Psychology

Negative Punishment

A desirable stimulus is removed to discourage the behavior.

Hypotheses

A logical idea that can be tested.

Evolution

Change over time

Punishers

Effects that decrease behaviours.

Functionalist Theories of Emotion

Emotions help people manage important tasks They motivate learning

Habit

Instrumental behavior that occurs automatically in the presence of a stimulus and is no longer influenced by the animal's knowledge of the value of the reinforcer. Insensitive to the reinforcer devaluation effect.

Case Study

Intensive examination of specific individuals or specific contexts. Hopefully what is learned from this one person can be applied to others; however, even with thorough tests, there is the chance that something unique about this individual (other than the brain injury) will affect his or her happiness. But with such a limited number of possible participants, a case study is really the only type of methodology suitable for researching this brain injury.

Ernst Weber and Gustav Fechner

Investigated the question of the relationship between the mental (experiences of the senses) and the material (external reality) ] Psychophysics - Study of the relationships between physical stimuli and the perception of those stimuli

Probability Model

Investigates the pattern of results that would occur in the long run if random chance were the only factor.

Sexual Strategies Theory

It proposes that humans have evolved a list of different mating strategies, both short-term and long-term, that vary depending on culture, social context, parental influence, and personal mate value (desirability in the "mating market"). In short-term mating, women will likely be choosier than men (because the costs of getting pregnant are so high), while men, on average, will likely engage in more casual sexual activities (because this cost is greatly lessened). Due to this, men will sometimes deceive women about their long-term intentions for the benefit of short-term sex, and men are more likely than women to lower their mating standards for short-term mating situations.

Cost Assymetries

Making a choice between low cost but great reward and low reward but high cost.

Karl Popper

Popper argued against statements that could not be falsified. He claimed that they blocked scientific progress: There was no way to advance, refine, or refute knowledge based on such claims.

Correlations

Researchers measure variables as they naturally occur in people and compute the degree to which two variables go together

Scholar-Practitioner Model (Vail Conference)

A model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes clinical practice.

Scientist Practitioner Model (Boulder Conference)

A model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes the development of both research and clinical skills.

Conducting a study...

Control variables. Random selection.

The most fundamental principle of statistics...

Data vary.

Reinforcers

Food pellets strengthen the rat's desire to engage with the environment in this particular manner. Any consequence of a behavior that strengthens the behavior or increases the likelihood that it will be performed it again.

Edward Jenner

Immunology

Correlation

In statistics, the measure of relatedness of two or more variables.

Experiment

Only laboratory experiments can clearly separate cause from effect and therefore establish causality. A scientific field that is mainly based on controlled laboratory studies ends up lopsided. It accumulates a lot of knowledge on what can happen—under carefully isolated and controlled circumstances—but it has little to say about what actually does happen under the circumstances that people actually encounter in their daily lives.

Induction

To draw general conclusions from specific observations.

Scatterplot

To find out how well two variables correspond, we can plot the relation between the two scores on what is known as a scatterplot

Adoption Study

A behavior genetic research method that involves comparison of adopted children to their adoptive and biological parents. For instance, if the biological child of tall parents were adopted into a family of short people, do you suppose the child's growth would be affected? What about the biological child of a Spanish-speaking family adopted at birth into an English-speaking family? What language would you expect the child to speak? And what might these outcomes tell you about the difference between height and language in terms of nature-nurture?

Twin Studies

A behavior genetic research method that involves comparison of the similarity of identical (monozygotic; MZ) and fraternal (dizygotic; DZ) twins.

Positive Reinforcement

A desirable stimulus is introduced to encourage certain behavior.

Knowledge Emotions

A family of emotions associated with learning, reflecting, and exploring. These emotions come about when unexpected and unfamiliar events happen in the environment. Broadly speaking, they motivate people to explore unfamiliar things, which builds knowledge and expertise over the long run. Surprise, interest, confusion, and awe.

Deductive Reasoning

A form of reasoning in which a given premise determines the interpretation of specific observations (e.g., All birds have feathers; since a duck is a bird, it has feathers). Starts with a general principle Prediction rather than using observations Proof is more associated with deductive reasoning.

Flashbulb Memory

A highly detailed and vivid memory of an emotionally significant event.

Population

A larger collection of individuals that we would like to generalize our results to.

Quantitative law of effect

A mathematical rule that states that the effectiveness of a reinforcer at strengthening an operant response depends on the amount of reinforcement earned for all alternative behaviors. A reinforcer is less effective if there is a lot of reinforcement in the environment for other behaviors.

Probabilities

A measure of the degree of certainty of the occurrence of an event. Because of these uncertainties, we do not say that a study—especially a single study—proves a hypothesis. Instead, we say the results of the study offer evidence in support of the hypothesis. Even if we tested this across 10 thousand or 100 thousand people we still could not use the word "proven" to describe this phenomenon.

Diary Method

A methodology where participants complete a questionnaire about their thoughts, feelings, and behavior of the day at the end of the day.

