Prologue and Chapter 1
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Created by:
amyfrances on August 15, 2012
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77 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 psychology | the scientific study of behavior and mental processes |
| tabula rosa | blank slate, John Locke |
| empiricism | the view that (a) knowledge comes from experience via the senses, and (b) science flourishes through observation and experiment |
| biological approach | a branch of psychology concerned with the links between biology and behavior. (Some biological psychologists call themselves behavioral neuroscientists, neuropsychologists, behavior geneticists, physiological psycologists, or biopsychologists.) |
| cognitive approach | the study of higher mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, and thinking |
| humanist approach | historically significant perspective that emphasized the growth potential of healthy people; used personalized methods to study personality in hopes of fostering personal growth |
| evolutionary perspective | the study of the evolution of behavior and the mind, using principles of natural selection |
| phrenology | a psychological theory or analytical method based on the belief that certain mental faculties and character traits are indicated by the configurations of the skull |
| structuralism | an early school of psychology that used introspection to explore the elemental structure of the human mind |
| introspection | the process of observing the operations of one's own mind with a view to discovering the laws that govern the mind. In a dualistic philosophy, which divides the natural world (matter, including the human body) from the contents of consciousness |
| functionalism | a school of psychology that focused on how mental and behavioral processes function-how they enable the organism to adapt, survive, and flourish |
| behaviorism | the view that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree with (1) but not with (2) |
| gestalt psychology | an organized whole. Gestalt psychoanalysts emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes |
| psychoanalytic theory | Freud's theory of personality and therapeutic technique that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and confliscts. Freud believed the patient's free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences-and the therapist's interpretations of them-released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight |
| counseling psychology | a branch of psychology that assists people with problems in living (often related to school, work, or marriage) and in acheiving greater well-being. |
| clinical psychology | a branch of psychology that studies, assesses, and treats people with psychological disorders. |
| industrial-organizational (I/O) psychology | the application of psychological consepts and methods to optimizing human behavior in workplaces. |
| psychiatry | a branch of medicine dealing with psychological disorders; practiced by physicians who sometimes provide medical (for example, drug) treatments as well as psychological therapy. |
| socio-cultural psychology | the branch of psychology that studies the effect of social variables on individual behavior, attitudes, perceptions, and motives; also studies group and intergroup phenomena. |
| human factors psychology | the science of understanding the properties of human capability. |
| basic research | pure science that aims to increase the scientific knowledge base. |
| applied research | scientific study that aims to solve practical problems. |
| theory | an explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes and predicts observations. |
| hypothesis | a testable prediction, often implied by a theory. |
| independent variable | the experimental factor that is manipulated; the variable whose effect is being studied. |
| dependent variable | the outcome factor; the variable that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variable. |
| control group | the condition of an experiment that contrasts with the experimental condition and serves as a comparison for evaluating the effect of the treatment. |
| experimental group | the condition of an experiment that exposes participants to the treatment, that is, to one version of the independent variable. |
| placebo effect | experimental results caused by expectation alone; any effect on behavior caused by the administration of an inert substance or condition, which is assumed to be an active agent. |
| single blind design | the subjects do not know whether they are in the control or experimental group. |
| double blind design | one in which neither the experimenter or the subjects know until after data has been gathered and analyzed which was the experimental treatment and which was the control. |
| operational definitions | a statement of the procedures (operations) used to define research variables. For example, "human intelligence" may be operationally defined as what an intelligence test measures. |
| validity | the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to. |
| reliability | the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting. |
| counterbalancing | an experimental procedure for eliminating the effect of irrelevant variables by presenting them in a different order along with the independent variable. For example, the effect of fatigue or variable x might be eliminated in a series of trials by presenting x at the beginning, in the middle of the series, and at the end. Thus the effect of fatigue on x could be evaluated by comparing performances without fatigue, with moderate fatigue, and with severe fatigue. |
| humors theory | people have mental issues due to an imbalance of bodily fluids, therefore disorders are natural occurrences. |
| confounding variables (extraneous, lurking) | a stimulus other than the variable an experimenter explicitly introduces into a research setting that affects a participant's behavior. |
| sample | a subset of a population selected as participants in an experiment. |
| representative/stratified sample | a subset of a population that closely matches the overall characteristics of the population with respect to the distribution of males and females, racial and ethnic groups, and so on. |
| random sample | a sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion. |
| random assignment | assigning participants to experimental and control conditions by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groups. |
| experimenter bias | the effects on an experiment of the conscious or unconscious attempts by the experimenter to influence the outcome in the direction he has predicted. An important and pervasive problem, as the outcome of virtually every published experiment is in the predicted direction. The ramifications of this phenomenon are much wider than the experimental situation. |
| hindsight bias | the tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it. |
| ex post facto method | a type of research that begins with data already collected, or research technologies applied to events not originally intended for reseach purposes. the experimenter does not directly manipulate the independent variable in ex post facto research. |
| naturalistic observation | observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation. |
| hawthorne effect | the observation (first at the hawthorne works of the western Electric company) that members of a group will work harder and be more productive if they feel their group has been singled out as important and that they are participating in a new and special activity. |
| survey method | a technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes or behaviors of people, usually by questioning a representative, random sample of them. |
| case study | an observation technique in which one person is studied in depth in the hope of revealing universal principles. |
| naturalistic observation | observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation. |
| cohort | is used in social science to describe variations in the characteristics of an area of study (such as the incidence of a characteristic or the age at onset) over time among individuals who are defined by some shared temporal experience or common life experience, such as year of birth, or year of exposure to radiation. |
| correlation | a measure of the extent to which two factors vary together, and thus of how well either factor predicts the other. |
| illusory correlation | the perception of a relationship where none exists. |
| replication | repeating the essence of a research study, usually with different participants in different situations, to see whether the basic finding extends to other particiapnts and circumstances. |
| scatterplot | a graphed cluster of dots, each of which represents the values of two variables. The slope of the points suggests the direction of the relationship between the two variables. The amount of scatter suggests the strength of the correlation (little scatter indicates high correlation). |
| statistical significance | a statistical statement of how likely it is that an obtained result occurred by chance. |
| Hippocrates | humors theory (person) |
| Socrates and Plato | mind is seperable from body, knowledge is innate. NATURE in nature vs. nurture. (person) |
| Aristotle | derived principles from logic, soul is not seperable from body, knowledge through experiences. NURTURE in nature vs. nurture. (person) |
| Descartes | interactive dualism, mind affects body and body affects mind. "animal spirits" in brain's cavities. (person) |
| Locke | tabula rosa (person) |
| Bacon | empiricism (person) |
| Pinel/Dix/Rush | moral therapy (person) |
| Gall | phrenology (person) |
| Wundt/Tichner | structuralism (person) |
| James | functionalism (person) |
| G. Stanley Hall | first psychology lab, founded APA (person) |
| Calkins | first woman elected president of APA, completed work for but was not awarded a PhD in psychology. (person) |
| Washburn | first woman to receive a PhD in psychology. (person) |
| Wertheimer | gestalt (person) |
| Frued | psychoanalytic (person) |
| Watson and Skinner | behaviorism (person) |
| Rogers and Maslow | humanistic psychology (person) |
| mean | the arithmetic average of a distribution, obtained by adding the scores and then dividing them by the number of scores. |
| median | the middle score in a distribution; half the scores are above it amd half are below it. |
| mode | the most frequently occurring score(s) in a distribution. |
| measures of central tendency | a single score that represents a whole set of scores. |
| moral therapy | philosophy of treatment that emphasized treating mentally ill people with compassion and understanding, rather than shackling them in chains. |
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