AP Psychology: History, Approaches, and Research (Modules 1-3)

Conducted what many consider as psychology’s first experiment and established the first psychology lab at the University of Leipzig, Germany.

An early school of psychology that used introspection to explore structural elements of the human mind

“Looking inward,” self-reflecting and reporting on immediate sensations and feelings

Edward Bradford Titchener

A school of psychology that focused on how our mental and behavioral processes function – how they enable us to adapt, flourish, and survive

William James

Memory researcher and first female president of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1905

First woman to receive a psychology Ph.D., wrote The Animal Mind, second female president of the APA in 1921

The view that psychology should 1) be an objective science that 2) studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Today researchers generally agree with 1 but no 2.

John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner

Historically significant perspective that emphasized the growth potential of healthy people and the individual’s potential for personal growth; counter to Freudian psychology and behaviorism. Humanistic psychologists emphasized the importance of current environmental influences on our growth potential and the importance of having our needs to love and acceptance satisfied.

Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow

The interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with cognition (including perception, thinking, memory and language); scientific exploration of how we perceive, process and remember information

The science of behavior and mental processes

Science; psychology is less than a set of findings than a way of asking and answering questions

The longstanding controversy over the relative contributions genes make and experience makes to the development of psychological traits and behaviors

Ex. “Are gender differences biologically predisposed ot socially constructed?”

The principle that, among the range of inherited trait combinations, those contributing to reproduction and survival will most likely be passed to succeeding generations

Charles Darwin

An integrated approach that incorporates biological, psychological and social-cultural levels on analysis

Neuroscience, Evolutionary, Behavior genetics, Psychodynamic, Behavioral, Cognitive, Social-cultural

How the body and brain enable emotions, memories and sensory experiences

How the natural selection of traits promoted the survival of genes

How much our genes and our environment influence our individual differences

How behavior springs from unconscious drivers and conflicts

How we learn observable responses

How we encode, process, store and retrieve information

How behavior and thinking cary across situations and cultures

Pure science that aims to increase the scientific knowledge base

Ex. Biological psychologists exploring the links between the brain and the mind

Scientific study that aims to solve practical problems

Ex. Clinical psychologists assess and treat mental, emotional and behavior disorders

The tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it (AKA the "AHA! I knew it all along!" phenomenon)

Ex. After the 2007 Virginia Tech Massacre, it seems obvious that the school should've been locked down after the murder of the first two students

1992

1) Obtain the informed consent of potential participants
2) Protect them from harm and discomfort
3) Treat information about individual participants confidentially.
4) Fully explain the research afterward.

An explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts behaviors or events

A testable prediction, often implied by a theory

A statement of the procedures/operations used to define research variables

Ex. Human intelligence may be operationally defined as what an intelligence test measures

An observation technique in which one person is studied in-depth in hope of revealing universal principles

A technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes or behaviors of a particular group, usually by questioning a representative, random sample of the group

All the cases in a group being studied, from which samples may be drawn

A sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion

Observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation

A measure of the extend to which two factors vary together, and thus of who well either factor predicts the other

A statistical index of the relationship between two things from -1 to +1

Correlation is not causation!!!

A perceived but nonexistence correlation; when we believe there is a relationship between two things, we are likely to notice and recall instances that confirm our belief

Ex. The presumption that infertile couples who adopt become more likely to conceive; we're less likely to notice those who adopt and never conceive

Research method in which an investigator manipulates one or more factors (independent variables) to observe the effect on some behavior or mental process (dependent variable)

Assigning participants to experimental and control groups by chance, thus minimizing pre-existing differences between those assigned to different groups

Pulling names out of a hat, assigning numbers to subjects and sorting them using a calculator

An experimental procedure in which both the research participants and the research staff are ignorant about whether participants have received the treatment or placebo

Experimental results caused by expectations alone; any effect on behavior caused by the administration of an inert substance or condition, which the recipient assumes is an active agent

The group that is exposed to the treatment in an experiment/one version of the independent variable

The group that is not exposed to the treatment in an experiment; serves as a comparison group for evaluating the effect of the treatment

The experimental factor that is manipulated; the variable whose effect is being studied

The outcome factor; the variable that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variable

A single score that represents a whole set of scores

The arithmetic average of a distribution

The middle score in a distribution

The most frequently occurring score/s in a distribution

The difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution

A computed measurement of how much scores vary around the mean score

A symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data.

A statistical statement of how likely it is that an obtained result occurred by change. Indicates the likelihood that a result will happen by chance.