Chapter 1

Health psychologists might conduct research that explores the relationship between one's...

genetic makeup, patterns of behavior, relationships, psychological stress, and health

Biological psychologists study...

how the structure and function of the nervous system generates behavior. Interest include: sensory and motor systems, sleep, drug use and abuse, ingestive behavior, reproductive behavior, neurodevelopment, plasticity of the nervous system, and biological correlates of psychological disorders

As a part of his research, Skinner developed a chamber that allowed the careful study of the principles of modifying behavior through reinforcement and punishment. This device, known as an ____ (or more familiarly, a Skinner box), has remained a crucial resource for researchers studying behavior

operant conditioning chamber

Imagine walking between buildings as you move from one class to another. You are inundated with sights, sounds, touch sensations, and smells. You also experience the temperature of the air around you and maintain your balance as you make your way. These are all factors of interest to someone working in the domain of sensation and _____

perception

According to Maslow, the highest-level needs relate to ____, a process by which we achieve our full potential

self-actualization

Scientists interested in both physiological aspects of sensory systems as well as in the psychological experience of sensory information work within the area of ____

sensation and perception

What is the Skinner box?

A chamber that isolates the subject from the external environment and has a behavior indicator such as a lever or a button. When the animal pushes the button or lever, the box is able to deliver a positive reinforcement of the behavior (such as food) or a punishment (such as a noise).

What is Humanism?

A perspective within psychology that emphasizes the potential for good that is innate to all humans. Two of the most well-known proponents of humanistic psychology are Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers

____ involves the patient taking a lead role in the therapy session

Client-centered therapy

List the five dimensions of the Big Five (aka five traits)

Conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion

____ impacts individuals, groups, and society

Culture

____ will assess a person's competency to stand trial, assess the state of mind of a defendant, act as consultants on child custody cases, consult on sentencing and treatment recommendations, and advise on issues such as eyewitness testimony and children's testimony

Forensic psychologists (and forensic psychiatrists)

____ is a branch of psychology that deals questions of psychology as they arise in the context of the justice system

Forensic psychology

In 1920, ____ was the first African American to receive a PhD in psychology in the United States

Francis Cecil Sumner

____ proposed that personality arose as conflicts between the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind were carried out over the lifespan.

Freud

What did Francis Cecil Sumner do?

He established a psychology degree program at Howard University, leading to the education of a new generation of African American psychologists

What did Ivan Pavlov do?

He studied a form of learning behavior called a conditioned reflex

What did Freud theorize?

He theorized that many of his patients' problems arose from the unconscious mind. In his view, the unconscious mind was a repository of feelings and urges of which we have no awareness. So, by gaining access to the unconscious, then, was crucial to the successful resolution of the patient's problems. According to him, the unconscious mind could be accessed through dream analysis, by examinations of the first words that came to people's minds, and through seemingly innocent slips of the tongue.

How did Wundt view psychology?

He viewed it as a scientific study of conscious experience, and he believed that the goal of psychology was to identify components of consciousness and how those components combined to result in our conscious experience.

____ focuses on how health is affected by the interaction of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors

Health psychology

What are Adjunct Faculty Members and Instructors?

Individuals who have an advanced degree in psychology (master's degree), but they often have primary careers outside of academia and serve in this role as a secondary job

What does Social Psychology focus on?

It focuses on how we interact with and relate to others. Individuals in this field research a wide variety of topics that include differences in how we explain our own behavior versus how we explain the behaviors of others, prejudice, and attraction, and how we resolve interpersonal conflicts

What does Personality Psychology focus on?

It focuses on patterns of thoughts and behaviors that make each individual unique. Theorists such as Freud, Maslow, and Gordon Allport have contributed to early theories of personality

A ____ is a doctor of psychology degree that is increasingly popular among individuals interested in pursuing careers in clinical psychology. These programs generally place less emphasis on research-oriented skills and focus more on application of psychological principles in the clinical context

PsyD

What is Contemporary psychology?

a diverse field that is influenced by all of the historical perspectives described in the preceding section (e.g. behaviorism, humanism, etc)

What is the American Psychological Association (APA)?