Day Reconstruction Method

A methodology where participants describe their experiences and behavior of a given day retrospectively upon a systematic reconstruction on the following day.

Experiencing Sampling Method

A methodology where participants report on their momentary thoughts, feelings, and behaviors at different points in time over the course of a day.

Electronically Activated Recorder

A methodology where participants wear a small, portable audio recorder that intermittently records snippets of ambient sounds around them. The ambient sound recordings can be coded for many things, including participants' locations (e.g., at school, in a coffee shop), activities (e.g., watching TV, eating), interactions (e.g., in a group, on the phone), and emotional expressions (e.g., laughing, sighing). As unnatural or intrusive as it might seem, participants report that they quickly grow accustomed to the EAR and say they soon find themselves behaving as they normally would.

Negative Correlation

A negative correlation is one in which the two variables move in opposite directions. That is, as one variable goes up, the other goes down.

White Coat Hypertension

A phenomenon in which patients exhibit elevated blood pressure in the hospital or doctor's office but not in their everyday lives.

Anecdotal Evidence

A piece of biased evidence, usually drawn from personal experience, used to support a conclusion that may or may not be correct. "Common Sense"

Transfer-appropriate Processing

A principle that states that memory performance is superior when a test taps the same cognitive processes as the original encoding activity.

Linguistic Analyses

A quantitative text analysis methodology that automatically extracts grammatical and psychological information from a text by counting word frequencies.

Full-cycle Psychology

A scientific approach whereby researchers start with an observational field study to identify an effect in the real world, follow up with laboratory experimentation to verify the effect and isolate the causal mechanisms, and return to field research to corroborate their experimental findings.

Null Hypothesis

A statement that two variables are not related (in this case, that student maturity and academic performance are not related in any meaningful way)

Alternative Hypothesis

A statement that two variables are related (in this case, that student maturity and academic performance go together).

Fear conditioning

A type of classical or Pavlovian conditioning in which the conditioned stimulus (CS) is associated with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US), such as a foot shock. As a consequence of learning, the CS comes to evoke fear. The phenomenon is thought to be involved in the development of anxiety disorders in humans.

Laboratory Experiment

Ability to determine cause-and-effect relationships. As it carefully controls conditions and their effects, it can yield findings that are out of touch with reality and have limited use when trying to understand real-world behavior.

Features that distinguish Scientific Thinking from Everyday Thinking

Accuracy - Explanations and theories match real-world observations Consistency - A theory has few exceptions and shows agreement with other theories within and across disciplines Scope Simplicity Fruitfulness

Experiments

Allow researchers to make causal inferences Researchers actively make changes in one variable and watch for changes in another variable

Identical Twins

Although identical twins share a common genotype and are genetically identical and epigenetically similar when they are young, as they age they become more dissimilar in their epigenetic patterns and often display behavioral, personality, or even physical differences, and have different risk levels for serious illness. Thus, understanding the structure of the nucleosome is key to understanding the precise and stable control of gene expression and regulation, providing a molecular interface between genes and environmentally induced changes in cellular activity.

Quasi-experiment Design

An experiment that does not require random assignment to conditions. We rely on existing group memberships (e.g., married vs. single). We treat these as the independent variables, even though we don't assign people to the conditions and don't manipulate the variables. Causal inference is more difficult What if you want to study the effects of marriage on a variable? For example, does marriage make people happier? Can you randomly assign some people to get married and others to remain single? Of course not. So how can you study these important variables? You can use a quasi-experimental design. In an experimental design, you would randomly assign students to one of the two professors and then compare the students' final grades. However, in real life, researchers can't randomly force students to take one professor over the other; instead, the researchers would just have to use the preexisting classes and study them as-is (quasi-experimental design). Again, the key difference is random assignment to the conditions of the independent variable. Although the quasi-experimental design (where the students choose which professor they want) may seem random, it's most likely not. For example, maybe students heard Dr. Smith sets low expectations, so slackers prefer this class, whereas Dr. Khan sets higher expectations, so smarter students prefer that one.

Scientific Theory

An explanation for observed phenomena that is empirically well-supported, consistent, and fruitful (predictive).

Conditioned Stimulus

An initially neutral stimulus (like a bell, light, or tone) that elicits a conditioned response after it has been associated with an unconditioned stimulus.

Ecological Momentary Assessment

An overarching term to describe methodologies that repeatedly sample participants' real-world experiences, behavior, and physiology in real time.

Positive Punishment

An undesirable stimulus is introduced to discourage the behavior.

Negative Reinforcement

An undesirable stimulus is removed to encourage the behavior.

Incidental Learning

Any type of learning that happens without the intention to learn. Unintentional learning under classical conditioning You're not just pulling it out whenever Only happens when you're presented with that stimulus

Empirical methods

Approaches to inquiry that are tied to actual measurement and observation.

