Intro (prolouge, 1)

Quizlet for this chapter: http://quizlet.com/62828251/introprologue-psych-flash-cards/

Intro to Psychology-- Prolouge + Types of psychology
Prescientific Psychology

• Buddha: sensations and perceptions work together to form our ideas
• Hebrew scholars: bowels= emotions- connected with your mind
• Plato and Socrates thought soul and body were separate- body is shell to house the mind
• Aristotle disagreed-- worked with animals, saw connection: knowledge comes from experience
• Descartes: tried to figure out how the mind and body connected
• Bacon: scientific-- mind imposes order where there is none
• Locke: empiricism= mind is a tabula rasa
• beginnings of psychology-- first scientific approach using observation + experimentation

Early Psychological Science

• Structuralism: using introspection to explore the structure of the human mind
• do an activity, report the sensations/feelings it gives you (too vague, couldn't pinpoint any specific patterns because of individual differences in test subjects)
• Functionalism: (william james) how mental/behavioral processes function in the real world
• why do we smell, why do we feel emotions
• darwin-inspired: must be some survival reason for these behavioral functions
• Humanistic Psychology: searching for greater success and satisfaction in life, growth and development of personality + influence of surrounding environment
• Behaviorism: (Watson and Skinner) behavior is most important part of psychology
• mind+emotion=not practical, Pavlov's dogs drool at the ringing food bell
• Freud: childhood experiences determine your behaviors-- deep seated violence+sexual desire
• Cognitive Revolution: brain imaging technology, drugs to alleviate psychological disease
• highlights importance of internal thought processes, highly scientific

Contemporary Psychology

• Nature vs. Nurture debate: are we predisposed to act a certain way?
• nurture works on what nature endows
• Darwin: certain behaviors lead to natural selection+evolution
• Levels of analysis
• biopsychosocial approach: considers genetics, emotions and societal pressure
• current fields of psychology: 
• neuroscience= how body enables sensory experiences (body brain connection)
• evolutionary= natural selection promotes certain behaviors
• behavior genetics= effects of genes vs. environment (nature v. nurture debate) 
• psycho-dynamic= unconscious drives and conflicts, especially from childhood experience
• behavioral= how rewards and punishment influence behavior
• behaviorism= learning
• cognitive= how we encode, store and retrieve information
• social-cultural= variations in behavior across cultures

Research: psychology is now regarded as a pure science

• biological= links between brain and mind
• developmental= womb to tomb changes over lifetime
• cognitive= how we percieve, think, solve problems
• personality= investigate persistant traits
• social= how we view and affect eachother

Applied Research

• clinical psychologist: treat mental disorders
• counseling psychologist: help people work out hard problems (marriage and family therapist)
• educational: school psychologists
• industrial/organizational: workplace morale boost

Psychological Research: the basics

Hindsight Bias-- after learning the outcome of an event, you feel like you would have predicted that outcome

• common sense gives us insight to human nature-- tells us what has happened, not what will happen
• we are often more confident than we are correct
• over-confidence leads to overestimating our intuition
• scientific attitude needed: curiosity, skepticism, humility

Basic Research Vocabulary

1. theory= explanation that integrates principles and predicts behavior or events
2. hypothesis= testable prediction that enables us to accept, reject or revise the theory
3. operational definitions= statement of procedures used to define research variables-- concrete, unbiased way of measuring phenomena

Types of Psychological Research

• case study= observe one person for a long time (not a large sample, so often misleading)
• reveals underlying behavioral principles, tells us what can happen, suggests hypothesis for future
• survey= large amounts of quick, self reported data
• should be from a random sample of people, asking the right question can be really hard
• false consensus effect- tendency to over estimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors
• random sampling- each member of a certain population has equal chance of being in the study
• naturalistic observation= record behavior in natural situations without interfering or controlling

Correlation

• when traits accompany each other, they correlate
• correlation coefficient-- r= [-1,1] 0= no relationship, 1= strong relationship -1=strong inverse relationship
• correlation does not equal causation (depression and anxiety go together, but which one is the cause and which one is the result?)
• we must determine cause and effect through experimentation, not correlation
• illusory correlation= perception of a relationship where none exists (http://www.tylervigen.com/) 
• conformation bias= if we believe there is a relationship, we will notice and recall instances where our belief is confirmed
• we notice random coincidences and think that they are part of the bigger picture
• given random data, we look for orders and patterns
• correlational studies predict behaviors but don't explain cause and effect

