PSY 325 8th Edition Lecture 1 Outline of Current Lecture I. Profession of Health Psychology a. What Jobs Can Health Psychologists Do?II. Some Questions to ConsiderIII. Why Care About Research?IV. What Makes Something a Sciencea. The Scientific Attitudeb. Summary: Why Do We Care?V. Assessment and Measurement: a Scientist’s Research Toolsa. Psychometric InstrumentsVI. Collecting Dataa. Types of Research MethodsVII. Correlation and Causalitya. Three Ways to Interpret CorrelationCurrent LectureI. Profession of Health PsychologyWhat training do health psychologists receive?Graduate training in psychologyGraduate school... health psychologists are psychologists first then concern themselves with health secondly.o Biological basis of health and diseaseo Social bases of health and diseaseo Psychological bases of health and disease, emphasis on individual differences.Sometimes people need health psychologists to do what doctors recommend. It is best to have various people in the medical group work together.Profession of Health Psychologya. What jobs can health psychologists do? These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.o Health research: work in university or government agency settings.o Clinical health psychologistso Work in hospitals or clinics providing services directly to patients. o Behaviors interventions, biofeedback therapies, assessments etc.o Also found in schools and other organizations, including workplace. o Allied health profession fieldso Includes social work, OT, dietetics, or public health positions. Also direct patient care.oThere is a high degree of overlap with psychology and health. II. Some Questions to Considero Do behaviors cause diseases? How can psychology and scientists make these claims?Research and research methods are important. o Does faith and religion help your health?It certainly can have an impact. Some religions sway away from unhealthy activities, others do the exact opposite. It is relative to the specific religion. Examples: When religion and medicine meet; Joel Osteen- anxiety taken awayo Are E-Cigs safe?Liquid nicotine, steam-like vapor instead of smoke. These could attract children because of flavors thus being a potentially harmful product if they get kids to start smoking and re-glamorize the habit.Too many sodas contain potential carcinogens.Human thought feeling and behavior… health psychology.Will help us as consumers evaluate the evidence we see, understand it and make our own decisions.III. Why Care about Research?All of us at times try to explain the events that happen around us or around others.We like to come up with explanations with things we observe. We generate explanations in everyday life and at this time, we rely on our Human Intuition- what your gut tells you.Try to predict what will happen based on what we have observed using our intuition. Multiple Choice tests: Changing answers usually results in better grades? Intuition can be wrong sometimes.Problem- we are just not that good at it—there are many problems and biases with human intuition- availability bias, confirmation bias, overconfidence bias.Problem with availability bias—affected by frequency and how memorable/ salient they were in our head. Likely to overestimate probability to get in accident…see more of it on news etc. Confirmation bias is another problem with human judgment. Seek out info that confirms their current beliefs. People buy things supporting candidates on amazonPeople’s subjective confidence in their own beliefs and answers… people tend to be wrong and perceive the world in misconstrued ways because of these biases. Intuition is not good to understand and know the world. However, research is!IV. What makes something a science?o Testable ideas, when you see data and numbers.Does the content area make something a science?Example- biology, chemistry, physics. o Science is a method of knowing: in other words, application of the scientific method:1. Ask a question2. 2. Form a theory and state a hypothesis 3. 3. Conduct an experiment 4. 4. Analyze the results 5. 5. Make a conclusion.a. The Scientific Attitude:o Approach the world with curious skepticism. o Requires humility; your ideas could be wrong and you need to be prepared to accept and admit that. o Question asking is a very important componento *Critical thinking—thinking without blindly accepting arguments and conclusionsIn our everyday lives, for instance, simply asking, “how do they know that?” applies critical thinking. Don’t believe everything you hear Correlation does not provide causationResearch methods allow researchers to make health-related claims. Be familiar with each other’s work.b. Summary- why do we care?Although we like to believe we can determine the cause of events in out lives, or predict what may happen, human intuition is often faulty. One must adopt a scientific attitude when evaluating claims made in the media.Evaluating research methods will help one evaluate the scientific evidence for such claims. Research methods promote the sharing of and advancement of knowledge. V. Assessment and Measurement: a Scientist’s Research ToolsSocial scientists, such as psychologists, rely on two important tools to conduct research:1. Theoretical models—used to try to make sense of research findings. 2. Theories—synthesize research findings. Generate new research. Want them to synthesize/ explain research findings along with generating new research.Think using the scientific method more broadly. a. Psychometric instruments: *Psychometrics is defined as the field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement. How do we measure Constructs?How do we measure what we want to study? How would you define these constructs?Happiness=satisfaction Sleepy= lethargicConceptual Versus Operational DefinitionsConceptual- what you would find in a dictionary.Operational- states specifically how you measured the construct of interest in a research study. (“This is how I’m going to measure what I care about!”)*Public Surveys- US Census polls conducted every 10 years. Invests a fair amount of money into this.Psychometric Instruments- Psychologists “measure” many different concepts.3 main types of measures1. Observational measuresa. Natural environment to sit somewhere and observe. 2. Psychophysiological measures- cycles of