psych quiz chaps 1+2

• psychology as a science is the study of the mind, brain, and behavior
• science and practice inform each other
• idiosyncratic variables are person-specific
• levels of analysis - lower levels are tied to biological influences, higher levels are tied to social influences, ex nature v nurture debate
• multiple levels of analysis must be considered when studying psych in order to fully understand psych
• the goals of psych are description, understanding, prediction, and change
• correlation does not equal causation
• scientific skepticism - evaluate all claims with an open mind but insist on persuasive evidence in order to believe them to be true
• psych has multiple schools of thought that influence each other, but have different explanations for behavior
• in the beginning, psychology was considered a part of philosophy
• structuralism - look at the individual parts of a person, the sum of its parts. used introspection to identify basic psych elements
• structuralism established the importance of systematic data collection and scientific observation
• Gestalt psychology - rejected that psychology could be broken down, it must be looked at through the whole picture. the whole is greater than the sum of its parts
• functionalism - heavily influenced by Darwin, tried to understand adaptive purposes of thoughts and experiences
• evolutionary psych - built off of functionalism, explains behavior in terms of inherited adaptive aspects of behavior and mental processes. basically there is an evolutionary reason for behavior
• biological psych - explains behavior in terms of our biological processes, ex hormones, brain structure
• psychoanalysis - theory that we have dark influences, unconscious trauma, etc. that causes our actions. it specifically rejected introspection, most of our mental processing occurs outside of conscious awareness
• radical behaviorism - focus on environmental influences on behavior, specifically that our behavior is controlled by what is rewarded and what is punished. believes that cognitive processes occur but they aren't as useful
• punishment in psych refers to anything that decreases a behavior
• cognitive psych - rejects behaviorist standpoint that cognitive processes can't be important in behavior, focuses on the mental aspects of said behavior and the thought processes that go into behavior
• social psych - emphasizes importance of social influences and culture on behavior
• developmental psych - how behavior changes over our lifespans and how that affects behavior
• biopsychosocial model - acknowledges there are bio, social, psych factors that influence human behavior
• while determinism vs free will is a debate in psych, most schools agree that both occur simultaneously
• determinism - behavior is lawful, has cause and effect, choices are determined by our environment
• free will - we are free to make our own choices, we aren't influenced by our environment in doing so
• all schools of psych have elements of both nature and nurture
• simplified views say that biopsych as ascribing all behavior to nature, and behaviorism ascribes it to nurture. this is too simple
• correlational study - examines the extent to which two variables are associated
• closer to +1 is a positive correlation, closer to -1 is a negative correlation
• observational study - watching behavior in real-world settings without manipulating them
• observational studies are high in external validity (real world) but low in internal validity (cause and effect)
• self report/survey - use of surveys, questionnaires, other self report methods to study behavior. should/must be randomly selected
• case studies - examines one person or a small group of people in depth, looking at all variables
• surveys can be unreliable because of how people choose to respond
• case studies don't create causal conclusions, instead they are used to develop hypotheses
• case studies can be used to develop existence proofs, or demonstrating that a phenomenon can occur
• experimental study - manipulating an independent variable to examine the effects on a dependent variable. most reliable form of study
• in an experiment, subjects must be randomly assigned to groups
• placebo - improvements only occur because of the expectation that they will help, not that they actually do