A professional organization representing psychologists in the United States. It is the largest organization of psychologists in the world, and its mission is to advance and disseminate psychological knowledge for the betterment of people. There are 54 divisions, representing a wide variety of specialties that range from Societies for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality to Exercise and Sport Psychology to Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology. Reflecting the diversity of the field of psychology itself, members, affiliate members, and associate members span the spectrum from students to doctoral-level psychologists, and come from a variety of places including educational settings, criminal justice, hospitals, the armed forces, and industry

How do you apply the scientific method?

A researcher with a question about how or why something happens will propose a tentative explanation, called a hypothesis, to explain the phenomenon. A hypothesis should fit into the context of a scientific theory, which is a broad explanation or group of explanations for some aspect of the natural world that is consistently supported by evidence over time. A theory is the best understanding we have of that part of the natural world. The researcher then makes observations or carries out an experiment to test the validity of the hypothesis. Those results are then published or presented at research conferences so that others can replicate or build on the results

What is Industrial-Organizational psychology (I-O psychology)?

A subfield of psychology that applies psychological theories, principles, and research findings in industrial and organizational settings

Who was Mary Whiton Calkins?

A woman who completed all requirements toward the PhD in psychology, but Harvard University refused to award her that degree because she was a woman. Her memory research studied primacy and recency, and she also wrote about how structuralism and functionalism both explained self-psychology

Who was Mary Cover Jones?

A woman who conducted a study she considered to be a sequel to John B. Watson's study of Little Albert. She unconditioned fear in Little Peter, who had been afraid of rabbits

Who was Noam Chomsky?

An American linguist, who was influential in the early days of the cognitive revolution. He was dissatisfied with the influence that behaviorism had had on psychology. He believed that psychology's focus on behavior was short-sighted and that the field had to re-incorporate mental functioning into its purview if it were to offer any meaningful contributions to understanding behavior

Who was Abraham Maslow?

An American psychologist who is best known for proposing a hierarchy of human needs in motivating behavior. He believed as long as basic needs were met, high-level needs (social needs) would begin to motivate behavior

Who was B. F. Skinner?

An American psychologist who was a behaviorist, he concentrated on how behavior was affected by its consequences. Therefore, he spoke of reinforcement and punishment as major factors in driving behavior

Who was Carl Rogers?

An American psychologist who, like Maslow, emphasized the potential for good that exists within all people. He used a therapeutic technique known as client-centered therapy in helping his clients deal with problematic issues that resulted in their seeking psychotherapy. He believed that people were more than capable of dealing with and working through their own issues

Who was Sigmund Freud?

An Austrian neurologist who was fascinated by patients suffering from "hysteria" and neurosis

Who was John B. Watson?

An influential American psychologist whose most famous work occurred during the early 20th century at Johns Hopkins University. He thought that the study of consciousness was flawed. Because he believed that objective analysis of the mind was impossible, Watson preferred to focus directly on observable behavior and try to bring that behavior under control. He was a major proponent of shifting the focus of psychology from the mind to behavior, and this approach of observing and controlling behavior came to be known as behaviorism (commonly uses animals in experiments)

What is Hysteria?

Ancient diagnosis for disorders, primarily of women with a wide variety of symptoms, including physical symptoms and emotional disturbances, none of which had an apparent physical cause

____ is largely responsible for establishing psychology as a scientific discipline through its objective methods and especially experimentation

Behaviorism

____ explores how our biology influences our behavior

Biopsychology

Who developed Structuralism?

Edward Titchener (Wundt's student)

Counseling Psychology focuses on?

Emotional, social, vocational, and health-related outcomes in individuals who are considered psychologically healthy

How is European psychology and American psychology different?

European psychology had never really been as influenced by behaviorism as had American psychology; and thus, the cognitive revolution helped reestablish lines of communication between European psychologists and their American counterparts. Furthermore, psychologists began to cooperate with scientists in other fields, like anthropology, linguistics, computer science, and neuroscience, among others. This interdisciplinary approach often was referred to as the cognitive sciences, and the influence and prominence of this particular perspective resonates in modern-day psychology

____ seeks to study the ultimate biological causes of behavior. To the extent that a behavior is impacted by genetics, a behavior, like any anatomical characteristic of a human or animal, will demonstrate adaption to its surroundings. These surroundings include the physical environment and, since interactions between organisms can be important to survival and reproduction, the social environment

Evolutionary psychology

What is a Dissertation?

