Intro Psychology Notes

Intro psych



Module 1

Scientific Attitude- curiosity, humilty, skeptism

modern definitions of pyschology

mental processes- internal, subjective experience inferred from behvaiour

pyschology- science of behaviour and mental processes

behaviour-any action that can be observed or recorded (3 categories)

1. overt actions and emotional expressions
2. self report via talking/writing/questionnaires
3. physiological

~there is no direct measurement of the mind~

Science requires:

1. empirical approach: using evidence based methods of observation and experimentation
2. scientific attitude: curiosity, humility, skeptism

critical thinking:

1. discarding

our understanding of pyschology emerges from the 3 levels of analysis

1. biological influence

 natural selection of adaptive traits

History of psychology

 until dec 1879, most philosophers believed that self knowledge is only gained from
careful introspection
 william wundt added two key elements to enhance the scientific nature of

Important people

Edward Titchener

,  aimed to classify and understand elements of the minds structure (structuralism)
 self reflective introspection (looking inward)
 observed people reporting elements of their experiences as they touched, tasted, or
smelled
 how did their experiences relate?
 his method failed because he wanted to create a period

William James

 went beyond labelling inward thoughts and feelings by considering their evolved
functions (functionalism)
 why do we smell? why does the brain do these things?
 assumed that thinking developed because it was adaptive, helped our ancestors survive
 explored consciousness

Willhelm Wundt

 sought to measure atoms of the mind
 how fast the brain can process things
 was a part in developing the first psychology lab in 1879 in Germany

John B. Watson

 dismissed introspection and redefined pysch as the scientific study of observable
behaviour


B. F. Skinner

Charles Darwin

 published on the origin of species by means of natural selection in 1859
 explored how physical and psycological traits can be passed on to descendents
 natural selection

John Locke

 argued that the mind is a blank slate and that knowledge is accumulated through
experience

Rene Descartes

 argued that some ideas are innate, and passed on through generations

Types of Pyschology

,Humanistic

 emphasizes human growth and our need for love and acceptance

Freudian

 emphasizes the way our unconscious minds and childhood experiences affect our
behaviour

module 2

Three common flaws in common sense thinking

Hindsight bias-when two separate view points both seem like common sense. after seeing results,
the obvious answer becomes clear in hindsight. known as the “i knew it all along phenomenon”

The scientific method

 observation
 question
 theory-possible explanations
 hypothesis-a testable prediction derived from the theory
 experiment-a test of the hypothesis: contains an independent variable and a control
 data
 conclusion

the process

1. observe an interesting problem or behaviour
2. form initial theory
3. construct hypothesis
4. test hypothesis
5. if results support hypothesis→ theory is strengthened; if results don’t support
hypothesis→ revise theory and restart process
6. try to replicate results
7. if results can be replicated→ theory is established; if results cannot be replicated→
theory is rejected. form new theory and restart process

Research strategies

 as a check on their own biases, researchers will use operational definitions when
conducting an experiments
 bigger sample of people→ a bigger change of replication
 descriptive methods-describe behaviours, often through case studies or surveys
 correlational methods-associate different factors and asses how they predict eachother
 experimental methods-manipulate factors to discover their effects

,  positive correlation: two sets of scores rise and fall together (height and weight)
 negative correlation: one set of scores falls while the other rises (frequency of teeth
brushing and tooth decay)

in class notes

 correlation symbol-r
 a variable- any trait or characteristic that can have different value or scores (height,
weight, gpa)
 r=a number measuring the strength of the relationship
 when you have a correlation, youre asking if the variables are related in any way
 if they are related, then they co-vary
 if there is a strong correlation, you can prediction one variable by knowing the other eg.
the taller the heavier, however there are exceptions, and exceptions make the relationship
weaker
 values range from -1.00 to 1.00

correlation has two properties

 strength-the size of the number-positives and negatives don't matter
 if the correlation is weak if its close to zero
 direction-regardless of strength, scores of two variables can vary together (positive
correlation) or inversely (negative correlation)
 1.00 is a perfect positive-as one event increases, the second one exactly increases
 .5 is a positive-as one event increases, the second sometimes increases
 0 means there is no correlation between the two events

correlation does not reveal causation-regardless of strength of relationship

module 3

 intuition isnt always right
 case studies do not allow for replication
 statistics are tools that help us see and interpret what we otherwise might not notice

statistical reasoning in everyday life

describing data

 once data is gathered, researchers use descriptive statistics
 eg. converting into graphs

measures of central tendency

 a single score that summarizes a whole set of scores
 mode- the most frequently occuring score or scores