1. Welcome to Psychology! Ms. Zendrian

2. What is Psychology?  Studying psychology helps us to understand who we are, where our thoughts come from, our actions, and how we understand the world around us.  Psychology- the scientific study of behavior and mental processes  Psychology is the study of the brain!  The brain tells us when we are hungry, determines out sleeping and dreaming patterns, and allows use to express and control our emotions

3. Where did psychology come from?  300 BC- Aristotle- theorized about learning, memory, motivation, emotion, perception, personality  Wilhelm Wundt- German- launched the first psychological laboratory  Other important psychologists: Charles Darwin, Ivan Pavlov, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, and William James

4. Psychology as a study of behavior  B. F. Skinner- “the scientific study of observable behavior”  Behaviorists study how people react  Humanistic psychology- emphasizes the importance of current environmental influence on our growth, and the importance of meeting our needs for love and acceptance  Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow

5. Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

6. Is it Nature or is it Nurture?  Psychology’s big historic issue: nature-nurture  Do human traits develop through experiences or do we come equipped with them?

7. Biopsychosocial Approach  Biopsychosocial approach- an integrated approach that incorporates biological, psychological, and social-cultural levels of analysis  Psychology’s varied perspectives ask different questions and have their own limits  One perspective may stress the biological, psychological, or socio- cultural level more than another

8. Different Psychological Perspectives  Neuroscience  Evolutionary  Behavior genetics  Psychodynamic  Behavioral  Cognitive  Socio-cultural

9. What do different psychologists do?  Biological psychologists  Developmental psychologists  Cognitive psychologists  Personality psychologists  Social psychologists

10. Psychologists or Psychiatrists?  Psychologists use the science of behavior and mental processes to better understand why people think, feel, and act as they do  Psychiatrists are medical doctors who are licenses to prescribe drugs and treat psychological disorders

11. Hindsight Bias and Overconfidence  “I-knew-it-all-along” phenomenon  The tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it  We tend to be more confident than correct  Hindsight bias and overconfidence lead us to over estimate our intuition

13. The Scientific Method and Psychology  People are naturally curious about the world around them  When an experiment is conducted, there is a community that checks and rechecks the findings and conclusions  Critical thinking- examines assumptions, discerns hidden value evidence, and assess conclusions  Theory- an explanation using integrated set of principles that organized observations and predicts behaviors or events

14. Scientific Theory  A good theory must have a hypothesis  Operational definitions- a statements of the procedures used to define research variables  Replication- repeating the essence of research study, typically with different participants

15. Different types of research methods  Case study  Survey  Random sample  Naturalist Observation

21. Correlations  A positive correlation- indicates a direct relationships meaning that two things increase together or decrease together  A negative correlation- indicates an inverse relationship as one thing increases the other decreases  Correlation DOES NOT equal causation!  Illusory correlation- the perception of a relationship where none exist

23. Experiments  Experiment a research method in which an investigator manipulates one or more factors (independent variables) to observe the effect on some behavior or mental processes (the dependent variable)  No single experiment is conclusive  Independent variables- the experimental factor that is manipulated  Dependent variables- the outcome factor

25. Experiments  Random assignment  New drug treatments  Double-blind procedure  Placebo effect  Control group

26. Experiments: SQ3R  SQ3R:  Survey  Question  Read  Rehearse  Review

31. Animal testing  Animal experiments are used for psychological, biological, and medical research