unit 1

• Structuralism


  Structure is more important than function. The mind must be broken into elements to understand the brain and its functions.
• Introspection


  When people try to understand the thoughts or emotions they are experiencing at the time. (Subject must be very intelligent and verbal to describe their sensations, images, and feelings in certain moments.)
• Wilhelm Wundt


  • Combined physiology and philosophy to create psychology and he believed in structuralism and introspection, he established the first psychology lab in Germany.
• Functionalism


  How the conscious mind is related to behavior
• William James


  • Key figure in functionalism
• Behaviorism


  The study of observable events, shifted psychology from the study of the unconscious and conscious mind to a more science-based study based on observable events.
• John Watson


  • Studied observable events and led the Little Albert experiment
• Psychoanalytic/psychodynamic


  The study of the unconscious mind. Behavior is determined by past experiences.
• Sigmund Freud

  • Key figure in psychoanalytic/psychodynamic approach
• Humanistic


  People have free will and people are trying to reach self-actualization
• Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers


  • Key figures in humanistic approach
• Evolutionary approach


  Evolutionary biology to explain human behavior (Darwin's theory of natural selection)
• Biological perspective


  Behavior is based on physical processes (hormones, brain etc)
• Cognitive


  Thought processes impact the way people behave.
• Jean Piaget


  • Key figure in cognitive approach
• Biopsychosocial


  Acknowledges the person as a whole and tries to look at all of the patient's circumstances.
• Sociocultural


  How thinking and behavior vary across cultures and situations.
• Independent variable


  What changes (cause)
• Dependent variable


  What's being measured (effect)
• Confounding variable


  Outside influence/factor that affects the experiment
• Constant variable


  What's being constant/unchanged
• Random assignment


  Randomly selecting people to be in an experimental group, with an equal chance of being chosen. Demonstrates cause and effect.
• Random sample


  Randomly selecting people from the population to be in the experiment
• Sampling bias


  Flawed sampling process that produces an unrepresentative sample.
• Experimenter bias


  Researchers influence the results of an experiment to portray a certain outcome. (Double-blind procedure when neither the researcher or the participants know what groups the participants have been assigned to, this prevents bias)
• Hindsight bias


  Tendency to believe that you knew what was going to happen "I knew it all along!"
• Overconfidence


  When we are overconfident in what we find/believe, which misleads others about the truth.
• External validity


  How generalizable the results are
• Internal validity


  Shows a cause and effect relationship
• Hawthorne effect


  Subjects changing behavior because they're aware that they're being observed
• Operational definition


  Statements of the exact procedures used in the study, which would eventually allow other researchers to replicate the research. (Like an IQ test to test intelligence)
• Ethical guidelines provided by the APA

  • Informed consent
  • Deception
  • Deception debriefing
  • Protection from harm or discomfort
  • Coercion
  • Anonymity
• Range


  Highest value - lowest value (another measure of variation)
• Correlation coefficient


  How well two variables are correlated, ranges from -1 (strong negative relationship) to +1 (strong positive relationship)
• Negative correlation


  One variable increases and the other decreases
• Positive correlation


  Both variables increase
• No correlation


  No connection between the two variables, a scatterplot showing no correlation would have dots all over the place.
• Frequency distribution


  How often something happens within certain ranges or intervals for a set of data points
• Normal distribution


  Symmetrical about the mean
• Positively skewed distribution


  Tail extending to the right/larger values, occurs when the dataset has a few unusually large values (mean > median)