PSY 101 Study.COM Notes & Quizes Notes CH 1 (Lesson 1-7) PDF

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PSY 101 NOTES I HOPE IT HELPS! I MADE THEM FROM THE SLIDES!! AND BEST OF LUCK GUYS!!...

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Ch 1: History and Approaches Lesson 1: Why Study Psychology? - Overview & Experiments What at first seems obvious may not be the case. Psychology looks past intuitions and feelings to search for the true roots to our behaviors. Watch this lesson to learn about two experiments that demonstrate how testing the 'obvious' can yield surprising results. So, you might think that some of the thing’s psychologists’ study are kind of obvious. They're not things that are mind-blowingly cool. They study behavior. We all have our own intuitions about behavior. We all have our own ways that we think it works, and this is something that can kind of be a misconception about psychology - that they're confirming things that we already know about ourselves. One kind of funny example is there was a recent study that studied the weekend effect. That's what they called it in the paper, and there were some researchers at the University of Rochester. What they concluded was that, regardless of whatever job you have, people are happier on the weekend than they are during the week. And this is something that your personal experience has probably confirmed over and over again. You might not think that this is something that scientists need to study. Well in this case, the obvious hypothesis is that the weekend is more fun than the non-weekend. While in this case this was proved to be true, there are a lot of instances in psychology where this hasn't been true. Some of the coolest experiments have been when people have thought things to be obvious but they've turned out not to be. This would be like if your weekend effect experiment actually proved that people were happier during the work week. That would be the magnitude of some of these experiments that disprove the hypothesis. That seems crazy - it isn't true in this case, but in some cases it is. As an example of this, let's say your friend decides to design an experiment where he's going to see if people get an incredibly easy question wrong just because everyone else in the room is answering wrong as well. The question he's going to ask is he's going to give two cards. The first card is going to have a line on it, and the second card is going to have three lines on it of different lengths. Now one of them is the same length as the one on the card. These lines are labeled A, B and C. So, he's going ask a bunch of people in the room which line is the same as the line on the first card. This is the most obvious, easy question ever, a 3-year-old can answer this - if he can see, he's going to be able to answer this question. But what your friend's going to do is he's going to have everyone else in the room answer wrong. If the answer is B, then he's going to have everyone else say C. Let's see if our subject will also say C. And now, this is a real experiment. The guy who designed it, his name is Solomon Asch, and he thought that people wouldn't do this. Again, they can see that B is clearly the answer, and they're not going to get it wrong even if they're pressured by other people. He thought that he would find this was true. No, people got it wrong all the time. Only about 24% of the subjects didn't say the wrong answer on average - they would do three trials each. 24% didn't say the wrong answer. Everyone else gave the wrong answer at least once because the effect of having all these people in a row saying the wrong answer over and over again was so powerful that they said the wrong answer. This is something that if Solomon Asch just said 'Oh yeah this is something obvious that people can see, and they're not going to get this wrong,' we would never know this. We would never know how powerful people's peers are and how powerful peer pressure is. And that was an experiment where it was good that it got done, and it turned out not be so obvious. That's a way in which psychology can be useful. It's true of psychology, what you see over and over again, because it's true that we have ideas of how things work and our brains work. We don't actually have any idea a lot of the time. And there's another study that shows this perfectly. It's about how people misattribute why they're feeling the way they're feeling. In this particular study, the researchers decided to have men go out on a bridge. They had two bridges, one of which is kind of shaky like one of those wooden, Indiana Jones bridges where you figure a plank may fall out in the middle. And one of them is really sturdy - it's not going anywhere; you're going to be fine if you're on this bridge. The men would cross this bridge, and afterward, they would talk to this lovely lady, who was posing as the researcher. And she would ask them a bunch of questions. She would ask them the kind of design scenarios based around certain questions, and she would also give them her phone number to see if they had any questions about the experiment. And you know they'd actually call her because she was a beautiful woman. And what they found is the ones who went over this shaky bridge in asking their questions and designing the stories that the questions were supposed to elicit, they were actually way more sexual than the ones who went over the not so shaky bridge. And they were way more likely to call the researcher if they went across the shaky bridge. So, shaky bridge equals more sexual content in their answers, and it also equals calling the researcher. Not shaky bridge equals none of that. And what the guys designing this experiment basically concluded was that if you get scared you're walking across a shaky bridge, and you get scared, and your heart's racing, and you're feeling kind of physiologically aroused in a nondescript way - they attributed this to the beautiful woman. And so, they wanted to call because they thought they were feeling all sort of out of whack and heart racing because of her and not necessarily because of the shaky bridge. So, we really have no idea why we do what we do. And so, what psychology can do in the Asch experiment and this experiment is it can help us tease apart all of the reasons why we might do things and figure out what actually causes behavior and why we actually think certain things and what influences what. It really allows you to tease apart all these factors without our own intuition getting in the way. And that's the value of psychology you'll see throughout most of the cool experiments. This is what they're doing. They're figuring out why we do what we do and not letting our own feelings and intuitions about that get in the way.

