Psychology for Dummies

Psychology For Dummies ─────────────── ▪ Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes ▪ One of the cardinal rules of science is that whatever is being investigated must yield to the empirical test and be replicated. That is, the existence of something ▪ To enable psychology to contribute to the community of knowledge about people, over the years, psychologists as a group have come up with a basic set of broad theoretical perspectives, or frameworks, to guide the work of psychology. These broad theoretical frameworks are sometimes referred to as metatheories ▪ The biological approach centers on the biological underpinnings of behavior, including the effects of evolution and genetics. ▪ Behaviorism emphasizes the role and influence of a person’s environment and previous learning experiences to understanding behavior ▪ In the framework of behaviorism, the “why” of behavior can be explained by looking at the circumstances in which it occurs and the consequences surrounding someone’s actions. ▪ The cognitive framework centers on the mental processing of information, including the specific functions of attention, concentration, reasoning, problem solving, and memory. ▪ The sociocultural approach focuses on the social and cultural factors that affect behavior. ▪ Developmental psychology is a metatheory that is built on the idea that mental processes and behavior change over time, from one mental process and behavior to another in a progressive manner. ▪ Early approaches focused mostly on children, and this is typically what people think when it comes to developmental psychology. But the contemporary approach covers the span of a human life and is known as lifespan development. ▪ Evolutionary psychology searches for the causes and explanations for mental processes and behavior through the lens of adaptive fitness and natural selection. ▪ comparative psychology that studies animal behavior as an analog for human behavior. ▪ The humanistic and existential metatheory emphasizes that each person is unique and that humans have the ability and responsibility to make choices in their lives. ▪ The psychoanalytic/psychodynamic metatheory emphasizes the importance of unconscious mental processes, early child development, personality, the self, attachment patterns, and relationships. ▪ Feminist psychology focuses on the political, economic, and social rights of women and how these forces influence the behavior of both men and women. ▪ The Postmodern metatheory questions the very core of psychological science, challenging its approach to truth and its focus on the individual. ▪ Postmodernists make the argument that people in powerful positions have too much to say about what is “real” and “true” in psychology, and they advocate a social constructionist view of reality, which states that the concepts of “reality” and “truth” are defined, or constructed, by society. ▪ The biopsychosocial model of psychology represents a popular attempt at integration. ▪ The basic idea behind this model is that human behavior and mental processes are the products of biological, psychological, and social influences. ▪ As material beings, humans are made of flesh and bones. Any discussion of thoughts, feelings, and other psychological concepts that doesn’t factor in biological makeup and function, especially the brain and nervous system, ignores the fundamental facts of human existence. ▪ When most people think about psychology, they have this aspect of the biopsychosocial model in mind (no pun intended). Thoughts, feelings, desires, beliefs, and numerous other mental concepts are addressed by the biopsychosocial model through analysis of the role of the mind. ▪ Behaviorists neglect the mind. Biological psychologists study the mind as the brain. ▪ Brains don’t work and minds don’t think in a vacuum. Behavior and mental processes are embedded within a context that includes other people and things in the environment in which people live. Therefore, the social aspect of the biopsychosocial model also includes parent-child relationships, families, communities, and culture. ▪ Nature refers to the concept that behavior and mental processes are innate, inborn, and hard-wired and will unfold over time as a person develops and her genetic blueprint is revealed. Nurture refers to the idea that behavior and mental processes are not inborn and instead are learned from the environment in which people live. ▪ A theory is a set of related statements about a set of objects or events (the ones being studied) that explains how these objects or events are related. ▪ Parsimony: It must be the simplest explanation possible that still explains the available observation. ▪ Precision: It must make precise, not overly large or vague, statements about reality. ▪ Testability: It must lend itself to scientific investigation. There must be some way to show that the theory can be wrong. ▪ as a field, psychology makes a serious effort to establish the truth of its claims with proof, or empirical evidence, which comes from applying the empirical method, an approach to truth that uses observation and experiment. ▪ Psychology, as the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes, uses the empirical method. It relies on data and information obtained from research, experimentation, observation, and measurement. The empiricist motto is “Show me the data.” ▪ Psychologists act responsibly when they are working with empirical evidence and less responsibly when not. These scientists are expected to base their work on solid data and information, not opinion. ▪ From an empirical perspective, just because a psychologist says something doesn’t make it true. ▪ Authority: Utilized to transmit information, usually in a therapy setting or the education and training process. ▪ Rationalism/logic: Used to create theories and hypotheses. If things don’t make logical sense, they probably won’t make sense when researchers use the scientific method to investigate them. ▪ Scientific method: Used as the preferred method of obtaining information and investigating behavior and mental processes. ▪ Not everything that psychologists do, talk about, and believe is based on scientific research. ▪ Psychologists use two broad categories of research when they want to scientifically evaluate a theory: descriptive research and experimental research. ▪ Descriptive research consists of observation and the collection of data without trying to manipulate any