My Psychology Chapter One

Confirmation Bias

One such error is the confirmation bias: a tendency to prefer information that confirms what you thought in the first place. You've experienced the confirmation bias in real life many times. As scientists, psychologists dedicate themselves to overcoming confirmation bias.

Posing a Question

The question on which the study focuses depends on the kind of research you conduct

Humanism

Humanism is a perspective in psychology that emphasizes the notion that human nature is generally good and people are naturally motivated to grow toward their own potential. Georg Voigt

Conducting a Literature Review

Of course, the question a researcher poses should be informed by what other researchers have found before. So you will need to do a literature review: a step in scientific research during which a researcher learns what previous research on the topic already exists. You may not be the first researcher to study social media time and self-esteem.

Phrenology

Phrenology, bumps in the skull revealed personality characteristics and mental abilities

What Psychology Is Not

Psychology is not just therapy psychology is not exclusively about people with mental disorders. Psychology is also not all about Sigmund Freud. Psychology is also not psychiatry, the medical specialization focusing on the brain and its disorders. Psychiatrists are medical doctors. They go to medical school and earn MD degrees to become physicians

Clinical psychology

Specialization in which psychologists focus on psychological disorders. Clinical psychologists do many professional activities, Clinical psychologists also do psychological assessment, including intelligence tests and personality tests, often to diagnose people with psychological disorders.

Community psychology

Specialization in which psychologists focus on the wellness of entire communities. Rather than helping individuals with a problem one by one as they experience it, community psychologists try to address community-wide problems that make its members vulnerable to that problem in the first place. As a result, community psychologists often participate in large-scale efforts to empower people and enhance their lives through prevention

Functionalism

The approach that took its place was functionalism: a perspective from the early history of psychology that focused on the function of our mental processes and behaviors. Unlike structuralism, which tried to determine what the mental processes are, functionalism tried to determine what the mental processes are for—their purpose, or their value to the person performing them William James

Pseudopsychology

These were ideas the general public believed in but that had no basis in science —like we have astrology, horoscopes, and the vaccines-cause-autism theory today.

Nature or Nurture?

Were you born that way, or were there factors in your upbringing that made you the person you are?

Universal or Unique?

When psychological researchers come to a conclusion, for whom is it true? Do some psychological truths apply universally? Or are such truths unique to certain people in certain places at certain times?

The Goals of Psychological Studies

When psychologists conduct scientific studies, they have one of three aims: (1) to describe people in terms of a particular variable, (2) to see how two variables correlate with each other, or (3) to experiment by manipulating one variable and measuring how another variable responds. `

Personality psychology

is a basic research specialization in which psychologists focus on people's traits. They also explore factors that influence personality, including genes and family environment, in an attempt to understand how those traits develop.

Multiculturalism

is a perspective in psychology that emphasizes the influence of culture on behavior and mental processes. Multiculturalism challenges an assumption held by the older schools of psychology (almost all of which were founded by White men from the United States and Europe) that an explanation of human behavior was equally true for all humans.

Scientific

we measure the merit of those ideas by applying the scientific method.

Psychoanalysis

as psychoanalysis: a perspective in psychology created by Sigmund Freud that emphasizes unconscious mental activity and the long-lasting influence of childhood experiences. The discovery of this "talking cure" (as it was called by Anna O., a patient whose treatment was famously described by Breuer) led Freud to two historic ideas. Sigmund Freud

Comparative psychology

is a basic research specialization in which psychologists focus on the behavior of species other than humans.

Biopsychosocial theory

is a uniquely comprehensive popular perspective in psychology that emphasizes biological, psychological, and social factors as influences on behavior. Biopsychosocial theory is as inclusive as it gets among the schools of psychology. Unlike other old and new approaches, biopsychosocial theory does not claim that one factor alone explains your behavior. Instead, it recognizes that your brain and genetic inheritance (biological factors) and your thoughts and feelings (psychological factors) and your family and culture (social factors)

Experimental Research

is research in which the goal is to determine the cause-and-effect relationship between two variables by manipulating one and observing changes in the other. independent variable (IV): in experimental research, a variable that is manipulated by the researcher. By contrast, self-esteem would be your dependent variable (DV): in experimental research, a variable that is expected to depend upon the independent variable. Of course, you'd want to put participants into those two groups via random assignment: a procedure in experimental research by which the assignment of participants into either the experimental or control group happens entirely by chance. If you used some factor (gender, for example) (the experimental group) the new therapy and the other half (the control group), a therapy already proven to work.

Physiognomy

Physiognomy was like phrenology but about the face rather than the skull. Supposedly your eyelids indicated how sympathetic you were,

Basic research psychology specializations

are areas in which psychologists conduct research for the sake of enhancing the understanding of behavior and mental processes. These are the psychologists who run studies.

