UNIT 1 - History, Methods & Genetics
About this set
Created by:
kbandy on May 31, 2011
Classes:
Bandy AP Psychology, Psychology
Log in to favorite or report as inappropriate.
Order by
68 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Applied Research | Research that psychologists conduct to solve practical problems. Research that has clear, practical applications. |
| Random Assignment | The process by which participants are put into either an experimental or control group. Means that each participant has an equal chance of being placed in a group. It limits the effects of confounding variables based on differences between people. Using this diminishes the chances that the participants in the 2 groups differ in any meaningful way. |
| Basic Research | Explores questions that are of real interest to psychologists but are not intended to have immediate, real-world applications. It builds psychology's knowledge base. |
| Hypothesis | A Statement that expresses a relationship between 2 variables. The dependent variable depends on the independent variable. In other words, the change in the independent variable will produce a change in the dependent variable. For instance, consider that watching violent television programs makes people more aggressive. In this, watching television violence is the independent variable since the hypothesis suggests that a change in television viewing will result in a change in the dependent variable, aggression. In testing this, researchers manipulate the independent variable and measure the dependent variable. |
| Introspection | Technique used by Wilhelm Wundt who asked subjects to accurately record their cognitive reactions to simple stimuli. Through this process, Wundt hoped to examine basic mental processes. |
| Operational definition | An explanation of how variables are measured. 2 variables need to be explained in the hypothesis. "Watching violent television programs makes people more aggressive". What programs will be considered violent? What behaviors will be considered aggressive? |
| Population | The group from which a sample is selected. This includes anyone or anything that could possibly be selected to be in a sample. The goal in selecting a sample is that it represents a larger population |
| Random Assignment | A method of assigning participants to conditions such that each participant has an equal chance in being places into experimental groups. The process by which participants are put into either an experimental, or a control group. It limits the effects of confounding variables based on differences between people. Using random assignment diminishes the chance that participants in the 2 groups differ in any meaningful way |
| Random Sample | This sample is representative because every member of the population has an equal chance of being included. |
| Stratified Sampling | A process that allows a researcher to ensure the sample represents the population on some criteria. For instance, If a researcher thinks that participants of different racial groups might respond differently, he or she would want the make sure that each race is represented in the sample in the same proportion that it appears in the overall population. In other words, if 500 of the 1,00 students in a school are Caucasian, 300 are African American, and 200 are Latino, in the sample of the 100 students, the researcher would want to have 50 Caucasians, 30 African Americans, and 20 Latinos. |
| Theory | Aims to explain some phenomenon and allows to generate testable hypothesis with the hope of collecting data that supports the theory. Hypothesis often grow out of these. |
| Experiment | The only research method that can show a causal relationship. Allows the researcher to manipulate the independent variable and control for confounding variables |
| Confounding Variable | Any difference between the experimental and control conditions, except for the independent variable that might affect the dependent variable |
| Validity | Research is ____ when it measures what the researcher set out to measure; it is accurate. |
| Reliability | Research is _____ when it can be replicated; it is consistent. If a researcher conducts the experiment in the same way, the researcher should get similar results |
| Hindsight bias | Tendency upon hearing about research findings (and many other things) to think that they knew it all along. After an event occurs, it is relatively easy the explain why it happened. The goal of scientific research, however, is to predict what will happen in advance |
| Experimenter bias | The unconscious tendency for researchers to treat members of the experimental and control groups differently to increase the chance of confirming their hypothesis. It is not a conscious act; it is fraud if the researcher purposefully distorts their data. Using the double blind procedure can eliminate this. |
| Double Blind Procedure | Method in which neither the participants nor the researcher are aware of who is in the experimental to control groups while the experiment is going on. |
| Participant/Response Bias | Tendency for subjects to behave in certain ways based on their perception of an experiment. Can be controlled with the single blind procedure. |
| Hawthorne effect | Being selected in a group of people to participate in an experiment will affect the performance of that group, regardless of what is done to those individuals |