Adaptations

At the broadest level, we can think of organisms, including humans, as having two large classes of adaptations—or traits and behaviors that evolved over time to increase our reproductive success.

Inductive Reasoning

Based on data from samples. A form of reasoning in which a general conclusion is inferred from a set of observations (e. g., noting that "the driver in that car was texting; he just cut me off then ran a red light!" (a specific observation), which leads to the general conclusion that texting while driving is dangerous).

Level of Significance

Because this p-value of 0.0021 is quite small, we conclude that the study provides very strong evidence that these infants have a genuine preference for the helper toy. We often compare the p-value to some cut-off value (called the level of significance, typically around 0.05). If the p-value is smaller than that cut-off value, then we reject the hypothesis that only random chance was at play here.

Pseudoscience

Beliefs or practices that are presented as being scientific, or which are mistaken for being scientific, but which are not scientific (e.g., astrology, the use of celestial bodies to make predictions about human behaviors, and which presents itself as founded in astronomy, the actual scientific study of celestial objects. Astrology is a pseudoscience unable to be falsified, whereas astronomy is a legitimate scientific discipline)

Gestalt Psychology

Believed that studying the whole of any experience was richer than studying individual aspects of that experience. The saying "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" is a Gestalt perspective. An attempt to study the unity of experience. Served as a precursor to the rise of cognitive psychology in America.

Narrative Analysis

Centers around the study of stories and personal accounts of people, groups, or cultures. A researcher will examine people's personal testimonies in order to learn more about the psychology of those individuals or groups. These stories may be written, audio-recorded, or video-recorded, and allow the researcher not only to study what the participant says but how he or she says it. In this methodology, rather than engaging with participants directly, or quantifying their responses or behaviors, researchers will analyze the themes, structure, and dialogue of each person's narrative.

Research Methods for Studying Daily Life

Collecting Usage Data via Smartphones Sampling Daily Experiences Sampling Daily Behaviour Sampling Daily Psychology Sampling Online Behaviour

Extinction

Decrease in the strength of a learned behavior that occurs when the conditioned stimulus is presented without the unconditioned stimulus (in classical conditioning) or when the behavior is no longer reinforced (in instrumental conditioning). The term describes both the procedure (the US or reinforcer is no longer presented) as well as the result of the procedure (the learned response declines). Behaviors that have been reduced in strength through extinction are said to be "extinguished."

Metacognition

Describes the knowledge and skills people have in monitoring and controlling their own learning and memory.

Auditory Perpetual Learning

Each time we listen to a song, we hear it differently because of our experience. Occurs when aspects of our perception changes as a function of experience.

Appraisal Theories

Evaluations that relate what is happening in the environment to people's values, goals, and beliefs. Appraisal theories of emotion contend that emotions are caused by patterns of appraisals, such as whether an event furthers or hinders a goal and whether an event can be coped with.

Researcher Expectation Effect

Even experimenter expectations can influence the outcome of a study. For example, if the experimenter knows who took the happy pill and who did not, and the dependent variable is the experimenter's observations of people's happiness, then the experimenter might perceive improvements in the happy pill group that are not really there.

Evolutionary Psychology

Focuses mainly on psychological adaptations. Fundamentally an interactionist framework, or a theory that takes into account multiple factors when determining the outcome. For example, jealousy, like a callus, doesn't simply pop up out of nowhere. There is an "interaction" between the environmental trigger (e.g., the flirting; the repeated rubbing of the skin) and the initial response (e.g., evaluation of the flirter's threat; the forming of new skin cells) to produce the outcome.

Gene-environment Interaction

For many traits, genetic differences affect behavior under some environmental circumstances but not others.

Dizygotic Twins (DZ)

Fraternal twins, share 50% of their DNA Develop from two zygotes The heights of fraternal twins, however, are like any other sibling pairs: more similar to each other than to people from other families, but hardly identical. This contrast between twin types gives us a clue about the role genetics plays in determining height.

Problems with Correlation - CORRELATION DOES NOT MEAN CAUSATION

From a correlation alone, we can't be certain. For example, in the first case it may be that happiness causes generosity, or that generosity causes happiness. Or, a third variable might cause both happiness and generosity, creating the illusion of a direct link between the two.

Functionalism (William James)

Functionalists were interested in the activities of the mind—what the mind does. A school of American psychology that focused on the utility of consciousness. Opposed to the reductionist ideas of Titchener, James proposed that consciousness is ongoing and continuous; it cannot be isolated and reduced to elements

Gene Selection Theory

Genes can boost their own replicative success in two basic ways First, they can influence the odds for survival and reproduction of the organism they are in (individual reproductive success or fitness—as in the example with the sloths). Second, genes can also influence the organism to help other organisms who also likely contain those genes—known as "genetic relatives"—to survive and reproduce (which is called inclusive fitness). Ex: why do human parents tend to help their own kids with the financial burdens of a college education and not the kids next door? Well, having a college education increases one's attractiveness to other mates, which increases one's likelihood for reproducing and passing on genes. And because parents' genes are in their own children (and not the neighbourhood children), funding their children's educations increases the likelihood that the parents' genes will be passed on.

