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| Naturalist, philosopher, theorized about psychological concepts. Suggested that the soul and body are not separate, and that knowledge grows from experience (Descartes' Tabula Rasa) |
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| Advocated structuralism - wanted to look at psych as a science (atoms of the mind). Defined psychology as the study of the structure of conscious experience. The goal was to find the "atoms" of conscious experience, and from there to build a knowledge of how the atoms combine to create our experience. |
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| Theory of psychology based upon the structural elements of the mind - Wundt |
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| Theory of psychology based upon the evolved workings/processes of our thoughts and feelings. William James promoted exploring down-to-earth emotions, memories, willpower, habits, and moment-to-moment streams of consciousness |
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| Functionalist - defined psychology as the study of mental activity, evaluated in terms of how it serves the organism in adapting to its environment. |
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| Emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind and its effects on human behavior (id, ego, super-ego) |
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| Theory of psychology based upon the study of overt behavior - Watson, Skinner |
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| Theory of psychology emphasizing the impact of environmental influences on our growth potential, importance of having the needs of love and acceptance satisfied. |
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| Modern Definition of Psychology |
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| The scientific study of behavior (what we do) and mental processes (inner thoughts and feelings) |
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| Controversy over the relative contributions of biology and experience. Do our human traits develop through experience, or are they instinctive? |
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| Biological Influences, Psychological Influences, Social-cultural Influences |
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| Three main levels of analysis for Contemporary Psychology |
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| Genetic predispositions, genetic mutations, natural selection of adaptive physiology and behaviors, genes responding to environment |
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| Learned fears and other learned expectations, emotional responses, cognitive processing and perceptual interpretations |
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| Social-Cultural Influences |
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| Presence of others, cultural/societal/family expectations, peers/other group influences, compelling models (media) |
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| Behavior/mental processes are influenced by biological, psychological, and social-cultural factors |
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Psychology's Current Perspectives
Focus: How the body and brain enable emotions, memories, and sensory experiences
Sample Q's: How are messages transmitted within the body? How is blood chemistry linked with moods and motives? |
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Psychology's Current Perspectives
Focus: How the natural selection of traits promoted the survival of genes
Sample Q's: How does evolution influence behavior tendencies? |
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Psychology's Current Perspectives
Focus: How much our genes and our environment influence our individual differences
Sample Q's: To what extent are psychological traits such as intelligence, personality, sexual orientation, and vulnerability to depression attributable to our genes? To our environment? |
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Psychology's Current Perspectives
Focus: How behavior springs from unconscious
Sample Q's: 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? |
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Psychology's Current Perspectives
Focus: How we learn observable responses
Sample Q's: How do we learn to fear particular objects or situations? What is the most effective way to alter our behavior, say, to lose weight or to stop smoking? |
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Psychology's Current Perspectives
Focus: How we encode, process, store, and retrieve information
Sample Q's: How do we use information in remembering? Reasoning? Solving problems? |
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Psychology's Current Perspectives
Focus: How behavior and thinking vary across situations and cultures
Sample Q's: How are we humans alike as members of one human family? As products of different environmental contexts, how do we differ? |
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| Subfield - Explores the links between brain and mind |
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| Subfield - Studies changing abilities from womb to tomb |
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| Subfield - Experiments with how we perceive, think, and solve problems |
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| Subfield - Investigates our persistent traits |
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| Subfield - Explores how we view and affect one another |
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| Subfield - Assess and treat mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders |
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| Subfield - Help people cope with challenges and crises (academic, vocational, marital issues) |
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| Subfield - Teaching psychology to others |
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| Industrial/Organizational Psychology |
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| Subfield - Uses psychological concepts and methods in the workplace to to help organizations and companies in employee selection/training, morale/productivity boosting, product design, and system implementation |
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| Subfield of medicine treating the physical causes of psychological disorders |
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| The "I knew it all along" phenomenon - after learning the outcome of an event, many people believe they could have predicted the same outcome. |
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An explanation that integrates principles and organizes and predicts behavior or events. Useful if it:
1. Effectively organizes a range of self-reports and observations
2. Implies clear predictions that anyone can use to check the thoery or to derive practical applications |
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| Setting in which the individual lives - family, school, peers, neighborhood |
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| The relationships between microsystems - formed between experiences. i.e. Family and Work |
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| Influences that are out of an individual's control |
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| The culture in which an individual lives |
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| A testable prediction, often prompeted or produced by a theory, to enable us to accept, reject, or revise the theory |
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| The process of examining one individual in depth in hopes of revealing things true of us all |
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| The process of asking people to report their behavior/opinions, thus looking at many cases with less depth |
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| Within a survey, word order/choice can make a huge difference |
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| Method of obtaining a representative sample, using a smaller, randomly-selected subgroup to represent the whole |
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| Naturalistic Observations |
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| Recording behavior in natural environments |
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| One trait, behavior, or entity accompanies another |
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| If A goes up, B goes down. If B goes up, A goes down. |
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| If A goes up, B goes up. If A goes down, B goes down. |
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| Most frequently occurring scores in a distribution |
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| Arithmetic average of a distribution |
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| Middle score in a distribution |
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| Difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution |
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| a computed measure of how much scores vary around the mean score |
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| In an experiment, this variable is manipulated, and its effect is being studied |
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| The outcome factor, the variable that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variable |
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| experimental procedure in which both the research participants and the research staff are ignorant about whether the research participants have received the treatment or a placebo |
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| Assigning participants to experimental and control groups by chance, minimizing pre-existing differences |
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| A symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data, with most scores falling near the mean. |
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