Transcript perspective - Hazlet.org

INTERACTIVE PRESENTATION SLIDES
FOR INTRODUCTORY PSYCHOLOGY
Nature vs. Nurture
Psychology’s Big Idea
 Are gender differences biologically predisposed or socially
constructed?
 Is a child’s grammar mostly innate or formed by experience?
 How are differences in intelligence and personality influenced
by heredity and environment?
Video:
The Nature-Nurture Issue
Video Review
How might evolutionary psychology’s
explanation of human behavior shape social
and political attitudes?
 Provide some examples of how both nature
and nurture contribute to specific human
behaviors.

Psychology’s Current
Perspectives
Perspective
A perspective is a way
of viewing subject matter
or phenomena.
Focus
Sample Questions
Neuroscience
How the body and brain
enable emotions,
memories, and sensory
experiences
 How are messages transmitted within
the body?
 How is blood chemistry linked with
moods and motives?

Evolutionary
How the natural selection
of traits promoted the
survival of genes
How does evolution influence
behavior tendencies?
Psychology’s Current Perspectives
Perspective
Focus
Sample Questions
Socio-cultural
How much our
environment and culture
effects our behavior
 To what extent are psychological traits
such as intelligence, personality,
sexual orientation, and vulnerability to
depression attributable to our genes?
To our environment?
Psychodynamic
How behavior springs
from unconscious drives
and conflicts
 How can someone’s personality traits
and disorders be explained in terms of
sexual and aggressive drives or as the
disguised effects of unfulfilled wishes
and childhood traumas?
Behavioral
How we learn observable  How do we learn to fear particular
objects or situations?
responses
 What is the most effective way to alter
our behavior, say, to lose weight or
stop smoking?
Cognitive
How we encode,
process, store, and
retrieve information
 How do we use information in
remembering? Reasoning? Solving
problems?
The Scientific Method
Psychologists use the
Empirical Evidence:
scientific method.
Evidence gained and
 Formulate
question
verifiedathrough
 Design
a study
objective
observation,
measurement,
 Analyze
the data and
experimentation
 Report the results
1. Theories
Example: Low self-esteem
feeds depression.
3. Research and observations
Example: Administer tests of selfesteem and depression. See if a low
score on one predicts a high score on
the other.
2. Hypotheses
Example: People with
low self-esteem will
score higher on a
depression scale.
Psychological Research
Descriptive Methods
are used to
systematically observe
and describe behavior
Case
Study
Survey
Naturalistic
Observation
Some drawbacks to
these methods
Correlation
Correlational studies
show how factors are
related.
 Positive correlations
indicate that two
factors increase or
decrease together.
 Negative correlations
indicate that as one
factor increases, the
other decreases.
 Correlation does not
prove causation.
or
or
and
Psychological Research
In an experiment, participants are randomly
assigned…
…into experimental and control groups…
…which are then subject to independent and
dependent variables.
Experiment
A method to test
a hypothesis
about a causeand-effect
relationship
Ethics in Psychological
Research
 Informed consent.
 No coercion
 Deception only under
certain conditions.
 Personal information must
remain confidential.
 Participants must be
debriefed.
Video:
Ethics in Human Research:
Violating One’s Privacy?
Video Review

Would you ask that your medical records be excluded
from deCODE’s databank? Why or why not?

Is increased understanding of human behavior
always beneficial? Why or why not?