PSYCH STUDY GUIDE EXAM 1 PART 1 General Theoretic Perspectives Psychology is the scientific study of cognitions thoughts and behavior There are three types of psychologists research Industrial organizational and counseling clinical psychologists 5 Basic Goals of Psychology 1 Describe in detail the behavior that was observed as objectively as possible 2 Explain why what the subject did past the obvious aspects of the observation 3 Predict what will happen in the future due to these explanations 4 Control the situation once we know what happens why it happens and what is going to happen in the future ex abusive relationships 5 Improve the behavior once we have found what why it happens Sociobiological Theory evolutionary psychology Behaviors based on biology survival of the fittest nervous system muscles and bones also known as instincts Continually our psychical environment we originally like sweets because they have more calories for survival and social environment shaving is hygienic shapes our behaviors as well Sociocultural Theory our thought and behavior is largely influenced by the culture we grow up in Culture shapes believes values manners and behaviors through expectations and norms Learning Theory Thoughts and behaviors based on what we learned fromnegative and positive consequences We often learn through interactions with society Social Learning Social Cognitive Theory Behavior in terms of beliefs being able to use a phone attitudes depends on whose calling affect positive negative mood and motivation answering the phone Perception is everything the way we think reflects the way we act in our environment even if it is not the norm Sociobiology can be used to explain differences in sexual behavior with the idea of Machismo I have good genes let me mate Specifically with humans females are able to manipulate machismo out of the population which therefore gives them more power in the mating process Evolutionarily it is the male females goal to get as much of his genes into the next generation as possible usually the male has the advantage because they are able to start thousands of pregnancies while the female s is limited Also men realistically do not have to commit as much nurture towards their offspring which is the sociobiological reasoning behind why promiscuity is more popular among men As for feminism it is believed to be a concept that will die out or start over at the start of every generation due to evolutionary biological ideology Watson s study on fear displays that our emotions are not only shaped biologically but they are learned by the experiences we endure through our environment Continually our behaviors are shaped by negative and positive consequences For example when little albert originally saw the white rat he was biologically not effected by it but through learning that the gong noise insinuated the sight of the rat little albert formed fear Subjects that were not exposed to aggression behavior without he Bandura Bobo Doll did not display aggressive behavior when playing with the doll control group However the group that was exposed to aggressive behavior used most of the objects in the room toy doll toy gun to beat the bobo doll aggressively Ultimately this also shows that these actions were learned not biologically inhabited PART 2 Research Methodology Naturalistic Observation Researchers observe their subjects without their knowledge ex teachers observe students at lunch without them noticing to see how the actions of those students differ based on age gender race ect ADVANTAGES the research is not influencing the participants behavior so it is more representative of the population also provides interesting descriptive data DISADVANTAGES not everything can be observed in its natural environment Rosenthal Effect skewed interpretation of the researcher the participants don t chose to be in the experiment not much is known about the participants Structured Observation Researchers set up a situation to observe behavior ex a researcher observes the reaction of a child in a room with a stranger once his mom leaves this determines the child s attachment style ADVANTAGES the researcher has control over the situation variables and can collect other data about the participants DISADVANTAGES the participant is aware of the researcher and can create an artificial response Self Report questionnaire survey structured assessment ex students record their grades for the first semester and what they ate for breakfast every day to determine the correlation between grades and a healthy breakfast ADVANTAGES inexpensive time efficient could be collected from a large range of participants world wide DISADVANTAGES participants are not always honest with their answers questions may be misinterpreted participants might not want to answer Controlled Experiment a controlled environment where researches can manipulate each variable to test its effect on another each other ex testing for a medicine by giving some patients the actual medication and the others a placebo ADVANTAGES the researcher has enough control to draw an accurate conclusion about what has been studied the effect of the drug DISADVANTAGES not everything can be manipulated in an experiment ex cannot feed deprive children of food to test for academic performance Longitudinal Researchers periodically collect data from the same participants over many years ex tracking those who smoke weed to those who don t to see the effects of weed on ones brain ADVANTAGES researchers can track changes over time DISADVANTAGES time consuming not all participants stay in the study attrition which may lead to different results from the beginning to the end of the study Cross sectional Gathering data over different age groups to look for differences between those ages ex observing students ages 10 18 to determine when they start to swear ADVANTAGES can study the effect of time without being as time consuming attrition is not an issue DISADVANTAGES cohort effects generational issues movies national event Case Study a detailed analysis of a particular person group business ect ex observing a monkey in a language rich environment to see if they can acquire human language ADVANTAGES unusual rare participants can reveal interesting areas facts for future study DISADVANTAGES the results are usually particular to that case Archival researcher uses already collected data for other purposes correlations ex temperature data and crime
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