Chapter 1 Study Guide The scientific goals of explaining predicting describing and deciding o Through many observations researchers can come to describe helping behavior They may also try to predict who will help After analyzing the data they can explain why helping behavior occurred when it did Be able to distinguish between human behavior and mental processes o Behavior everything we do that can be directly observed o Mental Processes the thoughts feelings and motives that people experience privately but that cannot be observed directly Attitudes central to scientific approach to psychology Skepticism ability to challenge Critical Thinking process of thinking deeply and actively asking questions and evaluating the evidence Objectivity trying to see things as they really are not just as the observer would like them to be Curiosity scientists notice things and wonder why they are that way Structuralism and functionalism o Structuralism Wundt s approach to discovering the basic elements or structures of mental processes o Functionalism James s approach to mental processes emphasizing the functions and purposes of the mind and behavior in the individual s adaptation to the environment William Wundt and William James o Wundt a German philosopher physician who created the academic discipline of psychology He also founded the first psychology laboratory with two of his co workers in 1879 at the University of Leipzig in Germany o James came up with the concept of functionalism James s approach to mental processes emphasizing the functions and purposes of the mind and behavior in the individual s adaptation to the environment The different approaches to psychology and know which psychologists were the biggest advocates of each approach biological behavioral psychodynamic humanistic cognitive evolutionary and sociocultural o Biological an approach to psychology focusing on the body especially the brain and nervous system o Behavioral an approach to psychology emphasizing the scientific study of observable behavioral responses and their environmental determinants John B Watson B F Skinner o Psychodynamic an approach to psychology emphasizing unconscious thought the conflict between biological drives such as the drive for sex and society s demands and early childhood family experiences Sigmund Freud o Humanistic an approach to psychology emphasizing a person s positive qualities the capacity for positive growth and the freedom to choose one s destiny o Cognitive An approach to psychology emphasizing the mental processes involved in knowing how we direct out attention perceive remember think and solve problems o Evolutionary an approach to psychology centered on evolutionary ideas such as adaptation reproduction and natural selection as the basis for explaining human behaviors o Sociocultural an approach to psychology that examines the influences of social and cultural environments in behavior The steps of the scientific method o Observing some phenomenon o Formulating hypotheses and predictions o Testing through empirical research o Drawing conclusions o Evaluating conclusions Descriptive experimental and correlational research o Descriptive involves finding out about the basic dimensions of some variable o Experimental concerns establishing causal relationships o Correlational interested in discovering relationships between variables between variables Case studies experiments naturalistic observation and surveys o Case studies also called a case history an in depth look at a single individual o Experiments carefully regulated procedure in which the researcher manipulates one or more variables that are believed to influence some other variable o Naturalistic observation the observation of behavior in a real world setting o Surveys questionnaires that present a standard set of questions items to obtain people s self reported attitudes or beliefs about a particular topic Longitudinal and cross sectional research o Longitudinal a special kind of systematic observation used by correlational researchers that involves obtaining measures of the variable of interest in multiple ways over time o Cross sectional a research design in which a group of people are assessed on a psychological variable at one point in time Hypothesis and theories o Hypothesis a testable prediction that derives logically from a theory o Theory a broad idea or set of closely related ideas that attempts to explain observations and to make predictions about future observations Independent and dependent variables o Independent a manipulated experimental factor the variable that the experimenter changes to see what its effects are o Dependent the outcome the factor that can change in an experiment in response to changes in the independent variable Operational definitions a definition that provides an objective description of how a variable is going to be measured and observed in a particular study How to interpret correlations Third variables confounds o Third variable the circumstance where a variable that has not been measured accounts for the relationship between two other variables Also known as cofounds Random assignment and random selection o Random assignment researchers assignment of participants to groups by chance to reduce the likelihood that an experiment s results will be due to preexisting difference between two groups o Random selection provides great grounds for generalizing the results of a sample The sample becomes more representative of the entire population Confederate a person who is given a role to play in a study so that the social context can be manipulated Experimental and control groups o Experimental the participants in an experiment who receive the drug or other treatment under study that is those who are exposed to the change from the independent variable represents o Control the participants in an experiment who are as much like the experimental group as possible and who are treated in every way like the experimental group except for a manipulated factor the independent variable Validity reliability and accuracy o Validity the soundness of the conclusions that a researcher draws from an experimenter o Reliability the extent to which a test yields a consistent reproducible measure of performance o Accuracy the quality or state of being correct or precise Internal external validity o Internal the degree to which changes in the dependent variable are due to the manipulation of the independent
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