05 13 2013 GENERAL THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES Psychology The science of understanding human individuals affect behavior cognition ABC s o Affect feelings emotions o Cognition thinking information processing Theories Sociobiological years Sociocultural o Our thoughts feelings behavior are founded on patterns that maximized our reproductive potential over thousands of o Men are typically attracted to younger women because they have a higher chance of reproducing o Our thoughts feelings behavior are influenced by the expectations of others o Group norms o Wearing a shirt that fits in with a certain trend so you come off as attractive popular etc Learning o Our thoughts feelings behavior are determined by our experience with and or expectations of the potential positive o Behaviorism people do things for basic reasons no thinking negative consequences ahead of time o Boys behave more aggressively than girls girls are punished for fighting while boys are rewarded when they play rough sports Social cognitive o Thoughts feelings behavior are functions of our knowledge attitudes abilities motivations o Thought always comes first o When choosing a brand of soda the choice is a function of knowledge about the brands our feelings towards brands motivations such as to save money to get what we believe is the highest quality product RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 1 Naturalistic observation awareness Researcher unobtrusively collects information without participant s Advantages researcher does not influence behavior can provide interesting descriptive data Disadvantages not everything can be observed naturally time consuming expensive behavior must be interpreted others may interpret it differently researcher does not know the participants well people do not have the opportunity to decide if they want to be observed 2 Structured observation Researchers set up a situation observe behavior Advantages researcher can keep most variables under control researcher can collect other information from participants Disadvantages participant is aware that they are being observed so there could be an influence researcher may still need to interpret behavior 3 Self report Participants are asked to provide information or responses to questions on a survey structured assessment Advantages inexpensive can collect a lot of data easy to create score computers allow data collection from around the world Disadvantages differences between what people think what they think the researcher wants them to think participants may misinterpret questions and answers participants may be unwilling or unable to answer 4 Controlled experiment Researchers create a controlled environment they can carefully manipulate one variable to test its effect on another Advantages researcher can be relatively sure that any difference observed was caused by studied behavior Disadvantages not everything can be manipulated because of morality issues 5 Longitudinal Researchers periodically collect data from same participants over a long period of time Advantages researchers can track changes over time Disadvantages takes a long time o Attrition not all participants who begin will complete may drop out die be hard to find o Selective attrition something particular can cause participants to drop out so the sample at the end may be different in an important way from how it started 6 Cross sectional Researchers can gather participants of different ages look for differences between the groups Advantages researchers can study effect of time or experience in less time than longitudinal studies no attrition Disadvantages o Cohort effects a generation may have different experiences than another one national events movies parenting norms 7 Case study Research can conduct a detailed analysis of a particular person Advantages researchers can study unusual rare difficult to find participants in depth analysis can reveal interesting areas for Disadvantages what happens with one case may not generalize group etc future study limited results 8 Archival purposes Researcher examines data that has already been collected for other Advantages researchers can analyze very large data sets without time expenses of data collection Disadvantages data may be missing incomplete have errors or be difficult to access Types of correlations correlation does NOT equal causation Positive as one increases the other one increases o People who sleep more tend to have higher GPAs Negative as one decreases the other one increases o Less educated people tend to be happier Variables Independent manipulate Dependent measure External validity the extent to which information learned about the sample is true about the population Sampling Probability sampling all elements in the population have an opportunity of being included in the sample Convenience sampling creates a group of participants from those that are willing to participate volunteers etc Random sampling assignment Random sampling creates a group of participants than can be assumed to be on average the same as the population in every way o From population o From sample Random assignment creates different group of participants that can be assumed to be on average equal in every way Operationalization process of strictly defining conceptual variables into measurable factors Aggressive driving count speeding tickets Attraction to a classmate how often they blush around them Love for a partner number of smiles when they are in the same room BEHAVIORAL PSYCHOLOGY Stimulus any event we can perceive Stimulus generalization applying what you know about one stimulus to another similar stimulus acting the same way o You respond to the sound of a car s horn by looking for who made the sound whether someone wants your attention o Cars trucks have different horn sounds but you react the Stimulus discrimination the ability to distinguish between 2 same way regardless different stimuli o Traffic lights you know to go at green stop at red Classical conditioning creating an association between 2 unrelated stimuli Pavlov s dogs saliva o Wanted to learn what causes salivation measured dogs o The dogs salivated when expecting food eating o Pavlov then rang a bell each time he fed the dogs o Eventually the dogs associated the bell with food would salivate whenever they heard the bell ring Stimuli responses in a classically conditioned association NS neutral stimulus o Rat exposing the rat to Albert he had no pervious experience with it had a neutral reaction
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