Introduction to psychology 2014

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs 223 HUNGER AND EATiNG 224 Hunger and eating – biological factors 225 Hunger and eating – social factors 226 AGGRESSiON 227 Aggression – biological factors 228

Introduction to

Psychology

Douglas S Krull

Design: Rokusek Design

Copyright © 2014 Kona Publishing and Media Group

All rights reserved No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, or any informational storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-935987-42-0

Neurons 43 Glia 46

THE FiRiNG OF ACTiON POTENTiALS 48

The Resting State 48 Ready, Aim, Fire! 50 Stimulus Intensity 51 Propagation Down the Axon 52 Speed of Conduction 52

SYNAPTiC TRANSMiSSiON 53

Neurotransmitters 54

THE ENDOCRiNE SYSTEM 57 DiViSiONS OF THE PERiPHERAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 59 THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 60

The Spinal Cord 60 The Cerebrospinal Fluid and the Ventricles 62

THE BRAiN 62

Localization of Function and Phrenology 62 The Hindbrain 63

Internal Validity and External Validity 28

Correlational and Experimental

Research Revisited 33

P-values, Significance,

and Inferential Statistics 33

Meta-Analysis 34

BEiNG A RESEARCH PARTiCiPANT 35

HAVE NO FEAR! CRiTiCAL THiNKiNG

iS HERE! 36

The Midbrain 64

The Forebrain 65

Hemispheric Specialization 70

iNVESTiGATiNG THE BRAiN 74

GENETiCS AND BEHAViORAL GENETiCS 75

Signal Detection Theory 87

The Just Noticeable Difference (JND)

and Weber’s Law 88

SUBLiMiNAL PERCEPTiON 89

SENSATiON 89

The Visual System 89

Common Eye Disorders 91

Composition of the Retina 92

Color and Color Vision 93

The Retina and Beyond 96

THE AUDiTORY SYSTEM 97

Sound 97

Structures of the Ear 98

Detection of Pitch 101

From the Ear to the Cortex 103

The Vestibular Sense 103

THE SOMATOSENSORY SENSES 104

Touch 104

Pain 108

THE GUSTATORY SENSE: TASTE 109

THE OLFACTORY SENSE: SMELL 111

Pavlov and His Amazing Salavating Dogs 129 Classical Conditioning Terminology 129 Factors that Affect Conditioning

– Order of the CS/US 132 Factors that Affect Conditioning – Relationship Between the CS and US 133 Factors that Affect Conditioning – Intensity of the CS/US 134 Generalization and Discrimination 135 Extinction, Spontaneous Recovery, and Renewal 136

What is Learned in Conditioning?

S-R or S-S? 137 Classical Conditioning Phenomena Applications 139

Primary and Secondary Reinforcers 151 Effectiveness of Reinforcement

and Punishment 151 Extinction and the Extinction Burst 152 Discriminative Stimuli 153

Shaping and Chaining 153 Schedules of Reinforcement 155 Choices Between Behaviors 157 Behavior Analysis Perspective 158 Instinctive Drift 159

Applications 160

OBSERVATiONAL LEARNiNG 162

Distinguishing Observational Learning from Other Phenomena 163 Real Observational Learning 164

Bandura’s Social Learning Theory 164 Applications 165

Problem Solving in the Gestalt Tradition 199

Problem Solving Strategies 201

V Maslow’s hierarchy of needs 223

HUNGER AND EATiNG 224

Hunger and eating – biological factors 225

Hunger and eating – social factors 226

AGGRESSiON 227

Aggression – biological factors 228

Aggression – social factors

- culture 230

Aggression – social factors

- media 231 Aggression – social factors

- situations 234 Cognitive Mechanisms 236 Overcoming Aggression 240

SEX 242

Sexual behavior – biological factors 242 Sexual behavior – social factors 244 Gender 247

Sexually transmitted disease 249 Sexual orientation 250

EMOTiON 254

Universal emotions 254 Theories of emotion 255 Neuroscience of Emotion 258 Affective Forecasting 259 Happiness 260

chapter 7

Development 263

Research Methods 264 Organization of This Chapter 266

COGNiTiVE DEVELOPMENT 283

Language Development 283 Piaget’s Theory

of Cognitive Development 285 Assimilation and Accommodation 291 Adolescent Egocentrism 291

