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Flashcards in PSY111 - ch1 Deck (35)

- A way of describing psychology
- The levels are like rungs on a ladder, with lower rungs (the brain) tied closely too biological influences and higher rungs (the mind) are tied closely to social influences
- The brain and mind are just different ways of describing the same stuff, but at a ___________

Levels of Analysis


- Human behavior is difficult to predict, in part because almost all actions are produced by many factors

Multiply determined


- people differ from each other in thinking, emotion, personality, and behavior
- they explain why we respond in different way to the same objective situation (such as an insulting comment from a boss)
- entire fields of psych such as intelligence, interests, personality, mental illness focus on ________ - they make psych challenging because by making it difficult to come up with explanations of behavior that apply to everyone

individual differennces


- the belief that we see the world precisely as it is
- we assume that "seeing is believing" and trust our initiative perceptions of the world and ourselves
- we should trust our perceptions of the world, yet appearances can sometimes be deceiving
- in many cases "believing is seeing" rather than the revers: our beliefs shape our perceptions of the world

naive realism


- an explanation for a large number of findings in the natural world, including the psychological world
- offers an account that ties multiple findings together into one pretty package
- good _____ generate predictions regarding new data we haven't observed yet
- it must generate novel predictions that researchers can test

scientific theory


- specific predictions derived from explanations
- a testable prediction
- based off of tests of _____, scientists can provisionally accept the theory that generated these hypotheses, reject this theory outright, or revise it



- scientific methods are tools for overcoming _____: the tendency to seek out evidence that supports our beliefs and deny, dismiss, or distort evidence that contradicts them
-Sum up in 5 words: "Seek and ye shall find"
- what makes it interesting is that it extends to many areas of our daily lives; for ex: politics and football
- "Mother of all biases"- can most easily fool us into seeing what we want to see

confirmation bias


- confirmation bias predisposes us to another shortcoming to which we're all prone:______ - this refers to the tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence contradicts them
- in everyday language its like the "don't confuse me with the facts" effect -> we don't want to think we're wrong

belief persistence


- It's essential to distinguish scientific claims from _______: assertions about the world that we can't test
- include assertions about the existence of God, the soul, and afterlife
- these claims differ from scientific claims because we could never test them using a scientific method

metaphysical claims


the scientific study of behavior, cognition, and affect



- when our tendency too seek out patterns sometimes goes to far, we experience _______
- perceiving meaningful connections among unrelated and even random phenomena
- EX: thinking of friend and she calls at that moment or eerie coincidence



- another example of our tendency to find patterns i the phenomenon of _____: seeing meaningful images in meaningless visual stimuli
- ex: looking at a cloud and seeing a shape/animal



- according to this theory, out awareness of our own inevitable death leaves many of us with an underlying sense of terror
- we cope with feelings of terror by adopting cultural world views that reassure us that our lives posses a broader meaning and purpose
- one that extends well beyond our vanishingly brief existence on this planet
- researchers test this model by manipulating MORALITY SALIENCE: the extent to which thoughts of death are foremost in our minds

terror management theory


- To many people _____ implies closed-mindedness, but nothing could be further from the truth.
- this term derives from the greek word skeptikos, meaning "to consider carefully"
- it evaluates all claims with an open mind but insists of =n persuasive evidence before accepting them
- to be a ________ we must adopt two attitudes that may see contrary but aren't: 1)a willingness to keep an open mind to all claims. 2) a willingness to accept claims only after researchers have subjected them to careful scientific tests
- these skeptics evaluate claims on their own merits and refuse to accept them until they meet a high standard of evidence

scientific skepticism


- the hallmark of science skepticism is ______
- A set of skills for evaluating all claims in an open minded and careful fashion
- inn psychology we can think of it as scientific thinking, as it's the form of thinking that allows us to evaluate scienntific claims, not only in lab but in everyday life

critical thinking


- correlation isn't causation
- however, when we conclude that a correlation means causation, we've committed the _____-______ _____ ---> this conclusion is a fallacy because the fact that 2 variables are correlated doesn't necessarily mean that one causes the other
- the three major explanations for this correlationn:
1. A---> B. it's possible that A causes B
2. B---> A. it's possible that B causes A
3. C---> causes both A and B

correlation-causation fallacy


- When C causes both A and B
- It's a problem because it can lead us to conclude mistakenly that A and B are causally related to each other when THEY ARE NOT

Third variable problem


- anything that can vary
- ex: height, IQ, extraversion



- For a claim to be meaningful, it must be _____: capable of being disapproved
- if a theory isn't ____, we can't test it



- a study's finding can be duplicated consistently
- If they can't be duplicated, it increases the odds that the original findings were due to chance
- We shouldn't place too much stock in psychological findings until it's been replicated



- Wilhelm Wundt used a combination of experimental methods, including reaction time procedures, and a technique called ____ - this required trained observers to carefully reflect and report on their mental experiences
- ___ might ask participants to look at an object, say an apple, and carefully report everything they saw



- school of psychology that aimed to identify the basic elements of psychological experience



- school of psychology that aimed to understand the adaptive purposes of psychological characteristics



- school of psychology that focuses on uncovering the general laws of learning by looking at observable behavior
- Approach name? environment and action

1. behaviorism
2. behavioral


- school of psychology that proposes that thinking is central to understanding behavior
- Perspective? thinking, remembering, evaluating, deciding

1. cognitive psychology
2. cognitive perspective


- relatively new field of psychology that examines the relation between the brain functioning and thinking
- Perspective? brain -->behavior relationships

1. cognitive neuroscience
2. neuropsychological perspective


- school of psychology funded by Sigmund Freud, that focuses on internal psychological processes of which we're unaware
- Approach? biologically bases drives and emotional memories

1. Psychoanalysis
2. Psychoanalytic approach


- discipline that applies Darwin's theory of natural selection to human and animal behavior
- Approach? adaptation and natural selection

1. evolutionary psychology
2. evolutionary approach


- research examining how the mind works

basic research


-research examining how we can use basic research to solve real-world problems

applied research


-set of claims that seems scientific but aren't



- implies use of systematic rather than a casual approach



- a more technical term for action and action is readily observable



- the technical term for thinking, which is not directly observable



- the technical term for emotion or feeling which is experienced internally yet linked to external events and sometimes evident in appearance and behavior