What is Psychology?• What is the definition of psychology?• What are the origins of Psychology?• Wilhelm Wundt and the first experiment.• Wilhelm Wundt defined psychology as the study

of consciousness and emphasized the use of experimental methods to study and measure consciousness

• Edward B. Titchener and structuralism and introspection.

• complex conscious experiences can be broken down into elemental structures, or component parts of sensations and feelings.

• William James and functionalism.• William James was an American physiologist and

psychologist and his ideas became the basis for a school of psychology called functionalism

• Functionalism stressed the importance of how behavior functions to allow people and animals to adapt to their environments.

• Functionalists examined how psychology could be applied to areas such as education, child rearing, and the work environment and primarily the influence of the workings of the British naturalist Charles Darwin

Psychology 1sts• G. Stanley Hall• G. Stanley Hall received the first PhD in

psychology in the United States and he established the first psychology research laboratory in the United States at Johns Hopkins University in 1833. He also began publishing the American Journal of Psychology in 1892.

• Mary Whiton Calkins

• Mary Whiton Calkins was an American psychologist who conducted research on memory, personality, and dreams and she established a psychological laboratory at Welesley College in 1891; she was also the first woman to be elected president of the APA and although she completed all the requirement for a PhD in psychology from Harvard, Harvard refused to grant her the degree because she was a woman.

• Margaret Washburn• Margaret Wasburn was the first

American woman to officially earn a PhD in psychology and she published the text The Animal Mind and was the second woman to be elected president of the APA.

• Francis Summer• Francis Summer was the first African

American to receive a PhD in psychology and he later published a wide variety of topics and chaired the psychology department at Howard University. One of Summer’s students, Kenneth Bancroft Clark was the first black president of the American Psychological Association in 1970.

Perspectives in Psychology

• Psychodynamic• Behaviorism• Humanistic• Cognitive• Psychosocial• Sociocultural• Behavioral neuroscience

Mental Health Professionals

• What do clinical psychologists do?• What is the role of Psychiatrists?• What is the difference between psychologists

and psychiatrists?

Areas of Research

• Biological• Clinical• Cognitive• Counseling• Educational• Experimental• Developmental

• Forensic• Health• Industrial/organizational• Personality• Rehabilitation• Social• Sports• School• Military

Ethics in Research

• Why do we need ethics in research?• What are some elements of ethics?

Ethics in Research• So why do we need ethics in research?• What are some elements of ethics?• Some ethical practices include…• Informed consent• Debriefing• Confidentiality• Deception?• There are also ethical guidelines for special

populations

Understanding the Themes of Psychology

•Psychology is empirical. •Psychology is theoretically diverse. •Psychology changes because society and history change; this is why psychology is said to be sociohistorical in context.•Psychology is multifactorial, or affected by many factors. •Our cultural backgrounds also exert influence over our behavior (sociocultural) culture is a shared custom, belief, values, norms, transmitted socially across a generation.•Heredity and environment influence our behaviors.•Because of each individual’s background, one person’s perception will be different from another person’s perception; perception is highly subjective.

Wha

• Why is there a need for Psychological Science?• People tend to overestimate or become

overconfident in the individual’s abilities….the overconfidence bias

• The hindsight bias is the tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have forseen it…basically, the I knew it all along phenomenon

The Importance of the Scientific Method

• What is the scientific method and why do we use it?

• The scientific method is a five step process:• Formulate a hypothesis• Design a study • Collect research information (data) how? • Analyze data and draw conclusion• Report the findings

Experiments

• What is an experiment?• An experiment is a carefully regulated

procedure in which one or more factors believed to influence the behavior being studied are manipulated while all other factors are held constant

• There are two components of an experiment:• Independent and dependent variables

The Experiment

• The independent variable is the variable that is manipulated in the experiment.

• The dependent variable is the factor that is observed and changes in an experiment in response to changes in the independent variable

• Experiments involve one or more experimental groups or one or more control groups

• The experimental group is the group that receives the treatment

• The control group is the group that does not receive the treatment

• Extraneous variables are any variable other than the independent variable that may influence the dependent variable in a specific study

• Cofounding of variables occurs when two variables are linked in a way that makes it difficult to sort out their specific effects

An Experiment

• You are conducting an experiment to test your hypothesis that drinking orange juice 20 minutes prior to taking an exam will enhance retention.

• 1. What is the independent variable?• 2. What is the dependent variable?• 3. Which group receives the IV?• 4. What is the function of the control group?

Types of Research• There are three basic types of research used

in psychology; descriptive, correlational, and experimental.

• Descriptive research-serves the purpose of observing and recording behavior and mental states

• Descriptive methods include observation, surveys, and interviews, standardized tests, and case studies.

Laboratory has some disadvantages:• 1. It is not only almost impossible to conduct research

without the participants’ knowledge, but in some cases it can be unethical

• 2. The laboratory setting is unnatural and can influence the results

• 3. The participants who are willing to go to a university to participate in the research are not necessarily representative of the population

• 4. Some of the aspects of research, in particular questions of the mind and behavior, may not be able to be observed in the lab

• • Observing behavior in real-world setting without benefit of

manipulation is naturalistic observation

• Qualitative research- research that asks open-ended questions

• What are some examples of qualitative research?

• Quantitative research-uses numbers to correlate research results

• What are some examples of quantitative research?

Biases• Sometimes when researchers want to adhere to the

integrity of the research, they account for any bias that might contaminate the research findings.

• Experimenter bias occurs when the expectations of the experimenter or researcher influences the research

• Research participant bias describes when the behavior of the participant during the experiment is influenced by how they think they are supposed to behave

• So how do researchers account for both experimenter bias and research participant bias?

• By designing a double-blind experiment

Double-blind experiments

• By designing a double-blind experiment, an experiment in which neither the participant nor the researcher knows in which group the participant until the results are calculated

• What might a double-blind experiment look like?

How do we ensure the research is fair?

• Random assignment• Procuring an accurate sample size from the

population• Do not become overconfident…leads to

confidence bias and making incorrect inferences

Brain-imaging techniques• Three commonly used brain-imaging techniques• • (1) Positron emission tomography (PET scan) generates images of

the brain’s activity by tracking the brain’s use of radioactively tagged compounds that have been injected into the bloodstream.

• • (2) Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) uses electrical signals

generated by the brain in response to magnetic fields to produce highly detailed images of the brain’s structure.

• • (3) Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) uses magnetic

fields to track changes in blood flow and oxygen levels in the brain. It provides a picture of brain activity averaged over seconds rather than the several minutes required by PET scans.

Correlation coefficient• The degree of relationship between two variables is

expressed as a numerical value called correlation coefficient

• The closer the number is to 1.00, the stronger the relation• The further away the number is from 1.00, the weaker the

relation • Negative and positive indicate the direction, not the

strength • In correlational research, the focus is the strength of the

relationship between two variables, events, or characteristics

• The correlational coefficient is the numerical value assigned to express the degree of the relationship between two variables