It is essentially a long research paper or bundled published articles describing research that was conducted as a part of the candidate's doctoral training. In the United States, a dissertation generally has to be defended before a committee of expert reviewers before the degree is conferred

What is Conditioned Reflex?

It is when an animal or human produced a reflex (unconscious) response to a stimulus and, over time, was conditioned to produce the response to a different stimulus that the experimenter associated with the original stimulus. The reflex Pavlov worked with was salivation in response to the presence of food. The salivation reflex could be elicited using a second stimulus, such as a specific sound, that was presented in association with the initial food stimulus several times. Once the response to the second stimulus was "learned," the food stimulus could be omitted. Pavlov's "classical conditioning" is only one form of learning behavior studied by behaviorists

What is Unconditional Positive Regard?

It refers to the fact that the therapist accepts their client for who they are, no matter what they might say

What is Psychology?

It refers to the scientific study of the mind and behavior. Psychologists use the scientific method to acquire knowledge

What is Object Permanence?

It refers to the understanding that physical things continue to exist, even if they are hidden from us

Depict the origins of the Association for Psychological Science (APS)

It was founded in 1988 and seeks to advance the scientific orientation of psychology. Its founding resulted from disagreements between members of the scientific and clinical branches of psychology within the APA. It publishes five research journals and engages in education and advocacy with funding agencies. A lot of the members are international

What is the focus on Functionalism?

Its focus was on how mental activities helped an organism fit into its environment. Functionalists were more interested in the operation of the whole mind rather than of its individual parts, which were the focus of structuralism.

What is the focus of Structuralism?

Its focus was on the contents of mental processes rather than their function

Early work in the field of behavior was conducted by the Russian physiologist ____

Ivan Pavlov

What is the key to Darwin's theory regarding natural selection?

Key to that theory is the idea that natural selection leads to organisms that are adapted to their environment, including their behavior. Adaptation means that a trait of an organism has a function for the survival and reproduction of the individual, because it has been naturally selected. As James saw it, psychology's purpose was to study the function of behavior in the world, and as such, his perspective was known as functionalism

Who were the 3 Germany psychologists who immigrated to the US to escape Nazi Germany?

Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Köhler

What are the many areas human behavior for which evolution can make predictions?

Memory, mate choice, relationships between kin, friendship and cooperation, parenting, social organization, and status

Scientists test must be?

Perceivable and measurable

____ refers to a doctor of philosophy degree, but here, philosophy does not refer to the field of philosophy per se. Rather, philosophy in this context refers to many different disciplinary perspectives that would be housed in a traditional college of liberal arts and sciences. In order to get one, you must complete a dissertation

PhD

____ allow young scientists to further develop their research programs and broaden their research skills under the supervision of other professionals in the field

Postdoctoral training programs

____ focuses on the role of a person's unconscious, as well as early childhood experiences, and this particular perspective dominated clinical psychology for several decades

Psychoanalytic theory

____ have also sought to determine how being among other people changes our own behavior and patterns of thinking

Social psychologists

What prevented Gestalt Principles from becoming influential?

The 3 German scientists were forced to abandon their work and the rise of Behaviorism prevented it as well

What is Critical Thinking?

The active application of a set of skills to information for the understanding and evaluation of that information. It involves maintaining an attitude of skepticism, recognizing internal biases, making use of logical thinking, asking appropriate questions, and making observations.

What is Cognitive Psychology?

The area of psychology that focuses on studying cognitions, or thoughts, and their relationships to our experiences and our actions. It is also known as cognitive science

What is Clinical Psychology?

The area of psychology that focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and other problematic patterns of behavior. It is considered to be a more applied area within psychology

What is a Theory?

The best understanding we have of that part of the natural world

What is Developmental Psychology?

The scientific study of development across a lifespan. A lot of interest in physical maturation (cognitive skills, moral reasoning, social behavior, physical aging appearances) is found in this field

Who was Inez Beverly Prosser?

The first African American woman awarded the PhD in 1933 at the University of Cincinnati

Who was Martha Bernal?

The first Latina to earn her doctoral degree in psychology (1962) conducted much of her research with Mexican American children.

Who is G. Stanley Hall?

The first president of the APA. Before he earned his doctoral degree, he was an adjunct instructor at Wilberforce University, a historically Black college/university (HBCU), while serving as faculty at Antioch College. Hall went on to work under William James, earning his PhD. Eventually, he became the first president of Clark University in Massachusetts when it was founded

Who was Margaret Floy Washburn?