Psychology is the scientific study of how we think, feel and behave. In this lesson, you'll get an overview of the five main approaches that have guided modern psychological research. Why do you act the way you do? Have you ever wondered why some people are the life of the party and others prefer to curl up with a good book? Or why you remember certain events but not others? People have studied the mind and how it works since the time of the ancient Greeks, but the scientific study of psychology only dates back to a little over a hundred years ago. Since Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychology lab in 1879, psychologists have studied various aspects of human behavior, such as personality, brain functions and socio-cultural influences. As psychology progressed, it began to tackle the question of why we do what we do from different angles, including: biological, psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive and humanistic perspectives. Let's look at each of these five main approaches that guide modern psychological research. Biological Approach Bio psychologists look at how your nervous system, hormones and genetic makeup affect your behavior. Biological psychologists explore the connection between your mental states and your brain, nerves and hormones to explore how your thoughts, moods and actions are shaped. So, what does that mean? It means that for the biological approach, you are the sum of your parts. You think the way you do because of the way your brain is built and because of your body's needs. All of your choices are based on your physical body. The biological approach attempts to understand the healthy brain, but it also examines the mind and body to figure out how disorders like schizophrenia develop from genetic roots. Psychodynamic Approach The psychodynamic approach was promoted by Sigmund Freud, who believed that many of our impulses are driven by sex. Psychologists in this school of thought believe that unconscious drives and experiences from early childhood are at the root of your behaviors and that conflict arises when societal restrictions are placed on these urges. Psychologist Sigmund Freud

Now, there are a lot of jokes about Freud and his now mostly outdated theories. But have you ever thought that something about who you are today comes from your experiences as a child? Say, you blame your smoking habit on an oral fixation that stems from being weaned from breastfeeding too early as a baby. Well, that also comes from Freud's theories, and it was an idea that revolutionized how we see ourselves. Behavioral Approach Behavioral psychologists believe that external environmental stimuli influence your behavior and that you can be trained to act a certain way. Behaviorists like B.F. Skinner don't believe in free will. They believe that you learn through a system of reinforcement and punishment. The behavioral approach is really effective when you don't care what someone thinks, as long as you get the desired behavior. The influence of these theories affects us every day and throughout our lives, impacting everything from why we follow the rules of the road when driving to how advertising companies build campaigns to get us to buy their products. Cognitive Approach In contrast to behaviorists, cognitive psychologists believe that your behavior is determined by your expectations and emotions. Cognitive psychologist Jean Piaget would argue that you remember things based on what you already know. You also solve problems based on your memory of past experiences. Piaget was a cognitive psychologist

So, with this approach, we turn away from people as machines without free will and delve back into thoughts and feelings. How you act is based upon internal processes, and there is much more stress upon individuals. From a cognitive perspective, your expectations of an upcoming party will affect how you feel and act while you're there and will color your memory of the night after you return home. Humanistic Approach Humanistic psychologists believe that you're essentially good and that you're motivated to realize your full potential. Psychologists from this camp focus on how you can feel good about yourself by fulfilling your needs and goals. The prominent humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers called his patients 'clients' and offered a supportive environment in which clients could gain insight into their own feelings. In contrast to the behavioral approach, the humanistic approach works on individual empowerment. Whether you are right or not, in a larger sense, you are motivated to be the best person you can be. All your choices come from trying to improve your life. So, if you're trying to cut back on your nightly wine consumption, a humanistic therapist would be encouraging and supportive but won't directly advise you to quit or try to analyze why you drink in the first place. Review Let's summarize what you've learned. Psychology is truly modern: it's the way we understand ourselves, our thoughts, our feelings and our behaviors. Five major approaches in psychology are biological, psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive and humanistic. Each has its own perspectives on the roots of why you do what you do.

