Transcript Unit 1 PowerPoint - website updatedx

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Today’s plan:
◦ Finish overview of Syllabus and Course Policies
◦ Discuss the schedule for Unit 1
◦ Introduce fundamental concepts in psych
◦ Study Groups!
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Psychology is the scientific study of behavior
and mental processes
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Why do I wait until the last minute to study for my tests?
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Is the saying, “opposites attract” true for relationships?
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Are people born shy or do they become shy because of their upbringing
and experiences?
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Why are that unsightly old fellow and attractive young lady dating?
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Why do I remember my 5th grade birthday party but not what I ate for
breakfast two days ago?
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Why am I scared of clowns?
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Why does the room start bending when one takes LSD?
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How does participation in social media affect one’s development?
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Nature vs. Nurture
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Person vs. Situation
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Mind vs. Body
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Status Quo vs. Change
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Diversity
These debates are unresolved, new research is
constantly coming out and informing us about our
behavior and mental processes as they relate to the
above issues
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B.A. – 4 years
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M.A. – 2-3 years beyond B.A.
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Ph.D./Psy.D./Ed.D. ~6 years beyond B.A.
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M.D. ~8 years medical school (required to
prescribe medicine); necessary to be a
psychiatrist
The higher the degree you have, the more
opportunities are available to you
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Cognitive
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Community
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Developmental
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Educational
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Experimental
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Forensic
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Industrial/Organizational
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Neuropsychologists
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School
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Social
Insert “psychologist” after
any of these (except
neuropsychologist) to
create a job title
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Wilhem Wundt – 1879
◦ First psychology lab
◦ Examined introspection (analysis of one’s own
conscious state)
It’s
pronounced
“VILHEM!”
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Structuralism
– E.B. Titchener
– Introspection
– Break down basic elements of consciousness,
immediate sensations, past memories, feelings
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Functionalism
– William James
– Darwin’s influence
– Conscious experience is adaptive
– Stream of consciousness
– Purpose of consciousness
I’m so
functional I
have two
first
names!
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Early contributions of women
– Limitations on access to education
– Restrictions on awarding advanced degrees
– Exclusion from psychological societies
• Mary Whiton Calkins – 1st female President of APA
• Margaret Floy Washburn – 1st woman to receive PhD in
psychology
• Rosalie Rayner – conducted groundbreaking research
with Watson
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Today, women earn the majority of Ph.D.s in
psychology and hold nearly half of the
leadership roles in psychological societies
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Psychoanalysis
◦ Sigmund Freud
◦ Role of the unconscious
◦ Sex and aggression
◦ Importance of early childhood events
◦ Eventually becomes the psychodynamic school
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Behaviorist
◦ John Watson, Ivan Pavlov, B.F. Skinner
◦ Observable, measurable behavior
How’s this for
a non-creepy
perfectly
normal smile?
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Gestalt
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Max Wertheimer, Fritz Perls
◦ Primarily concerned with perception
◦ Whole is greater than the sum of its parts
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Humanistic
◦ Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow
◦ Human potential for growth
◦ Importance of free will and acceptance
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Cognitive
◦ Jean Piaget, Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck
◦ Thoughts and thought processes
◦ Thinking, memory, language, perception
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Neuroscience
Evolutionary Psychology
Behavioral Genetics
Social-Cultural
She’ll
make a
great
mom!
Whoever
thought
financial
security
would feel
so…gross
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Biopsychosocial Approach
Behaviors and mental processes influenced
by:
◦ Biological factors
◦ Psychological factors
◦ Social-Cultural factors
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Goals of Psychology
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Describe
Explain
Predict
Control
Pitfalls of intuition and “common sense”
explanations
◦ Hindsight bias
◦ Overconfidence
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The Scientific Attitude: Be empirical
◦ Curiosity: passion to explore and understand
◦ Skepticism: question results; retest
◦ Humility: understanding humans’ limitations and
the possibility for error
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Ultimately, psychologists must be critical
thinkers (all people should be too!)
◦ Do not accept “truths” without first testing them
◦ Look at evidence, question assumptions, filter out
bias
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Generate a question
Formulate a theory
Develop a hypothesis
Test hypothesis
◦ Operational definitions
◦ Clear and concise
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Replication of results
◦ (2 possibilities)
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Devise a situation in which it would be
beneficial to use
1) Case study
2) Survey
3) Naturalistic Observation
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Case Study
◦ In-depth research
◦ Can we generalize?
Survey
◦ Lots of information – FAST!
◦ Population
◦ Random sample
◦ Stratified sample
◦ Wording
Naturalistic Observation
◦ Hawthorne Effect minimized
◦ Observer bias
◦ Interobserver reliability
◦ Control?
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How often do you feel depressed?
Rarely
Occasionally
How often do you feel content?
Rarely
Occasionally
Often
Often
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Which of the following best describes your attitude towards
tennis player Serena Williams?
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Which of the following best describes your attitude towards
tennis star Serena Williams?
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Example: Incidences of polio and ice cream
sales had a strong positive correlation in the
early part of the 1900s
Therefore ice cream causes polio??!!
