| A | B |
|---|
| psychology | study of behavior and thinking |
| psychiatrist | medical doctor specializing in treating serious behavior disorders; can prescribe medicine |
| psychologist | someone who treats others with mental disorders; has a degree; many varieties |
| hypothesis | statement of the relationship between 2 variables |
| variables | factors involved in an experiment |
| dependent variable | "effect" variable; depends on the action of the independent variable |
| independent variable | "causal" variable; is manipulated by the experimenter |
| confounding variables | factors which affect an experiment but should not; uncontrolled |
| phrenology | studying the structure of the skull to determine personality traits |
| Wundt | father of psychology; brought the experimental approach to psych |
| introspection | technique in which the person examines their own thoughts and feelings to better understand themselves |
| structuralism | Wundt theory that used introspection to explore the elemental structure of the human mind |
| James | American psychologist who developed theory of functionalism |
| functionalism | theory that focused on how mental and behavioral processes function; how they enable the organism to adapt, survive, and flourish |
| Gestalt | emphasizes the wholeness of the mind when studying personality; thought and behavior should be studied together |
| Galton | psychologist who examined the heredity vs environment aspect of psychology; emphasis on natural selection; evolutionary psych |
| psychoanalysis | Freudian theory that the unconscious mind determines behavior |
| Freud | significant contributor to psychology who developed psychoanalytic theory |
| unconscious | that aspect of the mind that houses our hidden wishes, thoughts, desires, etc. that we are not aware of at any given time |
| behaviorism | school of thought which emphasizes that personality/behavior is learned |
| humanism | school of thought that emphasizes free will in determining personality/behavior |
| cognitive psychology | school of thought which emphasizes thought processes in determining personality/behavior |
| sociocultural psychology | emphasizes the environment in determining personality/behavior; specifically culture |
| psychobiology | emphasizes body chemistry and genetics in determining behavior |
| natural observation | technique for studying behavior; watch the subject without his/her knowledge; a form of descriptive research |
| directed observation | technique for studying behavior; experiment set up in a lab situation with subject's knowledge; a form of experimental research |
| case study | technique for studying behavior where you gather as much background info on the subject as possible; form of descriptive research |
| interview | technique for studying behavior where there is a question and answer session with the subject; a form of descriptive research |
| questionaire/survey/inventory | technique for studying behavior; subject answers questions in a forced choice format; a form of descriptive or correlational research |
| guidelines for studying behavior | repeatable, measurable, communicable, set guidelines, objective |
| experimenter effect/Hawthorne effect | presence of the experimenter affects the results |
| courtesy bias | giving agreeable or socially acceptable answers when being studied |
| placebo effect | offering a "fake drug"; subject convinces themselves that it is working |
| ex post facto method | subjects selected based on conditions already being present; used because of ethical concerns; often used for correlational research |
| counterbalancing | procedure for eliminating confounding variable effects by presenting them in different order along with the independent variable |
| variables | any condition or behavior which can change in amount or quality |
| population | total from which you can select participants |
| sample | random, representative group selected from the population |
| experimental group | subjects which receive the changing independent variable |
| control group | subjects in which the changing independent variable is not present;may receive a placebo; used as comparison |
| single blind | exp. set up in which the subject does not know which group they are in |
| double blind | exp. set up in which neither the subject nor experimenter know which group the subjects are in; commonly used in drug evaluation studies |
| theory | summation of data and what it means |
| correlation method | measures the relationship between 2 variables; does not show cause and effect |
| correlation coefficient | numerical value of the relationship between 2 variables; falls between -1.0 and +1.0 |
| positive correlation | suggests that as one variable increases, so does the other |
| negative correlation | suggests that as one variable increases, the other similarly decreases |
| scatterplot | putting the correlation on the x/y graph |
| experimental design | shows a cause-effect relationship; research method in which an investigator manipulates one or more factors to observe the effect on some behavior or mental process |
| inferential statistics | tests differences between groups and draws conclusions; infer from the small group and apply to the larger group |
| central tendency | #s which describe the middle score |
| descriptive statistics | makes the data meaningful |
| mean | average |
| median | score in the exact middle of the range |
| mode | most frequently occuring score |
| frequency distribution | range of scores into classes of equal size |
| variability | how data spreads on the graph; includes range, standard deviation and variance |
| range | distance between highest and lowest score |
| standard deviation | index of how much data generally varies from mean |
| normal distribution | bell shaped curve of data |
| statistical significance | 5% or less chance that the data occured by chance |
| interrater reliability | comparison of studies by other evaluators |
| APA ethical guidelines | right to decline participation, openness and honesty, info is confidential, examine all potential risks |
| anthropomorphisms | attributing human characters to inanimate objects |
| applied psychology | make direct use of findings; real world; aims to solve practical problems |
| research(basic) psychology | studies the origins/cause of behavior;aims to increase the scientific knowledge base |
| between subject design | when the experimental and control groups are different sets of people from the random, representative sample |
| within subject design | when the experimental and control groups are the same set of people within the random, reprensentative sample |
| descriptive research | goal is to observe and record data; no variables are manipulated; ex: case study, survey, natural obs |
| evolutionary psych | examines thought and action in terms of natural selection |
| hindsight bias | when hearing findings, people think they knew it all along |
| participant/response bias | tendency to behave in certain ways based on perception of an experiment |
| random assignment | insures each participant has an equal chance of being placed in the experimental or control group |
| Hawthorne effect | being selected to be in an experiment affects performance |
| random assignment of participants | insures that the E and C groups have similar characteristics |
| operational definitions | explanation of how variables are measured |
| demand characteristics/Clever Hans effect | when the experimenter unintentionally gives off clues |
| outlier | a piece of data which skews the results; thus results can be misleading |
| stratified sampling | ensuring the smaple represents the population on some criteria |