| Survey Method | Involves asking people to fill out surveys. Often used to gather opinions or attitudes and for correlational research. |
| Naturalistic Observation | Research method that involves observing participants in their naturalistic habitats w/o interacting with them. The goal is to get a realistic and rich picture of the participants' behavior. Cannot provide a causal relationship between variables. |
| Case Study | A research method used to get a full detailed picture of one participant or a small group of participants |
| Scatter plot | A graph of correlated data. Graph pairs of values, one on the y-axis and one on the x-axis |
| Normal Curve | A bell-shaped curve that represents a distribution of scores that is normally distributed (a few scores at the low end and the high end of the distribution, with most of the score clustered around the mean). Approximately 68% of normal scores in this type of distribution fall within on standard deviation of the mean, approximately 95% of the scores fall within 2 standard deviations of the mean, and almost 99% of scores fall within 3 standard deviations of the mean |
| Correlation | A statistical measure of a relationship between 2 variables. Does not imply causation; does not prove that on variable causes the other. The strength of _____ runs from -1 to +1, where -1 is a perfect negative _____, and + is a complete positive _____. Can be positive or negative. Positive- the presence of one variable predicts the presence of the other. The presence of one variable predicts the absence of another |
| Descriptive statistics | Ways of describing a set of data. Measures of central tendency are a common descriptive statistic. Three common measures of central tendency are the mean, median, and mode. Mean is the average of all scores in a distribution. Median is the central score in the distribution. Mode is the score that appears the most frequently |
| Measures of variability | A type of descriptive statistical measure that attempts to depict the diversity of the distribution. Range variance, and standard deviation are the measures of variability. Range- the distance between the highest and lowest score in a distribution. Standard deviation is the square root of the variance |
| Inferential Statistics | Statistics that can determine whether or not the findings can be applied to the larger population from which the sample was selected. |
| Statistical significance | 5% is the cut =off for these results. This means that with these experimental result, there is less than 5% chance that the results occur by chance |
| APA Ethical Guideline | Established by the APA for Human Research. Any type of academic research must first propose the study to the ethics board or institutional review at the institution. Guidelines - Coercion - Informed Consent - Anonymity/ confidentiality - Lack of risk - Debriefing procedures. Requirements - Must have a clear scientific purpose - Care for and house animals in humane ways - Acquire animal subjects legally - Design experimental procedures that employ the least amount of suffering feasible |
| Informed Consent | The ethical principle that research participants should be told enough about an experiment to enable them to decide whether they wish to participate. |
| Debriefing | Occurs when participants are fully informed about an experiment's purpose and procedures once the study has concluded. |
| Wilhelm Wundt | Set up first psychological lab in an apartment near the university of Leipzig, Germany. Trained subjects in introspection. Subjects were asked to accurately record their cognitive reactions to simple stimuli. |
| Introspection | Technique used by Wilhelm Wundt who asked subjects to accurately record their cognitive reactions to simple stimuli. Through this process, Wundt hoped to examine basic mental processes. |
| William James | Published Principles of Psychology, psychology's first textbook. |
| Functionalism | Theory described by William James. Examines how the mental processes described by Wilhelm Wundt function in our lives. Focused on how organisms adapt to their environment |
| Gestalt Psychology | Was influenced by Max Wertheimer. Tried to examine a person's total experience because the way we experience the world is more than just an accumulation of various perceptual experiences. Demonstrated that the whole experience is often more than just the sum of the parts of the experience. |
| Sigmund Freud | Believed he discovered the unconscious mind - a part of our mind over which we do not have conscious control that determines, in part, how we think and behave. Proposed that we must examine the unconscious mind through dream anaylsis, word association, and other psychoanalytic therapy techniques if we are to understand human thought and behavior truly. Has been criticized for being unscientific and creating unverifiable theories. |
| Psychoanalytic Theory | Described by Sigmund Freud. Based on the unconscious mind: a part of our mind over which we do not have conscious control that determines, in part, how we think and behave. |
