Experimental Research

Experimental Research: Explores cause and effect relationships

ExperimentationIndependent Variable: Experimental factor that is being manipulated

Dependent Variable: Variable that may change in resoinse to manipulation

Experimental and Control Groups

Experimental Group: The condition of an experiment that explores participants to the treatment

Control Group: The condition of the experiment that serves as a comparison for evaluating the effect of the treatment

Experimental Method

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 STATISTICS V. INFERENTIAL STATISTICS

Descriptive Statistics: describe the results of research

Inferential Statistics: are used to make an inference or draw a conclusion beyond the raw data

Measures of Central TendencyCentral tendency - where does the center of the data tend to be?

Mode: The most frequently occuring score in a distribution

Mean: Average if scores in distribution

Median: Middle score in a rank-ordered distribution

Range: Difference between the highest and lowest scores in distribution

Measures of Variation

Standard Deviation: A computed measure of how much scores vary around the mean

Correlational Research

Correlational Research: express a relationship between two variables
-Does not show causation

-Measured using a correlation coeffecient-a number that measures the strength of a relationship

-The relationship gets weaker the closer it gets to zero

                             Types of Correlation

Positive Correlation: The variables go in the same direction

Negative Correlation: The variables go in opposite directions

Descriptive Research

Descriptive Research: describe the subject that is being observed
 -Any research that observes and records

Types of Descriptive Research

~Case Studies

~Survey

~Naturalistic Observation

Case Studies: A detailed picture of one or a few sunjects

Survey: Measures correlation and can be done in an interview, mail, phone, internet, etc.
-Most common type of study in psychology

Random Sampling: Identify the population you want to study
-Sample must be represenative of the population you want to study

*Why do we sample?*
-One reason is the false consensus effect=the tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors

-Reasons Why Survey Method Is Sometimes Bad--Low response rate

-People lie or just misintrepret themselves

-Wording effects

Naturalistic Observation: Watch subjects in their natural environments and avoid in manipulating it

Hawthorne Effect: when the subject becomes aware that they are apart of an experiment being conducted, changes their activities in their environment

Research Methods

In psychology, many methods of research is done to subject in mind and also add a scientific information as well to it.

Hindsight Bias: The tendency to believe, after learning the outcome, that you knew it all along

Over Confidence: We tend to think we know more than we do

The Barnum Effect: It is the tendency for people to accept very general or vague characterizatins of themselves and take them to be accurate

                       APPLIED V. BASIC RESEARCH
Applied: clear, practical practices

Basic: explores questions that you may be curious about, but not intended to be immediately used

Hypothesis: Expresses a relationship between two variables

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 your hypothesis
-How willthe variables be measured in "real life" terms

Schizophrenia Disorders

About 1 in every 100 person are diagnosed with schizophrenia

Symptoms of Schizophrenia

1. Disorganized Thinking
2. Disturbed Perceptions
3. Inappropriate Emotions and Actions

Disorganized Thinking: The thinking of a person with schizophrenia is fragmented and bizarre and distorted with false beliefs
-Disorganized thinking comes from a breakdown in selective attention

Delusions (false beliefs)
-Delusions of Persecution: people are out to get you
-Delusions of Grandeur: greater and more powerful than you really are

Disturbed Perceptions: hallucinations sensory experiences without sensory stimulation

Inappropriate Emotions and Actions: Laugh at inappropriate times, flat effect, senseless compulsive acts, and catatonia meaning motionless

              Positive vs. Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia
Positive: hallucinations, disorganized, and deluded in their talk

Negative: toneless voice-monotone, expressionless face, mute, and rigid body


                        Types of Schizophrenia
Disorganized Schizophrenia: Disorganized speech or behavior, or flat or inappropriate emotion
-Imagine the worst

Paranoid Schizophrenia: Preoccupation with delusions and hallucinations

Catatonic Schizophrenia: Flat Effect, waxy flexibility, and have parrot like manner in which they mimic another's speech and movements
Undifferentiated Schizophrenia: Many and varied symptoms