L How do psychologists use the scientific method to research behaviors? From formulating hypotheses to reducing biases, psychology carefully analyzes behaviors and their potential causes. The Scientific Method How do you go about finding an answer to a puzzling question? Let's say you want to improve the speed of your roller skates. You ask yourself, 'How do I make my wheels roll faster?' But you don't know the answer. What do you do? Do you change multiple things at once, or try one possible solution at a time? You could use the scientific method to tackle your problem. The scientific method is a systematic process of gathering measurable evidence. The first thing to do is to formulate a hypothesis, or testable idea. You did some research to remove some of the guesswork from the process, and you think cleaning your bearings might help to improve your speed. Your hypothesis is: 'Cleaning my bearings can make my skates roll faster.' Now, it's time to conduct a scientific experiment. You think your dirty bearings are causing your wheels to roll slowly. Your dirty wheel bearings are the independent variable, or cause. The speed is the dependent variable, or effect. You clean the four bearings on your right skate; these are your experimental group to see if the dirty bearings are the cause. The four dirty bearings on your left skate are the control group for your experiment. Then you push the two skates across the floor to see if your hypothesis was correct. You were right! Using the scientific method, you came up with a hypothesis and then tested it by comparing cause-and-effect relationships between two different variables and two test groups. That's science! Scientist’s record, analyze and report the results of experiments. Regardless of whether the hypothesis was supported or rejected, the results lead scientists to formulate new questions, and the process begins all over again. Scientific Experiments in Psychology But what if your question is more abstract? Take the human mind, for example. Can psychological questions be answered scientifically? Can the way people think and feel be directly observed and objectively analyzed? Behaviors can be recorded, but the thought processes behind those behaviors can't be objectively measured. In order for psychology to become a science in its own right, psychologists moved away from philosophy and aspects of the mind that could not be scientifically observed and analyzed and focused more on measurable aspects of behavior. Psychology studies the mind through the observation of behavior. Let's look at how psychologists use the scientific method. After your wheels are rolling fast, you're toying with the idea of joining your local roller derby league. Maybe you're wondering if you're cut out for what seems to be a violent sport. Must you have an aggressive personality in order to make the team? The psychologist in you comes up with the hypothesis, 'Derby players have aggressive personalities on and off the track.' How would you go about testing this assumption? You'd conduct a scientific experiment similar to the one you did for your wheels. You go online and find a sports psychology survey that assesses athletes' behavioral profiles through a series of questions. In this experiment, an aggressive personality is the independent variable, or cause of the behavior. The survey questions would measure your own perceptions of how you behave, which is the dependent variable, or effect. By comparing your answers against the answers of other athletes who took the survey, you have more self-awareness of why you behave the way you do and how you interact with others, like aggressive roller derby players. Clinical Research Now, the majority of psychologists today work directly with patients instead of conducting online surveys. These clinical psychologists often assess mental health. They are aware that subjects might behave differently than they normally would because they know they're being evaluated. One way to avoid sampling bias in a clinical study is to expose subjects at random to the independent variable, or cause of the behavior, so that they behave normally under test conditions. So, a clinical psychologist who hypothesizes that increased testosterone levels lead to aggressive behavior in roller derby players may conduct hormone therapy. They may give some derby players drugs to increase their testosterone levels and give others a placebo, or fake pill. Even so, the placebo effect can occur when the control group thinks they're being treated even when they're not. The roller derby players may start acting more aggressive because they think their testosterone levels are higher. To avoid subject bias, psychologists can conduct a blind study where subjects don't know they're being treated. The experimenters themselves can also influence the outcome. A double blind study can be conducted in which the experimenters don't know which subjects they're giving the treatment to and which ones they're giving the placebo. This research method reduces experimenter bias. Summary You've learned that psychologists use a powerful tool, the scientific method, in order to interpret observable behaviors. From these behaviors, they work to understand the underlying processes, like feelings of aggression or high testosterone levels. Psychology is a science because it's about measuring observable cause-and-effect relationships. Because one of the most difficult parts of psychology is making unbiased observations; these scientists use a number of methods to remove bias, including placebos, blind studies and double-blind studies.

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What are the ethical principles of psychological research? In this lesson, you'll take a look at the careful considerations a psychologist must make with respect to her participants when she designs a test. Let's say a psychologist wanted to test whether people who are thirsty do more poorly on math tests than people who are wellhydrated. She puts out an ad for participants which says that she's conducting a study of math ability that will take an hour. But when her participants turn up, she divides them into thirsty and non-thirsty groups. The non-thirsty people are each given two glasses of water and made to wait in a room for an hour and then take a twenty-minute test. This is a little longer than the psychologist said, but they're not too upset about it. The thirsty people, though, are forced to stay in a room without water for five hours before taking a twenty-minute test. They're justifiably upset; the psychologist made them uncomfortably thirsty and kept them for far longer than she said. The psychologist did not conduct her experiment with adequate ethical standards. The importance of ethics in psychological research has grown as the field has evolved. Some of the most famous studies in psychology could not be conducted today because they would violate ethical standards. Philip Zimbardo designed his Stanford Prison Experiment to look into the causes of conflict between guards and prisoners. Zimbardo assigned some college students to play guards and others to play prisoners in a 'prison' set up in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Building. The experiment quickly got out of hand--the guards quickly began abusing the prisoners for the sake of order. Zimbardo let this go on until his girlfriend visited th e 'prison' and was shocked at what she found. Zimbardo's experiment allowed its participants to hurt each other both physically and psychologically and would not be approved by today's review boards. Ethical standards in psychological research are motivated by two main principles: minimized harm and informed consent. The psychologist studying thirst and test performance failed on both of these counts; she made her participants unnecessarily uncomfortable and didn't tell them how long they would really be in the experiment. The experiment would likely not be approved by her university's Institutional Review Board (IRB). The IRB is in charge of determining whether the harm done by an experiment is worth its potential value to science and whether researchers are taking all of the precautions they can to make the research experience pleasant and informative for participants. Minimized harm and informed consent underlie the entire process of designing and approving psychological research. When psychologists are designing experiments, they try to think about the least harmful way to test the hypothesis they're interested in. Harm can be physical or psychological; deception is considered a form of psychological harm that is avoided if at...