What is Psychology?

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What is Psychology?

• What is the definition of psychology?
• What are the origins of Psychology?
• Wilhelm Wundt and the first experiment.
• Wilhelm Wundt defined psychology as the study of
  consciousness and emphasized the use of
  experimental methods to study and measure
  consciousness
• Edward B. Titchener and structuralism and
  introspection.
• complex conscious experiences can be broken down
  into elemental structures, or component parts of
  sensations and feelings.

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• William James and functionalism.
• William James was an American physiologist and
  psychologist and his ideas became the basis for a
  school of psychology called functionalism
• Functionalism stressed the importance of how
  behavior functions to allow people and animals to
  adapt to their environments.
• Functionalists examined how psychology could be
  applied to areas such as education, child
  rearing, and the work environment and primarily
  the influence of the workings of the British
  naturalist Charles Darwin

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Psychology 1sts

• G. Stanley Hall
• G. Stanley Hall received the first PhD in
  psychology in the United States and he
  established the first psychology research
  laboratory in the United States at Johns Hopkins
  University in 1833. He also began publishing the
  American Journal of Psychology in 1892.
• Mary Whiton Calkins
• Mary Whiton Calkins was an American psychologist
  who conducted research on memory, personality,
  and dreams and she established a psychological
  laboratory at Welesley College in 1891 she was
  also the first woman to be elected president of
  the APA and although she completed all the
  requirement for a PhD in psychology from Harvard,
  Harvard refused to grant her the degree because
  she was a woman.

• Margaret Washburn
• Margaret Wasburn was the first American woman to
  officially earn a PhD in psychology and she
  published the text The Animal Mind and was the
  second woman to be elected president of the APA.
• Francis Summer
• Francis Summer was the first African American to
  receive a PhD in psychology and he later
  published a wide variety of topics and chaired
  the psychology department at Howard University.
  One of Summers students, Kenneth Bancroft Clark
  was the first black president of the American
  Psychological Association in 1970.

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Perspectives in Psychology

• Psychodynamic
• Behaviorism
• Humanistic
• Cognitive
• Psychosocial
• Sociocultural
• Behavioral neuroscience

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Mental Health Professionals

• What do clinical psychologists do?
• What is the role of Psychiatrists?
• What is the difference between psychologists and
  psychiatrists?

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Areas of Research

• Biological
• Clinical
• Cognitive
• Counseling
• Educational
• Experimental
• Developmental

• Forensic
• Health
• Industrial/organizational
• Personality
• Rehabilitation
• Social
• Sports
• School
• Military

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Ethics in Research

• Why do we need ethics in research?
• What are some elements of ethics?

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Ethics in Research

• So why do we need ethics in research?
• What are some elements of ethics?
• Some ethical practices include
• Informed consent
• Debriefing
• Confidentiality
• Deception?
• There are also ethical guidelines for special
  populations

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Understanding the Themes of Psychology

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• Psychology is empirical.
• Psychology is theoretically diverse.
• Psychology changes because society and history
  change this is why psychology is said to be
  sociohistorical in context.
• Psychology is multifactorial, or affected by many
  factors.
• Our cultural backgrounds also exert influence
  over our behavior (sociocultural) culture is a
  shared custom, belief, values, norms, transmitted
  socially across a generation.
• Heredity and environment influence our behaviors.
• Because of each individuals background, one
  persons perception will be different from
  another persons perception perception is highly
  subjective.

