AP Review
Chapter 1, 2, & 3
Chapter 1: Terms
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Structuralism
Functionalism
Behaviorism
Evolutionary Nature v.
Nurture
Gestalt Psychology
Psychoanalysis
Humanist
Cognition
Biological
Sociocultural
Behavorial Genetics
 Ethnocentrism
 Dualism
 Rene
Descartes
 John Locke
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Empiricism
 Thomas
Hobbes
7 major fields
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Developmental – human development (mostly
children)
Social – attitudes, prejudice, conformity, attraction
Experimental – sensation, perception, learning,
conditioning, motivation, emotion
Physiological – genetics, brain, nervous system,
endocrine system
Cognitive – mental processes, memory, reasoning,
language, problem solving
Personality – what shapes our personality
Psychometrics – measurement of behavior, capacities
through test, designing test, look for new data
Focus of professional practice
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Clinical – Evaluation, diagnosis, treatment of
disorders
Counseling – Overlaps clinical, work usually
with people suffering moderate severity
Educational & School – improve curriculum
design, achievement testing, work in schools
aiding students
Industrial & Organizational – HR department,
improve staff moral, productivity
Structuralism
 Smallest
possible elements of the mind
 Understand all the parts = understanding
structure of the mind
 Examples:
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Patient shown picture, listen to sounds and
record thoughts (Sensation, feelings,
images)
 People:
Wundt)
Edward Titchener (student of
Functionalism
 Influenced
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by Darwin (Natural Selection)
How people adapt to the world around
them (Survival/reproduction advantage)
 “Stream
of consciousness”
 Looks at function/ purpose of
consciousness rather than structure (leads
to behaviorism)
 People: William James
Behavioral (Stimulus – Response
Psychology
 Study
observable behavior, mind and
mental events unimportant (why?)
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Can not study consciousness
Scientific Method rests on verifiability
 People:
Ivan Pavlov (Classical
Conditioning – dog), John Watson
(Classical Conditioning – Little Albert), B.F.
Skinner (Operant Conditioning – Skinner
Box)
Evolutionary Nature vs. Nurture
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Nature (genetic) vs. Nurture
(Environment/Experience)
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Watson argued environment played large
role
Could specialize any child in any profession
Gestalt Psychology
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Concerned with perception of conscious
experience.
How we experience the world rather than how we
felt
The whole of an experience can be more than the
sum of its parts
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Law of Closure – group items together see whole (3/4
circle – we fill in the gap)
Law of Pragnanz – organize, reduce to simplest form
Law of Proximity – Objects near each other we group
Law of Similiarty – group items that are similar together
Law of Continuity – Lines seen following smooth path
Psychoanalysis/Psychodynami
c
 Unconscious
– thoughts below surface of
awareness
 Explains personality, motivation, mental
disorders through unconscious
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You are not the master of your own mind
Repressed thoughts
 People:
Adler
Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred
Humanist
 Humans
are unique and free in will
(different from animals)
 Optimistic about human nature
 People: Abraham Maslow (SelfActualization – reach full potential), Carl
Rogers (Unconditional Positive Regard –
positive self concept in attaining self
actualization)
Cognitive
 Thinking
or conscious experience
 Combines Structuralist (look at
subcomponents of thought) and
functionalist (understand purpose of
thought)
 People: Jean Piaget, Noam Chomsky
Biological
 Looks
at interaction of anatomy and
physiology (Nervous system) and behavior
 Example: look at what part of the brain is
at work during a task
Sociocultural
 Environment
person lives in has great
influence on how we behave.
 Cultural values vary from society to
society
Behavorial Genetics
 Certain
behaviors happen due to
genetically-based psychological
characteristics
 Looks at Biological/ environmental effects
on trait
 Example: What extent does risk taking
behavior in teens have to do with
genetics
Ethnocentrism
 Ones
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own ethnicity superior to others
Fear of cultural comparisons may have
lead to ethnocentrism so many psychologist
focused on middle class whites
Dualism
 Divides
the world and all things in it into
two parts:
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Body
Spirit
 Questions
the Greeks pondered
Rene Descartes
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“I Think Therefore I am”
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Physical world is not under divine influence
rather followed by a set of observable
laws/rules
The world and all creatures are like machines
behavior is predictable
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Mind controls the body
Humans exception = mind (not observable, not
subject to natural laws)
Reflex – not controlled by the mind rather an
unconscious reaction to environmental event
John Lock
 Empiricism
– acquisition of truth through
observations and experiences
 Humans born knowing nothing (“blank
slate”), nothing is innate it is all learned
 Nurture over nature in development
Thomas Hobbes
 Materialism
– only
things that exist are
matter and energy
 What we
experience as
consciousness is
simply by-product
of machinery of
the brain
Subfields in Psychology
 Applied
Psychology – everyday practical
problems
 Clinical Psychology – Diagnosis treatment
Methods of
Research
Scientific Method
 Experiment
 Mean/Median/Mode
 Independent
 Standard
Variable
 Dependent
Variable
 Extraneous
Variable
 Confounding of
Variables
Deviation
 Correlational coefficient
 Sampling Bias
 Placebo effect
 Experimenter Bias
 Double blind
 Single blind
Experiment
 An
investigation seeking to understand
relations of cause and effect
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The experimenter changes a variable
(cause) and measures how it, in turn
changes another variable (effect).