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Indicates the strength of a relationship
Must be between -1 and 1
Closer to -1 or 1 = strong relationship
Closer to 0 = weak or no relationship
Graphed with a scatterplot
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Illusory Correlation: Perception of a relationship
when one does not exist
◦ Brought on by confirmation bias - tendency to only
remember examples that support what we believe to be
true
◦ “Crime increases under a full moon”
◦ Reality: On average, crime is not significantly higher
under a full moon than any other night
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Third factor could be the causal factor
◦ (cases of polio and ice cream sales increase in summer
 increase in heat could be responsible for both)
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Could be a coincidence!
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Experimenter manipulates selected variables and
then measures the effect(s) of these
manipulations
Only research method in psychology that can
establish causation
Results generalizable to outside the lab?
Ethics control which variables can be
manipulated
◦ Experimenter – person who manipulates a variable and
then measures the effect of that manipulation on
subsequent behavior
◦ Subjects (participants) – individuals whose reactions or
responses are observed in an experiment
 Sample: All participants in an experiment
 Random sample: All potential participants have an equal
chance of being selected to be a part of the experiment
◦ Confederates: actors in an experiment who pretend to
be participants but are actually working for the
experimenter
◦ Independent Variable: The variable that is being
manipulated in an experiment
◦ Dependent Variable: The variable that is being
measured in an experiment
◦ Confounding Variable: A variable other than the
independent and dependent variable whose
presence influences the relationship between the IV
and DV
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Operational Definitions
◦ What are we measuring and how?
◦ Allows experiment to be replicated by others
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Experimental Group: the group exposed to
the independent variable
Control Group: Group not exposed to the
change in the independent variable; used for
comparison with the experimental group
How do random assignment and placebo fit
in?
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Double vs. Single Blind
◦ Single - subject doesn’t know who is in
control group and who is in
experimental group
◦ Double - subject and confederate don’t
know who is in which group
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Placebo benefits
◦ Reduces demand characteristics
◦ Reduces chance of confounding variable
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Statistics Defined
◦ A branch of mathematics used to organize and
analyze data
◦ Necessary to use statistics to understand what
results actually MEAN – if they mean anything at
all…
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Be skeptical of sweeping generalizations
◦ E.g. “Males are better at math and science than
females”
◦ How was this measured?
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Nominal Scale
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Ordinal Scale
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Interval Scale
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Ratio Scale
◦ Set of categories for classifying
◦ E.g. types of cars in the student lot
◦ Scale that indicates relative position; ranks data
◦ E.g. class rank
◦ Scale with equal distance between values, but without
a true zero
◦ E.g. temperature
◦ Scale with equal distance between values, but WITH a
true zero
◦ E.g. Inches of rain
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Frequency
Distribution
◦ A count of the number
of scores that fall
within each series of
intervals
◦ Frequency histogram
and frequency polygon
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This is a single
score that
represents a set of
scores
◦ Mode
 Most frequently
occurring score
◦ Mean
 Average
◦ Median
 The midpoint –
half the scores
fall below, and
half are above
This is a NORMAL
CURVE, where all
measures of central
tendency are equal!
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Frequency distribution is asymmetrical
Mean, median and mode are different values
◦ Negative (left) – just a few very low scores
◦ Positive (right) – just a few very high scores
◦ How can a few atypical scores distort data?
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As the name implies, a bimodal distribution
has TWO modes
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Range – the difference between the highest and lowest
score in a distribution
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What does it tell you?
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What DOESN’T it tell you?
Standard Deviation – how much do scores vary from the
mean in a distribution? (see table 1.4 on p. 36)
1. Calculate mean
2. Subtract each score from the mean
3. Square that difference
4. Add the sum of the squares
5. Divide by the number of scores in the distribution
6. Take square root of this
7. The number is equal to the value of ONE standard
deviation
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So what?
◦ In a normal curve, this number reveals the
percentage of scores that falls within a particular
range
◦ 68% fall within one standard deviation from the
mean
◦ 95% fall within two standard deviations from the
mean
◦ 99% fall within three standard deviations from the
mean
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Significant Difference
◦ What is the difference between the experiences of the
control and the experimental groups?
◦ What is the chance that the difference happened due
to chance?
◦ .05 value generally accepted (1 in 20 due to chance)
◦ If it IS a significant difference, how important is that
difference (e.g. difference between IQ scores of firstand later-born children is significant, but due to its
very small value, it is not important.
◦ WITHIN vs. BETWEEN group variation?
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When can we generalize about a population
based on the results from our sample?
◦ Sample is a representative sample
◦ The less variation in the data, the more reliable (if
variability is high in a distribution, the mean
becomes less meaningful)
◦ The more examples the better! (ask 2 friends how
they like the class vs. asking 25)
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Setting Standards
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Must Haves:
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How did Milgram, Landis, Watson, and
Zimbardo challenge ethical standards?
◦ APA (American Psychological Association)
◦ PsyETA (Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals)
◦ Human Subjects Review Board/Ethics Committee
Informed Consent
Confidentiality
Justified use of deception
Protection from harm/discomfort (mental and
physical)
◦ Debriefing
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