Vygotsky’s Theory

of Cognitive Development 292 The Information Processing Perspective 292 Kohlberg’s Model

of Moral Development 293 Cognitive Development in Young and Middle Adulthood 295 Cognitive Development

in Late Adulthood 296

THE PSYCHODYNAMiC PERSPECTiVE 321

Freud’s Model of Mind

and Structure of Personality 322

Psychosexual Stages of Development 323

Anxiety and Defense Mechanisms 325

THE LEARNiNG, SOCiAL LEARNiNG,

AND COGNiTiVE SOCiAL

Evaluating the Learning Perspective 338

THE HUMANiSTiC, EXiSTENTiAL,

George Kelly and Personal Constructs 342

Evaluating the Humanistic, Existential,

and Phenomenological Perspective 343

THE TRAiT PERSPECTiVE 344

Personality Versus the Situation 348 Evaluating the Trait Perspective 350

THE BiOLOGiCAL PERSPECTiVE 350

Genes 350 Extroversion and Eysenck’s Theory 351 Brain Asymmetry 351

Male-Female Differences 352 Evaluating the Biological Perspective 353

iNTELLiGENCE 354

Theories of Intelligence 354 Intelligence Testing 355

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder 400

PERSONALiTY DiSORDERS 401

chapter 10

Health Psychology 405

iNTRODUCTiON 405 RESEARCH METHODS

How Does Stress Cause Disease? 439

Coping With Stress 440

CORONARY HEART DiSEASE 442

COPiNG WiTH CHRONiC DiSEASE 445

Genes and Religiosity 516 Biology and Mystical and Religious Experience 517

SENSATiON/PERCEPTiON/ATTENTiON, COGNiTiON, LEARNiNG,

AND MOTiVATiON/EMOTiON 522 DEVELOPMENT 524

Religious Thinking 524 Parenting Style 524 Parents and Peers in the Development

of Religiosity 525 Attachment 526 Identity Development 528 Marriage 529

PERSONALiTY AND iNDiViDUAL DiFFERENCES 529

Religiosity and the Big Five 529 Terror Management 530 Moral Frameworks 533 Gender Differences in Religiosity 534

PSYCHOLOGiCAL HEALTH 535

Scrupulosity 537

PHYSiCAL HEALTH 539 SOCiAL PSYCHOLOGY 540

Self-Control 540 Helping Behavior 540 Prejudice and Discrimination 543

Index 547References 567

iX

A preface is an introduction, so, reader, meet psychology text Psychology

text, meet reader Now that introductions are out of the way, let me

sum-marize some of the major features of this text First, psychology is a

sci-ence, a field based on research, and I hope this text illustrates that clearly

However, as one of my colleagues has said, psychology is a cool science,

and I hope I have managed to convey some of its coolness in an engaging

way Moreover, I don’t think science needs to be dry or confusing Who

wants to read dry and confusing material? I prefer an informal,

conversa-tional style, and that is what I have strived for in this text I hope I have

also illustrated concepts with clear (and occasionally goofy) examples and

that my enthusiasm for the field of psychology has come through In

addi-tion, critical thinking skills are very important Indeed, it is probably more

important to be able to think critically than it is to know a collection of

psy-chological findings (although that’s important too) Consistent with this, I

have regularly included opportunities to exercise critical thinking Finally,

I have included a chapter on the psychology of religion, which is not only

interesting and important, but also makes a good capstone for introductory

psychology because many of the topics in introductory psychology are also

topics in the psychology of religion More could be said, but let me

encour-age you to read on and explore for yourself

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Doug Krull thought he wanted to be a veterinarian and went to the University of California, Davis to study animal science However, along the way he changed his major to psychology and graduated

in 1985 He went to the University of Texas at Austin for graduate school in social psychology and graduated in 1990 He worked at the University of Missouri-Columbia and then moved to Northern Kentucky University in 1996 In addition to introductory psychol-ogy, he regularly teaches social psychology, social psychology lab, and consumer psychology, and he has also taught cognitive psy-chology and the psychology of religion His research interests in-clude attribution/first impressions, perceptions of science, and mul-tiple topics in the psychology of religion With regard to personal matters, he is a Christian; he and his wife, Lori, have four daughters and one son; and he enjoys music, reading, and movies He also finds it odd to write about himself in the third person

