Research Method

Research Methods:

• Hindsight Bias- tendency to believe, after learning the outcome, that you knew it all along
• overconfidence- tend to think we knew more than we do
• The Barnum Effect- tendency for people to accept very general or vague characterizations of themselves and take them to be accurate
• Applied v.s. Basic Research:

          - applied research has clear, practical applications; you can use it!
          - basic research explores questions that you may be curious about, but not intended to be immediately used

• hypothesis- expresses a relationship between two variables; variables can vary among participants in a study

          - independent variable: whatever is being manipulated in the experiment
          - dependent variable: whatever is being measured in the experiment

• Operational Definitions- explain what you mean in the hypothesis; how will the variables be measured in "real life" terms

Types of Research:

• Descriptive Research- describing what you see; any research that observes and records

1. Case Study: detailed picture of one or few subjects
2. Naturalistic Observation
3. Surveys: use interview, mail, phone, internet, etc... most common type; measures correlation; cheap and fast but has a low response rate

• Random Sampling- identify the population you want to study; sample must be representative of the population you want to study
• False Consensus Effect: tendency to overestimate extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors
• Naturalistic Observation- in which you watch your subjects in their natural environments, do not manipulate the environment
• Hawthorne Effect: just the fact that you know you are in an experiment can cause change
• Correlational Method- expresses a relationship between two variables; does not show causation
• measured using correlation coefficient: a number that measures the strength of a relationship (-1 to +1); relationship gets weaker the closer you get to zero
• positive correlation: variables go in the SAME direction
• negative correlation: variables go in the OPPOSITE direction

Experimental Research:

• explores cause and effect of a relationship
• independent variable: manipulates, effect is being studied
• dependent variable: changes in response to independent variable, is measured

Experimental and Control Group:

• experimental: exposes participants to the treatment
• control: comparison for evaluating the effects

Experimental Methods:

• single blind study- subjects are unaware if assigned to experimental or control group
• double blind study- neither subjects nor experimenters know which group is control or experimental
• descriptive statistic: describes the results of research
• inferential statistic: used to make an inference or draw conclusion beyond the raw data
• central tendency- where does the center of the data tend to be?
• mode- most frequent occurring score in distribution
• mean- arithmetic average of scores in distribution
• median- middle score in rank-ordered in distribution
• range- difference between highest and lowest scores in distribution
• standard deviation: computed measure of how much scores vary around the mean
• high standard variation

7 Perspectives of Psychology

7 Perspectives of Psychology:

1. Biological: seek to understand, interaction between anatomy and behavior
2. Behavioral: determined by your environment and experience, not by genetics; Watson, Skinner, Pavlov
3. Cognitive: thinking; Jean Piaget
4. Evolutionary: how adaptive behavior is to our survival; natural selection... Charles Darwin
5. Humanistic: freewill, love... Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers; how do you fit in, acceptance
6. Sociocultural: much of behavior and your feelings are dictated by the culture you live in; must be taken into account when trying to understand, predict, or control behavior
7. Psychoanalytical/Psychodynamic: interaction between the conscious and unconscious (mental process that we do not normally have access to but are influenced by); shapes behavior; importance of childhood experiences to develop personality... Sigmund Freud

Multiple Personalities Disorders

Psychology Notes: Psychological Therapy

Psychological Therapy
- treatments based on psychological principles

• biomedical therapy: treatments that focus on altering the brain with drugs, psycho-surgery, or electro-convulsive therapy
• therapy - used to be abnormal but became institutionalized; new drugs and better therapy, US want policy of deinstitutionalization

Psychotherapy:

1. Psychoanalysis: Freud's therapy, use free association, hypnosis and dream interpretation to gain insight into the client's unconscious
2. Humanistic Therapy: focus of people's potential for self-fulfillment; focus on present and future; focus on conscious thoughts; take responsibility for your actions - instead of blaming childhood anxieties

                - group therapy and self help

• Client (Person) Centered Therapy: Carl Rogers, in which therapist uses techniques such as active listening within a genuine, accepting, empathic environment to facilitate client's growth

     3. Behavior Therapy: applies to learning principles to eliminate unwanted behavior, problems we must change to better behavior
                - systematic desensitization: counter conditioning that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli
                - exposure therapy: form of desensitization where the client directly confronts the anxiety provoking stimulus
                - aversive conditioning: counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state with an unwanted behavior
                - operant conditioning: Token Economy- operant conditioning procedure that rewards a desired behavior
     4. Cognitive Therapy: teaches people how to think and how to act; based on assumptions that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions

Biomedical Therapy:

• Psychopharmacology- study effects of drugs on mind and behavior
• Antipsychotic Drugs: (hallucination, delusion, and agitations) class of medicines used to treat psychosis and other mental or emotional conditions
• Antianxiety Drugs: includes drugs like Valium and Librium; like alcohol, depress nervous system activity, most widely abused drugs
• Antidepressant Drugs: lift you out of depression; most increase the neurotransmitter
• Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft: work by blocking serotonin reuptake
• Electroconvulsive Therapy: for severely depressed patients in which brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient

Psychology Notes: Psychological Disorders

Psychological Disorders:

• "harmful dysfunction" in which behavior is judged to be atypical, disturbing, maladaptive, and unjustifiable
• Medical Perspective - psychological disorders are sicknesses and can be diagnosed, treated and cured
• Bio-Psycho-Social Perspective: assumed biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors combined to interact causing psychological disorders

                - used to be called Diathesis - Stress Model: diathesis meaning predisposition and stress meaning environment

• DSM-IV: Diagnostic Statistical Manual

                - neurotic disorders: distressing but one can still function in society and act rationally
                - psychotic disorders: person loses contact with reality, experiences distorted perceptions