Correlational Research

Correlational research is research in which the goal is to determine the relationship between two variables. To measure correlations, psychologists use the correlation coefficient: a statistic that shows the relationship between two variables, ranging from highly positive (+1) to highly negative (−1) (Figure 1.4). A positive correlation coefficient means that as one variable goes up, A negative correlation coefficient means that as one variable goes up, Between the positive and the negative, there's the zero correlation coefficient, Even though such coefficients may lean in either a positive or negative direction, they lean so slightly that they have no real predictive value.

Mesmerism

(named after its inventor, Franz Anton Mesmer) was a practice in which a healer moved magnets or in some cases just empty hands over your body to adjust your balance of fluids or to induce a hypnotic trance.

Behaviorism

Behaviorism is a perspective in psychology that emphasizes observable behavior over internal mental processes. The rationale behind behaviorism is simple: behavior can be seen and measured, but mental processes like feelings and thoughts cannot. Behaviorists believed psychology could be a science if it focused on behavior rather than mental processes— a point that Wundt, Titchener, James, and other pioneers of psychology had already highlighted.

Belief Perseverance

Belief perseverance happens when you can't avoid beliefs that prove yours wrong but you cling to yours anyway. Going back to that restaurant example, if several of your friends tell you that restaurant was their all-time favorite, you might think, "What do they know about good food? It was awful." If it wins awards from local restaurant critics, you dig your heels in even more: "Restaurant critics are such idiots."

Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive psychology is a perspective in psychology that emphasizes processes such as thinking, language, attention, memory, and intelligence. These are the processes of acquiring and using information The cognitive perspective arose largely as a reaction against the behavioral perspective, which came before it. In particular, psychologists associated with the cognitive perspective argue against the behavioral emphasis on issues outside of the mind, like observable behavior and external conditions. Instead, cognitive psychologists highlight the fact that what happens inside the mind is essential to understanding humans. Cognitive psychologists study a wide range of inside-the-mind questions, like how we solve problems and make decisions, how we learn languages, what stimulates creative thinking, and what influences intelligence.

Descriptive Research

Descriptive research is research in which the goal is simply to describe a characteristic of the population. You'd report your findings of this descriptive study in the form of a measure of central tendency, like the mean, median, or mode. You'd also report the scatter, or variance, around those measures of central tendency, such as the standard deviation.

Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology is a perspective in psychology that emphasizes Charles Darwin's theory of evolution as an influence on behavior. Evolutionary theory is well over 100 years old, and its influence on psychology can be traced back as far as William James's functionalism, but its impact on psychology continues to grow. Contemporary psychologists increasingly turn to evolutionary theory to explain and predict all kinds of human behavior. Evolutionary psychology also offers explanations of psychological disorders. For example, the most common phobias—heights, snakes, insects, small animals, the dark, enclosed spaces—are actually not the biggest threats to our survival today. But they were the biggest threats to the survival of our ancestors. Ancestors who feared those things were more likely than the fearless to live long enough to have kids of their own.

Ethics in Psychological Studies

Force people to participate against their will. Deceive possible participants about the research unless doing so won't cause them pain or distress, is essential to the study, is disclosed after participation, and is the only option (no undeceptive alternative is available). Fabricate, or make up, data. Plagiarize, or claim as their own, ideas or words that belong to someone else.

Neuroscience

Neuroscience is a perspective in psychology that emphasizes the link between behavior and the biological functioning of the brain. This link has always been an important part of psychology, but technological advances in recent decades that allow researchers access to the inner workings of the brain Neuroscience has become so hot in recent years that some experts have started a backlash.

Analyzing the Data and Drawing Conclusions

Once the data is collected, it's time to make sense of it. Most often, that process begins by entering numbers into a data file in a statistics computer program and conducting a data analysis with the appropriate statistical tests. The best statistical tests are the ones that directly address the hypothesis.

Critical Thinking

Perhaps the biggest enemy to pseudopsychology and the greatest friend to real psychology is critical thinking: an inquisitive, challenging approach to ideas and assumptions. Critical thinking is essential to advancement in any kind of science. With critical thinking, we become less dependent upon "common sense? Common sense certainly has its place, but science, fueled by critical thinking, can help us confirm or disconfirm the common sense explanations that occur to us.

Positive Psychology

Positive psychology is a perspective in psychology that emphasizes people's strengths and successes. When positive psychology rose to popularity in the 1990s and 2000s, it contrasted with the dominant focus within much of psychology: people's problems, in the forms of disorders, weaknesses, and failings.

Developing a Hypothesis

Psychological research is typically based on a theory: a proposed explanation for observed events. For example, your experimental research on social media time and self-esteem might be based on the theory that as social media time goes up, self-esteem goes down. Ideally, this theory is influenced by previous research on the topic

How Psychologists Share Their Results

Psychologists who have conducted research are certainly eager to share their results, but they do so in a way that ensures higher quality than simply putting those results out there without any oversight or scrutiny. Psychologists make their research known to others via the peer review process: the appraisal of research by people who are as expert as (or more so) on the subject than the researcher. The peers involved in the peer review process take an evaluative role: they receive submissions from researchers and decide whether they are worthy to be shared with the professional community here are two main outlets for psychologists (and their students) to share their research—presentations at professional conferences and articles in professional journals. The peer review process is a big part of both outlets.

Industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology

Specialization focused on the workplace. Some I/O psychologists concentrate on issues of personnel—helping companies hire the right people, place them in jobs that fit their abilities, and train them to maximize their performance.

Educational Psychology

Specialization in which psychologists focus on learning and teaching They improve students' performance by examining how students organize their materials, study, motivate themselves, and deal with challenges. There is significant overlap between educational psychologists and school psychologists,

Forensic psychology

Specialization in which psychologists focus on legal and criminal justice issues. Forensic psychologists—whose degrees are often actually in clinical psychology, with a concentration in forensic issues

Spiritualism

Spiritualism took many forms, typically including communicating with spirits or the deceased. Clairvoyants, fortunetellers, palm readers, and séance conductors could tell you all about your past, present, and future, according to these techniques. So early psychologists fought hard to make sure that psychology was scientific, which made its claims more valid and respectable than those of all the nonscientific techniques. Unfortunately, pseudopsychology is still around and still persuades lots of people.

The Scientific Method

The scientific method is a way of asking and answering questions that follows a predetermined series of steps: posing a question, conducting a literature review, developing a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis by collecting data, and analyzing the data and drawing conclusions

Psychology

The scientific study of behavior and mental processes. The and in that definition is important: it means that psychology focuses on both our outer actions and our inner experiences.

Change or Stability?

To what extent do you change over time? To what extent do you remain the same? When you change, how does it happen—slowly and surely or in abrupt spurts? For example, developmental psychologists explore how we change from birth through old age in many ways:

Testing the Hypothesis by Collecting Data

When you collect data for your study of social media and self-esteem, you'll have to decide whose social media time and self-esteem you are most interested in. In other words, you have to identify the study's population: the whole range of people on whom the research is focused. In this case, as we have already discussed, your population is U.S. college students. But you certainly won't be able to include all of them in your study; there are way too many, and you couldn't get to them all. That means you'll have to settle for a sample: the subset of the population who actually participate in the research. It's important for the sample to match the population (Figure 1.6). If the sample differs in a significant way from the population, your results may be true only for your sample, not more generally across your whole population. . Surveys are usually done in a self-report format, which means that the person completing the survey answers questions about himself or herself. Occasionally, people complete surveys that describe someone else's behavior or attitudes, as when a parent completes a survey about a young child. With laboratory observations, the psychologist collects data from participants by watching their behavior in the psychologist's lab. With naturalistic observations, the psychologist collects data from participants by visiting them in the real-world location where their behavior happens naturally.

Structuralism

a perspective from the early history of psychology that focused on breaking down mental processes into their structure or basic parts. Edward B. Titchener

Developmental psychology

basic research specialization in which psychologists focus on how people change throughout the life span. In the early days, developmental psychologists focused exclusively on childhood and adolescence, but in recent decades, they have also focused on development during the adult years. Developmental psychologists conduct research on how our reasoning, thinking, relationships, emotions, and other aspects of our lives evolve as we age

Black psychologists

have made many notable historical achievements. In 1920, Francis C. Sumner became the first Black man to earn a PhD in psychology in the United States, In 1937, Alberta Banner Turner became the first Black woman to do so. The Clarks also opened a child guidance clinic in Harlem, have made many notable historical achievements. In 1920, Francis C. Sumner became the first Black man to earn a PhD in psychology in the United States, and in 1937, The Clarks also opened a child guidance clinic in Harlem, which Mamie Phipps Clark directed for over 30 years and which is still in operation today. In 1971, Kenneth Clark became the first Black president of the American Psychological Association

Social psychology

is a basic research specialization in which psychologists focus on how people think about, influence, and relate to each other. Social psychologists explore our attitudes toward others, including prejudices and stereotypes, and how they relate to our interpersonal actions. They compare the way we explain the behavior of others to the way we explain the behavior of ourselves.

Physiological psychology

is a basic research specialization in which psychologists focus on the neural basis of behavior. Physiological psychologists conduct studies to determine the roles of various parts or processes within the brain in various behaviors, from hearing and sight to memory and sleep.

Health psychology

is a basic research specialization in which psychologists focus on the relationship between mind and body Most health psychologists are researchers, but some work in other specialization areas (like clinical and counseling), directly with clients on health-related issues. They study eating, exercise, and other topics related to weight; smoking, drinking, and other topics related to harmful substances; and sexual behavior and sexually transmitted diseases.

Applied psychology specializations

psychologists apply their expertise to real-world problems. These are the psychologists who practice. In other words, they use their knowledge of mind and behavior to enhance some important aspect of their clients' live

Counseling psychology

specialization in which psychologists focus on improving the functioning of people who are struggling through difficult times in their lives.

New-School Psychology

the new schools—most notably, multiculturalism, evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and biopsychosocial theory—more accurately capture the movements that characterize psychology's present and immediate future.