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What is Psychology?
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Overview
!   The science of psychology
!   What psychologists do
!   Critical and scientific thinking
!   Correlational studies
!   The experiment
!   Evaluating findings
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What is psychology?
The discipline concerned with behavior
and mental processes and how they
are affected by an organism’s
physical state, mental state, and
external environment.
Symbolized with a Y
Empirical
Relying on evidence gathered by careful
observation, experimentation, or measurement
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Psychology, pseudoscience,
and common sense
!   Psychobabble and psychology
!   Not just common sense
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Psychology’s past
Two early psychologies
Functionalism
Psychoanalysis
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Functionalism
Early approach that emphasized the function
or purpose of behavior and consciousness
Interested in how and why something
happens
Functionalists broadened field of psychology
to include the study of children, animals,
religious experiences, and stream of
consciousness
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Psychoanalysis
A theory of personality and a method
of psychotherapy, originally
formulated by Sigmund Freud
Emphasizes unconscious motives and
conflicts
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Your turn
The first field of psychology to ask
why people have consciousness was:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Behaviorism
Phrenology
Psychoanalysis
Functionalism
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Your turn
The first field of psychology to ask
why people have consciousness was:
1. Behaviorism
2. Phrenology
3. Psychoanalysis
4. Functionalism
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Major Psychological
perspectives
!   Biological perspective
!   Learning perspective
!   Cognitive perspective
!   Sociocultural perspective
!   Psychodynamic perspective
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The biological
perspective
Psychological approach that focuses
on how bodily events affect
behavior, feelings, and thoughts
This perspective involves
Hormones
Brain chemistry
Heredity
Evolutionary influences
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The cognitive
perspective
Psychological approach that
emphasizes what goes on in people’s
heads
This perspective involves
Behaviorism
Social-cognitive learning theories
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The sociocultural
perspective
Psychological approach that
emphasizes social and cultural
forces outside the individual
This perspective involves
Social psychology or the study of rules, roles,
groups, and relationships
Cultural psychology or the study of cultural
norms, values, and expectations
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The psychodynamic
perspective
Psychological approach that
emphasizes unconscious dynamics
within the individual, such as
inner forces, conflicts, or the
movement of instinctual energy
This perspective involves
Unconscious thoughts, desires, conflicts
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Humanist psychology
Psychological approach that
emphasizes personal growth and
the achievement of human
potential, rather than the
scientific understanding of
behavior
This approach
Rejected behaviorism and psychoanalysis
Emphasized creativity and achieving potential
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Your turn
The psychological perspective that
emphasizes the “deep,” psychological
causes of people’s behavior is:
1. Biological perspective
2. Learning perspective
3. Cognitive perspective
4. Psychodynamic perspective
5. Sociocultural perspective
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Your turn
The psychological perspective that
emphasizes the “deep,” psychological
causes of people’s behavior is:
1. Biological perspective
2. Learning perspective
3. Cognitive perspective
4. Psychodynamic perspective
5. Sociocultural perspective
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Psychological research
Research in areas of basic or
applied psychology
Examples:
Experimental psychologists
Educational psychologists
Developmental psychologists
Industrial/organizational psychologists
Psychometric psychologists
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Psychological practice
Counseling psychologists help
people deal with problems
associated with everyday life.
School psychologists work with
parents, teachers, and students to
enhance student performance.
Clinical psychologists diagnose,
treat, and study mental or
emotional problems.
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Psychologists in other
settings
Sports
Consumer issues
Advertising
Organizational problems
Environmental issues
Public policy
Opinion polls
Military training
Animal behavior
Legal issues
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Critical thinking
guidelines
Ask questions
Define your terms
Examine the evidence
Analyze assumptions and biases
Avoid emotional reasoning
Don’t oversimplify
Consider other interpretations
Tolerate uncertainty
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Descriptive methods
Methods that yield descriptions of
behavior, but not necessarily causal
explanations
Include
Case studies
Observational studies
Psychological tests
Surveys
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Case studies
A detailed description of a particular
individual being studied or treated,
which may be used to formulate
broader research hypotheses
Most commonly used by clinicians;
occasionally used by researchers
Observational studies
Researchers carefully and
systematically observe and record
behavior without interfering with
behavior
Naturalistic observation
Purpose is to observe how people or animals behave in
their natural environments.