of the conditions or circumstances being observed. ▪ Experimental research involves the control and manipulation of the objects and events being investigated in order to get a better idea of the cause and effect relationships between the objects or events. ▪ A z-factor is something affecting the hypothesis that I am unaware of or not accounting for. ▪ Good research studies try to eliminate z-factors or extraneous variables by controlling for their influence and factoring them out of the explanation. ▪ Good psychology is based on solid theory and good data, whether the data is obtained through observation or experimentation. And psychology claims to make statements about all people. ▪ statistics comes riding in on a white horse to enable a psychologist to make claims about humanity based on studies and research conducted on only a few dozen or a couple hundred people. ▪ Descriptive statistics refer to the direct numerical measurement of characteristics of a population ▪ a population is defined as a well-defined, complete collection of things, objects, and so on. ▪ population is defined as a well-defined, complete collection of things, objects, and so on. ▪ Inferential statistics comes to the rescue when I can’t measure all swans, because this approach allows me to measure a sample of swans, a subset of the swan population, and then make inferences or estimates about the population as a whole from the sample that was drawn. ▪ Randomization allows researchers to make inferences about a population based on the way a sample is chosen. ▪ If you don’t randomly choose the people to measure, then you can fall prey to sampling bias, choosing in a way so that some members of the population are less likely to be included than others. Sampling bias prevents you from being able to make statements about an entire population. ▪ sample size, the number or n of individuals in your sample. ▪ A variable is the thing, characteristic, behavior, or mental process that is being measured or observed. ▪ In research, there are two types of variables, independent and dependent. ▪ A dependent variable is the thing that is impacted or altered as a function of the independent variable. ▪ independent variable impacts the dependent variable as it changes. ▪ a causal relationship. The value of the dependent variable is directly caused or influenced by the independent variable. ▪ A correlation exists between two variables when the value of one is related to the value of the other but not necessarily in a causal manner. ▪ A placebo is a decoy variable of sorts, a fake independent variable that is not expected to have an impact on the dependent variable, but the person in the study thinks it is an actual treatment or independent variable ▪ Human conduct is guided by codes of behavior known as ethics. ▪ ethics refers to the prescribing of right behavior and the proscribing of wrong behavior ▪ monism, believe that in order to achieve the most full understanding of mental processes and behavior, we have to include the brain and the body in that formulation, acknowledging the very reality that we have brains and bodies in which mental processes and behavior “live.” ▪ The idea that all of human psychology can be reduced to biology is known as biological reductionism. ▪ Changes in a person’s biology result in changes in her mental processes and behavior. ▪ Biological psychologists are a group of psychologists who have extended this intuitive belief and these casual observations, using techniques and methods of modern science to investigate the idea that changes in biology lead to changes in psychology. ▪ The human nervous system consists of two large divisions: the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS includes the brain and spinal cord. The PNS includes the nerves outside the CNS; they are in the rest (the periphery) of the body. ▪ The basic building blocks of the nervous system are nerves, neurons, and neurotransmitters and glial cells. ▪ The nerves are, essentially, bundles of neurons ▪ The neurons are individual nerve cells. ▪ Usually, they receive signals from other neurons, evaluate those signals, and then transmit new signals to other parts of the nervous system. ▪ Neurochemical electrical changes throughout the nervous system serve as a basic mechanism for psychological functions. ▪ Because these electrical changes involve the movement of chemical ions, the transmission system is called an electrochemical system. ▪ Neurotransmitters are chemicals that play a critical role ▪ in transmitting signals between neurons. ▪ The glial cells are cells within the nervous system that play a variety of support roles for the neurons; they protect neurons from damage, repair them when they are damaged, and remove damaged or dead tissue when it can’t be repaired ▪ So neurons, networks of neurons, and all the biological stuff (I know, not very scientific but I’m not a neurobiologist) underlying their function make up the neurobiology of mental processes and behavior. ▪ Some scientists propose that the biological study of the brain is really the study of neurons in networks. This approach is known as the neurocomputational approach to brain functioning. It’s “computational” because these researchers base their models of brain function- ing on the calculation processes of neurons in networks as they interact with each other by turning each other on and off with electrochemical signaling. ▪ The nervous system is a living part of the body and, therefore, has the same basic needs as any other body part: It needs fuel and immune protection. The components of the nervous system stay alive and healthy thanks to the circulatory system and other regulatory body functions. ▪ Atoms are grouped in particular ways to make up molecules that then form compounds. ▪ In the brain, molecules create cells, and cells interact with each at the cell-to-cell level. Cells interacting with each other form neuronal networks, and the neurobiology of behavior are cells and their interactions with each other. There are billions of neurons and trillions of connections. ▪ an anatomical (or anatomy) viewpoint essentially focuses on the parts ▪ functional organization view is concerned with what those parts do with respect to mental processes and behavior ▪ The anatomy of the CNS consists of both the brain and the spinal cord. Although the spinal cord is critical, the focus of this section is on the brain, which is considered to be the underlying physical