Schools of Thought
Sigmund Freud and his followers started this school, which focuses on unconscious drives and childhood experience.
What is psychodynamic psychology?
Any information collected through the research steps of formal observation or measurement.
What are data?
This committee of at least five members reviews a study before it begins to decide whether its benefits outweigh its costs.
What is the Institutional Review Board (IRB)?
If I add up all the scores in a set, then divide by the number of scores in that set. I am calculating the .....
What is mean or average?
This branching, treelike part of a neuron collects messages from other cells.
What is the dendrite?
Watson made Little Albert afraid of a white rat by pairing the rat with a flash of light.
What is a loud noise? Watson paired the rat with a loud noise, not a flash of light.
Wundt and Titchener asked people to describe exactly what they experienced while doing a mental task, such as reading or viewing colors. This method is called...
What is introspection?
After the game ends, your friend says, “I knew they would win all along.” Thinking you could have predicted an outcome you already know is called this type of bias...
What is hindsight bias?
At the end of a study, the researcher explains its true purpose and removes any harmful aftereffects. This step is called...
What is debriefing?
Freud’s detailed study of “Little Hans,” one boy with a fear of horses, is an example of this research design.
What is a case study?
This lobe, at the back of the skull, processes what you see.
What is the occipital lobe?
The left side of the brain controls the left side of the body.
What is contralateral control? The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body, and the right hemisphere controls the left side.
Watson and Skinner led this school, which said psychologists should study only behavior they can observe, not the mind.
What is behaviorism?
Studying in several short sessions spread over time works better than cramming. This principle is called...
What is the spacing effect?
Science must be this: its procedures are objective and free from the scientist’s personal bias.
What is empirical?
Using a randomized process, such as a coin flip, to decide which group each individual participant joins in a condition is performed. This tries to ensure the groups start out equal.
What is random assignment?
This part of the brain stem controls heart rate and breathing.
What is the medulla?
The mean is the score at the exact center of a set of scores.
What is the median? The median is the score at the exact center. The mean is the arithmetic average.
Ebbinghaus, Bartlett, and Piaget belong to this school, which studies mental processes like memory, thinking, and judgment.
What is cognitive psychology?
Cultures that value group harmony and duty to family over personal success are described with this term.
What is collectivism (collectivist)?
A researcher decides to measure “stress” as a person’s heart rate. A precise statement like this, turning an idea into something measurable, is called...
What is an operational definition?
Repeating a study to see whether it produces the same results.
What is replication?
This part of the limbic system regulates our reactions to fear and aggression.
What is the amygdala?
Eyewitnesses who feel confident about who they saw are almost always correct.
What is “confidence does not equal accuracy”? Eyewitnesses feel just as confident when they are wrong as when they are right.
This Greek philosopher said a child is born as a “blank slate” and gains knowledge through learning and experience.
Who is Aristotle?
Testing yourself instead of rereading your notes builds this skill: judging how well you know the material. It is thinking about thinking..
What is metacognition?
Telling participants a study is about learning when its true topic is obedience to authority is an example of this ethical concern.
What is deception?
A researcher who knows the hypothesis treats the groups differently without meaning to, and the results drift toward what the researcher expected.
What is experimenter or researcher bias?
This division of the autonomic nervous system prepares your body for action when you feel stressed.
What is the sympathetic nervous system?
A study finds that children who watch more violent TV act more aggressively. This proves that violent TV causes aggression.
What is “correlation does not prove causation”? A third variable, such as the parents’ discipline style, could cause both.