psychology chapter 1
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thunderman57 on August 24, 2011
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59 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Psychology | the science the seeks to understand behavior and mental processes and to apply that understanding in the service of human welfare |
| positive psychology | a field of research that focuses on people's positive experiences and characteristics, such as happiness, optimism, and resilience |
| cognitive psychologist | psychologist whose research focus in analysis of the mental processes underlying judgment, decision making, problem solving, imagining, and other aspects of human thought or cognitions |
| biological psychologist | psychologist who analye the biological factors influencing behavior and mental processes |
| personality psychologists | psychologists who focus on people's uniqye characteristics |
| developmental psychologists | psychologist who seek to understand, decribe and explore how behavior and mental processes change over the course of a lifetime |
| quantitative psychologist | psychologists who develop statistical methods for evaluating and analyzing data from psychological research |
| clinical, counseling, and community psychologists | psychologist who seek to assess, understandm modify, and prevent behavior disorders |
| educational psychologists | psychologist who study methods by which instructors teach and students learn and who apply their results to improving such methods |
| school psychologist | psychologists who test IQ, diagnose students academic problems, and set up programs to improve students achievements |
| social psychologists | psychologist who study how people influence one another's behavior and attitudes, especially in groups |
| industrial and organizational psychologists | psychologists who examine factors that influence people;s pergormance in the workplace. |
| health psychologists | psychologists who study the effect of behavior on health and the impact of illness on behavior and emotion |
| sport psychologists | psychologist whose research is aimed at maximizing athletic performance |
| forensic psychologist | psychologist who are involved in many aspects of psychology and law |
| engineering psychologist | psychologistswho study and try to improve the relationships between human beings and the computers and other machines they use. |
| enviromental psychologists | psychologist who study the relationship between people's physical enviroment and their behavior |
| empiricism | the view that knowledge comes from experience and observation |
| consciousness | the awareness of external stimuli and our own mental activity |
| biological approach | the view that behavior is the result of physical processes, especially those relating to the brain, to hormones, and to other chemicals |
| evolutionary approach | a view that emphasizes the inherited, adaptive aspects of behavior and mental processes. |
| psychodynamic approach | a view developed by freud that emphasizes unconscious mental processes in explaining human thought, feeling, and behavior |
| behavioral approach | a view based on the assumption that human behavior is determined mainly by what a person has learn in life, especially by rewards and punishments |
| cognitive approach | a view that emphasizes research on how the brain takes in information, creates perceptions, forms and retrieves memories , processes information, and generates intergrated patterns of action. |
| humanistic approach | a view of behavior as controlled by the decisions that people make about their lives based on their perceptions of the world |
| sociocultural factors | social identity and other background factors, such as gender, ethnicity, social class, and culture. |
| culture | the accumulation of values, rules of behavior, forms of expression, religious beliefs, and occupational choices for a group of people who share a common language and environment. |
| critical thinking | the process of assessing claims and making judgments on the basis of well-supported evidence |
| hypothesis | in scientific research, a specific, testable proposition about a phenomenon |
| operational definitions | statements that defines phenomena or variables by describing the exact research operations or methods used in measuring or manipulating them. |
| variables | specific factors or characteristics that can take on different numerical values in research |
| reliability | the degree to which test results or other research evidence occurs repeatedly |
| validity | the degree to which evidence from a test or other research method measures what it is supposed to measure |
| theory | an integrated set of propositions used to explain certain phenomena including behavior and mental processes. |
| observational methods | procedures for systematically watching behavior in order to summarize it for scientific analysis |
| naturalistic observation | the process of watching without interfering as a phenomenon occurs in the natural environment |
| case studies | research involving the intensive examination of some phenomenon in a particular individual, group, or situation |
| surveys | research that involves giving people questionnaires or interviews designed to describe their attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and intentions |
| correlational studies | research methods that examine relationships between variables in order to analyze trends, test predictions, evaluate theories, and suggest new hypotheses |
| correlation | the degree to which one variable is related to another |
| experiment | a situation in which the research menipulates on variable and observes the effect of that maipulation on another variable, while holding all other variables constant. |
| independent variable | in an experiment, the variable manipulated by the researcher |
| dependent variable | in an experiment, the factor affected by the independent variable |
| experimental group | the group that receives the experimental treatment |
| control group | the group that receives no treatment or provides some other baseline agaisnt which to compare the performance or response of the experimental group |
| confounding variable | any factor that affects the dependent variable along with , or instead of the independent variable |
| random variables | uncontrolled or uncontrollable factors taht affect the dependent variable along with , or instead of, the independent variable |
| random assigenment | a procedure through which random variables are evenly distributed in an experiment by placing participants in experimental and control groups on the basis of a coin flip or some other random process |
| placebo | a treatment that contain no active ingredient but produce an effect because that person receiving it believes it will |
| experimenter bias | a confounding variable that occurs when an experimenter unintentionally encourages participants to respond in a way that supports the hypothesis |
| double-blind design | a research design in which neither the experimenter nor the participants know who is in the experimental group and who is in the control group |
| sampling | the process of selecting participants who are members of the population that the researcher wishes to study |
| representative sample | a sample of research participants chosen from a larger population such that their age, gender, ethnicitym and other charateristics are typical of that larger population |
| random sample | a group of research participants selected from a population each of whose members had an equal chance of being chosen |
| biased sample | a group of research participants selected from a population each of whose members did not have an equal chance of being chosen |
| behavioral gentics | study og how a genes and environments combine to affect behavior and mental processes |
| epigenetics | the study of potentially inheritable chnages in gene experssion that are caused by environmental factors that do not alter a cell's DNA |
| data | number that represent research findings and provide th basis for conculsions |
| statistically significant | referring to a correlation or a difference between two group, that is larger than would be expected chance |
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