AP Psychology: Unit 1

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introspection
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Terms in this set (79)
introspection
first began in laboratory set up by Wilhelm Wundt; process of reporting on one's own conscious mental experiences
structuralism
idea proposed by Wundt that the mind operates by combining subjective emotions and objective sensations; aimed to uncover the basic structures that make up mind and thought
functionalism
theory presented by William James; emphasizes adaptiveness of the mental or behavioral processes
Wilhelm Wundt
set up first psychological laboratory in Leipzig, Germany in 1879; known for training subjects in introspection and for his theory of structuralism
Margaret Floy Washburn
first woman to earn a Ph.D. in psychology
William James
published The Principles of Psychology, the science's first textbook; responsible for theory of functionalism
Mary Whiton Calkins
studied with William James and went on to become president of the American Psychological Association
G. Stanley Hall
student of William James who pioneered he study of child development and was the first president of the APA
Gestalt psychology
theory that states that the whole experience is often more than just the sum of the parts, because the way we experience the world is more than just an accumulation of various perceptual experiences; relatively little influence on current psychology
Max Wertheimer
Gestalt psychologist who argued against dividing human thought and behavior into discrete structures
psychoanalysistheory that states a part of our mind over which we do not have conscious control determines, in part, how we think and behaveSigmund Freudrevolutionized psychology with his psychoanalytic theory; believed the unconscious mind must be examined through dream analysis, word association, and other psychoanalytic therapy techniques; criticized for being unscientific and creating unverifiable theoriesbehaviorismtheory that states psychologists should look at only behavior and causes of behavior, and not concern themselves with describing elements of consciousness; dominant school of thought in psychology from the 1920s through the 1960sJohn Watsonpsychologist who believed the science must limit itself to observable phenomena; wanted to establish behaviorism as the dominant paradigm of psychologyB. F. Skinnerbehaviorist who expanded the basic ideas of behaviorism to include the idea of reinforcement- environmental stimuli that either encourage or discourage certain responseshumanismmodern psychological viewpoint that stresses individual choice and free will; suggests that we choose most of our behaviors and these choices are guided by physiological, emotional or spiritual needs; not easily tested by the scientific method; includes theorists Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogersbiopsychologymodern psychological perspective that explains human thought and behavior strictly in terms of biological processes (e.g. genes, hormones, and neurotransmitters)evolutionary perspectivealso known as Darwinian; modern psychological perspective that examines human thoughts and actions in terms of natural selection; similar to biopsychologybehavioral perspectivemodern psychological perspective that explains human thought and behavior in terms of conditioning; looks strictly at observable behaviors and what reaction organisms get in response to specific behaviorscognitive perspectivemodern psychological perspective that examines human thought and behavior in terms of how we interpret, process, and remember environmental eventssociocultural perspectivemodern psychological perspective that looks at how our thoughts and behaviors vary from people living in other cultures; emphasizes the influence of culture on the way we think and actJean Piagetcame up with a cognitive developmental theory, which focuses on how our cognitions develop in stages as we maturedevelopmental perspectivemodern psychological perspective emphasizing that change occurs across a lifespan; focus has shifted over recent years to teens and adultstrait viewmodern psychological perspective that views behavior and personality as the products of enduring psychological characteristicsbasic researchexplores questions that are of interest to psychologists but are not intended to have immediate, real-world applications; also referred to as experimental psychologyoperational definitionsa researcher's explanation how the variable of an experiment will be measuredvalidresearch that measures what the researcher set out to measure; accuratereliableresearch that can be replicated and is consistentparticipantsindividuals on which research is conductedsamplingthe process by which participants for research are selectedpopulationincludes anyone or anything that could possibly be selected to be in the sample for researchrandom selectionevery member of the population has an equal chance of being selected as a participant in researchstratified samplingprocess that allows a researcher to ensure that the sample represents the population on some criterialaboratory experimentsexperiments conducted in a lab, a highly controlled environment; advantage of being easily controlledfield experimentsexperiments conducted in the world; advantage of being more realisticconfounding variablesany difference between the experimental and control conditions, except for the independent variable, that might affect the dependent variableassignmentthe process by which participants are put into a group, experimental controlrandom assignmenteach participant has an equal chance of being placed into any groupparticipant-relevant confounding variableswhen groups are not randomly assigned during