Introductory Psychology CLEP

Psychology --Scientific study of human behavior and mental processes. Answers philosophical questions about human nature. Uses methods borrowed from other disciplines. Wilhelm Wundt --German. Set up first psychology lab. Was a Structuralist. Studied how people sense and perceive world around them. Structualists --Believed that consciousness was made of basic elements. combined in different ways to produce different perceptions. They wanted to discover the form or elements of mental experience. introspection --Technique favored by structuralists for examining mental experience. Involves reporting one's own conscious thought and feelings. It fell out of favor, too subjective, not usable on children or animals. Edward Titchener --Set up first American psychology lab, was a structuralist. Functionalists --Believed mental experiences were adaptive, or functional for people. Believed behavior and consciousness allowed people & animals to adjust to environments. William James --a most notable functionalist. Current state of the study of psychology --psychologists study both the structure and functions of behavior. both are methods, are of many that are used to study psychology. Approaches to understanding human behavior --Biological, Psychodynamic, Behavioral, Cognitive Approach, Humanistic Biological approach --Focus on physiological and biochemical processes might produce psychological phenomena. Psychodynamic approach --Thoughts, feelings and behaviors stem from the interaction of innate drives and restrictions on those drives. Most important drives according to Sigmund Freud are that of sexual and aggression. [we have drives]+[society, limitations]=[conflicts] how we approach conflicts determines personality. The reason for much of your behavior are unconscious and rooted in childhood. Behaviorist approach --Explains behavior in terms of learned responses to predictable patterns of environmental stimuli. Pavlov (and his dogs) = classical conditioning Skinner = operant conditioning They study animals in order to understand people more often than the other approaches. They don't believe in expectations, feelings or thoughts. Cognitive approach --reaction against behaviorism. Focuses on explaining behavior in terms of expectations, feelings, and thoughts. Humanistic approach --They believe that people are not machines based on genetic code, stimuli, or calculations, but instead humans have the desire for optimal growth & development (i.e. self-actualization). They believe people are basically good and focus on positive aspects of development. experiments --cause and effect relationships independent variables --The "cause" & always involves treating subjects in at least two different ways experimental group --exposed to cause control group --not exposed to cuase dependent variable --the "effects" of the cause placebo effect --different behavior because the subject knows they are being tested/getting special treatment placebo --fake special treatment blind study --subjects unaware if they are reciving special treatment or not double blind study --both experimenter and experimetee are unaware of who has recivied special treatment correlational studies --assessing the relationship between two variables positive relationship --high score in one variable results in/correlates to a high score in another variable (+1) negative relationship --high score in one variable results in/correlates to low scores in another variable (-1) correlation coefficient --(+/-)1, the higher the absolute value = more correlation, +/- indicates type of relationship, 0 is no relationship surveys --participants fill out questionaries that ask about variables, researchers determine patterns