Ethan - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

• How important are parents in the development of a child?
• Why do individuals remain in abusive relationships?
• Is depression caused by a chemical imbalance?
• What are the long-term consequences of sexual assault?
• Is personality more influenced by genetics or the environment?
• What causes school bullying?

• The scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
• The goal of psychology is to describe, understand, predict, and change thought and behavior.

• Psychology involves analysis at three levels.
• The brain (biology)
• The person (intrapersonal)
• The group (interpersonal)

• Psychologists use critical thinking to investigate various phenomenon:
• Identify central ideas.
• Maintain a skeptical and questioning attitude.
• Tolerate uncertainty and avoids black/white thinking.

• Psychologists use empiricism to investigate behavioral phenomena:
• Knowledge acquired through observation.

Objective data collection

Subjective data collection

Systematic observation

Hit or miss observation

Reliance on evidence

Ignores counterevidence

• Structuralism
• Functionalism
• Psychoanalysis
• Behaviorism
• Humanistic Models

• Structuralism: The first major movement.
• Goal – To understand the basic elements of thought and laws by which they combine into complex experience.

• Sensations: Arising from the eyes, ears, and other sense organs.
• Feelings: Such as fear, anger, and love.

…How to these combine into mental structures? What are the rules?

• Structuralism’s roots were established by Wilhelm Wundt.
• Set up the first psychology laboratory in Germany (1879).

• Experimentation can be used to study basic processes of mind, not the higher processes. For the latter, only naturalistic observation could be used.

• Edward B. Titchener furthered Wundt’s in the United States.
• He sought a periodic table of mental elements. For example,

sensations and images were characterized by quality, sensation, intensity, duration, clearness, extensity.

• Key contributions of structuralism:
• Introspection (self-examination): To understand the mind by describing and analyzing thoughts, sensations, and feelings.

• Experiments. For example, studying the speed of thought by observing reaction time.

• Studying Tiger Wood’s golf success by analyzing how he perceives distances, faraway terrain, and wind direction.

*Limitations:

• Not all behavior can be described with conscious thought.
• Structuralism failed to establish laws of behavior.

• Functionalism: The second major movement, which went beyond charting the mind’s elements…

• Goal: To understand the function of the mind in adaptation: functionalism was influenced by Charles Darwin (1809-1882).
• Involved studying people’s goals and beliefs.

• Founder of functionalism (and American psychology!) was William James.
• James set up the first American psychology laboratory.

• He believed that knowing only the contents of the mind was too limited: we need to know how the mind’s contents function and work together.

• How do Tiger Wood’s goals and beliefs help him to press on in the face of adversity?

• Key contributions of functionalism:
• Using animals to study behavior.
• Practical applications
• Example: Improving education

• Today’s perspectives incorporate ideas of the past expanded by a deeper understanding of the mind. Psychologists with different perspectives work in different settings and in different ways. However:

• All are attempting to explain human behavior.

• All incorporate a theory of development, personality, and therapeutic techniques.
• Most consider research and theory to be cornerstones of their approach (Lefton & Brannon, 2003).

Major Founder: Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

“I have found little that is ‘good’ about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash.”

--Sigmund Freud

• Behavior is determined by unconscious processes and biological/instinctual forces (e.g., sex & aggression).
• Personality develops during the first 6 years of life, influenced by one’s early experiences and progression through the stages of psychosexual development.
• Early childhood experiences are responsible for subsequent adult problems.
• Early childhood relationships lay the foundation for all adult relationships.

• Key Idea: Behavior/emotional problems are driven from anxiety stemming from early traumatic experience.
• Unconscious: warehouse of past experiences, conflicts, memories, & repressed material; it substantially contributes to most of our behavior and mental health problems.

• Techniques

1) Free association: Patient reports freely and without censure ideas that come to mind.

2) Dream interpretation: Interpreting dreams uncovers symbols of unconscious conflict.