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Wha
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• Why is there a need for Psychological Science?
• People tend to overestimate or become
  overconfident in the individuals abilities.the
  overconfidence bias
• The hindsight bias is the tendency to believe,
  after learning an outcome, that one would have
  forseen itbasically, the I knew it all along
  phenomenon

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The Importance of the Scientific Method

• What is the scientific method and why do we use
  it?
• The scientific method is a five step process
• Formulate a hypothesis
• Design a study
• Collect research information (data) how?
• Analyze data and draw conclusion
• Report the findings

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Experiments

• What is an experiment?
• An experiment is a carefully regulated procedure
  in which one or more factors believed to
  influence the behavior being studied are
  manipulated while all other factors are held
  constant
• There are two components of an experiment
• Independent and dependent variables

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The Experiment

• The independent variable is the variable that is
  manipulated in the experiment.
• The dependent variable is the factor that is
  observed and changes in an experiment in response
  to changes in the independent variable
• Experiments involve one or more experimental
  groups or one or more control groups

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• The experimental group is the group that receives
  the treatment
• The control group is the group that does not
  receive the treatment
• Extraneous variables are any variable other than
  the independent variable that may influence the
  dependent variable in a specific study
• Cofounding of variables occurs when two variables
  are linked in a way that makes it difficult to
  sort out their specific effects

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An Experiment

• You are conducting an experiment to test your
  hypothesis that drinking orange juice 20 minutes
  prior to taking an exam will enhance retention.
• 1. What is the independent variable?
• 2. What is the dependent variable?
• 3. Which group receives the IV?
• 4. What is the function of the control group?

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Types of Research

• There are three basic types of research used in
  psychology descriptive, correlational, and
  experimental.
• Descriptive research-serves the purpose of
  observing and recording behavior and mental
  states
• Descriptive methods include observation, surveys,
  and interviews, standardized tests, and case
  studies.

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Laboratory has some disadvantages

• 1. It is not only almost impossible to conduct
  research without the participants knowledge, but
  in some cases it can be unethical
• 2. The laboratory setting is unnatural and can
  influence the results
• 3. The participants who are willing to go to a
  university to participate in the research are not
  necessarily representative of the population
• 4. Some of the aspects of research, in
  particular questions of the mind and behavior,
  may not be able to be observed in the lab
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• Observing behavior in real-world setting without
  benefit of manipulation is naturalistic
  observation

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• Qualitative research- research that asks
  open-ended questions
• What are some examples of qualitative research?
• Quantitative research-uses numbers to correlate
  research results
• What are some examples of quantitative research?

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Biases

• Sometimes when researchers want to adhere to the
  integrity of the research, they account for any
  bias that might contaminate the research
  findings.
• Experimenter bias occurs when the expectations of
  the experimenter or researcher influences the
  research
• Research participant bias describes when the
  behavior of the participant during the experiment
  is influenced by how they think they are supposed
  to behave
• So how do researchers account for both
  experimenter bias and research participant bias?
• By designing a double-blind experiment

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Double-blind experiments

• By designing a double-blind experiment, an
  experiment in which neither the participant nor
  the researcher knows in which group the
  participant until the results are calculated
• What might a double-blind experiment look like?

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How do we ensure the research is fair?

• Random assignment
• Procuring an accurate sample size from the
  population
• Do not become overconfidentleads to confidence
  bias and making incorrect inferences

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Brain-imaging techniques

• Three commonly used brain-imaging techniques
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• (1) Positron emission tomography (PET scan)
  generates images of the brains activity by
  tracking the brains use of radioactively tagged
  compounds that have been injected into the
  bloodstream.
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• (2) Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) uses
  electrical signals generated by the brain in
  response to magnetic fields to produce highly
  detailed images of the brains structure.
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• (3) Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
  uses magnetic fields to track changes in blood
  flow and oxygen levels in the brain. It provides
  a picture of brain activity averaged over seconds
  rather than the several minutes required by PET
  scans.

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Correlation coefficient

• The degree of relationship between two variables
  is expressed as a numerical value called
  correlation coefficient
• The closer the number is to 1.00, the stronger
  the relation
• The further away the number is from 1.00, the
  weaker the relation
• Negative and positive indicate the direction, not
  the strength
• In correlational research, the focus is the
  strength of the relationship between two
  variables, events, or characteristics
• The correlational coefficient is the numerical
  value assigned to express the degree of the
  relationship between two variables