Intro to Psychology Test 1

Explain how the scientific attitude encourages critical thinking.

The scientific attitude reflects a hard-headed curiosity to explore and understand the world without being fooled by it. The eagerness to skeptically scrutinize competing claims requires humility because it means we may have to reject our own ideas. This attitude, coupled with scientific principles for sifting reality from illusion, helps us winnow sense from nonsense. It carries into everyday life as critical thinking in which we examine assumptions, discern hidden values, evaluate evidence, and assess conclusions.

Chapter 1 Preview

The scientific attitude reflects an eagerness to skeptically scrutinize competing ideas with an open-minded humility before nature. This attitude, coupled with scientific principles for sifting reality from illusion, prepares us to think critically. Two reliable phenomena—hindsight bias and judgmental overconfidence—illustrate the limits of everyday intuition and our need for scientific inquiry and critical thinking. Psychologists construct theories that organize observations and imply testable hypotheses. In their research, they use case studies, surveys, and naturalistic observation to describe behavior; correlation to assess the relationship between variables; and experimentation to uncover cause-effect relationships. Researchers use statistics to describe their data, to assess relationships between variables, and to determine whether differences are significant. This chapter concludes by briefly answering several questions that students commonly ask about psychology. These include concern over the simplification of reality in laboratory experiments, the generalizability of research in terms of culture and gender, the purpose of animal studies, the adequacy of research ethics, and the potential misuse of psychology's knowledge.

Identify the three main levels of analysis in the biopsychosocial approach, and explain why psychology's varied perspectives are complementary.

The different systems that make up the complex human system suggest different levels of analysis: biological, psychological, and social-cultural. Together, these levels form an integrated biopsychosocial approach. Psychology's varied perspectives therefore complement each other. Someone working from the evolutionary perspective considers how evolution influences behavior tendencies. behavior genetics perspective considers how evolution influences behavior tendencies. neuroscience perspective studies how the body and brain work to create emotions, memories, and sensory experiences. psychodynamic perspective views behavior as springing from unconscious drives and conflicts. behavioral perspective examines how observable responses are acquired and changed. cognitive perspective studies how we encode, process, store, and retrieve information. social-cultural perspective examines how behavior and thinking vary with the situation and culture.

Explain how experiments help researchers isolate cause and effect.

The experiment is a research method in which the investigator manipulates one or more variables to observe their effect on some behavior or mental process while controlling other relevant factors. If a behavior changes when we vary an experimental factor, then we know the factor is having a causal effect.

Describe how psychological theories guide scientific research.

A useful theory effectively organizes a wide range of observations and implies testable predictions, called hypotheses. By enabling us to test and reject or revise a particular theory, such predictions give direction to research. They specify in advance what results would support the theory and what results would disconfirm it. As an additional check on their own biases, psychologists report their results precisely with clear operational definitions of concepts. Such statements of the procedures used to define research variables allow others to replicate, or repeat, their observations. Often, research leads to a revised theory that better organizes and predicts observable behaviors or events.

Prologue Preview

As the science of behavior and mental processes, psychology traces its roots back to early recorded history when scholars reflected on the relationship between mind and body. Psychologists' initial focus on the mind's structure was later replaced by the study of its functions. As the science of behavior and mental processes, psychology has its origins in many disciplines and countries. Psychology's most enduring issue concerns the relative contributions of biology and experience. Today, psychologists recognize that nurture works on what nature endows. The biopsychosocial approach incorporates biological, psychological, and social-cultural levels of analysis. Although different perspectives on human nature have their own purposes and questions, they are complementary and together provide a fuller understanding of mind and behavior. Some psychologists conduct basic or applied research; others provide professional services, including assessing and treating troubled people. With its perspectives ranging from the biological to the social, and settings from the clinic to the laboratory, psychology has become a meeting place for many disciplines. Mastering psychology requires active study. A survey-question-read-recite-review study method boosts students' learning and performance.

Explain the importance of statistical principles, and give an example of their use in everyday life.

Bar graphs provide one way to organize and present distributions of data. The visual display permits comparisons between different groups on the same quantitative dimension. Reducing or expanding the range of that measure can make differences between groups appear smaller or larger. It is always important to read the scale labels and note the range.