foundation for psychological functioning. ▪ neuron, a specialized cell that provides the foundation for brain functioning, which is communication among nerve cells ▪ Glial cells provide the basic structure to the nervous system and nourish the neurons. ▪ A neuron is considered the information cell; it’s involved in the processing and storage of information. ▪ Soma: The cell body of the neuron containing the nucleus and supportive structures of the cell, including the mitochondria ▪ Dendrite: Projections from the cell body that receive information from other neurons ▪ Axon: The nerve fiber that conducts the electrical impulse ▪ Terminal button: The end of the axon involved in neurotransmitter release and signaling to other neurons ▪ Simply put, when information from the environment (or inside the brain itself from other neurons) comes into the brain through the sensory organs and activates a particular neuron (or, more often, a set of neurons), an action potential is created. ▪ Action potentials are the movement of electrochemical energy through a neuron toward its terminal button, toward other neurons. ▪ Something called the all-ornone law states that neurons are either “on” or “off”; they are either firing an action potential or not. After a neuron is activated, it fires. If it’s not activated: no action, no fire! ▪ When a neuron is not firing, it is considered to be in the state of a resting potential and its electrical charge is more negative on the inside relative to the outside. ▪ when a neuron receives a signal from another neuron, gates in the cell membrane (its covering) open and positive ions rush into the negatively charged inside of the cell. ▪ phantom limb syndrome in which people who have lost a limb (an arm or leg for example) continue to report feeling sensations from that limb ▪ A genetic marker is a gene with a known location on the human genome. ▪ Evolutionary psychology is a branch of psychology that says human psychology (behavior and mental processes) is the result of the evolutionary process of natural selection. ▪ Natural selection is the process by which specific genes become more or less common in a population of a species through reproduction and mating. ▪ Many brain systems involved in the symptoms of mental illness involve one particular neurotransmitter, and drugs used for the treatment of a particular illness are designed to affect the functioning of that specific neurotransmitter. ▪ Medications that are used to treat depression are called antidepressants. ▪ Most antidepressants affect one or both of two neurotransmitters: norepinephrine and serotonin. ▪ One of the most powerful treatments for psychotic symptoms are antipsychotic medications. ▪ The dopamine dysregulation hypothesis of psychosis proposes that the symptoms of psychosis result from disruptions in the action of dopamine in the brain. ▪ Anxiolytic medications are drugs designed to relieve the symptoms of anxiety disorders. ▪ Benzodiazepines are very effective in reducing anxiety. ▪ sensation is the process by which we receive raw energy/information from the environment. ▪ sensation is the process of mentally acquiring information about the world through the reception of its various forms of energy. ▪ The eyes, ears, skin, nose, and mouth are called accessory structures because they provide access to the environment. ▪ Electrochemical energy involves the creation of an electrical signal from chemical reactions. ▪ So in order for the brain to process the various forms of energy that a person’s sense organs receive, each form of energy has to undergo a transformation process, called transduction, that turns the raw energy into electrochemical, or neural, energy. ▪ The presence of specific types of cells, receptors, in each of the sensory systems makes transduction possible. ▪ After the receptor cells transduce, or convert, the environmental energy, a neural signal travels along a sensory nerve, taking the information to the parts of the brain that are involved in processing and analyzing the information. ▪ stimuli, is made up of a complex array of wavelengths of light, frequencies of sound, intensities of smells and tastes, and so on. ▪ The theory of specific nerve energies states that each sensory system provides information for only one sense, no matter how nerves are stimulated. ▪ When a particular part of the brain is stimulated, the brain thinks that it’s receiving a specific kind of information from the sense organ it processes, even if it’s not. ▪ Different aspects of a stimulus are coded in the brain depending on which neurons are activated and the pattern of neuron activation. ▪ Sight is arguably one of the most important human senses. ▪ Synesthesia is the name of an ability that certain people have to sense one (or more) forms of energy with a sensory system other than the one typically used for the stimulus. ▪ The intensity of light is calculated by measuring the size of the waves, and its frequency is measured by how many peaks of a wave pass a particular point within a specific period of time. ▪ 1. Light enters the eye through the cornea. 2. Light passes through the pupil. 3. The lens of the eye focuses the light onto the retina. 4. Light energy is converted into neural energy — an action known as light transduction. ▪ e retina, a part of the eye that’s located on the back lining of the eyeball. ▪ The retina contains some special cells called photoreceptors that are responsible for transduction ▪ These cells contain chemicals called photopigments that are broken apart when the photons of light traveling in the light wave make contact with them. ▪ The signal then travels to the visual cortex of the brain, the part of the brain responsible for analyzing visual stimuli. So light is transformed into neural energy by literally breaking up chemicals in the retina, which triggers a neural signal. ▪ These chemicals are stored in two different cells (called photoreceptors) in the retina, rods and cones. ▪ Rods contain a chemical called rhodopsin, which is very light-sensitive. This chemical reacts to very low-intensity light and helps with peripheral vision. ▪ Cones contain chemicals known as the iodopsins, which are closely related to rhodopsin. ▪ The trichromatic theory is really basic. The idea is that the retina contains three different types of cones (photoreceptors) that each responds to different wavelengths of light, and these provide our experience of different colors. ▪ When each cone syste