Personality Disorders

Personality disorders is a well established maladaptive ways of behaving that negatively affect people's ability to function
-Dominates their personality

Antisocial Personality Disorder: lack of empathy, little regard for other's feelings and view the world as hostile and look out for themselves

Dependent Personality Disorder: Rely too much on the attention and help of others

Histrionic Personality Disorder:  Needs to be the center of attention and it is whether acting silly or dressing provocatively

Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Having an unwarranted sense of self-importance and thinking that you are the center of the universe

Mood Disorders

Mood Disorders is an experience of extreme or inappropriate emotion

Major Depression: unhappy for at least two weeks with no apparent cause

Depression is the common cold of psychological disorders

Seasonal Affective Disorder: experience depression during the winter months 

-Based not on temperature, but on amount of sunlight

-Treated with light therapy

Bipolar Disorder: involves periods of depression and manic episodes

-Manic episodes involve feelings of high energy

Dissociative Disorders

Dissociative disorders involve a disruption in the conscious process

THREE TYPES

Psychogenic Amnesia: a person cannot remember things with no physiological basis for the disruption in memory
-Retrograde Amnesia
-Not organic amnesia

Dissociative Fugue: people with psychogenic amnesia find themselves in an unfamiliar environment

Dissociative Identity Disorder: person who has several rather than one integrated personality
-People with DID commonly have a history of childhood abuse or trauma

Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety Disorders:  is a group of conditions where the primary symptoms are anxiety of defenses against anxiety

-the patient fears something awful will happen to them

-they are in a state of intense apprehension, uneasiness, uncertainty, or fear

Phobias: A person who experiences sudden episodes of intense dread

-Must be irrational fear

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): An anxiety disorder in which a person is continuously tense, apprehensive and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal

Panic Disorder: An anxiety 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 cause someone to feel the need 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 Disorders: occurs when a person manifests a psychological problem through a physiological symptom

 

TWO TYPES

Hydrochodriasis: has frequent physical complaints for which medical doctors are unable to locate the cause

-like a headache would seem like a indicative symptom to a severe illness
Conversion Disorders: report the existence of severe physical problems with no biological reason

Psychological Disorders

Psychological Disorders: A "harmful dysfunction" in which behavior is judged to be atypical, disturbing, maladaptive, and unjustifiable

Current Perspectives-Medical Perspective: psychological disorders are sicknesses and can be diagnosed, treated, and cured
-Bio-Psycho-Social Perspectives: assumes biological, psychological, and socioccultural factors combine to interact causing psychological disorders

Diathesis-Stress Model: diathesis meaning predisposition and stress meaning environment

Classifying Psychological Disorders

DSM-IV: Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: the big book of disorders
Neurotic Disorders: distressing but one can still function in society and act rationally
Psychotic Disorders:Person loses constact with reality experiences distorted perceptions

The Seven Perspective

1. Biological: The interaction between anatomy and behavior
   -What affects your body affects your behavior

2. Behavioral: Study of observable behavior
   -Determined by your environment and experience not genetics

3. Cognitive: In order to understand someone's behavior, we must understand how thet think

4. Evolutionary: Behavior can be best explained in terms of how adaptive that behavior is to our survival

5. Humanistic: Humans have unique qualities of behavior different from other animals
   -Free will, importance of feelings, love and acceptance

6. Sociocultural: Your behavior and your feelings are dictated by the culture you live in

7. Psychoanalytical/Psychodynamic: The interation between the conscious and unconscious shape behavior

Key People in the History of Psychology

Hippocrates: was a Greek psychologist who believed in mind-body dualism meaning that mind and body were saw as two different things that interact.

Platos: was a Greek philosopher that believed that who we are and what we know are innate (inborn)

Aristotle: he believed in monism which is seeing the mind and body as different aspects of the same thing

John Locke: believed that knowledge comes from observation and what we know from experience. In which he also coined the phrase "abula rasa" meaning 'blank slate'.