AP P SYCH A GENDA

C OMPREHENSION C HECK 1. What is the “behavioral perspective”? 2. Why did most psychological research study white, middle-class men? 3. Give an example of “positive individual traits” according to positive psychologists. 4. Evolutionary psychology examines what? 5. List the seven major fields within the psychology profession.

A NSWERS … 1. Behavioral perspective = maintains that much of human and animal behavior can be explained in terms of bodily structure and bio-chemical processes that allow organisms to behave 2. Cross-cultural research is costly, difficult, researchers fear that cultural comparisons will lead to or reinforce existing stereotypes and researchers are potentially ethnocentric. 3. Personal strengths and virtues 4. Behavioral processes in terms of their adaptive value for members of the species over the course of many generations. 5. Psychological, developmental, social, experimental, personality, cognitive, psychometrics

L AST SLIDE FROM YESTERDAY … 4 types of psychologists: 1. Clinical 2. Counseling 3. Educational 4. Organizational/industrial See chart 1.8 and 1.9 on page 20! Difference b/w clinical psychology and psychiatry: Psychiatry = branch of medicine concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of psychological problems & disorders. Psychology takes a non-medical approach to such problems.

S EVEN U NIFYING T HEMES 1. Psychology is empirical 2. Psychology is theoretically diverse 3. Psychology evolves in a sociohistorical context 4. Behavior is determined by multiple causes 5. Behavior is shaped by cultural heritage 6. Heredity and environment jointly shapes behavior 7. People’s experience of the world is highly subjective

Write anecdotal/short skit that exemplify the last 4 of the 7 themes. Concept check page – 35: chapter recap and practice test