• Founder: John Watson (1878- 1958).
• Established the study of observable stimuli (environmental situation) and response (anything an organism does).

• All behavior, whether positive or negative, is learned. Cognition (thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, etc.) are also learned behaviors.
• Behavior is maintained by current circumstances, not historical events.

“If you could understand rats without the convolutions of introspection, could you not understand people the same way?”

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist that I might select- a doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even into a beggarman and thief………..”

“Little Albert” experiment….

• Founder: B. F. Skinner (1904- 1990).
• Furthered behaviorism and examined the effects of reinforcement on behavior (currently a technique used with children, and dog training too!)

• Major founders: Varied
• Key ideas: Most behavioral/emotional problems are due to faulty learning coupled with poor choices and habits.

• Founder: Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
• Key Idea: Most behavioral or emotional problems are due to blocked growth and potential.

• Most psychologist use a blend of the aforementioned techniques, supplemented by:

• The Biopsychology perspective: Examines how brain structure and its cellular functioning (and thus neurotransmitters) affects mental processes and behavior. Study:

a. Genetic abnormalities

b. Central nervous system problems

c. Brain damage

d. Hormonal changes

2) The Sociocultural perspective: Examines how culture affects mental health, identity, and ability to thrive.

• Time, identity, values

3) The Evolutionary perspective: Analyzes how the human brain developed over hundreds of thousands of years. This framework can be used to understand:

a. Cross-cultural similarities

b. Gender differences

c. Drives (e.g. altruism).

• All of the major schools of thoughts have similar therapeutic outcomes. This is because they share certain COMMON FACTORS such as:

• Catharsis
• Reassurance
• Learning
• Feedback and changing expectations

Research Methods Used by Psychologists

Scientific Method

True Experiments

Quasi-Experiments

Correlation

Description

• Behavior is lawful or orderly.
• We can discover the laws of human behavior through carefully controlled investigations.
• Only phenomena will empirical referents can be studied.
• Beliefs and theories should be subjected to rigorous, public evaluation.
• Science is (ideally) self-correcting. Theories should be modified or discarded based on new evidence.
• Theories should be tentative and falsifiable.

• Science attempts to develop the most parsimonious explanations to account for one’s findings or psychological phenomenon.
• This principle explains why chance is frequently invoked as the explanation for the relationships among variables.

• Psychology is a science because of its methods of finding things out. Its main method is:

• Definition: a research design that attempts to establish cause and effect relationships by manipulating an independent variable(s) and observing the impact on a dependent variable(s).
• How do you do this?

Developing a hypothesis

Performing a controlled test

Gathering objective data

Analyzing the results

Publishing, criticizing, and replicating the results

• 1) Form a hypothesis from a theory (i.e., an interlocking set of concepts or principles that explain a set of observations).

• We want to investigate the impact of moderate levels of alcohol consumption on students’ abilities to drive a car through a difficult maze. We predict that moderate levels of alcohol consumption (BAC = .05) will still impair driving performance.

• A hypothesis must be able to be falsified: You must be able to test it as right or wrong.

the “cause” or variable presumed to bring about changes in the dependent variable(s); the IV is either controlled or manipulated by the researcher.

Dependent variable:

-- the “effect” or variable presumably altered by an independent variable; this variable is what is measured by a researcher.

Remember this: The value of the dependent variable (D.V.) depends on what happens with the independent variable (I.V.). In our experiment:

I.V. – Alcohol Consumption

D.V. – Driving Performance

• Participants are randomly assigned to levels of the IV to reduce selection biases (e.g., individual differences).
• Experimental group: the group of participants exposed to the variable of interest or simply those who experience the experimental condition (alcohol).
• Control group: the group of participants who do not experience the treatment or manipulation (no alcohol).

• Define your terms by using

An operational definition: A definition of a variable that specifies how it is measured or manipulated.

• DV: Driving impairment will be defined as the number of errors made on an obstacle course.

