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EXPLORING PSYCHOLOGY

(7th Edition)David Myers

Professor: Dr. Ahsani

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• Myers Website:http://bcs.worthpublishers.com/myers7e/

My email:

ahsani@ucc.edu

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Thinking Critically With Psychological

Science

Chapter 1

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Thinking Critically With Psychological Science

What is Psychology? Psychology’s Roots Contemporary Psychology

Why Do Psychology? What About Intuition and Common Sense? The Scientific Attitude Critical Thinking

How Do Psychologists Ask and Answer Questions?

The Scientific Method Description Correlation Experimentation

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Psychology

With hopes of satisfying curiosity, many people listen to talk-radio counselors and

psychics to learn about others and themselves.

Dr. Crane (radio-shrink)

http://ww

w.nbc.com

http://ww

w.photovault.com

Psychic (Ball gazing)

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“Psychology has a long past, but a short history”

• 500,000 BC: trephining to allow the escape of evil spirits.

• 430 BC: Hippocrates argues for four temperaments of personality.

• Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) suggests that the soul and body are not separate and that knowledge grows from experience.

• 1689 AD: John Locke introduces idea of tabula rasa. • 1807: Franz Josef Gall proposes phrenology.

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Psychological Science is Born

Wundt and psychology’s first graduate students

studied the “atoms of the mind” by conducting

experiments at Leipzig, Germany, in 1879. This work is

considered the birth of psychology as we know

it today.

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Psychological Science is Born

American philosopher William James wrote an important 1890 psychology textbook. Mary

Calkins, James’s student, became the APA’s first female president.

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Psychological Science is Born

Sigmund Freud, an Austrian physician, and his followers emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind and its effects on human

behavior.

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ud

(1856

-1939)

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Psychological Science DevelopsBehaviorists

Watson and later Skinner emphasized the study of overt behavior as the subject

matter of scientific psychology.

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Psychological Science Develops

Humanistic Psychology

Maslow and Rogers emphasized current environmental influences on our growth

potential and our need for love and acceptance.

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Psychology Today

We define psychology today as the scientific study of behavior (what we

do) and mental processes (inner thoughts and feelings).

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Psychological Associations & Societies

The American Psychological Association is the largest organization of psychology with 160,000

members world-wide, followed by the British Psychological Society with 34,000 members.

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Psychology’s Current Perspectives

Perspective Focus Sample QuestionsNeuroscience How the body and

brain enables emotions?

How are messages transmitted in the body? How is blood chemistry linked with moods and motives?

Evolutionary How the natural selection of traits the promotes the perpetuation of one’s genes?

How does evolution influence behavior tendencies?

Behavior genetics

How much our genes and our environments influence our individual differences?

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

Perspective Focus Sample Questions

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 disguised effects of unfulfilled wishes and childhood traumas?

Behavioral How we learn observable responses?

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 quit smoking?

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Psychology’s Current Perspectives

Perspective Focus Sample QuestionsCognitive How we encode,

process, store and retrieve information?

How do we use information in remembering? Reasoning? Problem solving?

Social-cultural

How behavior and thinking vary across situations and cultures?

How are we — as Africans, Asians, Australians or North Americans – alike as members of human family? As products of different environmental contexts, how do we differ?

Chapter 1

Part 2

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Which perspective is most relevant to understanding the impact of strokes and brain diseases on memory?

 

A)Evolutionary

B)Behavioral

C)Psychodynamic

D)Neuroscience

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Psychology’s Subfields: Research

Psychologist What she does

BiologicalExplore the links between brain and mind.

DevelopmentalStudy changing abilities from womb to tomb.

CognitiveStudy how we perceive, think, and solve problems.

Personality Investigate our persistent traits.

SocialExplore how we view and affect one another.

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Psychology’s Subfields: Research

Data: APA 1997

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Psychology’s Subfields: Applied

Psychologist What she does

ClinicalStudies, assesses, and treats people with psychological disorders

CounselingHelps people cope with academic, vocational, and marital challenges.

EducationalStudies and helps individuals in school and educational settings

Industrial/Organizational

Studies and advises on behavior in the workplace.

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Psychology’s Subfields: Applied

Data: APA 1997

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A clinical psychologist (Ph.D.) studies, assesses, and treats troubled people with

psychotherapy.

Psychiatrists on the other hand are medical professionals (M.D.) who use treatments

like drugs and psychotherapy to treat psychologically diseased patients.

Clinical Psychology vs. Psychiatry

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Why Do Psychology?

1. How can we differentiate between uniformed opinions and examined conclusions?

2. The science of psychology helps make these examined conclusions, which leads to our understanding of how people feel, think, and act as they do!

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What About Intuition & Common Sense?

Many people believe that intuition and common sense are enough to bring forth

answers regarding human nature.

Intuition and common sense may aid queries, but they are not free of error.

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Hindsight Bias is the “I-knew-it-all-along” phenomenon.