Experimentation

• manipulate factors that interest us and keep other factors under control
• manipulated factors determine cause and effects
• dependent variable changes in response to independent variable
• placebo effect= results caused by expectation alone
• double-blind procedure= patients and experimenters should not be aware of which test group received the placebo so they don't dramatize data
• descriptive research- observes behavior
• correlational research- predicts behavior
• experimental research- explains behavior

Statistical Reasoning

• mode= most frequently occurring number
• mean= average number
• median= when lined up in descending/ascending order, the middle number

Measures of variation

• range= difference between highest/lowest numbers in the data
• standard deviation= how much the data varies around the mean number
• must differentiate between real difference and natural fluctuation
• observed difference is reliable if: deviations are small, sample is large and representative
• statistical significance= statistical statement of how likely it is that an obtained result occurred by chance alone
• alpha level 5%- chance/luck screw things up 5% of the time
• if it is significant, it is not necessarily important or practical

Textbook Notes- Chapter 1: Thinking Critically with Psychological Science

Here are notes from the textbook, pages 19-51, to supplement the in-class lecture notes.

Need for psychological science: we can not rely soley on intuition

• hindsight bias-- I-knew-it-all-along: easy to claim you would have forseen the outcome
• common sense is not wrong, it is just after the fact
• "good ideas in psychology usually have an oddly familiar quality, and the moment we encounter them we feel certain that we once came close to thinking  the same thing ourselves and simply failed to write it down."
• judgmental overconfidence: we are too confident in our predictions

The scientific attitude

• James Randi is a psychic skeptic
• we have to be open to new radical ideas, but not gullible-- "show me the evidence"
• critical thinking: examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence and assesses conclusions

The scientific method

• theories are a good way to combine observations into a deeper principle, to summarize
• theory must produce testable predictions (hypothesis) 
• to prevent biases, psychologists report their research with precise operational definitions so anyone can replicate their observations, and if repeats of the experiment produce the same result, we can have more confidence in the theory
• theories are useful if they...

1. effectively organize a range of self reports and observations
2. implies clear predictions that anyone can use to check the theory or derive practical applications 

Description: observe and describe people objectively and systematically

• case study= suggest hypothesis for future, but individuals may be atypical 
• interesting, strange examples may distract from the major direction of the evidence
• survey= answers depend on the questions wording and the sample of people
• we can only generalize from a representative sample
• website polls are misleading: only people who would go to that website took that poll
• naturalistic observation= help us describe behaviors, which can be revealing

Correlation: how close things are to eachother helps predict when they will appear

Correlation does not mean causation: can indicate possibility of cause-effect relationship

• illusory correlation: when we think there is a connection, we seek out evidence that proves it (one time, I didn't wear a coat, and then I got a cold! must be a connection)
• we are sensitive to dramatic and unusual events

Experiments: unlike correlational studies, which uncover naturally occurring relationships, experiments manipulate factors to determine their effects

• double-blind procedure: one group is given new drug, other control group given placebo
• to evaluate the dependent variable, questions asked of the patient must be specific
• manipulate and independent variable, measure the dependent variable, control others

Statistical Reasoning

• measures of central tendency: outliers often throw off the average, so 62% of people can be below average ;)
• if mean is reported, consider the outliers that could have effected the calculations
• standard deviation tells wether scores are packed together or spread far apart
• how can we tell that results are not just random, natural fluctuations?
• must have: representative sample, a small variation between results, large sample
• statistical significance: a statistical statement of how likely it is that the obtained result occurred by chance
• statistical significance happens when sample averages are reliable and the difference between them is relatively large
• indicates likelihood that an event will occur by chance, not the importance of the result
• only count findings whose statistical significances are 5% or less

Psychology FAQ

- Can Laboratory experiments illuminate everyday life?

laboratory is a simplified reality, are used to test theoretical principles which explain behavior

concerns lie less in particular behaviors and more in general principles that explain behaviors

- Does behavior depend on culture?

yes, in our customs and behaviors, but not in underlying principles

- Does behavior vary with gender? 

we are similarly human, but cultural factors contribute to our differences.

-is it ethical to experiment on animals?

which do we value more: humans or animals? We value those close to our heart, such as primates which look like humans and dogs and cats, which are common pets.

• required to provide a stress free, happy, natural environment for animal test subjects
• sometimes we temporarily deceive human test subjects to get an accurate result

-Is psychology free of value judgements?

we see what we want to see, use labels to emphasize certain values