Introduction to PsychologyUnit 1

History of Psychology

•Greeks began studying human behavior•By the 17th century, the idea of dualism emerged•Mind and body are separate and distinct

Historical Approaches

Structuralism

• Interested in the basic elements of human experiences•Wilhelm Wundt•Use self-observation/introspection

Functionalism

• Study how people and animals adapt to their environment•William James- father of psychology•focused on the actions of the conscious mind and the purposes of behavior

Inheritable Traits

• Study how heredity influences abilities, character, and behavior• Sir Francis Galton• Is behavior determined by heredity or

environment?

Gestalt Traits

• Study how sensations are assembled into perceptual experiences• Perception is more than the sum of its

parts• Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka

Contemporary Approaches

Psychoanalytic Psychology

• Sigmund Freud• Interested in unconscious mind• Conscious experiences are tip of iceberg,

beneath surface are primitive biological urges that are in conflict with the requirements of society and morality

• Free Association- say what comes to mind• Reveals the operation of unconscious processes

• Dreams= expressions of primitive, unconscious urges

Behavioral Psychology

• Ivan Pavlov• Dogs and Bells• Investigate observable behavior• Behavior is the result of conditioning and

appears because an appropriate stimulus is present

• John B. Watson, B.F. Skinner

Humanistic Psychology

• Human nature is evolving and self-directed• Humans are not controlled by events

in the environment or unseen forces- background to internal growth• Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Rollo

May

Cognitive Psychology

• Focus on how people process, store, and use information and how this information influences our thinking, language, problem solving, and creativity• Behavior is more than a response to a

stimulus• Jean Piaget, Noam Chomsky, and

Leon Festings

Biological Psychology

• Impact of biology on behavior• Study how brain, nervous system, hormones, and genetics influence behavior• Genetic factors influence behavior

Sociocultural Psychology

• Ethnicity, gender, culture and socioeconomics affect behavior

Research Methods and Statistics

Different ways to collect data:• Sample- small group out of the total

pop. being studied (desire to go to college among Jrs. and Srs.)• Samples must be representative (if

studying how tall the avg. man is, don’t include a lot of professional basketball players= non-representative)• To avoid non-representative sample,

either have a random sample, or deliberately pick people

Data Collection

• Naturalistic Observations- natural setting• Case Study- long term, intensive study• Survey- questions• Longitudinal Study- study the same group over time• Cross- Sectional Study- age groups

Methods of Research

• Correlation- descriptive study• Positive- IQ scores and academic

success• Negative- hrs spent working on serve &

double faults• None

•Shows relation between 2 things, one does not cause the other

Research Methods cont.

• Experiments- provide control over the situation•Hypothesis•Variables- what changes• Independent- changed by experimenter

to observe effects (hours studying)• Dependent- changes in relation to

independent variable (grade on exam)•Experimental group- exposed to independent variable•Control group- not exposed to iv, but treated the same

• Ethical Issues must be considered when conducting experiments

Research Methods cont.

Crash Course

• Self-fulfilling prophecy• Having expectations and acting in a way, unknowingly, to carry out that behavior

• Researchers can influence a subject’s behavior

• How to fix this?• Single Blind Experiments- participants are unaware• Double Blind Experiment- experimenter and participants are unaware

Research Problems

•Milgram Experiment•Experiment on obedience to authority figures • series of social psychology experiments which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.

Research Problems cont.

• Change in a patient’s illness or physical state that results from the patient’s knowledge and perceptions of treatment

• Treatment that resembles medical therapy, but had no effect• Sugar water

Placebo Effect

STATISTICAL EVALUATION

How Truthful are statistics??

• Does the amount of time you study for a quiz affect the grade you get??

• Kate asks 15 students how many hours of TV they watch the night before and after the quiz, their quiz grade, to check off a list of products advertised on TV the night before the quiz, and their height.

Descriptive Statistics

• Listing and summarizing of data in a practical, efficient way• Create frequency tables and graphs•Frequency distribution- arranging data to know who often a score or observation occurs•Histograms- show frequency distributions with rectangles whose widths represent intervals•Bell-curve

Frequency Distribution• Kate wants to know how many hours of TV were

watched before and after the quiz.• She makes a chart of the number of hours and

counts the participants in each category.

Frequency Distribution• Frequency Polygon

Bell Curve

Central Tendency• Central tendency- number that describes something

about the average score• Mean- average, used to measure central tendency• Median- middle score• Mode- most frequent score

Variance• Variance- how spread out are

the scores• Range- subtract the lowest score from

highest score• Standard Deviation• scores above the mean have a

positive deviation• scores below the mean have a

negative deviation• Correlation Coefficient• direction and strength of the

relationship between 2 sets of observations

• Positive correlation- as one variable increases, the second increases

• Negative correlation- as one variable increases, the second decreases

Statistical Significance• Results can be duplicated and are not due to

chance