Psychology's Roots

Famous People: Aristotle's Psychology; Psychology's First Experiments; History of Psychology; Wilhelm Wundt and William James—Founding Fathers of Psychology Why do Psychologist behave like Scientist?

Explain the human tendency to perceive order in random sequences.

Illusory correlation is also a result of our natural eagerness to make sense of our world. Given even random data, we look for meaningful patterns. We usually find order because random sequences often don't look random. Apparent patterns and streaks (such as repeating digits) occur more often than people expect. Failing to see random occurrences for what they are can lead us to seek extraordinary explanations for ordinary events.

Explain why the double-blind procedure and random assignment build confidence in research findings.

In many experiments, control is achieved by randomly assigning people either to an experimental condition, where they are exposed to the treatment, or a control condition, where they are not exposed. Often, the research participants are blind (uninformed) about what treatment, if any, they are receiving. One group might receive the treatment, while the other group receives a placebo (a pseudotreatment). Often both the participant and the research assistant who collects the data will not know which condition the participant is in (the double-blind procedure). The placebo effect is well-documented. Just thinking one is receiving treatment can lead to symptom relief.

Trace psychology's prescientific roots, from early understandings of mind and body to the beginnings of modern science.

In their attempt to understand human nature, early scholars examined how our minds work and how our bodies relate to our minds. Buddha and Confucius focused on the power and origin of ideas. Socrates and Plato viewed mind as separable from body and argued that some ideas are innate. In contrast, Aristotle maintained that knowledge grows from our experience and believed that the mind and body are connected. He derived principles from careful observations. In the 1600s, the Frenchman René Descartes agreed with Socrates and Plato regarding the existence of inborn knowledge and the mind's "being entirely distinct from the body" and thus able to survive its death. In Britain, Francis Bacon, one of the founders of modern science, anticipated later discoveries regarding the human mind. British philosopher John Locke argued that at birth the mind is a blank slate on which experience writes. This idea helped formed modern empiricism, the view that knowledge originates in experience and thus that science should rely on observation and experimentation.

Identify an advantage and a disadvantage of using naturalistic observation to study behavior and mental processes.

Naturalistic observation consists of observing and recording the behavior of organisms in their natural environment. Like the case study and survey methods, this research strategy describes behavior but does not explain it.

Describe how overconfidence contaminates our everyday judgments.

Our everyday thinking is limited by our tendency to think we know more than we do. Asked how sure we are of our answers to factual questions, we tend to be more confident than correct. College students' predictions of their future behaviors and experts' predictions of political, economic, and military outcomes are similarly overconfident. Despite lackluster predictions, the overconfidence of experts is hard to dislodge.

Explain why correlational research fails to provide evidence of cause-effect relationships.

Perhaps the most irresistible thinking error is to assume that correlation proves causation. Correlation reveals how closely two things vary together and thus how well one predicts the other. However, the fact that events are correlated does not mean that one causes the other. Thus, while correlation enables prediction, it does not provide explanation.

Describe the evolution of psychology from the 1920s through today.

Psychology developed from the more established fields of philosophy and biology. Its pioneers included Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, Austrian personality theorist Sigmund Freud, and Swiss biologist Jean Piaget. Until the 1920s, psychology was defined as the science of mental life. From the 1920s through the 1960s, American psychologists, led by John Watson and later by B. F. Skinner, redefined psychology as the science of observable behavior. In the 1960s, psychology began to recapture its interest in mental processes, and today is defined as the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.

Define psychology.

Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. As a science, psychology evaluates competing claims with systematic observation and rigorous analysis. Behavior is anything an organism does. Mental processes are the internal, subjective experiences we infer from behavior, for example, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings.

Summarize the nature-nurture debate in psychology, and describe the principle of natural selection

Psychology's biggest and most enduring debate concerns the nature-nurture issue: the controversy over the relative contributions of genes and experience to the development of psychological traits and behavior. Included in the history of this debate is Charles Darwin's concept of natural selection, which states that among the range of inherited trait variations, those contributing to reproduction and survival will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations. Evolution has become an important principle for twenty-first-century psychology. Today, contemporary science recognizes that nurture works on what nature endows. Our species is biologically endowed with an enormous capacity to learn and to adapt. Moreover, every psychological event is simultaneously a biological event.

