Ch 1 - The Foundations of Psychological Science

Question 1

The tendency to believe claims because they seem true or because it would be nice if they were true.

Answer 1

What is uncritical acceptance?

Question 2

The tendency to notice information that fits one’s expectations, while forgetting or ignoring discrepancies.

Answer 2

What is confirmation bias?

Question 3

Unfounded belief held without evidence or in spite of falsifying evidence.

Answer 3

What is superstition?

Question 4

Unfounded belief system that seems to be based on science.

Answer 4

What is pseudoscience?

Question 5

An objective approach to answering questions that relies on careful observations and experiments.

Answer 5

What is science?

Question 6

A person highly trained in the methods, factual knowledge, and theories of psychology.

Answer 6

What is a psychologist?

Question 7

In research, an animal whose behaviour is studied to derive principles that may apply to human behaviour.

Answer 7

What is the animal model?

Question 8

A psychologist who specializes in the treatment of psychological and behavioural disturbances or who does research on such disturbances.

Answer 8

What is a clinical psychologist?

Question 9

A psychologist who specializes in the treatment of milder emotional and behavioural disturbances.

Answer 9

What is a counseling psychologist?

Question 10

A medical doctor with additional training in the diagnosis and treatment of mental and emotional disorders.

Answer 10

What is a psychiatrist?

Question 11

A mental health professional (usually a medical doctor) trained to practice psychoanalysis?

Answer 11

What is a psychoanalyst?

Question 12

A mental health professional who specializes in helping people with problems that do not involve serious mental disorders.

Answer 12

What is a counselor?

Question 12

An empirical investigation structured to answer questions about the world in a systematic and intersubjective fashion (i.e., observations can be reliably confirmed by multiple observers)

Answer 12

What is scientific observation?

Question 12

Study of sensations and personal experience analyzed as basic elements.

Answer 12

What is structuralism?

Question 12

Any physical energy that an organism senses.

Answer 12

What is a stimulus?

Question 12

An old term describing the inability of introspectionists to become subjectively aware of some mental processes; an early term describing the cognitive unconscious.

Answer 12

What is imageless thought?

Question 12

Personal observation of your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviour.

Answer 12

What is introspection?

Question 13

The part of the mind of which we are subjectively unaware and that is not open to introspection.

Answer 13

What is cognitive unconscious?

Question 13

Study of thinking, learning, and perception in whole units, not by analysis into parts.

Answer 13

What is gestalt psychology?

Question 14

School of psychology that considers behaviours in terms of active adaptations.

Answer 14

What is functionalism?

Question 15

Darwin’s thoery that evolution favours those plants and animals best suited to their living conditions.

Answer 15

What is natural selection?

Question 16

School of thought in psychology that emphasizes study of observable actions over study of the mind.

Answer 16

What is behaviorism?

Question 17

Any muscular action, glandular activity, or other identifiable aspect of behaviour.

Answer 17

What is response?

Question 18

A behaviorist approach that rejects both introspection and any study of mental events, such as thinking, as inappropriate topics for scientific psychology.

Answer 18

What is radical behaviorism?

Question 19

In Freudian theory, the parts of the mind that are beyond awareness, especially conflicts, impulses, and desires not directly known to a person.

Answer 19

What is dynamic unconscious?

Question 20

Freudian approach to psychotherapy emphasizing the exploration of the unconscious using free association, dream interpretation, resistance, and transference to uncover unconscious conflicts.

Answer 20

What is psychoanalysis?

Question 21

Psychologists who accept the broad features of Freud's theory but have revised the theory to include the role of cultural and social factors while still accepting some of its basic concepts.

Answer 21

Neo-Freudians

Question 22

Any theory of behaviour that emphasizes internal conflicts, motives, and unconscious forces.

Answer 22

What is psychodynamic theory?

Question 23

The study of information processing, thinking, reasoning, and problem solving.

Answer 23

What is cognitive psychology?

Question 24

Defining a scientific concept by stating the specific actions or procedures used to measure it. For example, hunger might be defined as the number of hours of food deprivation.

Answer 24

What is operational definition?

Question 25

The idea that all behaviour has prior causes that would completely explain one's choices and actions if all such causes were known.

Answer 25

What is determinism?

Question 26

The ability to freely make choices that are not controlled by genetics, learning, or unconscious forces; the idea that human beings are capable of making choices or decisions themselves.

Answer 26

What is free will?

Question 27

Study of people as inherently good and motivated to learn and improve.

Answer 27

What is humanistic psychology?

Question 28

The process of fully developing personal potentials.

Answer 28

What is self-actualization?

Question 29

The scientific study of behaviour and mental processes.

Answer 29

What is psychology?

Question 30

The approach acknowledging that biological, psychological, and social factors interact to influence human behaviour and mental processes.

Answer 30

What is the biopsychosocial model?

Question 31

The attempt to explain behaviour in terms of underlying biological principles.

Answer 31

What is the biological perspective?

Question 32

Approach that emphasizes inherited, adaptive aspects of behaviour and mental processes.

Answer 32

What is evolutionary psychology?

Question 33

The broader field of biopsychologists and others who study the brain and nervous system, such as biologists and biochemists.

Answer 33

What is neuroscience?

Question 34

The traditional view that behaviour is shaped by psychological processes occurring at the level of the individual.

Answer 34

What is the psychological perspective?

Question 35

The focus on the importance of social contexts in influencing the behaviour of individuals.

Answer 35

What is the social perspective?

Question 36

Rules that define acceptable and expected behaviour for members of a group.

