1. Invitation To Psychology
Carol Wade and Carol Tavris
PowerPoint Presentation by
H. Lynn Bradman
Metropolitan Community College-Omaha
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What is Psychology?
Chapter 1
Prepared by Michael J. Renner, Ph.D.
These slides ©2002 Prentice Hall Psychology Publishing.
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3. Wade and Tavris © 2005 Prentice Hall
What is Psychology?
The Science of Psychology
What Psychologists Do
Critical and Scientific Thinking in Psychology
Descriptive Studies: Establishing the Facts
Correlational Studies: Looking for Relationships
The Experiment: Hunting for Causes
Evaluating the Findings
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4. The Science of Psychology
Psychology, Pseudoscience, and Common Sense
The Birth of Modern Psychology
Psychology's Present
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Defining Psychology
Psychology is the discipline concerned with behavior and mental processes and how they are affected by an organism's physical state, mental state, and external environment
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Empirical Evidence
Evidence gathered by careful observation, experimentation, and measurement.
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7. Psychology, Pseudoscience, and Common Sense
Scientific Psychology bears little relationship to "Pop" Psychology
Fortune telling, numerology, graphology, and astronomy are not part of psychology
Psychology is not just a fancy name for common sense
Psychological research often produces findings that contradict popular beliefs
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Bumpy Logic
Phrenology was a 19th-century pseudoscience
No scientific basis
Phrenology linked bumps on the skull with character traits
From
Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2002). Invitation to Psychology, 2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Wade and Tavris © Prentice Hall

9. The Birth of Modern Psychology
Functionalism: An early psychological approach that emphasized the function or purpose of behavior and consciousness
Psychoanalysis: A theory of personality and a method of psychotherapy, originally formulated by Sigmund Freud, which emphasizes unconscious motives and conflicts
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Psychology's Present
Biological Perspective
Learning Perspective
Cognitive Perspective
Sociocultural Perspective
Psychodynamic Perspective
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11. Biological Perspective
A psychological approach that emphasizes bodily events and changes associated with actions, feelings, and thoughts
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Learning Perspective
A psychological approach that emphasizes how the environment and experience affect a person's or animal's actions: It includes behaviorism and social-cognitive learning theories
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13. Cognitive Perspective
A psychological approach that emphasizes mental processes in perception, memory, language, problem solving, and other areas of behavior
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14. Sociocultural Perspective
A psychological approach that emphasizes social and cultural influences on behavior
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15. Psychodynamic Perspective
A psychological approach that emphasizes unconscious dynamics within the individual, such as inner forces, conflicts, or the movement of instinctual energy
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What Psychologists Do
Psychological Research
Psychological Practice
Psychology in the Community
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17. Psychological Research
Basic Psychology: The study of psychological issues in order to seek knowledge for its own sake rather than for its practical application
Applied Psychology: The study of psychological issues that have direct practical significance; also the application of psychological findings.
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18. Psychological Practice
Psychotherapist
Person who does psychotherapy; credentials and training vary
Clinical Psychologist
Has a doctoral degree: Ph.D., Ed.D., or Psy.D.
Psychoanalyst
Has specific training in psychoanalysis after an advanced degree (usually M.D. or Ph.D.)
Psychiatrist
A physician (M.D.) with specialization in psychiatry
Other professionals
Licensing requirements vary by state; generally at least an M.A. Can be social worker (LCSW), counselor (MFCC), or other.
After Table 1.2 from
Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2002). Invitation to Psychology, 2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Wade and Tavris © Prentice Hall