Laboratory observation
Purpose is to observe how people or animals behave in
a more controlled setting.
Psychological tests
Procedures used to measure and evaluate
personality traits, emotional states,
aptitudes, interests, abilities, and values
Psychological tests can be objective or
projective.
Characteristics of a good test include
Standardization
Reliability
Validity
Standardization
The test is constructed to include uniform
procedures for giving and scoring the test.
In order to score tests in a standardized way,
an individual’s outcome or score is
compared to norms.
To establish norms, the test is given to a large group of people
who are similar to those for whom the test is intended.
By having norms or established standards of performance, we
know who scores low, average, or high.
Reliability
When constructing a test, the
scores achieved on the test at one
time and place should be
consistent with the scores
achieved at another time and
place.
Validity
The ability of a test to measure
what it was designed to measure
Content validity
The test broadly
represents the trait
in question.
Criterion validity
The test predicts
other measures of
the trait in question.
Surveys
Questionnaires and interviews that ask
people about experiences, attitudes, or
opinions
Requires a representative sample
Group of subjects, selected from the population for study,
which matches the population on important characteristics
such as age and sex
Popular polls and surveys rely on volunteers
Correlational study
A descriptive study that looks for a
consistent relationship between
two phenomena
Correlation
A statistical measure of how strongly two variables
are related to one another.
Correlational coefficients can range from 0.0 – 1.0.
Direction of correlations
Positive correlations
An association between
increases in one variable
and increases in another, or
decreases in one variable
and decreases in the other.
Negative correlations
An association between
increases in one variable
and decreases in another.
Your turn
What kind of
correlation is this?
1. Positive
2. Negative
3. No correlation
Scatterplots
Correlations can be represented by
scatterplots.
Your turn
What kind of
correlation is this?
1. Positive
2. Negative
3. No correlation
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Explaining correlations
Start with three variables (X, Y,
Z)
X might cause Y
Y might cause X
X might be correlated with Y, which alone causes Z
Correlations show patterns, not
causes.
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An experiment
A controlled test of a hypothesis
in which the researcher
manipulates one variable to
discover its effect on another.
An experiment includes variables
of interest, control conditions,
and random assignment.
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Variables of interest
Independent variables
Variables the
experimenter
manipulates
Dependent variables
Variables the
experimenter predicts
will be affected by
manipulations of the
independent variable(s)
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Your turn
An experimenter wants to study the effects of
music on studying. He has some students
study while listening to music and others
study in silence, and then compares their test
scores. What is the independent variable in
this experiment?
1.
2.
3.
4.
The
The
The
The
students
presence of music while studying
kind of music
test scores
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Your turn
An experimenter wants to study the effects of
music on studying. He has some students
study while listening to music and others
study in silence, and then compares their test
scores. What is the independent variable in
this experiment?
1.
2.
3.
4.
The students
The presence of music while studying
The kind of music
The test scores
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Control conditions
In an experiment, a comparison
condition in which subjects are not
exposed to the same treatment as in
the experimental condition.
In some experiments, the control
group is given a placebo, an inactive
substance or fake treatment.
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Random assignment
For experiments to have experimental and
control groups composed of similar
subjects, random assignment should be
used.
Each individual participating in the study has
the same probability as any other of being
assigned to a given group.
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Experimenter effects
Unintended changes in
subjects’ behavior
due to cues
inadvertently given
by the
experimenter.
Strategies for
preventing
experimenter
effects include
single- and doubleblind studies.
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Descriptive statistics
Statistical procedures
that organize and
summarize research
data
Examples
Arithmetic mean
Standard deviation
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Inferential statistics
Statistical procedures that allow
researchers to draw inferences about
how statistically meaningful a study’s
results are.
The most commonly used inferential
statistics are significance tests.
Statistical tests that show how likely it is that a study’s
results occurred merely by chance
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Choosing the best
explanation
Interpretation of results may depend on
how the research was conducted.
Cross-sectional studies
Subjects of different
ages are compared at a
single time.
Longitudinal studies
Subjects are periodically
assessed over a period
of time.
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Judging the results’
importance
Statistical techniques can help determine if
results are really important.
Meta-analysis is a procedure for combining and analyzing data
from many studies. It determines how much of the
variance in scores across all studies can be explained by a
particular variable.