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psyc 100
chapter one vocab words
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| psychology | the science of behavior and mental processes. |
| experimental psychologists | psychologists who do research on basic psychological processes as contrasted with applied psychologists. experimental psychologists are also called research psychologists. |
| teachers of psychology | psychologists whose primary job is teaching, typically in high schools, colleges, and universities. |
| applied psychologists | psychologists who use the knowledge developed by experimental psychologists to solve human problems. |
| psychiatry | a medical specialty dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. |
| pseudo-psychology | erroneous assertions or practices set forth as being scientific psychology. |
| critical thinking skills | this book emphasezes six critical thingking skills, based on the following questions: what is the source? Is the claim reasonable or extreme? What is the evidence? Could bias contaminate the conclusion? Does the reasoning avoid common fallacies? |
| critical thinking skills | does the reasoning avoid common fallacies? Does the issue require multiple perspectives? |
| anecdotal evidence | first-hand accounts that vividly describe the experiences of one or a few people, buy may erroneously be assumed to be scientific evidence. |
| emotional bias | the tendency to make judgments based on attitudes and feelings, rather than on the basis of a rational analysis of the evidence. |
| confirmation bias | the tendency to attend to evidence that complements and confirms our beliefs or expectations, while ignoring evidence that does not. |
| biological perspective | the psychological perspective that searches for the causes of behavior in the functionalist of genes, the brain and nervous system, and the endocrine (hormone) system. |
| neuroscience | the field devoted to understanding how the brain creates thoughts, feelings, motives, consciousness, memories, and other mental processes. |
| evolutionary psychology | a relatively new specialty in psychology that sees behavior and mental processes in terms of their genetic adaptations for survival and reproduction. |
| structuralism | a historical school of psychology devoted to uncovering the basic structures that make up mind and thought. structuralists sought the "elements" of conscious experience. |
| functionalism | a historical school of psychology that believed mental processes could best be under stood in terms of their adaptive purpose and function. |
| necker cube | an ambiguous two- dimensional figure of a cube that can be seen from different perspectives: the necker cube is used here to illustrate the notion that there is no single "right way" to view psychological processes. |
| cognitive perspective | another of the main psychological viewpoints distinguished by an emphasis on mental processes, such as learning, memory, perception, and thinking, as forms of information processing. |
| behaviorism | a historical school (as well as a modern perspective) that has sought to make psychology an objective science by focusing only on behavior to the exclusion of mental processes. |
| behavioral perspective | a psychological viewpoint that finds the source of our actions in environmental stimuli, rather that in inner mental processes. |
| psychodynamic psychology | a clinical approach emphasizing the understanding of mental disorders in terms of unconscious needs, desires, memories, and conflicts. |
| psychoanalysis | an approach to psychology based on Sigmund fraud's assertions, which emphasize unconscious processes. the term is used to refer broadly both to fraud's psychoanalytic theory and to his psychoanalytic treatment method. |
| whole-person perspectives | a group of psychological perspectives that take a global view of the person: included are psycho-dynamic psychology, humanistic psychology, and trait and temperament psychology. |
| humanistic psychology | a clinical approach emphasizing human ability, growth, potential, and free will. |
| trait and temperament psychology | a psychological perspective that views behavior and personality as the products of enduring psychological characteristics. |
| developmental perspective | one of the six main psychological viewpoints, distinguished by its emphases on nature and nurture and on predictable changes that occur across the lifespan. |
| sociocultural perspective | a main psychological viewpoint emphasizing the importance of social interaction, social learning, and culture in explaining human behavior. |
| culture | a complex blend of language, beliefs, customs, values, and traditions developed by a group of people and shared with others in the same environment. |
| cross-cultural psychologists | those who work in this specialty are interested in how psychological processes may differ among people of different cultures. |
| scientific method | a four-step process for empirical investigation of a hypothesis under conditions designed to control biases and subjective judgments. |
| empirical investigation | an approach to research that relies on sensory experience and observation as research data. |
| theory | a testable explanation for a set of facts or observations. in science, a theory is not just speculation or a guess. |
| hypothesis | a statement predicting the outcome of a scientific study; a statement predicting the relationship among variables in a study. |
| operational definitions | objective descriptions of concepts involved in a scientific study. operational definitions may restate concepts to be studied in behavioral terms (e.g., fear may be operational defined as moving away form a stimulus). |
| operational definitions part 2 | operational definitions also specify the procedures used to produce and measure important variables under investigation (e.g., "attraction" may be measured by the amount of time one person spends looking at another). |
| data | pieces of information, especially information gathered by a researcher to be used in testing a hypothesis. (singular: datum.) |
| replicate | in research, this refers to doing a study over to see whether the same results are obtained. as a control for bias, replication is often done by someone other than the researcher who performed the original study. |
| experimental | a kind of research in which the researcher controls all the conditions and directly manipulates the conditions, including the independent variable. |
| independent variable | a stimulus condition so names because the experimenter changes it independently of all the other carefully controlled experimental conditions. |
| dependent variable | the measured outcome of a study; the responses of the subjects in a study. |
| experimental group | participants in an experiment who are exposed to the treatment of interest. |
| control group | participants who are sued as a comparison for the experimental group. the control group is not given the special treatment of interest. |
| random assignment | a process used to assign individual to various experimental conditions by chance alone. |
| corrlational study | a form of research in which the relationship between variables is studied, buy with out the experimental manipulation of an independent variable. correlational studies cannot determine cause and effect relationships. |
| positive correlation | a correlation indication that the variables change simultaneously in the same direction: as one grows larger or smaller, the other grows or shrinks in a parallel way. |
| negative correlation | a correlation indicating that the variables change simultaneously in opposite directions. as one becomes larger, the other gets smaller. |
| zero correlation | when two variables have no relationship to each other. |
| survey | a technique used in descriptive research, typically involving seeking peoples responses to a prepared set of verbal or written items. |
| naturalistic observation | a form of descriptive research involving behavioral assessment of people or animals in their natural surroundings. |
| case study | research involving a single individual (or, at most a few individuals). |
| expectancy bias | the researcher allowing his or her expectations to affect the outcome of a study. |
| placebo (pla-see-bo) | substance that appears to be a drug but is not. placebos are often referred to as "sugar pills" because they might contain only sugar, rather than a real drug. |
| double-blind study | an experimental procedure in which both researchers and participants are uninformed about the nature of the independent variable being administered. |
| informed consent | insures that research participants are informed of the procedures of the research, as well as any potential dangers involved, so they may opt out if desired. |
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duncanjonz
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