After learning the outcome of an event, many people believe they could have

predicted that very outcome. We only knew the dot.com stocks would plummet after

they actually did plummet.

Hindsight Bias

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The Scientific Attitude

The scientific attitude is composed of curiosity (passion for exploration),

skepticism (doubting and questioning) and humility (ability to accept responsibility

when wrong).

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How Do Psychologists Ask & Answer Questions?

Psychologists, like all scientists, use the scientific method to construct

theories that organize, summarize and simplify observations.

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A theory is an explanation that integrates principles and organizes

and predicts behavior or events.

Examples??

Theory

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A hypothesis is a testable prediction, often prompted by a theory, to enable

us to accept, reject or revise the theory.

It is a statementIt must be falsifiable

Operational definition

Hypothesis

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Critical thinking guidelines

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Research Process

12.Two basic characteristics of the

scientific attitude are:

A)pride and enthusiasm.

B)ingenuity and practicality.

C)creativity and patience.

D)skepticism and humility.

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In a written report of their research, psychologists specify exactly how anxiety is assessed, thus

providing their readers with a(n):

A)hypothesis.

B)independent variable.

C)operational definition.

D)case study.

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Descriptive methods

Methods that yield descriptions of behavior, but not necessarily causal explanations

IncludeCase studies

Observational studies

Psychological tests

Surveys

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Description

Case Study

A technique in which one person is studied in depth to reveal underlying behavioral

principles.

Is language uniquely human?

Susan K

uklin/ Photo R

esearchers

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Survey

A technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes, opinions or behaviors of people usually done by questioning a

representative, random sample of people.

http://ww

w.lynnefeatherstone.org

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Survey

Wording can change the results of a survey.

Wording Effects

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Survey

Random Sampling

If each member of a population has an equal chance of inclusion into a sample, it is called a

random sample (unbiased). If the survey

sample is biased, its results are not valid.

The fastest way to know about the marble color ratio is to blindly transfer a few into a smaller jar and count them.

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Naturalistic ObservationObserving and recording the behavior of animals in the wild and recording self-seating patterns in a multiracial school lunch room constitute naturalistic observation.

Courtesy of G

ilda Morelli

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Descriptive Methods

Case studies, surveys, and naturalistic observation describe

behaviors.

Summary

The case study is a research method in which:

A)a single individual is studied in great depth.

B)a representative sample of people are questioned regarding their opinions or behaviors.

C)organisms are carefully observed in a laboratory environment.

D)an investigator manipulates one or more variables that might affect behavior.

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Chapter 1

Part 3

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Correlation

When one trait or behavior accompanies another, we say the two

correlate.

Correlation coefficient

3. Indicates directionof relationship

(positive or negative)

2. Indicates strengthof relationship(0.00 to 1.00)

r = 0.37+

1.Correlation Coefficient is a statistical measure of the relationship between two

variables.

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Direction of correlations

Positive correlationsAn association between increases in one variable and increases in another, or decreases in one variable and decreases in the other.

Negative correlationsAn association between increases in one variable and decreases in another.

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ScatterplotsCorrelations can be represented by scatterplots.

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or

Correlation and CausationCorrelation does not mean causation!

Correlation refers to the extent to which two variables:

A)vary together.

B)are random samples.

C)influence each other.

D)show statistically significant differences.

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Experimentation

Like other sciences, experimentation is the backbone of psychological research.

Experiments isolate causes and their effects.

Exploring Cause and Effect

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Many factors influence our behavior. Experiments (1) manipulate factors that interest us, while other factors are kept

under (2) control.

Effects generated by manipulated factors isolate cause and effect relationships.

Exploring Cause & Effect

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In evaluating drug therapies, patients and experimenter’s assistants should

remain unaware of which patients had the real treatment and which patients had the

placebo treatment.

Evaluating Therapies

Double-blind Procedure

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Hypothesis: Breast-fed babies have higher IQ than formula-fed babies.

Assigning participants to experimental (breast-fed) and control (formula-fed) conditions by random assignment minimizes pre-existing

differences between the two groups.

Evaluating Therapies

Random Assignment

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An independent variable is a factor manipulated by the experimenter. The effect of the independent variable is the

focus of the study. For example, when examining the effects of

breast feeding upon intelligence, breast feeding is the independent variable.

Independent Variable

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A dependent variable is a factor that may change in response to an independent variable. In psychology, it is usually a

behavior or a mental process.

For example, in our study on the effect of breast feeding upon intelligence,

intelligence is the dependent variable.

Dependent Variable

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ExperimentationA summary of steps during

experimentation.

Researchers use experiments rather than other research methods in order to

distinguish between:

A)facts and theories.

B) causes and effects.

C)case studies and surveys.

D)random samples and representative samples.

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In a psychological experiment, the potentially causal factor that is

manipulated by the investigator is called the ________ variable.

A)dependent

B)independent

C)control

D)experimental

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