Vocab
Psychology
The science of understanding of the human mind and its functions (how people think, feel, and behave)
Hypothesis
A smart guess or prediction about what you think will happen in an experiment.
Theory
Theory-A big idea that explains something important, based on lots of experiments and evidence.
Why is psychology like tomatoes?
Because there are many different ways to study it, and different schools of thought (the way you can use tomatoes to make wildly different food)
Name at least two schools of thought in Psych
Behaviorism, Cognitive Psych, Psychoanalysis, Gestalt, etc
What is Cognition?
Cognition is how our brains think and understand things. It includes all the mental activities we do, like learning, remembering, problem-solving, and making decisions.
What is Memory Storage?
Storage is when our brains keep the information we’ve encoded. It’s like putting memories in a "brain file" so we can find and use them later.
Validity
How well a test or experiment actually measures what it’s supposed to measure.
Which type of Psychology is Pavlov associated with?
Behaviorism (dog, saliva, bell, etc)
Who is considered the Father of Modern Psychology?
Wundt
Sample
A small group of people or things chosen from a larger group to learn about the whole group.
Population
The entire group of people or things that you want to learn about in your study.
What is Perception?
Perception is how we take in and understand the world around us using our senses, like sight, sound, and touch. It’s how we make sense of what we see, hear, and feel.
Retrieval is the process of finding and using the memories we’ve stored. It’s like opening a "brain file" to remember something we learned or experienced before.
Reliability
How much you can trust a test or experiment to give the same results every time you do it.
Ethics
Rules about what’s right and wrong that scientists follow to make sure they’re being fair and not hurting anyone in their studies.
Bias
When someone unfairly favors one thing over another, which can mess up the results of an experiment.
Confounding Variable
Something unexpected that changes during an experiment and might mess up the results, making it hard to know if the change was caused by the thing you were testing or something else
What's the difference between Behaviorism and Cognitive Psychology?
Behaviorism focuses on behavior you can SEE, and Cognitive Psych focuses on how the brain works (like a computer)
What is Memory?
Memory is the ability to remember things we’ve learned, experienced, or seen. It’s like our brain’s way of storing information so we can use it later.
What are Heuristics?
Heuristics are simple rules or shortcuts our brains use to make quick decisions. They help us solve problems faster, but they aren’t always perfect and can sometimes lead to mistakes.
Placebo Effect
A fake treatment that looks like the real thing, used in experiments to see if the real treatment actually works.
Random Assignment
Putting people or things into groups by chance, so the groups are as similar as possible from the start.
Double Blind
A setup in an experiment where neither the participants nor the people running it know who is getting the special treatment, to make sure results aren’t influenced by anyone’s expectations.
Causation
When one thing directly causes another thing to happen.
Case Study
A detailed look at one person, group, or situation to learn something important.
What are the three steps to memory recall?
What are examples of Cognitive Bias? List at least two
The Confirmation Bias
The Hindsight Bias
The Anchoring Bias
The Misinformation Effect
The Actor-Observer Bias
The False Consensus Effect
The Halo Effect
The Self-Serving Bias
The Availability Heuristic
The Optimism Bias
Independent Variable
The part of an experiment that you change on purpose to see what happens.
Dependent Variable
The part of an experiment that you measure or observe to see if it changes because of what you did.
Control Group
A group in an experiment that doesn’t get the special treatment, so scientists can see if the treatment really makes a difference.
Experimental Group
The group in an experiment that gets the special treatment to see if it has any effect.
Correlation
A relationship between two things where if one thing changes, the other might change too, but it doesn’t mean one causes the other.
What is Encoding?
Encoding is the first step in creating a memory. It’s when our brains take in information from our surroundings and change it into a form that can be stored.
What is a Cognitive Bias?
Cognitive bias is a mistake in thinking that affects the decisions and judgments we make. It happens when our brains take shortcuts, which can sometimes lead us to the wrong conclusion.