Experimental group – group receiving or
reacting to the IV
Control group – does not receive the IV but
the rest of the experiment should be the
same
Experiment
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Population – group of interest to be studied
Representative Sample – too large of a
population to study
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Representativeness – degree to which a sample
reflects the diverse characteristics of the
population being studied
Random Sampling – ensures maximum
representativeness
Random assigned – when all subjects have an
equal chance of being assigned to any
group/condition in a study
Scientific Method
 IV
– Manipulated variable (change)
 DV – what’s measured
 Extraneous Variable – Something not
apart of the experiment that effects the
results
 Confounding of Variables - anything that
could cause change in B, that is not A
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Object of experiment is to prove A causes B
Placebo
 In
some double-blind experiments, the
control group is given a placebo, a
seemingly therapeutic object or
procedure that causes the control group
to believe they are in the experimental
group but actually contains none of the
tested material.
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I.e.; Sugar pill
Sampling Bias
 When
a sample is not representative of
the population from which it is drawn from
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Example: Dewy defeats Truman election
results
 Polls
tend to focus on middle/upper class
white college students
The Biased &The Blind
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Experimenter Bias
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Another confounding variable
Not a conscious act
Looks for the good results in study not the bad
Double-Blind Procedure - neither the
participants or the experimenters know who is
receiving a particular treatment
Single-Blind - an experiment in which the
person collecting data knows whether the
subject is in the control group or the
experimental group, but subjects do not
Placebo Effects
 Resembles
a drug, but no effect
 Why is it used? Expectations can influence
feelings, reactions, behavior and going
into something positive can have a
beneficial effect
Mean/Median/Mode
 Mean
– average score
 Median – middle score
 Mode – most frequent
Standard Deviation
 An
index of the amount of a variability in
a set of data
 When the variability is larger so to will the
the standard deviation
 Typical distribution is:
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1 standard deviation is 68%
2 standard deviation is 95%
3 standard deviation is 98%
Distribution Skew
Correlation Coefficient
A
number that measures the strength of a
relationship
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Range from -1 to +1
Relationship gets weaker the closer to zero
 Which
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is a stronger correlation?
-.13 or +.38
-.72 or +.59
-.91 or +.04
Important!
 Correlation
does NOT prove causation, it
simply shows strength of the relationship
among variables
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i.e.; poor school performance may be
correlated with lack of sleep. However, we
do not know if lack of sleep
Confounding (3rd) Variable
 If
an unknown factor is playing a role
Case Studies
 Intensive
psychological studies of a single
individual
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The intense research of one can be broadly
applied to similar cases
Like correlational studies, case studies do
not lead to causation
Cross Sectional
 Cross
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Sectional
utilizes different groups of people who differ
in the variable of interest, but share other
characteristics such as socioeconomic
status, educational background, and
ethnicity.
Often used about developmental
psychologist
Cross Sectional
 For
example, researchers studying
developmental psychology might select
groups of people who are remarkably
similar in most areas, but differ only in age.
By doing this, any differences between
groups can presumably be attributed to
age differences rather than to other
variables.
Longitudinal
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used to discover relationships between
variables that are not related to various
background variables. This observational
research technique involves studying the
same group of individuals over an extended
period of time.
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Can last decades
The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) is a longterm study of a random sample of 10,317 men
and women who graduated from Wisconsin
high schools in 1957
Statistical Significance
 The
probability that the observed findings
are due to chance is very low.
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“Very low” is usually defined as less than .05
P Value
 statistical
like this:

A
significance is often represented
p < 0.05
p-value of less than .05 indicates if the
particular results are due merely to
chance, the probability of obtaining
these results would be less than 5%.
Z - Score
 In
statistics, a z-score is a standardized
score that indicates how many standard
deviations a data point is from the mean.
Biological Bases
of Behavior
The Neuron
 Dendrites
– receive message
 Soma – cell body
 Axon – carries the electrical message
 Myelin Sheath – protects the axon, and
speed up the message
 Node of Ranvier – gap between myelin
sheath – helps speed up message
 Synapse – chemical message takes place
The Neuron
 Action
neuron
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Potential (nerve impulse) – firing of
Allows electrical charged ions of
potassium/sodium to enter cells
 All
or nothing
 Absolute Refractory Period – minimal
length of time to fire again
 Resting Potential – 70 millivolts
The Neuron
 Post
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Synaptic Potential
Excitatory PSP – Ups likelihood of firing
Inhibitory PSP – Hampers likelihood of firing
 Reuptake
– after neurotransmitter is
released had has conducted the impulse
to the next cell(s), it is either broken down
by enzymes or absorbed back into firing
cell for reuptake
Key Neurotransmitters
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Acetylcholine – memory, muscle contraction,
particularly in the heart
Serotonin – arousal, sleep, pain sensitivity, and
mood and hunger regulation (OCD/Depression)
Dopamine – movement, attention, and reward;
dopamine imbalances may play a role in (low
levels) Parkinson’s disease and in (high levels)
schizophrenia
GABA – inhibitory neurotransmitter
Norepinephrine – affects alertness; lack of
depression
Endorphins – body’s natural painkillers
Nervous System
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Peripheral – all nerves outside brain and spinal
cord
Somatic – connect voluntary muscles to
sensory receptors
Autonomic – Connect the heart, blood
vessels, smooth muscles, and glands
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Sympathetic - mobilizes resources for
emergencies
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Fight or Flight
Parasympathetic – Conserves body resources
Roger Sperry – Split Brain
Research
 Sperry
received the prize for his
discoveries concerning the functional
specialization of the cerebral hemispheres
 corpus callosum
Endocrine System
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Pituitary gland (master gland) – releases
hormones which control release of other
glands
Adrenocorticotropic Hormone (ACTH) –
released in stressful situations
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Adrenal glands – fight-or-flight
Epinephrine (adrenaline) and Norepinephrine
(noradrenaline)
Thyroid produces thyroxin regulate
metabolism