Psychology 101 Fall 2015 Exam 1 Study Guide 9 16 15 This is intended to be a guide only You are responsible for all of the lecture material and assigned reading material Key Green Examples Magenta Notes I wrote in class Purple Additional textbook information bold any color important to remember Still working on Introduction 1 What is psychology the scientific study of thought behavior and emotion 1 What are each of the modern psychological perspectives 2 Behavioral Conditioning via reinforcements and punishments Psychoanalytic psychodynamic Unconscious dynamics within the individual Evolutionary Natural selection of traits Cognitive How people reason remember understand language form beliefs Sociocultural How social and cultural forces shape individuals behavior Biological neuroscientific How bodily events affect behavior feelings and thoughts Research Methods dualism 1 What contributions did Decartes make to psychology links between the mind body 1 What contributions did Wundt Titchener and James make to psychology 2 What is introspection What is structuralism the analysis of mental structures what is the nature of the mind the structure Studied that by trying to look at the basic elements of sensory E x focus and think and describe something using introspection and ask people to report it The effort was to find out what sensations are The WHAT What is functionalism the study of how the mind works How does the mind work why what are the functions The WHY We like sweet things because it would be a source of significant calories which would mean we would store fat and live longer if in famine conditions liking ice cream and sweet things is not by accident we associate it with survival from our ancestors 1 What is hindsight bias 1 What is a hypothesis testable prediction about the relationships between variables or conditions under which event will occur does doing meditation reduce stress hypothesis Mediation reduces stress it has to be something that is testable 1 What is an operational definition redefines concepts in terms of clearly observable operations that anyone can see or repeat Measure biological exams Adrenal gland to measure stress Questioning them asking if they re stressed questionnaire Body language sweating tense define the variables operational Define medication operational define stress 1 What is naturalistic observation Describe and measure people and or animals behavior systematically naturally in the environment e x go to a place where kids are being physically active and observe then measure obesity e x going to a fraternity and see how much beer is consumed or go to next morning and see how much bottles are in the trash Can be a physical trace of behaviors Not interfering with the behavior we can rely thats its people true behaviors People change if people know you re watching therefore its always better if they don t know you re there Problems you cant infer causation 1 What is a case study in depth analysis of one subject or more Aren t very common in psych Could be one person or animal or a few Very in depth Can receive lots of data We would do this if the case was unusual E x HM had a frontal abotomy was no longer was to form new memories Someones wouldn t volunteer to do this but in unusual cases you can study it t get lots and lots of information because its not common used to generate new hypothesizes e x Phinous Gage metal rode went through this brain he survived His personality changed a lot so we studied it but no one would willingly have a rod in their brain therefore we would want to know if this part of the brain controls personality You cant generalize with this information because there wouldn t be enough studies 1 What is a survey Asking people questions about their thoughts feelings desires and actions and recording their answers E x ask people who eats breakfast to see if they function better in the day but you don t follow them or actually check This could be a writer survey questionnaire etc They re very effiecent because it ll be a sizable amount of people Problems Wording Don t want to have a leadng question e x how often do you drive drunk putting peoples live in dangers 1 What is a correlation measure of the strength of the association between two variables ranges from 1 00 to 1 00 perfect correlation it s a numerical estaminet E x perfect negative as pressure increase as volume decreased all correlations a liner 2 variables change in opposite directions high sioco economics variables change in the same direction weight increase Negative correlation increased smoking rates decrease Positive correlation cardiovascular disease risks increases More neurotic more stress Value R 4 its unrealistic to think it could be a 1 because there are a lot of variables 4 would be considered a big number really meaningful 3 accurcate pretty meaningful 2 probably something going on much has changed Same person blood pressure before and after doctors office Value R 6 because not 1 Does correlation indicate causation Correlation does not indicate causation Its possible it would relate but no definite Could be other alternate reason Just one of several possibilities correlation between ice cream and committing crimes during the summer more people are out of school and its hot in summer so both increase but not directly related 1 What are some other alternatives Instead of A causing B B could cause A More TV hours more likely they ll be obese A causing b More tv then less time they have to go outside B causing a Obese kids don t feel comfortable running around and being laughed at so they watch TV C could be causing both A and B C variable bad eating habits are causing him to watch TV because it s hard for him to do physical activities Variable C medical condition Makes it difficult for him to run around so he watches TV contributing to his obesity How are scatterplots interpreted How are correlation coefficients interpreted 1 What are experiments Experiments researcher manipulates variable they think is causing some behavior while holding all other variables constant the word study and experiment are no interchangeable i e if i want to see if TV directly correlates with obese i would manipulate the amount of TV they watch in an experiment you manipulate the presumed cause Have two groups do two different things and compare variables must be constant i e does medication reduce stress one group to medicate once a week and one group to not However someone
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