• A researcher investigates whether medication or psychotherapy is more effective in reducing symptoms of depression .
• What is the Independent Variable?
• What is the Dependent Variable?

• What is the Independent Variable?
• What is the Dependent Variable?

2) Next, you perform a controlled test to either accept or reject hypothesis.

• Collect your data.

• In this example, you would compare the driving performance of those in the experimental and control groups.

4. Analyze the data (test scores) and either accept or reject the hypothesis. You do this by using:

a. Statistics – Numbers that summarize or indicate differences or patterns of differences in measurement.

*For example, compare the mean driving scores between your experimental and control groups.

5.Publishing/criticizing/and replicating the results: This involves a write-up of your study results using a particular format (APA style). You should pose competing explanations for your findings is a special section of the write-up.

• Temporal Precedence: the cause (A) must precede the effect (B).
• There must be a functional relationship between A & B (i.e, they must co-vary together).
• Alternative explanations for the relationship between A & B must be ruled out.

1) Participant expectancy bias: The participant’s expectations lead him or her (consciously or unconsciously) to be influenced by the experimental situation rather than I.V. manipulation.

2) Experimenter Expectancy Bias: The experimenters’ expectations lead him or her to consciously or unconsciously treat participants in a way that encourages the expected results.

A way eliminate these biases:

• Use a Double Blind Design (control): The participant is “blind” to the predictions of the study and the experimenter is “blind” to the conditions assigned to the participants.

Eg. Drug studies.

3) Another form of bias is Sampling Bias: A bias that occurs when the participants are not chosen at random, but are instead chosen in such a way that they are not representative of the population (e.g. college students).

5) Confounding variables: Variables that vary along with the ones of interest, and could be the actual reason for the study findings.

• Quasi-experimental research: similar to the true experiment, but participants are not randomly assigned to groups for ethical or practical reasons.

Example: Effects of sleep deprivation on memory for people aged 18-25 verses 30-35.

• I.V.s – Age and sleep deprivation
• D.V. – Memory

• Correlational research: Uses a statistic called a correlation to measure the relationship between 2 or more variables. Useful when you cannot ethically or experimentally manipulate your variables.

Examples: lack of sleep and G.P.A;

domestic assault and self-esteem.

The correlation indexes a relationship in which changes in one variable are

accompanied by changes in another.

• Correlation Coefficients, which range from –1.00 to +1.00, describes the relationship between two research variables; sign indicates the direction of the relationship, and the number represents its strength.
• Note: r = -1.0 is as strong as r = 1.0

Cannot imply causation due to:

Directionality problems

Third Variables

Possibility 1: A might cause B

A

B

Possibility 2: B might cause A

B

A

If A and B are correlated:

Possibility 3: A might influence B while B influences A in return.

A

B

Rather than A causing B or B causing A, third variable C causes A & B.

C

A

B

• So, you must be VERY careful about what conclusions that you draw. For example;
• Eyesight and I.Q. (small correlation)
• Ice cream consumption and crime
• Heat and shark attacks

• Positive:
• Hours of studying and good test scores
• Self esteem and reported happiness
• Inches of snow and school closures
• Negative:
• Missed classes and test scores
• Social skills and reported social anxiety
• Depression and good coping skills

• Height and grades
• Wealth and body weight
• Looks and intelligence

• Describes phenomenon such as behaviors, emotions, and interactions in their natural environment. No variables are manipulated!

1) Naturalistic observation: Observing your variable of interest in its natural setting.

2) Case study: A study that focused on a single instance of a situation.

For example, a therapist writes an anonymous case study (with client permission) about a Vietnam Veteran with PTSD.

3) Survey: A set of questions about beliefs, attitudes, preferences and activities.

Example: Survey 500 students on campus about their beliefs/attitudes concerning alcohol.

• Pitfalls of a survey are:
• People may not be honest.
• People may not be comfortable answering.
• The wording of the survey could influence response.
• The survey could limit response options.