Answer 36

What are social norms?

Question 37

A tendency for females and female-related issues to be underrepresented in research, whether psychological or otherwise.

Answer 37

What is gender bias in research?

Question 38

The idea that behaviour must be judged relative to the values of the culture in which it occurs.

Answer 38

What is cultural relativity?

Question 39

In scientific research, the process of naming and classifying.

Answer 39

What is description?

Question 40

In psychology, being able to state the causes of a behaviour.

Answer 40

What is understanding?

Question 41

In psychology, an ability to accurately forecast behaviour.

Answer 41

What is prediction?

Question 42

In psychology, altering conditions that influence behaviour.

Answer 42

What is control?

Question 43

In psychology, a type of reflection involving the support of beliefs through scientific explanation and observation.

Answer 43

What is critical thinking?

Question 44

The deliberate attempt to uncover how a commonsense belief or scientific theory might be false.

Answer 44

What is falsification?

Question 45

A form of critical thinking based on careful measurement, controlled observation, and repeatable results.

Answer 45

What is the scientific method?

Question 46

Predicted outcome of an experiment, or an educated guess about the relationship between variables.

Answer 46

What is a hypothesis?

Question 47

Comprehensive explanation of observable events.

Answer 47

What is a theory?

Question 48

Information that is provided by participants about their own thoughts, emotions, or behaviours, typically on a questionnaire or during an interview.

Answer 48

What is self-report data?

Question 49

Descriptive research method in which participants are asked the same question.

Answer 49

What is a survey?

Question 50

The entire group of people from which a sample is drawn.

Answer 50

What is a population?

Question 51

A subset of a population being studied.

Answer 51

What is a sample?

Question 52

A small, randomly selected part of a larger population that accurately reflects the characteristics of the whole population.

Answer 52

What is a representative sample?

Question 53

A subpart of a larger population that does not accurately reflect the characteristics of the whole population.

Answer 53

What is a biased sample?

Question 54

Deliberate tendency to provide polite, socially acceptable responses.

Answer 54

What is social desirability?

Question 55

Data that come from watching participants and recording their behaviour.

Answer 55

What is observational data?

Question 56

Observing behaviour as it unfolds in natural settings.

Answer 56

What is naturalistic observation?

Question 57

Observing behaviour in situations that have been set up by the researcher.

Answer 57

What is structured observation?

Question 58

Changes in an organism's behaviour brought about by an awareness of being observed.

Answer 58

What is observer effect?

Question 59

The tendency of an observer to distort observations of perceptions to match his or her expectations.

Answer 59

What is observer bias?

Question 60

Data that come from participants' physiological processes (including measures of the brain and heart, muscles, and the production of hormones).

Answer 60

What is physiological data?

Question 61

Factor or characteristic manipulated or measured in research.

Answer 61

What is a variable?

Question 62

A study in which the investigator manipulates at least one variable while measuring at least one other variable.

Answer 62

What is an experiment?

Question 63

Variable manipulated by the researcher in an experiment.

Answer 63

What is the independent variable?

Question 64

The element of an experiment that measures any effect of the manipulation.

Answer 64

What is the dependent variable?

Question 65

A condition or factor that may change and is excluded from influencing the outcome of the experiment.

Answer 65

What is an extraneous variable?

Question 66

Humans (also referred to as participants) or animals whose behaviour is investigated in an experiment.

Answer 66

What are experimental subjects?

Question 67

Humans whose behaviour is investigated in an experiment.

Answer 67

What are participants?

Question 68

Group that receives the treatment the study is designed to test.

Answer 68

What is the experimental group?

Question 69

Subjects in an experimental study who do not receive the treatment being investigated.

Answer 69

What is the control group?

Question 70

Use of chance to place subjects in experimental and control groups.

Answer 70

What is random assignment?

Question 71

The type of experimental results that would rarely occur by chance alone.

Answer 71

What is statistically significant?

Question 72

A statistical technique for combining the results of many studies on the same subject.

Answer 72

What is meta-analysis?

Question 73

Changes in the behaviour of study participants caused by the unintended influence of their own expectations.

Answer 73

What is research participant bias?

Question 74

Changes in behaviour due to participants' expectations that a drug (or other treatment) will have some effect.

Answer 74

What is the placebo effect?

Question 75

Inactive substance or treatment that is distinguishable from a real, active substance or treatment.

Answer 75

What is a placebo?

Question 76

Research in which the subjects do not know which treatment they receive.

Answer 76

What is a single-blind study?

Question 77

Changes in participants' behaviour caused by the unintended influence of a researcher's actions.

Answer 77

What is researcher bias?

Question 78

A prediction that prompts people to act in ways that make the prediction come true.

Answer 78

What is a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Question 79

Research in which neither the observer nor the subjects know which subjects received which treatment.

Answer 79

What is a double-blind study?

Question 80

A descriptive study in which researchers wish to compare groups of people, but cannot randomly assign them to groups.

Answer 80

What is a quasi-experimental study?

Question 81

Descriptive study that quantifies the degree to which events, measures, or variables are associated.

Answer 81

What is correlational research?

Question 82

The existence of a consistent systematic relationship between two events, measures, or variables.

Answer 82

What is correlation?

Question 83

A statistical index ranging from -1.00 to +1.00 that indicates the direction and degree of correlation.

Answer 83

What is the correlation coefficient?

Question 84

The act of causing some effect.

Answer 84

What is causation?

Question 85

In-depth analysis of the behaviour of one person or a small number of people.

Answer 85

What is case study (clinical method)?