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• Psychology

  The scientific study of mind, brain, and behavior
• What else is Psychology?


  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuropsychology
  • Biological Psychology
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Social Psychology
  • Organizational Psychology
  • Evolutionary Psychology
  • Mathematical Psychology
• Science


  • Grounded in observation
  • Data are needed to confirm and disconfirm ideas
  • Cumulative body of knowledge that grows and is refined through time
  • Self-correcting - errors or misconceptions are (eventually) excised
  • Achieves explanation and understanding
• The Scientific Method


  1. Observation (Data)

  2. Explanation (Theory)

  3. Prediction (Hypothesis)
• The scientific method implies incremental refinement - our knowledge progressively becomes a closer approximation to truth/reality
• Falsification

  Competing theories should be tested, and the one that is falsified should be rejected
• Real scientific inference requires exercising judgment at many levels - about the quality of the data, the adequacy of theory, and alternative explanations
• Reliability


  How "repeatable" or consistent a measure is
• Validity


  The degree to which a measure assesses the thing it is purported to assess
• Cranial capacity does not really relate to intelligence - it's not the size of the organ that matters, it's how you use it
• Parsimonious theory


  Provides the simplest possible explanation that suffices to explain all relevant observations
• Correlation does not imply causation - because two variables are related to each other does not mean that one causes the other
• Quantitative measurement


  Allows us to put a numerical value on a measurement and quantifies our uncertainty
• What is true of the sample/population need not be true of the individual, and what is true of the sample need not be true of another sample (even if both are drawn from the same population)
• There is always uncertainty in scientific inference - no one study is definitive
• The Scientific Method


  1. Observation

  2. Explanation (Theory)

  3. Prediction (Hypothesis)
• Paradigms


  An organizing principle that defines concepts and constructs invoked by theories, research questions worth investigating, and methodologies used to assess these questions
• Paradigms


  • They provide a "template" for expressing theories
  • They encompass the set of background assumptions that provide a general frame of reference for explaining things
• The Behavioral Paradigm

  • Root Metaphor of the Blank Slate
  • Our behaviors are wholly determined by our environment
  • Key Concepts of History of Reinforcement and Learning
  • Law of Effect—Behaviors that are rewarded tend to be repeated
  • Rejection of unobservable processes as unscientific
  • Questions about how contingencies pairing stimuli with reward/punishment affect subsequent behavior
  • Studied experimentally, often with animal subjects
• The Cognitive Paradigm

  • Root Metaphor of Computer
  • Inputs are processed and transformed into outputs
  • Key concepts of Mental Representations and Mental States
  • Focus on unobservable mental processes and their (observable) effects
  • Attention, Memory, and Decision-Making
  • Questions about the mental processes that give rise to behavior
  • Studied experimentally, often with human participants
• The Biological Paradigm


  • Root Metaphor of the Biological Machine
  • What are the physical bases of thought and behavior?
  • Key concepts of evolution, genetics, and physiological functions
  • Focus on identifying physiological correlates of specific behaviors/cognition
  • Measurement of brain activity and identification of genetic contributions to behaviors or psychological disorders
  • Questions about how mental processes are physically realized in the brain and how such functionality evolved
  • Studied experimentally (humans and animals) as well as via case studies
• Criteria for Major Depressive Disorder (DSM-V)


  • Depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day
  • Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities most of the day, nearly every day
  • Significant weight loss when not dieting or weight gain, or decrease or increase in appetite nearly every day
  • A slowing down of thought and a reduction of physical movement (observable by others, not merely subjective feelings of restlessness or being slowed down)
  • Fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day
  • Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt nearly every day
  • Diminished ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness, nearly every day
  • Recurrent thoughts of death, recurrent suicidal ideation without a specific plan, or a suicide attempt or a specific plan for committing suicide
• Experience 5 or more of the criteria for Major Depressive Disorder within a two week period
• Thinking within a Paradigm

  1. Underlying Causes

  2. Treatment Pathways

  3. Research Questions

  4. Research Methodologies in Psychology
• Why Are Research Methods Important?
• People have a tendency to see what they want to see
• If a card has a vowel on one side, it has an even number on the other
• Research and Confirmation Bias: People often seek out information that confirms their beliefs, highlight occurrence of expected or favored events, and minimize occurrence of unexpected or unfavorable events
• Highly problematic when we are trying to infer causal relationships between events
• Benefits of Research Methodologies: Impose control, or structure, over the observations we make, the more structure the more confident we can be about the causal status between events
• Research Methodologies (from less to more control)

  • Introspection
  • Natural Observation
  • Case History
  • Surveys
  • Correlational Designs
  • Experiments
• A variety of methods are often used to provide converging evidence for a theory
• Experimental Designs

  • Specifically set up to support causal inference
  • Manipulate (i.e., systematically vary) an Independent Variable while measuring the effect on another Dependent Variable
  • The different "levels" of the IV create different experimental conditions
  • All other factors are held constant across conditions by either being allowed to vary randomly or by being deliberately equated
• If the DV changes significantly across conditions, we may infer that the change was caused by manipulation of the IV
• Experiment Example


  • Monitor the screen and press a button whenever a dot appears on either side of the fixation cross
  • Dependent Variable: Response Time
  • Independent Variable: Level of Rest (Sleep Deprived vs Normal Sleep)
• Stroop Effect Experiment


  • Independent Variable: Color-Text Congruity
  • Dependent Variable: Response Time
• Slowing in the Stroop Effect is caused by conflicting semantic information
• Bias


  Factors that affect the data that are obtained in a study, can have follow-on effects on conclusions and theoretical inferences
• Sources of Bias in Research


  • Sampling Bias
  • Expectation Effects
  • Operational Definitions
• Sampling Bias


  When the study sample is not representative of the population to which you wish to generalize the study conclusions to