Psychology Chapter 1

Gestalt

"pattern" or "organized whole"

Social psychologists

Concerned with the nature and causes of individuals' thoughts, feelings, and behavior in social situations.

Kenneth Bancroft Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark

Conducted research that showed the negative effects of school segregation on African American children.

B. F. Skinner

Contributed to behaviorism. Believed that organisms learn to behave in certain ways because they have been reinforced for doing so.

Applied research

Designed to find solutions to specific personal or social problems.

Sigmund Freud

Developed psychoanalysis

Random sample

Each member of a population has an equal chance of being selected to participate

School psychologists

Employed by school systems to identify and assist students who have problems that interfere with learning.

1879 psychology as a laboratory science - Wilhelm Wundt

Established the first psychological laboratory in Leipzig, Germany.

Theories

Interwoven descriptive terms and concepts that propose reasons for relationships among events.

Mary Whiton Calkins

Introduced the method of paired associates to study memory, discovered the primacy and recency effects, and engaged in research into the role of the frequency of repetition in the vividness of memories.

Psychodynamic perspecitve

Liberating the expression of unconscious ideas.

Contemporary Freud theory followers

Likely call themselves neoanalysts.

Human factors psychologists

Make technical systems such as automobile dashboards and computer keyboards more user-friendly.

Critical thinking

Means taking nothing for granted - not believing things just because they are in print or uttered. Refers to a process of thoughtfully analyzing and probing the questions, statements, and arguments of others.

Psychoanalysis

Name of both the theory of personality and the method of psychotherapy. Proposes that much of our lives is governed by unconscious ideas and impulses that originate in childhood conflicts.

Functionalists adapt Darwin's theory

Proposed that adaptive behavior patterns are learned and maintained. Maladaptive behavior patterns tend to drop out, and only the fittest behavior patterns survive.

Consumer psychologists

Study the behavior of shoppers in an effort to predict and influence their behavior.

Humanism

Stresses the human capacity for self-fulfillment and the central roles of consciousness, self-awareness, and decision making.

Developmental psychologists

Study the changes - physical, cognitive, social, and emotional - that occur throughout the life span.

Health psychologists

Study the effects of stress on health problems such as headaches, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. And guide clients toward healthier behavior patterns.

Environmental psychologists

Study the ways that people and the environment, both natural and human-made, influence one another.

Social-cognitive theorists

Suggest that people can modify and create their environments. Grant cognition a key role. Note that people engage in intentional learning by observing others.

Democritus

Suggested that we could think of behavior in terms of a body and a mind. He pointed out that our behavior is influenced by external stimulation.

Socrates

Suggested we should rely on rational thought and introspection to gain self-knowledge, and pointed out that people are social creatures who influence one another.

Correlation coefficient

A number that varies from r = +1.00 to r = -1.00

Sociocultural perspective

Addresses many of the ways that people differ from one another. Studies the influences of ethnicity, gender, culture, and socioeconomic status on behavior and mental processes.

Scientific method

An organized way of using experience and testing ideas to expand and refine knowledge.

Forensic psychologists

Apply psychology to the criminal justice system.

Practicing psychology

Applying psychological knowledge to help individuals change their behavior so that they can meet their own goals more effectively.

Education psychologists

Attempt to facilitate learning but they usually focus on course planning and instructional methods for a school system rather than on individual children.

Structuralism

Attempted to break conscious experience down into objective sensations and subjective feelings.

Structuralists

Believe the mind functions by combing objective and subjective elements of experience.

Aristotle

Believed human behavior is subject to rules and laws.

Several broad influential perspectives in psychology today

Biological, cognitive, humanistic-existential, psychodynamic, learning, and sociocultural.

Case studies

Collect information about individuals and small groups.Many are clinical which have descriptions of a person's psychological problems and how a psychologist treated them.

Introspection

Careful examination of one's own thoughts and emotions.

Humanistic-existential perspective

Cognitive, but emphasizes the role of subjective experience. Humanism stresses the human capacity for self-fulfillment and the central roles of consciousness, self-awareness, and decision making. Existentialism views people as free to choose and as being responsible for choosing ethical conduct.

Gestalt psychologists' view of learning

Demonstrated that much learning, especially in problem solving, is accomplished by insight, not by mechanical repetition.

Karen Horney and Erick Erikson

Famous neoanalysts who focused less on unconscious processes and more on conscious choice and self-direction.

Gestalt therapists (can be found today thought Gestalt psychologists are few)

Focus on helping clients integrate conflicitng parts of their personality.

Industrial psychologists

Focus on the relationships between people and work.

Gestalt psychologists

Focused on perception and how perception influences thinking and problem solving. See perceptions as wholes that give meaning to parts.

Functionalism

Focuses on behavior as well as the mind or consciousness. Looks at how experience helps us function more adaptively in our environments.

Broadus Watson

Founded American behaviorism because he believed psychology is a natural science that must limit itself to observable, measurable events.

Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow

Founded humanistic-existential perspective.

William James

Founder of the school of functionalism

Ms Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Kohler

Founders of Gestalt psychology.

Sport psychologists

Help athletes concentrate on their performance and no on the crown, using cognitive strategies.

Goal of psychoanalysis

Help patients gain insight into their conflicts and to find socially acceptable ways of expressing wishes and gratifying needs.

Clinical psychologists

Help people with psychological disorders adjust to the demands of life.

Personality psychologists

Identify and measure human traits and determine influences on human thought processes, feelings, and behavior.

1860 psychology as a laboratory science - Gustav Theodor Fechner

Published Elements of Psychophysics, which showed how physical events are related to psychological sensation and perception.

Mary Slater Ainsworth

Revolutionized our understanding of attachment between parents and children by means of her cross-cultural studies.

Biological perspective

Seek the relationships between the brain, hormones, heredity, and evolution, on the one hand, and behavior and mental processes on the other.

Goal of psychology

Seeks to describe, explain, predict, and control behavior and mental processes.

Stratified sample

Selected so that identified subgroups in the population are represented proportionately in the sample.

Elizabeth Loftus

Shown that memories are not snapshots of the past but often consist of something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.

Experimental psychologists

Specialize in basic processes such as the nervous system, sensation and perception, learning and memory, thought, motivation, and emotion.

Behaviorism

The school of psychology that focuses on learning observable behavior.

Psychology

The scientific study of behavior and mental processes.

Reinforced

Their behavior has a positive outcome.

Pure research

Undertaken because the researches is interested in the research topic.

Counseling psychologists

Use interviews and tests to define their clients' problems which are usually adjustment problems but not serious psychological disorders.

Cognitive perspective

Venture into the realm of mental processes to understand human nature. Investigate the ways we perceive and mentally represent the world, how we learn, remember the past, plan for the future, solve problems, form judgments, make decisions, and use language. In short, study the mind.

Existentialism

Views people as free to choose and as being responsible for choosing ethical conduct.