19. Critical and Scientific Thinking in Psychology
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Critical Thinking
Critical Thinking: The ability and willingness to assess claims and make objective judgments on the basis of well-supported reasons and evidence, rather than emotion or anecdote
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21. Critical Thinking Guidelines
Ask Questions: Be willing to wonder
Define Your Terms
Examine the Evidence
Analyze Assumptions and Biases
Avoid Emotional Reasoning
Don't Oversimplify
Consider Other Interpretations
Tolerate Uncertainty
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Hypothesis
A statement that attempts to predict or to account for a set of phenomena; scientific hypotheses specify relationships among events or variables and are empirically tested.
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23. Operational Definition
A precise definition of a term in a hypothesis, which specifies the operations for observing and measuring the process or phenomenon being measured.
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24. Principle of Falsifiability
The principle that a scientific theory must make predictions that are specific enough to expose the theory to the possibility of disconfirmation; that is, the theory must predict not only what will happen, but also what will not happen.
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25. Principle of Falsifiability
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Theory
An organized system of assumptions and principles that purports to explain a specified set of phenomena and their interrelationships.
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27. Descriptive Studies: Establishing the Facts
Case Studies
Observational Studies
Tests
Surveys
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Case Studies
A detailed description of a particular individual being studied or treated.
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29. Observational Studies
Studies in which the researcher carefully and systematically observes and records behavior without interfering with that behavior; it may involve either naturalistic or laboratory observation.
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Tests
Standardize: To develop uniform procedures for giving and scoring a test.
Norms: Established standards of performance.
Reliability: Consistency of scores derived from a test.
Validity: The ability of a test to measure what it was designed to measure.
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Surveys
Survey: Questionnaires and interviews that ask people directly about their experiences, attitudes, or opinions.
Representative Sample: A group of subjects, selected from a population, which matches the population on important characteristics.
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32. Correlational Studies: Looking for Relationships
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Correlation
Correlation: A measure of how strongly two variables are related to one another
Variables: Characteristics of behavior or experience that can be measured or described by a numeric scale
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Types of Correlations
Figure 1.02 from
Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2002). Invitation to Psychology, 2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Positive correlation: Increases in one variable are associated with increases in the other; decreases are likewise associated
Negative correlation: Increases in one variable are associated with decreases in the other
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35. The Experiment: Hunting for Causes
Experimental Variables
Experimental and Control Conditions
Experimenter Effects
Advantages and Limitations of Experiments
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36. Experimental Variables
Independent Variable: A variable that an experimenter manipulates.
Dependent Variable: A variable than an experimenter predicts will be affected by manipulations of the independent variable.
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Experiments
Experiment: A controlled test of a hypothesis in which the researcher manipulates one variable to discover its effect on another.
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38. Experimental and Control Conditions
Experimental Condition: In an experiment, a condition in which subjects are exposed to manipulations of the independent variable.
Control Condition: A comparison condition in which subjects are not exposed to the same treatment as in the experimental condition.
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Experimental Design
Hypothesis: Nicotine in cigarettes impairs driving.
All conditions kept the same for both groups except nicotine.
Control condition is given placebo (inactive) cigarettes
Number of collisions is measured.
Figure 1.03 from
Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2002). Invitation to Psychology, 2nd Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Wade and Tavris © Prentice Hall

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Random Assignment
A procedure for assigning people to experimental and control groups in which individuals have the same probability as an other of being assigned to either group.
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Placebo
An inactive substance or fake treatment used as a control in an experiment or given by a practitioner to a patient.
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Experimenter Effects
Unintended changes in subjects’ behavior due to cues inadvertently given by the experimenter
Double-Blind Study: Experiment where neither subjects nor people running the study know which subjects are in the control group and which are in the experimental group until after results are tallied.
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43. Advantages and Limitations of Experiments
Experiments allow conclusions about cause-effect relationships.
Participants in experiments are not always representative of larger population.
Much psychology research is carried out using colleges students as participants.
Field Research: Descriptive or experimental research conducted in a natural setting outside the laboratory.
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44. Evaluating the Findings
Why Psychologists Use Statistics
From the Laboratory to the Real World
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45. Why Psychologists Use Statistics
Descriptive Statistics: Organize and summarize data
Inferential Statistics: Assess how meaningful results are, such as differences between groups.
Significance tests assess how likely it is that a study’s results occurred merely by chance
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46. From the Laboratory to the Real World
Choosing the Best Explanation
Sometimes there are competing explanations for the same events
Judging the Result’s Importance
Statistical significance does not prove that a result is important, only that it is reliable
Meta-analysis combines and analyzes data from many studies
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47. Different Research Methods
Cross-Sectional Study: Subjects of different ages are compared at a given time.
Longitudinal Study: Subjects are followed and periodically reassessed over a period of time
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