EXPLORING
PSYCHOLOGY
(7th Edition)
David Myers
Professor: Dr.
Ahsani
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• Myers Website:
http://bcs.worthpublishers.com/myers7e/
My email:
ahsani@ucc.edu
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Thinking Critically With
Psychological Science
Chapter 1
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Thinking Critically With Psychological
Science
What is Psychology?
 Psychology’s Roots
 Contemporary Psychology
 Why Do Psychology?
 What About Intuition and Common Sense?
 The Scientific Attitude
 Critical Thinking
 How Do Psychologists Ask and Answer Questions?
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The Scientific Method
Description
Correlation
Experimentation
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Psychology
With hopes of satisfying curiosity, many people
listen to talk-radio counselors and psychics to
learn about others and themselves.
http://www.photovault.com
http://www.nbc.com
Dr. Crane (radio-shrink)
Psychic (Ball gazing)
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“Psychology has a long past, but a
short history”
• 500,000 BC: trephining to allow the escape of evil
spirits.
• 430 BC: Hippocrates argues for four temperaments
of personality.
• Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) suggests that the soul and
body are not separate and that knowledge grows
from experience.
• 1689 AD: John Locke introduces idea of tabula rasa.
• 1807: Franz Josef Gall proposes phrenology.
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Psychological Science is Born
Wundt (1832-1920)
Wundt and psychology’s
first graduate students
studied the “atoms of the
mind” by conducting
experiments at Leipzig,
Germany, in 1879. This
work is considered the
birth of psychology as we
know it today.
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Psychological Science is Born
Mary Calkins
James (1842-1910)
American philosopher William James wrote an important
1890 psychology textbook. Mary Calkins, James’s
student, became the APA’s first female president. 8
Psychological Science is Born
Freud (1856-1939)
Sigmund Freud, an Austrian physician, and his
followers emphasized the importance of the
unconscious mind and its effects on human behavior.
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Psychological Science Develops
Behaviorists
Skinner (1904-1990)
Watson (1878-1958)
Watson and later Skinner emphasized the study of
overt behavior as the subject matter of scientific
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psychology.
Psychological Science Develops
Rogers (1902-1987)
http://www.carlrogers.dk
http://facultyweb.cortland.edu
Maslow (1908-1970)
Humanistic Psychology
Maslow and Rogers emphasized current
environmental influences on our growth potential
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and our need for love and acceptance.
Psychology Today
We define psychology today as the scientific
study of behavior (what we do) and mental
processes (inner thoughts and feelings).
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Psychological Associations &
Societies
The American Psychological Association is the
largest organization of psychology with 160,000
members world-wide, followed by the British
Psychological Society with 34,000 members.
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Psychology’s Current Perspectives
Perspective
Focus
Sample Questions
Neuroscience
How the body and brain
enables emotions?
How are messages
transmitted in the body? How
is blood chemistry linked with
moods and motives?
Evolutionary
How the natural selection
of traits the promotes the
perpetuation of one’s
genes?
How does evolution influence
behavior tendencies?
Behavior genetics How much our genes and
our environments
influence our individual
differences?
To what extent are
psychological traits such as
intelligence, personality,
sexual orientation, and
vulnerability to depression
attributable to our genes? To
our environment?
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Psychology’s Current Perspectives
Perspective
Focus
Sample Questions
Psychodynamic
How behavior springs
from unconscious drives
and conflicts?
How can someone’s
personality traits and
disorders be explained in
terms of sexual and
aggressive drives or as
disguised effects of unfulfilled
wishes and childhood
traumas?
Behavioral
How we learn observable
responses?
How do we learn to fear
particular objects or
situations? What is the most
effective way to alter our
behavior, say to lose weight or
quit smoking?
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Psychology’s Current Perspectives
Perspective
Focus
Sample Questions
Cognitive
How we encode, process,
store and retrieve
information?
How do we use information
in remembering? Reasoning?
Problem solving?
Social-cultural
How behavior and
thinking vary across
situations and cultures?
How are we — as Africans,
Asians, Australians or North
Americans – alike as members
of human family? As products
of different environmental
contexts, how do we differ?
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Chapter 1
Part 2
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Which perspective is most relevant to
understanding the impact of strokes and
brain diseases on memory?
A)Evolutionary
B)Behavioral
C)Psychodynamic
D)Neuroscience
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Psychology’s Subfields: Research
Psychologist
Biological
Developmental
Cognitive
Personality
Social
What she does
Explore the links between brain and
mind.
Study changing abilities from womb to
tomb.
Study how we perceive, think, and solve
problems.
Investigate our persistent traits.
Explore how we view and affect one
another.
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Psychology’s Subfields: Research
Other 11.5%
Experimental
14.1%
Biological
9.9%
Developmental
24.6%
Psychometrics
5.5%
Cognitive
8.0%
Social 21.6%
Personality
4.8%
Data: APA 1997
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Psychology’s Subfields: Applied
Psychologist
Clinical
What she does
Studies, assesses, and treats people with
psychological disorders
Counseling
Helps people cope with academic,
vocational, and marital challenges.
Educational
Studies and helps individuals in school
and educational settings
Industrial/
Organizational
Studies and advises on behavior in the
workplace.
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Psychology’s Subfields: Applied
Industrial
6%
Educational
9%
Other
3%
Counseling
15%
Clinical
67%
Data: APA 1997
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Clinical Psychology vs. Psychiatry
A clinical psychologist (Ph.D.) studies, assesses,
and treats troubled people with psychotherapy.