Theories

Groups of closely related phenomena or observations.

EMT: Auditory Looming Bias

Have you ever noticed how an ambulance seems closer when it's coming toward you, but suddenly seems far away once it's immediately passed? With the auditory looming bias, people overestimate how close objects are when the sound is moving toward them compared to when it is moving away from them. From our evolutionary history, humans learned, "It's better to be safe than sorry." Therefore, if we think that a threat is closer to us when it's moving toward us (because it seems louder), we will be quicker to act and escape. In this regard, there may be times we ran away when we didn't need to (a false alarm), but wasting that time is a less costly mistake than not acting in the first place when a real threat does exist.

EMT: Visual Descent Illusion

Have you ever thought it would be no problem to jump off of a ledge, but as soon as you stood up there, it suddenly looked much higher than you thought? States that people will overestimate the distance when looking down from a height (compared to looking up) so that people will be especially wary of falling from great heights—which would result in injury or death.

John Locke

He and Thomas Reid promoted Empiricism, the belief that knowledge comes from experience. Emphasized the role of the human observer and the primacy of the senses in defining how the mind comes to acquire knowledge

Adaptations: Reproduction

Help us compete for mates. These adaptations are described in an evolutionary theory proposed by Charles Darwin, called sexual selection theory.

Modern Intelligence Tests (Alfred Binet)

His goal was to develop a test that would identify schoolchildren in need of educational support.

Operational Definitions

How researchers specifically measure a concept. Psychologists measure many abstract concepts, such as happiness and intelligence, by beginning with operational definitions of the concepts.

Monozygotic Twins (MZ)

Identical twins, share 100% of genes Develop from a single zygote They are essentially clones Identical twins, unsurprisingly, are almost perfectly similar for height.

Weak vs Strong Correlation

If an association has many exceptions, it is considered a weak correlation. If an association has few or no exceptions, it is considered a strong correlation. A strong correlation is one in which the two variables always, or almost always, go together. In the example of happiness and how good the month has been, the association is strong. The stronger a correlation is, the tighter the dots in the scatterplot will be arranged along a sloped line.

Double-blind Procedure

In a double-blind procedure, neither the participant nor the experimenter knows which condition the participant is in.

Conditioned compensatory response

In classical conditioning, a conditioned response that opposes, rather than is the same as, the unconditioned response. It functions to reduce the strength of the unconditioned response. Often seen in conditioning when drugs are used as unconditioned stimuli.

Blocking

In classical conditioning, the finding that no conditioning occurs to a stimulus if it is combined with a previously conditioned stimulus during conditioning trials. Suggests that information, surprise value, or prediction error is important in conditioning.

Unconditioned Stimulus

In classical conditioning, the stimulus that elicits the response before conditioning occurs.

Epigenome

In contrast to the genome sequence, which is static and the same in almost all cells, the epigenome is highly dynamic, differing among cell types, tissues, and brain regions. A dynamic layer of information associated with DNA that differs between individuals and can be altered through various experiences and environments.

Discriminative stimulus

In operant conditioning, a stimulus that signals whether the response will be reinforced. It is said to "set the occasion" for the operant response.

Field Studies

In order to make claims about human behavior that apply across populations and environments, researchers complement traditional laboratory research, where participants are brought into the lab, with field research where, in essence, the psychological laboratory is brought to participants. Allow for the important test of how psychological variables and processes of interest "behave" under real-world circumstances (i.e., what actually does happen rather than what can happen). They can also facilitate "downstream" operationalizations of constructs that measure life outcomes of interest directly rather than indirectly.

Parental investment and programming of stress responses in the offspring

In rats, increased amount of licking by the mother rat increased the expression of the glucocorticoid receptor in the hippocampus (a brain structure associated with stress responsivity as well as learning and memory). This resulted in lowered hormonal response to stress compared with adult animals reared by mothers who engaged in lower levels of this behaviour.

Causality

In research, the determination that one variable causes—is responsible for—an effect.

Falsified

In science, the ability of a claim to be tested and—possibly—refuted; a defining feature of science. In other words...it's testable.

Null Hypothesis Significance Testing

In statistics, a test created to determine the chances that an alternative hypothesis would produce a result as extreme as the one observed if the null hypothesis were actually true.

Probability Values

In statistics, the established threshold for determining whether a given value occurs by chance. When researchers write that a particular finding is "significant at a p < 0.05 level," they're saying that if the same study were repeated 100 times, we should expect this result to occur - by chance - fewer than five times. That is, in this case, a Type I error is unlikely.

Evolutionary Forces

Influences you to offer gifts to your dates, as you are communicating that you have the money or "resources" to help take care of them. This is similar to how chimpanzees will give food to mates to show they can provide for them.