| John Watson | Declared that psychology must limit itself to observable phenomena, not unobservable concepts like the unconscious mine, if it is to be considered a science. Wanted to establish behaviorism as the dominant paradigm of psychology. Maintained that psychologists should look at only behavior and causes of behavior - stimuli (environmental events) and responses (physical reactions) - and not concern themselves with describing elements of consciousness. |
| Ivan Pavlov | Performed pioneering conditioning experiments on dogs. These experiments led to the development of the classical conditioning model of learning. |
| B. F. Skinner | Expanded the basic ideas of behaviorism to include the idea of reinforcement - environmental stimuli that either encourage or discourage certain responses. Helped establish and popularize the operant conditioning model of learning. His intellectual influence lasted for decades |
| Behaviorism | Maintains that psychologist should look at only behavior and causes of behavior - stimuli (environmental events) and responses (physical reactions) and not concern themselves with describing elements of consciousness. This was the dominant school of thought in psychology from the 1920s through the 1960s. |
| Social-Cultural Perspective | Look at how our thoughts and behaviors vary from people living in other cultures. Emphasize the influence culture has on the way we think and act. |
| Behavioral Perspective | Explain human thought and behavior in terms of conditioning. Look strictly at observable behaviors and what reaction organisms get in response to specific behaviors. |
| Cognitive Perspective | Examines human thought and behavior in terms of how we interpret, process, and remember environmental events. States the rules that we use to view the world are important to understanding why we think and behave the way we do. |
| Evolutionary Perspective | Examines human thoughts and actions in terms of natural selection. Stresses that some traits might be advantageous for survival and that these traits would be passed down from the parents to the next generation. |
| Biological Perspective | Explain human thought and behavior strictly in terms of biological processes. Believe that human behavior might be caused by effects of our genes, hormones, and neurotransmitters in the brain or by a combination of all three. |
| Psychoanalytic Perspective | Emphasizes the unconscious mind - a part of our mind that we do not have conscious control over or access to - controls much of our thoughts and actions. This perspective looks for impulses or memories pushed into the unconscious mind through repression. States we must examine our unconscious mind through dream analysis, word association, and other psychoanalytic therapy techniques in order to understand human thought and behavior. |
| Humanist Perspective | Include theorists Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, stressed indivdual chocie and free will. This contrasts with the deterministic behaviorists who theorized that all behaviors are caused by past conditioning. States that we choose most of our behaviors and that these choices are guided by physiological, emotional, or spiritual needs. |
| Behavior Genetics | The study of the relative power and limits of genetic and environmental influences on behavior. |
| Genes | The biochemical units of heredity that make up the chromosomes; a sement of DNA. |
| Environment | Every non-genetic influence, from prenatal nutrition to teh people and things around us. |
| Chromosomes | Threadlike structures made of DNA molecules that contain the genes. |
| DNA | A complex molecule containing the genetic information that makes up the chromosomes. |
| Genome | The complete instructions for making an organism, consisting of all the genetic material in its chromosomes. |
| Epigenetics | literally translates into just meaning "above the genome." It is the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence. |
| Mutation | Random errors in gene replication that lead to a change in the individual's genetic code. |
| Evolutionary Psychology | The study of evolution of behavior and the mind, using principles of natural selection. |
| Natural Selection | The principle that, among the range of inherited trait variations, those contributing to survivial will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations. |
| Identical Twins | Twins who develop from one fertilized egg that splits in two, creating two genetically identical organisms. |
| Fraternal Twins | Twins who develop from separate eggs. They are genetically no closer than any other brothers and sisters, but they share a fetal environment. |
| Heritability | The proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. |
| Culture | The shared attitudes, beliefs, norms, and behaviors of a group communicated from one generation to another. |
| Norms | Understood rules for accepted and expected behavior; norms prescribe "proper" behavior. |
| Individualism | Giving priority to ones own goas over group goals, and defining one's identify in terms of personal attributes rather than group identification. |
| Collectivism | Giving priority to the goals of one's group (often one's extended family or work group) and defining one's identity accordingly. |
First Time Here?
Welcome to Quizlet, a fun, free place to study. Try these flashcards, find others to study, or make your own.
Completed “Learn” mode
BrandonSmee , kllaubacher , maggie_jhigh , sliang02 , mollybrown94 , alexa6412 , anmiller02 , jknappen , ShaneKim , jlwilcox5 , bemittleman Plus