AP psych

• Dualism


  Socrates and Plato believed the body and mind were separate and that only the mind survived after death; also believed ideas were innate (nature/born with)
• Monism


  Aristotle disagreed with his mentors suggesting that the mind could not be separated from the body because mind and body were different aspects of the same thing; believed ideas resulted from experience (nurture)
• Rene Descartes


  Agreed with Socrates' and Plato's ideas about the body-mind connection, dissected animals to view their brains and nerves
• Francis Bacon


  Used the scientific method to conduct experiments, known as a father of modern science
• John Locke


  Wrote that people are born with minds that are a "blank slate" (tabula rasa), everything we know has been learned since then, birth of modern "empiricism" –knowledge comes from experiences
• Mary Whiton Calkins


  • Elected president of the American Psychological Association and the American Philosophical Association in 1918, first woman to hold a position in both societies
• Charles Darwin


  • Published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence for natural selection
• Dorothea Dix


  • Advocate for the mentally ill and created the first generation of American mental asylums
• Sigmund Freud


  • Founder of psychoanalysis (the "talking cure"), developed techniques such as free association and transference, theory of the unconscious included the id, ego, and superego model of the mind
• G. Stanley Hall


  • Began the first journal dedicated only to psychology called the American Journal of Psychology, first president of the American Psychological Association
• William James


  • Father of American Psychology and was one of the strongest proponents of the school of functionalism in psychology
• Abraham Maslow


  • Humanistic psychologist who created the hierarchy of needs
• Ivan Pavlov


  • Father of classical conditioning by studying the digestive systems of dogs, used a bell as his conditioned stimulus
• Jean Piaget


  • Created the four cognitive development stages
• Carl Rogers


  • Humanistic psychologist who emphasized acceptance, genuineness, and empathy, and unconditional positive regard
• B.F. Skinner


  • Behaviorist who created operant conditioning
• Edward B. Titchener


  • Structuralism who worked under Wundt
• John B. Watson


  • Established the psychological school of behaviorism, conducted the "Little Albert" experiment
• Wilhelm Wundt


  • Founder of experimental psychology, set up the first laboratory for experimental psychology in Germany
• Structuralism


  Aimed to classify and identify different structures of consciousness, used self-reported introspection (looking inside) to analyze consciousness into its basic elements
• Functionalism


  Aimed to investigate how mental processes function and enable the organism to adapt and survive
• Gestalt


  Perspective that looks at the human mind and behavior as a whole
• Biopsychosocial


  The idea is that biological, psychological, and socio-cultural influences all influence behavior and thinking
• Each level of theory provides a valuable vantage point for looking at behavior, yet each by itself is incomplete. They ask different questions and have their own limits. Each is helpful but by itself fails to reveal.
• Theory aims to explain some phenomenon and allows researchers to generate testable hypotheses with the hope of collecting data that supports the theory.
• Domains of psychology


  • Applied
  • Basic
  • Biological
  • Clinical
  • Cognitive
  • Counseling
  • Developmental
  • Educational
  • Experimental
  • Industrial-organizational
  • Personality
  • Psychometric
  • Social
  • Positive
• Naturalistic Observation


  Observing and recording behavior in natural situations without trying to manipulate or control the situation, describes behavior as we see it but does not explain the purposes of behavior and pays no attention to mental processes
• Case Study


  Studying one person or group in-depth in hope of revealing universal principles, can try to understand very specific issues but cannot be used to generalize the whole population
• Survey


  Obtaining self-reported attitudes or behaviors of a group, usually through questioning a random sample, able to obtain data from many people faster, cheaper, and thus more easily but response rate can be low and self-report can be inaccurate
• Correlation


  Measuring the extent to which two factors vary together and how well one factor can predict the other, correlation helps us make logical predictions but correlation is NOT causation and an unknown variable could be influencing the relationship
• Experiment


  Measuring the extent to which two factors vary together and how well one factor can predict the other, can control or manipulate variables to be more accurate and can explain cause and effect but placebo effect and confounding variables can influence results
• Longitudinal

  Involves looking at variables over an extended period of time (weeks, months, years) in the same subjects, helps us understand changes over time but participants tend to drop out over time and can be expensive
• Cross-Sectional


  Conducted at a single point in time, comparing many variables in groups of different ages, explains what's happening in a population NOW, can look at differences in age groups without doing it over a long period and can look at many variables at once but is not causal and has same weaknesses as surveys if used
• Operational Definition


  The definition of a concept in terms of the actual procedures used by the researcher to measure it, all researchers must understand and measure the concept in the same way in order to have reliable (trustworthy) results
• Replication


  Repeating the essence of a research study, usually with different participants in different situations, to see whether the basic finding extends to other participants and circumstances
• Meta-Analysis


  Process of analyzing the results of many studies that have measured the same variables
• Independent Variable (IV)


  Variable that the experimenter manipulates, the cause (what you are studying)
• Dependent Variable (DV)


  Variable that researchers measure, the effect (result of experiment)
• Control Group


  In an experiment, the group was not exposed to the treatment, serves as a comparison for evaluating the effect of the treatment
• Population


  All individuals who can potentially participate in the study