Psychiatrists on the other hand are medical
professionals (M.D.) who use treatments like drugs
and psychotherapy to treat psychologically
diseased patients.
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Why Do Psychology?
1. How can we differentiate between
uniformed opinions and examined
conclusions?
2. The science of psychology helps make
these examined conclusions, which leads
to our understanding of how people feel,
think, and act as they do!
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What About Intuition & Common
Sense?
Many people believe that intuition and common
sense are enough to bring forth answers regarding
human nature.
Intuition and common sense may aid queries,
but they are not free of error.
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Hindsight Bias
Hindsight Bias is the “I-knew-it-all-along”
phenomenon.
After learning the outcome of an event, many
people believe they could have predicted that very
outcome. We only knew the dot.com stocks would
plummet after they actually did plummet.
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The Scientific Attitude
The scientific attitude is composed of curiosity
(passion for exploration), skepticism (doubting
and questioning) and humility (ability to accept
responsibility when wrong).
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How Do Psychologists Ask &
Answer Questions?
Psychologists, like all scientists, use the
scientific method to construct theories that
organize, summarize and simplify
observations.
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Theory
A theory is an explanation that integrates
principles and organizes and predicts
behavior or events.
Examples??
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Hypothesis
A hypothesis is a testable prediction, often
prompted by a theory, to enable us to
accept, reject or revise the theory.
It is a statement
It must be falsifiable
Operational definition
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Critical thinking guidelines
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Research Process
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12.
Two basic characteristics of the
scientific attitude are:
A)pride and enthusiasm.
B)ingenuity and practicality.
C)creativity and patience.
D)skepticism and humility.
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In a written report of their research, psychologists
specify exactly how anxiety is assessed, thus
providing their readers with a(n):
A)hypothesis.
B)independent variable.
C)operational definition.
D)case study.
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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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Description
Case Study
A technique in which one person is studied in
depth to reveal underlying behavioral principles.
Susan Kuklin/ Photo Researchers
Is language uniquely human?
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Survey
A technique for ascertaining the self-reported
attitudes, opinions or behaviors of people
usually done by questioning a representative,
random sample of people.
http://www.lynnefeatherstone.org
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Survey
Wording Effects
Wording can change the results of a survey.
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Survey
Random Sampling
If each member of a
population has an equal
chance of inclusion into a
sample, it is called a
random sample
(unbiased). If the survey
sample is biased, its
results are not valid.
The fastest way to know about the
marble color ratio is to blindly
transfer a few into a smaller jar and
count them.
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Naturalistic Observation
Observing and recording the behavior of animals in the
wild and recording self-seating patterns in a multiracial
school lunch room constitute naturalistic observation.
Courtesy of Gilda Morelli
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Descriptive Methods
Summary
Case studies, surveys, and naturalistic
observation describe behaviors.
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The case study is a research
method in which:
A)a single individual is studied in great
depth.
B)a representative sample of people are
questioned regarding their opinions or
behaviors.
C)organisms are carefully observed in a
laboratory environment.
D)an investigator manipulates one or more
variables that might affect behavior.
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Chapter 1
Part 3
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Correlation
When one trait or behavior accompanies
another, we say the two correlate.
2. Indicates strength
of relationship
(0.00 to 1.00)
Correlation
coefficient
1.Correlation Coefficient is a
statistical measure of the
relationship between two
variables.
r = + 0.37
3. Indicates direction
of relationship
(positive or negative)
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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.
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Scatterplots
Correlations can be represented by
scatterplots.
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Correlation and Causation
Correlation does not mean causation!
or
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Correlation refers to the extent
to which two variables:
A)vary together.
B)are random samples.
C)influence each other.
D)show statistically significant differences.
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Experimentation
Exploring Cause and Effect
Like other sciences, experimentation is the
backbone of psychological research. Experiments
isolate causes and their effects.
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Exploring Cause & Effect
Many factors influence our behavior. Experiments
(1) manipulate factors that interest us, while other
factors are kept under (2) control.
Effects generated by manipulated factors isolate
cause and effect relationships.
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Evaluating Therapies
Double-blind Procedure
In evaluating drug therapies, patients and
experimenter’s assistants should remain
unaware of which patients had the real
treatment and which patients had the placebo
treatment.
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Evaluating Therapies
Random Assignment
Hypothesis: Breast-fed babies have higher IQ
than formula-fed babies.
Assigning participants to experimental (breastfed) and control (formula-fed) conditions by
random assignment minimizes pre-existing
differences between the two groups.
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Independent Variable
An independent variable is a factor manipulated
by the experimenter. The effect of the independent
variable is the focus of the study.
For example, when examining the effects of breast
feeding upon intelligence, breast feeding is the
independent variable.
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Dependent Variable
A dependent variable is a factor that may change
in response to an independent variable. In
psychology, it is usually a behavior or a mental
process.
For example, in our study on the effect of breast
feeding upon intelligence, intelligence is the
dependent variable.
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Experimentation
A summary of steps during experimentation.
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Researchers use experiments rather
than other research methods in order to
distinguish between:
A)facts and theories.
B) causes and effects.
C)case studies and surveys.
D)random samples and representative
samples.
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In a psychological experiment, the
potentially causal factor that is
manipulated by the investigator is
called the ________ variable.
A)dependent
B)independent
C)control
D)experimental
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