Chapter 1: The Science Of Psychology

Front 1

-Define "psychology" and identify some of its major subfields.

Back 1

-Psychology: is the scientific study of behavior and the mind. The term behavior refers to actions and responds that we can directly observes, whereas the therm mind refers to internal states and processes.
SUBFIELDS:
-Biopsychology: focuses on the biological underpinnings of behavior (a set of ideas, motives, or devices that justify or form the basis of something).
These study how brain processes, genes, and hormones influence our actions, thoughts, and feelings. Others study how evolution has shaped our psychological capabilities (our capacity for advanced thinking and language) and behavioral tendencies.
-Developmental psychology: examines human physical, psychological, and social development across the lifespan. Some study the infant’s emotional world, while others study how different parenting styles psychologically affect children or how our mental abilities change during adolescence and adulthood.
-Experimental psychology: focuses on basic processes such as learning, sensory systems, perception, and motivational states. This research is most of the time with animals. Even though this is the one with the title “experimental,” it is important to remember that all subfields of psychology include research.
-Industrial-organizational (I/O) psychology: this studies leadership, teamwork, and factors that influence employees’ job satisfaction, work motivation, and performance. In this field, psychologists make tests to help employers identify the best job applicants and design systems that companies use to evaluate employee performance.
-Personality psychology: focuses on the study of human personality in this field, psychologists look to find core personality traits and the way different traits relate to one another and influence behavior. They also make tests to measure personality.
-Social psychology: examines people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior pertaining to the social world, which is the world of other people. This studies how people influence one another, behave in groups, and form impressions and attitudes. They study: attraction and love, prejudice and discrimination, helping, and aggression.

Front 2

-Identify four major goals of psychology, and describe how basic and applied research differ.

Back 2

-Description: most basic goal; psychologist seek to describe how people behave, think and feel.
-Explanation: typically take the form of hypotheses and theories that specify the causes of behavior
-Control: psychologist exert control by designing experiments or other types of research to test whether their proposed explanations are accurate.
-Application: finally many psychologist apply psychological knowledge in ways that enhance human welfare.

Front 3

-What three general levels of analysis do psychologists use to study behavior?

Back 3

-Biological level:Brain Function, Stress hormones and physiology, Genetic factors, Evolution
-Environmental Level: Stimuli in immediate physical and social environment, Previous life experiences, Cultural Norms and socialization
-Psychological Level: Thinking, memory, attention, beliefs
Desires, values, expectations, personality characteristics
Conscious and unconscious influences

Front 4

-Discuss psychology’s philosophical and scientific roots, earliest schools of thought, and founders.

Back 4

-Philosophers:
Rene Descartes: held a position of mind-body dualism, the belief that the mind is a spiritual entity not subject to physical laws that govern the body, monism holds that mind and body are one and not a separate spititual entity, Thomas Hobbes: advocated this.
-Early schools:
Structuralism: analysis of the mind in terms of its basic elements.  Founders: Wilhelm Wundt: englishman edward titchener. school:-emerged in 1879 first experimental psychology lab at the university of leipzig in germany, cornell university in u.s. functionalism: belief that psychology should study the functions of consciousness rather than its elements, founder was william james from Harvard University.

Front 5

-Describe the psychodynamic perspective. Contrast Freud’s psychoanalytic theory with modern psychodynamic theories.

Back 5

-The analysis of internal and primarily unconscious psychological forces.
-Psychodynamic: they downplay the role of hidden sexual and aggressive motives and focus more on how early relationships with family members and other caregivers shape the views the people that form of themselves and others.

Front 6

-What are the behavioral perspective’s origins and focus? Contrast radical behaviorism with cognitive behaviorism.

Back 6

-Focuses on the role of the external environment in governing our actions; has roots in the philosophical school of british empiricism, John Locke “Tabula Rasa”= Blank Slate
Learning is the key to understanding how experience molds behavior.

-Cognitive: proposes that learning experiences and the environment influence our expectations and other thoughts and, in turn, that our thoughts influence how we behave.
Radical Behaviorism- B.F. Skinner believed that the real causes of behavior reside in the outer world, “A person does not act upon the world, the world acts upon him.” Environmental Forces enhance human welfare.