What is Psychology?
©2002 Prentice Hall
What is Psychology?
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The Science of Psychology
What Psychologists Do
Critical and Scientific Thinking in Psychology
Descriptive Studies: Establishing the Facts
Correlational Studies: Looking for Relationships
The Experiment: Hunting for Causes
Evaluating the Findings
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The Science of Psychology
Psychology, Pseudoscience, and Common
Sense
The Birth of Modern Psychology
Psychology's Present
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Defining Psychology
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Psychology is the discipline concerned
with behavior and mental processes and
how they are affected by an organism's
physical state, mental state, and external
environment
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Empirical Evidence
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Evidence gathered by careful observation,
experimentation, and measurement.
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Psychology, Pseudoscience, and
Common Sense
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Scientific Psychology bears little
relationship to "Pop" Psychology
Fortune telling, numerology, graphology,
and astronomy are not part of psychology
Psychology is not just a fancy name for
common sense
Psychological research often produces
findings that contradict popular beliefs
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Bumpy Logic
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Phrenology was a
19th-century
pseudoscience
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No scientific basis
Phrenology linked
bumps on the skull
with character traits
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The Birth of Modern Psychology
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Functionalism: An early psychological
approach that emphasized the function or
purpose of behavior and consciousness
Psychoanalysis: A theory of personality
and a method of psychotherapy, originally
formulated by Sigmund Freud, which
emphasizes unconscious motives and
conflicts
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Psychology's Present
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Biological Perspective
Learning Perspective
Cognitive Perspective
Sociocultural Perspective
Psychodynamic Perspective
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Biological Perspective
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A psychological approach that emphasizes
bodily events and changes associated
with actions, feelings, and thoughts
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Learning Perspective
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A psychological approach that emphasizes
how the environment and experience
affect a person's or animal's actions: It
includes behaviorism and social-cognitive
learning theories
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Cognitive Perspective
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A psychological approach that emphasizes
mental processes in perception, memory,
language, problem solving, and other
areas of behavior
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Sociocultural Perspective
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A psychological approach that emphasizes
social and cultural influences on behavior
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Psychodynamic Perspective
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A psychological approach that emphasizes
unconscious dynamics within the
individual, such as inner forces, conflicts,
or the movement of instinctual energy
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What Psychologists Do
Psychological Research
Psychological Practice
Psychology in the Community
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Psychological Research
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Basic Psychology: The study of
psychological issues in order to seek
knowledge for its own sake rather than for
its practical application
Applied Psychology: The study of
psychological issues that have direct
practical significance; also the application
of psychological findings.
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Psychological Practice
Psychotherapist
Person who does psychotherapy; credentials
and training vary
Clinical
Psychologist
Psychoanalyst
Has a doctoral degree: Ph.D., Ed.D., or Psy.D.
Psychiatrist
A physician (M.D.) with specialization in
psychiatry
Other
professionals
Licensing requirements vary by state;
generally at least an M.A. Can be social
worker (LCSW), counselor (MFCC), or other.
Has specific training in psychoanalysis after
an advanced degree (usually M.D. or Ph.D.)
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Critical and Scientific Thinking
in Psychology
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Critical Thinking
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Critical Thinking: The ability and
willingness to assess claims and make
objective judgments on the basis of wellsupported reasons and evidence, rather
than emotion or anecdote
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Critical Thinking Guidelines
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Ask Questions: Be willing to wonder
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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Hypothesis
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A statement that attempts to predict or to
account for a set of phenomena; scientific
hypotheses specify relationships among
events or variables and are empirically
tested.
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Operational Definition
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A precise definition of a term in a
hypothesis, which specifies the operations
for observing and measuring the process
or phenomenon being measured.
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Principle of Falsifiability
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The principle that a scientific theory must
make predictions that are specific enough
to expose the theory to the possibility of
disconfirmation; that is, the theory must
predict not only what will happen, but also
what will not happen.
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Theory
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An organized system of assumptions and
principles that purports to explain a
specified set of phenomena and their
interrelationships.
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Descriptive Studies:
Establishing the Facts
Case Studies
Observational Studies
Tests
Surveys
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Case Studies
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A detailed description of a particular
individual being studied or treated.
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Observational Studies
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Studies in which the researcher carefully
and systematically observes and records
behavior without interfering with that
behavior; it may involve either naturalistic
or laboratory observation.
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Tests
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Standardize: To develop uniform
procedures for giving and scoring a test.
Norms: Established standards of
performance.
Reliability: Consistency of scores derived
from a test.
Validity: The ability of a test to measure
what it was designed to measure.
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Surveys
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Survey: Questionnaires and interviews
that ask people directly about their
experiences, attitudes, or opinions.
Representative Sample: A group of
subjects, selected from a population,
which matches the population on
important characteristics.
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Correlational Studies: Looking
for Relationships
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Correlation
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Correlation: A measure of how strongly
two variables are related to one another
Variables: Characteristics of behavior or
experience that can be measured or
described by a numeric scale
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Types of Correlations
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Positive correlation: Increases in one variable are
associated with increases in the other; decreases are
likewise associated
Negative correlation: Increases in one variable are
associated with decreases in the other
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The Experiment:
Hunting for Causes
Experimental Variables
Experimental and Control Conditions
Experimenter Effects
Advantages and Limitations of Experiments
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Experimental Variables
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Independent Variable:
A variable that an
experimenter
manipulates.
Dependent Variable:
A variable than an
experimenter predicts
will be affected by
manipulations of the
independent variable.
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Experiments
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Experiment: A controlled test of a
hypothesis in which the researcher
manipulates one variable to discover its
effect on another.
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Experimental and Control
Conditions
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Experimental Condition: In an experiment,
a condition in which subjects are exposed
to manipulations of the independent
variable.
Control Condition: A comparison condition
in which subjects are not exposed to the
same treatment as in the experimental
condition.
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Experimental Design
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Hypothesis: Nicotine
in cigarettes impairs
driving.
All conditions kept the
same for both groups
except nicotine.
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Control condition is
given placebo
(inactive) cigarettes
Number of collisions
is measured.
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Experimenter Effects
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Unintended changes in subjects’ behavior
due to cues inadvertently given by the
experimenter
Double-Blind Study: Experiment where
neither subjects nor people running the
study know which subjects are in the
control group and which are in the
experimental group until after results are
tallied.
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Advantages and Limitations of
Experiments
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Experiments allow conclusions about
cause-effect relationships.
Participants in experiments are not always
representative of larger population.
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Much psychology research is carried out
using colleges students as participants.
Field Research: Descriptive or
experimental research conducted in a
natural setting outside the laboratory.
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Evaluating the Findings
Why Psychologists Use Statistics
From the Laboratory to the Real World
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Why Psychologists Use Statistics
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Descriptive Statistics: Organize and
summarize data
Inferential Statistics: Assess how
meaningful results are, such as
differences between groups.
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Significance tests assess how likely it is that a
study’s results occurred merely by chance
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From the Laboratory to the Real
World
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Choosing the Best Explanation
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Sometimes there are competing explanations
for the same events
Judging the Result’s Importance
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Statistical significance does not prove that a
result is important, only that it is reliable
Meta-analysis combines and analyzes data
from many studies
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Different Research Methods
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Cross-Sectional
Study: Subjects of
different ages are
compared at a given
time.
Longitudinal Study:
Subjects are followed
and periodically
reassessed over a
period of time
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