Goal-directed behavior

Instrumental behavior that is influenced by the animal's knowledge of the association between the behavior and its consequence and the current value of the consequence. Sensitive to the reinforcer devaluation effect.

Interest

Intrinsically motivated form of learning - When curious, people want to learn something for its own sake, to know it for the simple pleasure of knowing it, not for an external reward, such as learning to get money, impress a peer, or receive the approval of a teacher or parent. Interest involves an additional appraisal of coping potential. In appraisal theories, coping potential refers to people's evaluations of their ability to manage what is happening Trait curiousity

Longitudinal Studies

Longitudinal studies track the same people over time. Some longitudinal studies last a few weeks, some a few months, some a year or more. Some studies that have contributed a lot to psychology followed the same people over decades.

Hermann von Helmholtz

Measured the speed of the neural impulse and explored the physiology of hearing and vision. His work indicated that our senses can deceive us and are not a mirror of the external world. Such work showed that even though the human senses were fallible, the mind could be measured using the methods of science. In all, it suggested that a science of psychology was feasible. There is a psychological reality and a physical reality and that the two are not identical.

Psychological Adaptations

Mechanisms of the mind that have evolved to solve specific problems of survival or reproduction. These kinds of adaptations are in contrast to physiological adaptations, which are adaptations that occur in the body as a consequence of one's environment. Physiological adaptation- How our skin makes calluses. First, there is an "input," such as repeated friction to the skin on the bottom of our feet from walking. Second, there is a "procedure," in which the skin grows new skin cells at the afflicted area. Third, an actual callus forms as an "output" to protect the underlying tissue, the final outcome of the physiological adaptation (i.e., tougher skin to protect repeatedly scraped areas) Psychological adaptation- Sexual jealousy. First, there is an "input," such as a romantic partner flirting with a rival. Second, there is a "procedure," in which the person evaluates the threat the rival poses to the romantic relationship. Third, there is a behavioural output, which might range from vigilance (e.g., snooping through a partner's email) to violence (e.g., threatening the rival).

Adaptations: Survival

Mechanisms that helped our ancestors handle the "hostile forces of nature." In order to survive very hot temperatures, we developed sweat glands to cool ourselves. These adaptations are for physical survival.

Sexual Overperception Bias

Men often misread sexual interest from a woman, when really it's just a friendly smile or touch. In the mating domain, the sexual overperception bias is one of the best-documented phenomena. It's been shown in studies in which men and women rated the sexual interest between people in photographs and videotaped interactions. As well, it's been shown in the laboratory with participants engaging in actual "speed dating," where the men interpret sexual interest from the women more often than the women actually intended it. In short, EMT predicts that men, more than women, will over-infer sexual interest based on minimal cues, and empirical research confirms this adaptive mating bias.

Ambulatory Assesment

Monitoring physiological reactions as people go about their daily lives. An overarching term to describe methodologies that assess the behavior, physiology, experience, and environments of humans in naturalistic settings.

Francis Galton

Nature VS Nurture

Operant Conditioning

Occurs when a behavior is associated with the occurrence of a significant event. In the best-known example, a rat in a laboratory learns to press a lever in a cage (called a "Skinner box") to receive food. Because the rat has no "natural" association between pressing a lever and getting food, the rat has to learn this connection. At first, the rat may simply explore its cage, climbing on top of things, burrowing under things, in search of food. Eventually while poking around its cage, the rat accidentally presses the lever, and a food pellet drops in. This voluntary behavior is called an operant behavior, because it "operates" on the environment (i.e., it is an action that the animal itself makes). Voluntary Behaviour Associates behaviour with a significant event When a dog learns to roll over to get a treat (stimulus-response learning).

Sexual Selection: Intrasexual Competition

Occurs when members of one sex compete against each other, and the winner gets to mate with a member of the opposite sex. That is, even though large antlers make it harder for the stags to run through the forest and evade predators (which lowers their survival success), they provide the stags with a better chance of attracting a mate (which increases their reproductive success). Similarly, human males sometimes also compete against each other in physical contests: boxing, wrestling, karate, or group-on-group sports, such as football. Even though engaging in these activities poses a "threat" to their survival success, as with the stag, the victors are often more attractive to potential mates, increasing their reproductive success. Thus, whatever qualities lead to success in intrasexual competition are then passed on with greater frequency due to their association with greater mating success.

Non-associative Learning

Occurs when repeated exposure leads to a change in behavior.

Classical Conditioning

Occurs whenever neutral stimuli are associated with psychologically significant events. With food poisoning, although having fish for dinner may not normally be something to be concerned about (i.e., a "neutral stimuli"), if it causes you to get sick, you will now likely associate that neutral stimuli (the fish) with the psychologically significant event of getting sick. These paired events are often described using terms that can be applied to any situation. Involuntary Behaviour Associates stimulus with a significant event When an alley cat learns that the sound of janitors working in a restaurant precedes the dumping of delicious new garbage (stimulus-stimulus learning).