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Kyler Ferguson and the editorial team at Kona Publishing & Media Group for giving me the opportunity to write this text I also want to thank the many colleagues who reviewed chapters, shared their expertise and sugges-tions, or otherwise helped me with this project, including Mark Bardgett, Robin Bartlett, Kim Breitenbecher, Sharon Burns, Kathleen Fuegen, Perilou Goddard, Richard Griggs, Heather Hatchett, Steve Hoekstra, David Hogan, Ralph Hood, Jay Kidwell, Angela Lipsitz, Cecile Marczinski, Ray Paloutzian, Jessica Park, David Silvera, Jeff Smith, Jim Thomas, Jordan Wagge, and Jennifer Williams: I take full responsibility for all content and any mistakes, but your suggestions improved the text immensely I’m also thankful for the many textbooks and other resources from which I have learned over the years I want to thank my family (Lori, Sarah, Rachel, Abigail, Keziah, and David) for their help and encouragement and for their under-standing when I spent extra hours working: I appreciate your sacrifices Finally, most of all I want to thank God, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, for blessing

me in this project and in every way

Photo by: Abigail Krull

Welcome to introductory psychology! I hope you find this material to be

extremely interesting It sure would be disappointing if you found it to be

mind-numbingly dull, wouldn’t it? Fortunately, I have a big advantage over

many other textbook writers because I get to write about psychology rather

than…well, maybe I’d better not mention anything specific

Psychology is the study of thoughts (also called cognition), emotions

(also called affect), and behavior Sometimes psychology is called a

behav-ioral science, but that really reflects a time when it was taboo to study

thoughts and feelings Today psychology is primarily a cognitive

science, although it includes all three In the course of studying

thoughts, emotions, and behavior, psychologists seek to describe

(for example, describing how shy people behave differently from

people who are not shy), predict (for example, predicting job

perfor-mance from a cognitive test), and explain (for example, explaining

why stereotypes are used more under some circumstances than

others) Psychologists in some areas might also be interested in

applying what has been learned to help people to change (for

ex-ample, helping people to overcome eating disorders)

Unfortunately, our society’s view of psychology seems to be

heavily influenced by the media, so it might be useful to point out

some important differences between psychology in movies and

1

television and what we will cover in this textbook According to one of my colleagues who has studied psychology in film (Lipsitz & colleagues, 2000), there are several differences between how psychologists are portrayed in films and the real field of psychology Consider three of these differences First, movie psychologists are nearly always involved in the investigation or treatment of abnormal people; in contrast, many psychologists and most ar-eas in psychology study normal people Very few psychologists study serial killers, and very few are employed as profilers If you glance at the table of contents of this text, you’ll see that only one chapter addresses disorders and treatments Now, psychological disorders are very interesting (although very challenging for those who have them), but that is only a small part of the field of psychology

Second, psychologists in the media are nearly always therapists Once again, it

is true that many psychologists are therapists, but there are also many who are not For example, I’m a social psychologist, so I was never trained as a ther-apist Most of my psychology colleagues were never trained to practice therapy Indeed, even though we have several clinical psychologists in the department, none

of them has a private practice and most of them have no interest in doing therapy Third, the portrayal of psychologists in films usually has little to do with sci-ence In contrast, we will focus pretty much exclusively on science It might sur-prise some of you to learn that psychology is a science just as much as biology

or chemistry Now, some psychologists are really sensitive about this If someone suggested to a particular colleague of mine that psychology is not a science, or is somehow inferior to the natural sciences, that someone might receive an educa-tion offered rather stridently I’m not so sensitive, but the fact of the matter is that psychology is a science because it is an empirical discipline; that is, it employs the scientific method of generating an idea and collecting data to test that idea (more about that when we get to methods)

HOW TO SUCCEED OR FAiL

iN iNTRODUCTORY PSYCHOLOGY

Before we go on, let me address one issue that might be important to you I’m

guess-ing most of you who are readguess-ing this are doguess-ing so in the context of a course you are

taking Let me offer a few tongue-in-cheek comments about succeeding and failing

It’s probably unnecessary, but lest anyone misunderstand my comments, let me

offer this clarification: I really do want you to succeed, so please do the opposite of

these instructions about how to fail Here goes

Because most students want to succeed, much has been written about how to

succeed However, you might be a student who wants to fail Shouldn’t you receive

some guidance? It seems only fair An entire book could be written on this subject,

but I will limit myself to three suggestions that, if followed, would go a long way

toward achieving failure (I know some of this through personal experiences.)

