Intro to Psych Terms

• Psychology is the scientific study of individual behaviour and mental processes
• Mental processes is the internal tasks we perform within our minds. Examples include thinking, decision making, remembering and problem solving
• Behaviour is an observable action
• Empirical evidence is evidence that has been gathered using observation and/or experimentation
• Independent variable is the variable in a study that the researcher manipulates in order to create different conditions for comparison of effects
• Dependent variable is the variable that the researcher measures, it is the effect of the IV
• Treatment group is the group that receives a treatment that is hypothesized to have an effect
• Control group is the group in an experiment that receives no treatments, so comparisons can be made with the treatment group
• Causation is when one variable directly causes a change in another
• Correlation is when two variables are related to one another in that as one increases or decreases, so does the other
• Extraneous variable is a variable that could influence the DV but is not the subject of the study
• negative correlation is when one variable increases the other decreases
• positive correlation is when one variable increases, so does the other
• phenomenon is anything that has been observed to commonly occur
• bidirectional ambiguity is when their is a correlation between two variables and their is uncertainty about which variable is influencing which