Identify an advantage and a disadvantage of using case studies to study behavior and mental processes

The case study is the method by which psychologists analyze one or more individuals in great depth in the hope of revealing things true of us all. While individual cases can suggest fruitful ideas, any given individual may be atypical, making the case misleading.

Identify some of psychology's subfields, and explain the difference between clinical psychology and psychiatry

Some psychologists conduct basic research. For example, biological psychologists explore the link between brain and behavior, developmental psychologists study our changing abilities from womb to tomb, and personality psychologists investigate our inner traits. Other psychologists conduct applied research. For example, industrial/organizational psychologists study behavior in the workplace and suggest ways of improving conditions and performance. Psychology is also a helping profession. Counseling psychology assists people with problems in living and in achieving greater well-being. Clinical psychology involves mental health professionals who study, assess, and treat people with psychological disorders. Psychiatry sometimes involves medical treatments as well as psychological therapy. Psychology relates to many disciplines, by connecting with fields ranging from mathematics to philosophy and by aiding those disciplines

Define hindsight bias, and explain how it can make research findings seem like mere common sense.

The hindsight bias, also known as the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon, is the tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it. Finding out that something has happened makes it seem inevitable. Thus, after learning the results of a study in psychology, it may seem to be obvious common sense. However, experiments have found that events seem far less obvious and predictable beforehand than in hindsight. Sometimes psychological findings even jolt our common sense.

Explain the difference between an independent and a dependent variable

The independent variable is the experimental factor that is being manipulated. It is the variable whose effect is being studied. The dependent variable is the variable that may change in response to the manipulations of the independent variable. It is the outcome factor.

Describe the three measures of central tendency, and tell which is most affected by extreme scores.

The mode is the most frequently occurring score in a distribution. The mean is the arithmetic average of a distribution, obtained by adding the scores and then dividing by the number of scores. It is biased by a few extreme scores. The median is the middle score in a distribution; half the scores are above it and half are below it.

Identify the advantages and disadvantages of using surveys to study behavior and mental processes, and explain the importance of wording effects and random sampling.

The survey looks at many cases in less depth and asks people to report their behavior or opinions. Asking questions is tricky because even subtle changes in the order or wording of questions can dramatically affect responses. In everyday experience, we are exposed to a biased sample of people who mostly share our attitudes and habits. As a result, we are vulnerable to the false consensus effect, whereby we overestimate others' agreement with us. The survey ascertains the self-reported attitudes or behaviors of a population by questioning a representative, random sample.

State five effective study techniques.

To master information, one must actively process it. People learn and remember material best when they put it in their own words, rehearse it, and then review and rehearse it again. An acronym for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review, SQ3R is a study method that encourages active processing of new information. Distributing study time, listening actively in class, overlearning, focusing on big ideas, and being a smart test-taker will also boost learning and performance.

Describe positive and negative correlations, and explain how correlational measures can aid the process of prediction.

When surveys and naturalistic observations reveal that one trait or behavior accompanies another, we say the two correlate. A correlation coefficient is a statistical measure of relationship. A positive correlation indicates a direct relationship, meaning that two things increase together or decrease together. A negative correlation indicates an inverse relationship: As one thing increases, the other decreases. Researchers depict scores on graphs called scatterplots; each point plots the value of two variables. The correlation coefficient helps us to see the world more clearly by revealing the extent to which two things relate.

Explain how the early psychologists sought to understand the mind's structure and functions, and identify some of the leading psychologists who worked in these areas.

Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychological laboratory in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany. He sought to measure the fastest and simplest mental processes. His student Edward Titchener introduced structuralism, which used introspection to search for the basic elements of the mind. However, self-reports proved somewhat unreliable, varying from person to person and from situation to situation. William James thought it more fruitful to study how consciousness serves a purpose. Thus, functionalism focused on how mental and behavioral processes enable the organism to adapt, survive, and flourish. James also wrote a textbook for the new discipline of psychology. He mentored Mary Whiton Calkins, the first female president of APA. Margaret Floy Washburn was the second female president of APA.

Describe how people form illusory correlations

llusory correlation, the perception of a relationship where none exists, often occurs because our belief that a relationship exists leads us to notice and recall confirming instances of that belief. Because we are sensitive to unusual events, we are especially likely to notice and remember the occurrence of two such events in sequence, for example, a premonition of an unlikely phone call followed by the call.