Introspection

Offer detailed self-reports of their reactions to various stimuli. The goal was to identify the elements of consciousness.

Natural Selection

Physical survival is only important if it eventually contributes to successful reproduction. That is, even if you live to be a 100-year-old, if you fail to mate and produce children, your genes will die with your body. Thus, reproductive success is the engine of evolution by natural selection.

Key Components to a Statistical Investigation

Planning the study Examining the data Inferring from the data Drawing conclusions

Error Management Theory

Predicts that whenever uncertain situations present us with a safer versus more dangerous decision, we will psychologically adapt to prefer choices that minimize the cost of errors. The evolution of how we think, make decisions, and evaluate uncertain situations—that is, situations where there's no clear answer how we should behave. Ex: Walking through the woods at dusk. You hear a rustle in the leaves on the path in front of you. It could be a snake. Or, it could just be the wind blowing the leaves. Because you can't really tell why the leaves rustled, it's an uncertain situation. The important question then is, what are the costs of errors in judgment? That is, if you conclude that it's a dangerous snake so you avoid the leaves, the costs are minimal (i.e., you simply make a short detour around them). However, if you assume the leaves are safe and simply walk over them—when in fact it is a dangerous snake—the decision could cost you your life.

Sexual Selection: Intersexual Selection

Preferential mate choice. If members of one sex are attracted to certain qualities in mates, those desired qualities get passed on in greater numbers, simply because their possessors mate more often. For example, the colorful plumage of peacocks exists due to a long evolutionary history of peahens' (the term for female peacocks) attraction to males with brilliantly colored feathers. In all sexually-reproducing species, adaptations in both sexes (males and females) exist due to survival selection and sexual selection. However, unlike other animals where one sex has dominant control over mate choice, humans have "mutual mate choice." That is, both women and men typically have a say in choosing their mates. And both mates value qualities such as kindness, intelligence, and dependability that are beneficial to long-term relationships—qualities that make good partners and good parents.

Instrumental conditioning

Process in which animals learn about the relationship between their behaviors and their consequences. Also known as operant conditioning.

Ethics

Professional guidelines that offer researchers a template for making decisions that protect research participants from potential harm and that help steer scientists away from conflicts of interest or other situations that might compromise the integrity of their research.

Heritability Coefficient

Quantitative genetics produces a number called a heritability coefficient, varying from 0 to 1, that is meant to provide a single measure of genetics' influence of a trait. Measures how strongly differences among individuals are related to differences among their genes Does not match up with our nature-nurture intuitions. We want to know how "important" the roles of genes and environment are to the development of a trait, but in focusing on "important" maybe we're emphasizing the wrong thing. It divides traits' determinants into two portions—genes and environment—which are then calculated together for the total variability. This is a little like asking how much of the experience of a symphony comes from the horns and how much from the strings; the ways instruments or genes integrate is more complex than that.

Renewal effect

Recovery of an extinguished response that occurs when the context is changed after extinction. Especially strong when the change of context involves return to the context in which conditioning originally occurred. Can occur after extinction in either classical or instrumental conditioning.

Spontaneous recovery

Recovery of an extinguished response that occurs with the passage of time after extinction. Can occur after extinction in either classical or instrumental conditioning.

Behaviorism

Rejected any reference to mind and viewed overt and observable behavior as the proper subject matter of psychology. The study of behavior.

Generalized

Related to whether the results from the sample can be generalized to a larger population.

Cause-and-Effect

Related to whether we say one variable is causing changes in the other variable, versus other variables that may be related to these two variables. Correlation does not equal causation.

Expertise

Remembering something is our ability to access information, not our space to store it, having more knowledge or expertise actually enhances our ability to learn new information. Expertise allowed the master to chunk multiple pieces into a smaller number of pieces of information—but only when that information was structured in such a way so as to allow the application of that expertise.

Studying Daily Physiology

Researchers are also interested in how our bodies respond to the fluctuating demands of our lives. What are the daily experiences that make our "blood boil"? What is stressful, engaging, or boring for one person might not be so for another. It is, in part, for this reason that researchers have found only limited correspondence between how people respond physiologically to a standardized laboratory stressor and how they respond to stressful experiences in their lives.

Thomas Kuhn

Science, as an activity conducted by humans, is a social activity. As such, it is—according to Kuhn—subject to the same psychological influences of all human activities. Specifically, Kuhn suggested that there is no such thing as objective theory or data; all of science is informed by values. Scientists cannot help but let personal/cultural values, experiences, and opinions influence the types of questions they ask and how they make sense of what they find in their research.

Context

Stimuli that are in the background whenever learning occurs. For instance, the Skinner box or room in which learning takes place is the classic example of a context. However, "context" can also be provided by internal stimuli, such as the sensory effects of drugs (e.g., being under the influence of alcohol has stimulus properties that provide a context) and mood states (e.g., being happy or sad). It can also be provided by a specific period in time—the passage of time is sometimes said to change the "temporal context."