• Anxiety Disorder: patient fears something will happen to them; state of intense apprehension, uneasiness, uncertainty, or fear
• Phobia: person experiences sudden episode of intense dread; irrational fear
• Generalized Anxiety Order (GAD): person is continuously tense, apprehensive and in a state of automatic nervous system arousal; constantly tense and worried, feels inadequate, oversensitive, can't concentrate, and suffers from insomnia
• Panic Disorder: marked by a minute-long episode of intense dread in which a person experiences terror and accompanying chest pain, choking and other frightening sensations
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): persistent unwanted thoughts (obsessions) cause someone to feel the need (compulsion) to engage in a particular action
• Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): flashbacks or nightmares following a person's involvement in or observation of an extremely stressful event; memories of the event cause anxiety
• Somatoform Disorder: occurs when a person manifests a psychological problem through a physiological symptom
• Hypochondriasis: frequent physical complaints for which medical doctors are unable to locate the cause; believe that minor issues (headache, upset stomach) are indicative are more severe illnesses
• Conversion Disorder: report existence of severe physical problems with no biological reason; ex: blindness and paralysis
• Dissociative Disorder: involve a disruption in the conscious process

                1. Psychogenic Disorders: person cannot remember things with no physiological basis for disruption in meaning; retrograde amnesia, NOT organic
                2. Dissociative Fugue: people with psychogenic amnesia find themselves in an unfamiliar environment
                3. Dissociative Identity Disorder: aka Multiple Personality Disorder; person has several rather than one integrated personality; people with DID commonly have a history of a childhood abuse or trauma

• Mood Disorders: experience extreme or inappropriate emotion

                - Major Depression: unipolar depression; unhappy for at least two weeks with no apparent cause; depression is common cold of psychological disorders
                - Seasonal Affective Disorder: experience depression during winter month; based not on temperature, but on amount of sunlight; treated with light therapy
                - Bipolar Disorder: aka maniac depression; involves periods of depression and maniac episodes; involves feelings of high energy
                - Personality Disorders: well-established, maladaptive ways of behaving that negatively affect people's ability to function; dominates personality

1. Antisocial Personality Disorder: lack of empathy; little regard for other's feelings; view the world as hostile and look out for themselves
2. Dependent Personality Disorder: rely too much on the attention and help of others
3. Histrionic Personality Disorder: needs to be the center of attention
4. Narcissistic Personality Disorder: having an unwarranted sense of self-importance; thinking you are the center of the universe 

• Schizophrenic Disorders - 1 in every 100 people; disorganized thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions/actions

                - disorganized thinking: fragmented and bizarre and distorted with false beliefs, comes from a breakdown in selective attention, cannot filter out information
                -delusions: false belief, delusions of persecution (someone is chasing you), delusion of grandeur
                - disturbed perceptions: hallucinations - sensory experiences without sensory stimulation
                - inappropriate emotions and actions: laughing at inappropriate times, flat effect, senseless, compulsive acts, catatonia - motionless

• Positive v.s. Negative Symptoms: 1. hallucinations 2. disorganized 3. diluted in speaking 4. inappropriate laughter, tears, or rage ; 1. toneless voice 2. expressionless 3. mute 4. very rigid body

Types of Schizophrenia:

• Disorganized Schizophrenia - disorganized speech or behavior, or flat or inappropriate emotion; "imagine the worst"
• Paranoid Schizophrenia - preoccupation with delusions or hallucinations, "someone is out to get me"
• Catatonic Schizophrenia - parrot like repeating of another's speech and movements
• Undifferentiated Schizophrenia - many and varied symptoms

Psychology Notes: Personality

Psychology
- scientific study of behavuir and mental processes

• behavior - anything that you do that can be observed
• mental processes - internal experiences such as : thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions
• systematic study - systematic collection and examination of data (empirical evidence) to support or disapprove hypotheses (predictions) rather than depending on common sense

Key Players in History of Psychology:
- can be traced back 2000 years ago to early philosophers, biologists, and physiologist of ancient Greece

• Hippocrates: Greek physiologist that thought the mind or soul resided in the brain; believed that it was not composed of physical substance; called mind-body-dualism (seeing mind and body as two different things that interact)
• Plato (350BC): Greek philosopher that believed that who we are and what we know are innate (inborn)
• Aristotle: Plato's student, believed that who we are and what we know are acquired from experience
• monism - seeing mind and body as different aspects of the same thing
• John Locke: believed that knowledge comes from observations and what we know comes from experiences
• tabula rasa - blank slates
• "The mind is like a blank slate in which the environment writes upon."
• Rene Descartes: believed that what we know is innate; "I think therefore I am."

- Nature: certain elementary ideas are innate to human mind; not gained through experiences
        -"Men are born, not made."
- Nurture: anything that we know, we have learned through experiences

• Wilhelm Wundt - 1879, University of Leipzig

               - Psychology's first experiment, birth of science
               - established first psychology lab
               - introspection (look inward)

• Edward Titchener

Structuralism:
        -Wundt, Titchener, Hall (founder and first president of APA)

• uses introspection to explore the structural elements of the mind

               - break down mental processes into the most basic parts

Functionalism:
- a reaction to structuralism

• sought to explain how our mental and behavioral processes function

               - How do they enable us to adapt, survive, and flourish?
               - focused on purpose of behavior

• William James

conscious - things we are aware of
preconscious - things we are aware of if we think of them
unconscious - deep hidden reservoir that holds true "us"; all desires
id - exists entirely in the unconscious (not aware); hidden animalistic nature
ego - develops after the id; personality
superego - difference between right and wrong; our conscience, bot real but ideal; seek perfection, judges actions based on positive feelings or guilt