General Psychology 2301

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General Psychology 2301

• What Is Psychology?

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Questions to Answer

• What is psychologys focus and definition?
• How do psychologists perceive and think about the
  world?
• What do psychologists do?
• How do psychologists do research?

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What Is Psychology?

• The study of human behavior, both overt and
  covert (mental)
• Human behavior is influenced by
• Biological processes
• Psychological processes
• The social environment
• How accurately can we predict behavior?

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What ISNT Psychology?

• Psychology is NOT common sense
• ALTHOUGH some common sense is informed by
  psychology
• Psychology is NOT just counseling
• Psychologists do a wide variety of jobs in
  society
• Psychology is NOT antithetical to science
• As opposed to mythology, etc.

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How Do Psychologists Think?

• Some general rules
• What is the evidence? What kind of evidence is
  it?
• Every scientific conclusion includes subjectivity
• What do the important concepts mean?
• How might I be biased? What assumptions am I
  using?
• If it is true here, will it be true there?
• Be OK with saying, We dont know yet.

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Perspectives Psychologists Take

• Biological psychologists emphasize the biological
  contribution to behavior
• Neuropsychologists, evolutionary psychologists
• Behavioral psychologists emphasize the principles
  of learning
• Cognitive psychologists emphasize the principles
  of human cognition (thinking)

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Perspectives Psychologists Take

• Social-cultural psychologists emphasize the
  interaction between society, culture and behavior
• Psychodynamic psychologists emphasize the
  unconscious mind
• Many psychologists adopt more than one of these
  perspectives in their work (eclectic)

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What Do Psychologists Do?

• Research psychologists come in two flavors
• Basic ? knowledge for its own sake
• Applied ? practical uses of knowledge
• Basic researchers are usually academics
• Applied researchers can be both academic or
  real-world
• Licensure not usually required

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What Do Psychologists Do?

• Practice psychologists are working in the field
  with clients
• Over 60 of psychologists fit this category
• May work independently or in institutions
• At least Masters degree required
• Licensure required ? involves written and oral
  testing and supervised experience

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How Do Psychologists Do Research?

• Psychologists must use multiple research tools
  and approaches why?
• Imperfect measurement
• Difficulty of obtaining representative samples
• Three rough categories
• Descriptive approaches
• Correlational approaches
• Experimental approaches

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Research Approaches

• Descriptive approaches are intended to describe
  behavior, NOT to assign causation
• Descriptive research examples
• Studying one organization as they change CEOs
  (case study)
• Watching couples interact in a social environment
  (observational study)
• Asking doctors to fill out a survey about their
  usual prescribing habits (surveys)
• Measuring the verbal ability of a group of kids
  (testing)

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Research Approaches

• Correlational approaches are intended to examine
  the co-relation of two or more variables
• Can vary between 1 and -1
• Does NOT assign causation

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Correlations
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Research Approaches

• Experimental approaches are intended to assign
  causality between variables
• Terminology
• Independent variable the variable under the
  control of the experimenter
• Dependent variable the variable under the
  control of the participant
• Control using experimental design to eliminate
  competing causal explanations

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Experimental Approach

• Terminology
• Random assignment participants are placed in
  different conditions without pattern
• Placebo used as comparison condition for causal
  inference
• Blinds designs used to minimize experimenter
  bias
• Drawback may feel artificial or fake to
  participants

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Example
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Reading the Numbers

• Psychological research is based in probability
• The primary question Is the effect of X on Y so
  unlikely that it probably did not occur by
  chance?
• Note that
• Psychologists assume chance is responsible and
  seek to disprove that assumption
• Thus, science is disconfirmatory we know by
  eliminating false alternatives

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Reading the Numbers

• Terminology
• Mean average of a set of scores
• Standard deviation measure of the spread of
  those scores
• Significance inference about the probability of
  mean differences between experimental groups

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Thought Question

• Is it possible for science to prove anything?
• Explain your answer in a 1-page written response,
  and be prepared to defend in class.