PSYCH FINAL EXAM NOTES How do sensations and perceptions combine to form ideas Stressed the power of ideas and importance of an educated mind INTRO TO PSYCHOLOGY Affect Behavior Cognition History of Psychology Philosophy and Natural Sciences India Buddha China Confucius Hebrew Scriptures Socrates and Plato Linked mind and emotion to the body Contemplated mind body connection Mind separate from the body Mind exists after death Ideas were innate o Born with it Soul mind not separate from body Knowledge grows from experience Aristotle Rene Descartes Francis Bacon John Locke Empiricism Believed in mind body separation Wondered how mind and body communicated Founder of the experimental method Founder of modern science Mind tabula rasa blank slate at birth and experiences wrote on it Based on observation and experimentation Structuralism Wilhelm Wundt 1879 Titchener late 1800s introspection look inside Functionalism William James 1875 o Harvard You couldn t study consciousness Focused on how minds allow us to function How and why of behavior Gestalt Wertheimer Method of therapy Psychoanalysis the whole is greater than the sum of its parts Freud Early 1900s Symptoms had mental not physical causes Influence of o Unconscious o Early Experience o Operant conditioning radical behaviorism The scientific study of behavior and mental processes Behaviorism Ivan Pavlov o Classical conditioning John B Watson o science of behavior B F Skinner Contemporary Psychology Current Perspectives Psychodynamic Rooted in Freud s theory Unconscious processes Early experience neo Freudians Behavioral Pavlov Watson Skinner Learning theory o Scientific exploration of memory and other cognitive processes Humanistic Carl Rogers 1951 o person centered Abe Maslow 1970 o self actualization o necessary but not sufficient Cognitive Psychology Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968 Thinking problem solving memory Cognitive neuroscience o Study brain and nervous system SocioCultural Social psychology Cultural psychology Interwoven into other theories How person acts in social situations Biopsychological Genetics Hormones Nervous system Evolutionary Shared universal human characteristics Natural selection focus Prepared fears o Humans automatically afraid of things Types of Psychological Professionals 1 Psychologist 2 Psychiatrist MD 3 Psychiatric Social Worker 4 Psychoanalyst RESEARCH The Need for Psychological Science Intuition o Humans rely on it Common Sense Empirical evidence Sometimes we think we know more than we actually do Hindsight bias I knew it all along Overconfidence The scientific attitude Curiosity Skepticism Humility Passion for exploration Doubting and questioning Ability to accept responsibility when wrong Critical thinking Examine the argument Question Identify and evaluate assumptions o Basis for conclusions o Quality of research info gathering Consider alternate arguments Avoid emotional reasoning o Authority expertise bias Don t oversimplify Tolerate uncertainty Be open minded Psychological research uses the scientific method to construct theories Scientific Method Theory Hypothesis A general explanation of a set of observations or facts Attempts to explain and predict behavior or events A testable prediction Often prompted by a theory Enables us to accept reject or revise the theory Cycle of scientific research Perceive question form hypothesis test draw conclusions report results replication Research design Descriptive Correlational Experiments Variable Operational definition Characteristic that can be measured Identification of procedure or steps used to measure or control a research variable Descriptive methods Naturalistic observation o Watching and recording behavior in organism s natural environment Laboratory observation o Subjects in lab setting o Control o Artificial Case study Survey o In depth study of a single individual o Ascertaining the self reported attitudes opinions or behaviors of people o Identify the population o Select a representative o Sample from the population o Social desirability o Accuracy of memories Correlation Examines relation between variables Positive o As one variable increases so does the other o As one variable decreases so does the other Negative o As one variable increases the other decreases Correlation does not prove causation Experimentation Enables isolation of cause and effect Manipulate factors that interest us Keep other factors under control Independent variable A factor manipulated by the experimenter The effect of the I V is the focus of the study Dependent variable A factor that may change in response to the I V Experimental condition Subjects receive treatment IV Control condition Subjects do not receive treatment Random assignment Assign subjects to groups by chance Minimizes existing differences Experimental effect Subject s response is influenced by experimenter s behavior Participants don t know if they are in experimental or control group Participants and experimenter don t know who receives variable and who doesn t Change due to belief that one is receiving treatment Single blind procedure Double blind procedure Placebo effect Statistics Help to o Organize o Summarize o Make inferences Frequency distributions Histogram bar graph Polygon line graph Most frequently occurring score in a distribution The middle score in a rank ordered distribution Arithmetic average of scores Mode Median Mean Variability Range o The difference between highest and lowest score in a distribution Standard deviation o A measure of how much scores vary around the mean Inferential statistics Probability theory regarding chance vs true differences Infer from those studied to larger groups Can results be generalized Generalizing from samples Representative samples Less variable observations More cases Statistical significance Research ethics Informed consent Risk Deception Debriefing Confidentiality Difference observed probably not due to chance variation between groups NERVOUS SYSTEM AND BRAIN o Attempt to explain how the brain works Study of neural structures behavior and learning Central and peripheral nervous system Phrenology Franz Gall 1800 Neuroscience Nervous system Central nervous system Brain Spinal cord o Reflexes Motor neurons Sensory neurons Carry outgoing information from CNS to muscles glands Carry incoming information from sense receptors to CNS Reflex Arc 3 types of neurons Afferent sensory neurons Efferent motor neurons Interneurons Nerves Part of PNS Neural