Structuralism (Titchener)

Structuralists were interested in the contents of the mind—what the mind is. A school of American psychology that sought to describe the elements of conscious experience.

Correlation Coefficient

The association between two variable A correlation coefficient provides information about the direction and strength of the association between two variables. For the example above, the direction of the association is positive. This means that people who perceived the past month as being good reported feeling more happy, whereas people who perceived the month as being bad reported feeling less happy.

Systematic Observation

The careful observation of the natural world with the aim of better understanding it. Observations provide the basic data that allow scientists to track, tally, or otherwise organize information about the natural world.

Sample

The collection of individuals on which we collect data.

Internal Validity

The degree to which a study allows unambiguous causal inferences Due to the importance of identifying true causal relationships, psychology has traditionally emphasized internal over external validity

External Validity

The degree to which a study ensures that potential findings apply to settings and samples other than the ones being studied

Ecological Validity

The degree to which a study finding has been obtained under conditions that are typical for what happens in everyday life.

Sexual Selection Theory (Darwin)

The evolution of characteristics, not because of survival advantage, but because of mating advantage.

Margin of Error

The expected amount of random variation in a statistic; often defined for 95% confidence level. The key to the margin of error is that when we use a probability sampling method, we can make claims about how often (in the long run, with repeated random sampling) the sample result would fall within a certain distance from the unknown population value by chance alone (meaning by random sampling variation).

Reinforcer devaluation effect

The finding that an animal will stop performing an instrumental response that once led to a reinforcer if the reinforcer is separately made aversive or undesirable.

Working Memory

The form of memory we use to hold onto information temporarily, usually for the purposes of manipulation.

Wilhelm Wundt

The formal development of modern psychology is usually credited to the work of German physician, physiologist, and philosopher Wilhelm Wundt In 1879, he complemented his lectures on experimental psychology with a laboratory experience: an event that has served as the popular date for the establishment of the science of psychology Students were trained to offer detailed self-reports of their reactions to various stimuli, a procedure known as introspection. The goal was to identify the elements of consciousness. The work of Wundt and his students demonstrated that the mind could be measured and the nature of consciousness could be revealed through scientific means.

Preparedness

The idea that an organism's evolutionary history can make it easy to learn a particular association. Because of preparedness, you are more likely to associate the taste of tequila, and not the circumstances surrounding drinking it, with getting sick. Similarly, humans are more likely to associate images of spiders and snakes than flowers and mushrooms with aversive outcomes like shocks.

Heritability

The most disappointing outcome has been the inability to organize traits from more- to less-genetic. As noted earlier, everything has turned out to be at least somewhat heritable (passed down), yet nothing has turned out to be absolutely heritable, and there hasn't been much consistency as to which traits are more heritable and which are less heritable once other considerations (such as how accurately the trait can be measured) are taken into account.

Random Assignment

The most important thing about experiments is random assignment. Participants don't get to pick which condition they are in (e.g., participants didn't choose whether they were supposed to spend the money on themselves versus others).

P-value

The p-value tells you how often a random process would give a result at least as extreme as what was found in the actual study, assuming there was nothing other than random chance at play. The probability of observing a particular outcome in a sample, or more extreme, under a conjecture about the larger population or process.

Encoding

The pact of putting information into memory.

Distribution

The pattern of variation in data. Compare the entire distribution rather than focusing only on the centers of the distributions.

Taste Aversion Learning

The phenomenon in which a taste is paired with sickness, and this causes the organism to reject—and dislike—that taste in the future.

Eugenics

The practice of selective breeding to promote desired traits. Cattel, like Galton, believed society was better served by identifying those with superior intelligence and supported efforts to encourage them to reproduce.

Chunk

The process of grouping information together using our knowledge.

R Value

The r value of a strong correlation will have a high absolute value. In other words, you disregard whether there is a negative sign in front of the r value, and just consider the size of the numerical value itself. If the absolute value is large, it is a strong correlation. A weak correlation is one in which the two variables correspond some of the time, but not most of the time. Figure 3 shows the relation between valuing happiness and grade point average (GPA). People who valued happiness more tended to earn slightly lower grades, but there were lots of exceptions to this. The r value for a weak correlation will have a low absolute value. If two variables are so weakly related as to be unrelated, we say they are uncorrelated, and the r value will be zero or very close to zero. In the previous example, is the correlation between height and pathogen prevalence strong? Compared to Figure 3, the dots in Figure 2 are tighter and less dispersed. The absolute value of -.83 is large. Therefore, it is a strong negative correlation.

Participant Observation

The researcher embedding himself or herself into a group in order to study its dynamics. The people being observed in a participant observation study usually know that the researcher is there to study them.

Conditioned Response

The response that is elicited by the conditioned stimulus after classical conditioning has taken place.

Behavioural Genetics

The science of how genes and environments work together to influence behaviour.