First, skip class as much as possible It is much easier to master material if one

attends class, so skipping class is a great way to start on the road to failure If you

cannot manage to skip every class, then try to skip extra classes in the beginning of

the course That way you might get so far behind that even if you attend class later

it might be too late to catch up

Second, study as little as possible As you might imagine, studying material

is a good way to learn, so not studying is another effective way to increase your

chances of failure If you must study, do not spread out your studying and do not

read the material in the text close to the time it is covered in class Rather, wait until

the night before the exam and then stay up all night and try to cram all the material

into your mind in as few hours as possible Then, not only will you have achieved a

considerable lack of studying, but you will also be very tired, which is helpful when

one wants to avoid correct answers

Third, if you find yourself being exposed to the material, either in class or

by reading the text, try not to think about the material Now, you might think that

if you skip class and never read the text you don’t have to worry about gaining

knowledge, but it is best to be prepared because other people might try to

con-front you with the information For example, your friends might not understand

your determination to fail They might share their notes with you or try to get

you into a study group They might drag you to class against your will But you

can defeat their attempts to push you toward success as long as you do not think

about the material Do not use mnemonics (memory tricks) that might cause the

material to stick in your mind Do not consider how the information might apply

in everyday life Do not think of examples beyond those provided by the

instruc-tor If you are being exposed to the material, distract yourself by, for example,

thinking about how to thwart your friends who are trying to propel you toward

success (“Let’s see I could wear a crazed grin and burst forth with a fiendish

‘Moo Ha Ha Ha!’ Then I could cry out something like ‘You’ll never defeat me!

I have foiled your feeble plan!’”) Of course, you might actually want to succeed

You might want to learn You might want to earn a good grade If so, then, well,

you know what to do

Before I go on I’d like to acknowledge prominently the help I received from ious electronic resources (e.g., PsycARTICLES, RefWorks, PubMed, Wikipedia), but especially PsycInfo (a searchable psychology database), on which I relied heav-ily throughout writing this text PsycInfo (which is probably available electronically through your campus library) is a terrific resource that I recommend highly to you Because I want you to succeed, from time to time I will encourage you to stop and test your knowledge It can be easy to read along without thinking, but

var-of course the goal is not just to read but also to learn If you get a poor grade on a psychology exam (which I hope never happens), protesting to your instructor that you read the chapters three times and copied your notes twice is unlikely to get him or her to change your grade because your instructor’s job is to evaluate your knowledge, not your effort So, I recommend trying to learn each section before reading on This will take longer, but I think it will help you to master the mate-rial For now, can you name three types of phenomena that psychologists study? Name three (sometimes four) things that psychologists seek to do Describe three ways that psychology in the media differs from the field of psychology

Before continuing, let me pause here and note just a few stylistic matters

First, in this text I will frequently use the abbreviation e.g., which, as you might know, means “for example.” I understand it comes from the Latin phrase exempli gratia Psychologists use e.g very often in their writing Second, I will frequently

use that abbreviation prior to noting a journal article or book that supports a ular point For example, if Cassandra Johansen and Rudy Parker published a series

partic-of experiments in 2008 that indicated that people are more helpful when they are

in a good mood, I might write “Research suggests that people are more helpful when they are in a good mood (e.g., Johansen & Parker, 2008).” Then if you’re curious about that topic, you have a starting point for locating additional informa-tion Third, psychologists often write cautiously So, rather than writing “Research

proves that a good mood makes people more helpful,” I might write “Research suggests that a good mood makes people more helpful” or “A good mood seems to

promote helping behavior.” Psychologists often write this way because scientific findings are not definitive; current research might support a particular conclusion, but future research might call that conclusion into question

Perspectives in Psychology

Psychologists have different perspectives about how to investigate their field As

we shall see, there are many specialties in psychology (e.g., clinical, tal, social), but I’m not talking about training Rather, I’m referring to the level of

developmen-analysis they prefer For example, many psychologists have a cognitive tive In fact, this is probably the dominant perspective in psychology These psy-

perspec-chologists like to study people at the cognitive level—what people are thinking or

feeling But other psychologists have a behavioral perspective; they like to study behavior, not thoughts or feelings Still other psychologists have a biological per- spective; they like to study people by investigating brain structures or neurochem-

icals Nearly all psychologists would subscribe to one of these three perspectives Now, it should be noted that there are other perspectives that are sometimes men-tioned in a section like this For example, some psychologists have a cultural perspec-tive and like to point out similarities and differences across cultures But they proba-bly study cultures at the cognitive level, the behavioral level, or the biological level