an experiment; increases the chance of participants in the two groups differ in any meaningful waygroup matchingused if one wants to ensure that the experimental and control groups are equivalent on some criterion (e.g. sex, IQ scores, or age)situation-relevant confounding variableswhen the situations into which the different groups of an experiment are put are not truly equivalent; can create invalid experiment results due to the situation rather than the independent variableexperimenter biasthe unconscious tendency for researchers to treat members of the experimental and control groups differently to increase the chance of confirming their hypothesisdouble-blind procedurewhen neither the participants nor the researcher are able to affect the outcome of the researchdemand characteristicscues about the purpose of the study; participants use such cues to try to respond appropriately, skewing the validity of the experimentresponse biasthe tendency for subjects to behave in certain ways; can alter validity of experimentsocial desirabilitythe tendency of participants to try to give answers that reflect well upon thempseudopsychologyerroneous assertions or practices set forth as being scientific psychologyconfirmation biasthe tendency to attend to evidence that complements and confirms our beliefs or expectations, while ignoring evidence that does notPlatoancient Greek philosopher who studied areas like cognition; was first philosopher credited with the study of gaining knowledgeAristotleancient Greek philosopher who developed theories of sensation, perception, cognition, memory, problems olving, and ethicsRené Descartes17th century French philosopher who asserted that human sensations and behaviors are based on activity in the nervous systemWolfgang KohlerGestalt psychologist who studied insight learning, an overlooked form of learning marked by sudden "Aha!" experiencesneurosciencefield devoted to understanding how the brain creates thoughts, feelings, motives, consciousness, memories and other mental processescognitionsmental processes, such as thinking, memory, sensation, and perceptioncognitive neurosciencean interdisciplinary field emphasizing brain activity as information processing; involves cognitive psychology, neurology, biology, computer science, linguistics, and specialists from other fields who are interested in the connection between mental processes and the brainpsychodynamic psychologymodern clinical viewpoint emphasizing the understanding of mental disorders in terms of unconscious needs, desires, memories, and conflictsclinical viewpsychological perspective emphasizing mental health and mental illness; psychodynamic and humanistic psychology are variations of thisempirical investigationan approach to research that relies on sensory experience and observation as research datascientific methoddeveloping a hypothesis, performing a controlled test, gathering objective data, analyzing results, and publishing, criticizing, and replicating the resultsrandom presentationprocess by which chance alone determines the order in which the stimulus is presented in an experimentex post factonon-experimental method; research in which subjects are chosen based on a pre-existing conditioncorrelational studiesnon-experimental method; a type of research that is mainly statistical in nature; determines the relationship between two variablessurveynon-experimental method; a quasi-experimental method in which questions are asked to subjects; when being designed, the researcher hast o be careful that the questions are not skewed or biased towards a particular answernaturalistic observationnon-experimental method; research in which subjects are observed in their natural environmentlongitudinal studynon-experimental method; a type of study in which one group of subjects is followed and observed (or examined, surveyed, etc.) for an extended period of time (years.)cross-sectional studya study in which a representative cross section of the population is tested or surveyed at one specific timecohort-sequential studya research method in which a cross section of the population is chosen and then each cohort is followed for a short period of timefrequency distributiona summary chart, showing how frequently each of the various scores in a set of data occurshistograma bar graph depicting a frequency distribution; the height of the bars indicates the frequency of the group of scoresdescriptive statisticsstatistical procedures used to describe characteristics and responses of groups of subjectsmeasure of variabilityhow closely scores bunch up around the central point; a statistic that indicates the spread of distributionmeasures of central tendencyaverages; mean, median, and modehindsight biaspeople's tendency upon hearing about research findings to think that they knew it all alongapplied researchresearch conducted in order to solve practical problemsstandard deviationa measure of variability that indicates the average difference between the sources and their meannormal distributiona bell-shaped curve, describing the spread of a characteristic throughout a populationcorrelation coefficienta number between -1 and +1 expressing the degree of relationship between two variablesinferential statisticsstatistical techniques (based on probability theory) used to assess whether the results of a study are reliable or whether they might be simply the result of chance; often used to determine whether two or more groups are essentially the same or differentrepresentative samplea sample obtained in such a way that it reflects the distribution of important variables in the larger population in which the researchers are interested; variables such as age, income level, ethnicity, and geographic distribution