| Question | Answer |
| Behavioral Approach | Human behavior is determined by what a person has learned primarily through rewards and punishments |
| Cognitive Approach | How the brain take in and processes info, creates perceptions, makes and retrieves memories and generates patters of action. |
| Humanistic Approach | Behavior controlled by the decisions people make about their lives based on their perceptions of the world. |
| Psychology | scientific study of behavior and the mind (mental processes) |
| Role of Research | Scientific method= gather evidence, perform experiments, analyze results, draw conclusions, and apply findings. |
| British Empiricism | philosophers believed that all ideas and knowledge are gained through senses. Observation was more valid to knowledge than reason. |
| Psychophysics | understanding vision and other senses |
| Evolutionary Approach | inherited and adapted aspects of behavior and mental processes |
| Wilhelm Wundt | Focused on identifying the building blocks of consciousness and looking within. |
| Edward Titchener | Used building blocks toward the consciousness and studied the structure of it. (structuralism) |
| Gestalt Psychologists | described the organization of consciousness and principles of perceptual organization. argued against structuralism= the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. |
| Sigmund Freud | explain personality and behavior through psychological processes. Importance of childhood in development of personality. Consciousness and unconscious components of the mind. |
| William James | Studied how the conscious mind allows and organism to survive and adapt to the environment, influenced by Charles Darwin (functionalism) |
| John B. Watson | Study only observable behavior, the mind can't be observed (science) |
| B.F. Skinner | Radical behaviorism meant that all organismic action is determined and not free. |
| Biological Approach | Behavior and mental processes are largely shaped by biological processes= nervous system, hormones, and other chemicals |
| Psychodynamic Approach | interplay of unconscious mental processes in determining human thought, feeling and behavior |
| Critical Thinking | process of assessing claims and making judgements on the basis of well-supported evidence. |
| Hypothesis | a specific testable prediction about some phenomenon |
| Theory | Set of formal statements that explains how and why certain events are related to each other |
| A Good Theory | organizes info in a meaningful way, testable and generates new hypothesis, supported by research, simple is better (Law of Parsimony) |
| Variable | any characteristic or factor that you can vary |
| Operational Variable | Defines a variable in terms of the specific procedures used to produce or measure the variable |
| Data | usually numbers that represent facts used as a basis for reasoning, reaching conclusions, and analysis. |
| Participants | are organisms whose behavior is systematically observed in a study. |
| Naturalistic Observation | observation in normal environments |
| Advantage to Naturalistic Observation | Large amounts of uncontaminated descriptive data about behavior |
| Disadvantage of Naturalistic Observation | observer bias, participant self-consciousness, may not see any interesting behavior |
| Case Study | intensive examination of specific interesting person/situation |
| Advantage Case Study | provides detailed descriptive analysis |
| Disadvantage Case Study | may not represent the phenomena |
| Surveys | a set of questions put to a number of participants about their beliefs, attitudes, preferences, or activities |
| Use of Surveys | Gathering descriptive data, learning about opinions |
| Disadvantage of Surveys | sampling errors, poorly phrased questions, self-report measure |
| Correlational Study | Two variables that impact each other |
| Positive correlation | as one variable gets high so does the other |
| Negative correlation | as one variable gets high the other gets low |
| Strength of Correlation | Study variables that cannot be manipulated |
| Weakness of Correlation | does not imply causation |
| Experimental Design | manipulation of one variable under controlled conditions so that resulting changes in another variable can be observed identifying a causal relationship |
| Independent Variable | The factor that is manipulated or controlled by the experimenter |
| Dependent Variable | The factor that is measured and may be influenced by independent variable |
| Confound | A factor that independently influences the dependent variable making it hard to understand how the IV effects the DV |
| Control Group | The group that is not exposed to the treatment or receives a zero-level of the IV |
| Experiment Group | The group that receives treatment or an active level of IV |
| Random Assignment | Participants that are randomly chosen to be manipulated by the IV |
| Quasi- Experiment | The participants are not randomly assigned to conditions of the manipulated variable |
| Placebo Effect | People receive treatment they show a change in behavior because of their expectations, not because of the treatment itself. |
| Experimenter Expectancy | the subtle and unintentional ways researchers influence their participants to respond in a certain manner that is consistent with their hypothesis |
| Double-Blind | Participant and experimenter are kept blind as to which experimental condition the participant is in |
| Mean | Average of a set of scores |
| Median | The point that divides a distribution of scores in half from the lowest to highest |
| Mode | the most frequent score in a distribution |
| Range | The highest value minus the lowest value |
| Descriptive Stats | Describe or summarize the main characteristics of the sample |
| Inferential Stats | Help us decide if characteristics seen in our sample reflect true differences or are simply due to chance variation |
| Statistical Significance | Indicates whether a measured relationship is due to chance or not. No more than 5% occurring by chance. |
| Ethics | Informed consent, avoid unnecessary risk to participant, avoid deception unless necessary, debriefing. |
| Standard Deviation | a measure of variability that is the average difference between each score and the mean of the data set. |
| Statistical Validity | The degree to which evidence from a test or other research method measures what it is supposed to measure. |
| Statistical Reliability | The degree to which test results or other research evidence occurs repeatedly |
| Individualist | separate from others, self-defined, success comes from personal effort, personal traits |
| Collectivist | Connected to others, Defined by others, ability to restrain the self and be part of social, success is due to others, family work group |