The first woman awarded the doctoral degree in psychology. She wrote The Animal Mind: A Textbook of Comparative Psychology, and it was the standard in the field for over 20 years

Wundt believed in Voluntarism, which is?

The notion that people have free will and should know the intentions of a psychological experiment if they were participating

What is Behavior?

The objectively observable outcome of mental processes

What is a drawback of evolutionary psychology?

The traits that we possess now evolved under environmental and social conditions far back in human history, and we have a poor understanding of what these conditions were. This makes predictions about what is adaptive for a behavior difficult. Behavioral traits need not be adaptive under current conditions, only under the conditions of the past when they evolved, about which we can only hypothesize

What are the Gestalt Principles?

The word Gestalt roughly translates to "whole;" a major emphasis of Gestalt psychology deals with the fact that although a sensory experience can be broken down into individual parts, how those parts relate to each other as a whole is often what the individual responds to in perception. For example, a song may be made up of individual notes played by different instruments, but the real nature of the song is perceived in the combinations of these notes as they form the melody, rhythm, and harmony. This perspective contradicted Wundt's idea of structuralism

Mamie Phipps Clark and Kenneth Clark are known for?

Their studies conducted on African American children and doll preference, research that was instrumental in the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court desegregation case. They applied their research to social services and opened the first child guidance center in Harlem

What are Forensic psychologists (and forensic psychiatrists)?

They are expert witnesses, called by either side in a court case to provide their research or experience based opinions. As expert witnesses, they must have a good understanding of the law and provide information in the context of the legal system rather than just within the realm of psychology. They are also used in the jury selection process and witness preparation. They may also be involved in providing psychological treatment within the criminal justice system

What are Personality Traits?

They are relatively consistent patterns of thought and behavior, and many have proposed that five trait dimensions (aka big five) are sufficient to capture the variations in personality seen across individuals

What were Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Köhler credited for?

They were credited with introducing psychologists in the United States to various Gestalt principles

Rogers believed that a therapist needed to display three features to maximize the effectiveness of this particular approach, which were?

Unconditional positive regard, genuineness, and empathy

WEIRD stands for?

Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic

The field of psychology explores questions such as?

What is creativity? What are prejudice and discrimination? What is consciousness?

What is the difference between clinical psychologists and psychiatrists?

While both can conduct therapy and counseling, clinical psychologists have a PhD or a PsyD, whereas psychiatrists have a doctor of medicine degree (MD). As such, licensed clinical psychologists can administer and interpret psychological tests, while psychiatrists can prescribe medications

____ was a German scientist who was the first person to be referred to as a psychologist

Wilhelm Wundt

Who are credited as being the founders of psychology as a science and academic discipline that was distinct from philosophy.

Wilhelm Wundt and William James

Who helped establish Functional Psychology (Functionalism)?

William James, John Dewey, and Charles Sanders Peirce

Is Psychology is a social science?

Yes, it is a social science

By the 1950s, new disciplinary perspectives in linguistics, neuroscience, and computer science were emerging, and these areas revived interest in the mind as a focus of scientific inquiry. This particular perspective has come to be known as the ____

cognitive revolution

Anyone wishing to continue a career in psychology at a 4-year institution of higher education will have to earn a...

doctoral degree in psychology for some specialties and at least a master's degree for others

Psychological science is ____, based on measurable data

empirical

An ____ for acquiring knowledge is one based on observation, including experimentation, rather than a method based only on forms of logical argument or previous authorities

empirical method

Wundt used ____ (he called it "internal perception"), a process by which someone examines their own conscious experience as objectively as possible, making the human mind like any other aspect of nature that a scientist observed.

introspection

Cognitive psychologists have research interests that span a spectrum of topics, ranging from attention to problem solving to language to ____

memory

More recently, the study of personality has taken on a more quantitative approach. Rather than explaining how personality arises, research is focused on identifying _____, measuring these traits, and determining how these traits interact in a particular context to determine how a person will behave in any given situation

personality traits

I-O psychologists are often involved in issues related to...

personnel management, organizational structure, and workplace environment

Researchers in ____ study the psychological aspects of sport performance, including motivation and performance anxiety, and the effects of sport on mental and emotional wellbeing

sport and exercise psychology