Quantitative Genetics

The scientific discipline in which similarities among individuals are analyzed based on how biologically related they are. We can do these studies with siblings and half-siblings, cousins, twins who have been separated at birth and raised separately or with entire extended families. Scientific and mathematical methods for inferring genetic and environmental processes based on the degree of genetic and environmental similarity among organisms.

Epigenetics

The study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence. Epigenetic marks include covalent DNA modifications and posttranslational histone modifications. The transmission of phenotype in terms of gene expression in the absence of changes in DNA sequence.

Social Learning Theory

The theory that people can learn new responses and behaviors by observing the behavior of others.

Heritability Coefficient defying Intuition

The trait of having two arms. No one would argue against the development of arms being a biological, genetic process. But fraternal twins are just as similar for "two-armedness" as identical twins, resulting in a heritability coefficient of zero for the trait of having two arms. Normally, according to the heritability model, this result (coefficient of zero) would suggest all nurture, no nature, but we know that's not the case. The reason this result is not a tip-off that arm development is less genetic than we imagine is because people do not vary in the genes related to arm development—which essentially upends the heritability formula.

Positive Correlation

The two variables go up or down together. In a scatterplot, the dots form a pattern that extends from the bottom left to the upper right.

Independent Variable

The variable the researcher manipulates and controls in an experiment.

Dependent Variable

The variable the researcher measures but does not manipulate in an experiment. The dependent variable "depends" on what happens to the independent variable.

Problems with Internal and External Validity

These two kinds of validity tend to be difficult to achieve at the same time, in one study. This is because creating a controlled setting, in which all potentially influential factors (other than the experimentally-manipulated variable) are controlled, is bound to create an environment that is quite different from what people naturally encounter

Confound

Things that could undermine your ability to draw causal inferences Ex: Placebo effect - If some participants know they are getting the happy pill, they might develop expectations that influence their self-reported happiness. You should avoid introducing confounds into your experiments.

Accurate Detection

This means that the researcher's conclusion mirrors reality. Another form of accurate detection is when a researcher finds no evidence for a phenomenon, but that phenomenon doesn't actually exist anyway! Using this same example, let's now pretend that maturity has nothing to do with academic performance. Perhaps academic performance is instead related to intelligence or study habits. If the researcher finds no evidence for a link between maturity and grades and none actually exists, she will have also achieved accurate detection.

Participant Demand

This occurs when participants try to behave in a way they think the experimenter wants them to behave

Random Sample

Using a probability-based method to select a subset of individuals for the sample from the population.

Individual Differences (Cattell)

Ways in which people differ in terms of their behavior, emotion, cognition, and development. Believed that mental abilities such as intelligence were inherited and could be measured using mental tests.

Thorndike's law of effect

When a behavior has a positive (satisfying) effect or consequence, it is likely to be repeated in the future. However, when a behavior has a negative (painful/annoying) consequence, it is less likely to be repeated in the future.

Sensitization

When our response increases with exposure.

Habituation

When our response lessens with exposure.

Correlational Research

When scientists passively observe and measure phenomena. We do not intervene and change behavior, as we do in experiments. In correlational research, we identify patterns of relationships, but we usually cannot infer what causes what. Ex: She asked people how much of their income they spent on others or donated to charity, and later she asked them how happy they were. Do you think these two variables were related? Yes, they were! The more money people reported spending on others, the happier they were.

Type II Error

When the data fail to show a relationship between variables that actually exists. In our example, this time pretend that maturity is —in reality—associated with academic performance, but the researcher doesn't find it in her sample. Perhaps it was just her bad luck that her older students are just having an off day, suffering from test anxiety, or were uncharacteristically careless with their homework: the peculiarities of her particular sample, by chance, prevent the researcher from identifying the real relationship between maturity and academic performance.

Prediction Error

When the outcome of a conditioning trial is different from that which is predicted by the conditioned stimuli that are present on the trial (i.e., when the US is surprising). Prediction error is necessary to create Pavlovian conditioning (and associative learning generally). As learning occurs over repeated conditioning trials, the conditioned stimulus increasingly predicts the unconditioned stimulus, and prediction error declines. Conditioning works to correct or reduce prediction error.

Type I Error

When the researcher concludes there is a relationship between two variables but, in reality, there is not. Let's now pretend there's no relationship between maturity and grades, but the researcher still finds one. Why does this happen? It may be that her sample, by chance, includes older students who also have better study habits and perform better: the researcher has "found" a relationship (the data appearing to show age as significantly correlated with academic performance), but the truth is that the apparent relationship is purely coincidental—the result of these specific older students in this particular sample having better-than-average study habits (the real cause of the relationship). They may have always had superior study habits, even when they were young.

Implicit Learning

When we exhibit changes in behavior without having intended to learn something. It's being taught, you're not being explicitly taught. You could potentially pull it out.

Implicit Memory

When we exhibit changes in our behavior that reveal the influence of past experience even though we are not attempting to use that experience.