Cognitive perspective

A perspective that investigates

psychology at the cognitive

level, such as by studying

thoughts and feelings

A perspective that investigates

psychology at the biological

level, such as by studying brain

structures or neurochemicals

Some psychologists have a humanistic perspective and emphasize people’s desire to

grow and realize their full potential We will notice more about this view in the history

of psychology section and in the personality chapter, but again, such psychologists

would still study cognitions, behavior, or biology So, although you should know the

cultural and humanistic perspectives, I wouldn’t include them in the big three

Specialties in Psychology

There are many specialties in psychology; let me give you brief descriptions of

some of the possibilities

1 Clinical: If I tell people I’m a psychologist, they often seem to assume

that I’m a clinical psychologist Their assumption is not unreasonable

because clinical psychology is the most common specialty Now, it is

important to distinguish clinical psychology from psychiatry Clinical

psychologists are, of course, psychologists In contrast, psychiatrists

are medical doctors—just like general practitioners, pediatricians,

or orthopedic surgeons—but psychiatrists have received specialized

training in psychiatry Clinical psychologists go to graduate school and

earn a PhD Psychiatrists go to medical school and earn an MD

2 Counseling: Some might think that counseling psychology is a lesser

degree than clinical, but that is not the case You can earn a PhD in

counseling just as you can in clinical As you might guess, there is

substantial overlap between these fields, but clinical psychologists

are probably more likely to deal with the more severe disorders (e.g.,

schizophrenia, bipolar disorder), whereas counseling psychologists are

more likely to deal with more typical problems (e.g., marriage and family

problems, problems at work)

3 Experimental: This is actually misleading because many psychologists

who are not defined as “experimental psychologists” do conduct

experiments, but this name is often used for psychologists who study

basic psychological processes (e.g., perception, cognition, learning).

4 School: School psychologists differ from school counselors School

psychologists often do psychological testing, such as for learning disabilities,

but they might also intervene when a child is having behavioral problems.

5 Educational: Educational psychologists study issues that pertain to

learning in educational settings, such as how to teach more effectively

or how to enhance student motivation.

6 Developmental: Developmental psychologists study aspects of

development, such as prenatal development, the effects of parents and

peers on children, or cognitive declines in old age.

7 Biological: Biological psychologists study the interaction of biology and

psychology, such as the role of a particular brain structure in memory or

the effect of a hormone on aggression.

8 Health: Health psychologists study psychology as it pertains to health

They might work on programs to reduce smoking or study the factors

that influence decisions about health care.

9 Social/Personality: These specialties are often combined (e.g., in graduate

programs, in titles of journals), but in a sense they are opposites

Personality psychologists tend to focus on individual differences (e.g., introverts vs extroverts), whereas social psychologists tend to focus on how people in general react to different situations Social psychologists often focus on “everyday life” topics, such as attraction, helping behavior, and persuasion.

10 Industrial/Organizational: Industrial/organizational psychologists apply psychology to the workplace They might help businesses to make good hiring decisions, help leaders to be more effective, or work to increase employee productivity and satisfaction.

11 Forensic: Forensic psychologists are about as close as one is likely to get to being a profiler They work at the juncture of psychology and law They might, for example, be involved in evaluating eyewitness testimony or whether a person is competent to stand trial.

12 Human Factors: This is sometimes called engineering psychology or ergonomics These psychologists study human performance when working with machines For example, they might study how airplane cockpits (e.g., gauges, levers) should be designed to facilitate the performance of pilots

or how using a cell phone affects driving performance.

Career Settings in Psychology

Where do psychologists work? Given that clinical and counseling are the largest areas, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that many psychologists work in a setting that involves practicing therapy, such as a private psychology practice, a psy-chology clinic, or a hospital Many also work in colleges or universities, typically teaching and conducting research Then there are a variety of other possibilities, such

as working in a business setting (e.g., polling organization, marketing research firm) Now, most of the specialties and career settings I just mentioned pertain to indi-viduals who have finished their undergraduate education and have gone on to graduate school and earned a PhD But it is important to point out that one could have a career in psychology or a closely related field with a master’s degree One could get a master’s degree in a “helping profession,” such as counseling or social work One could get a master’s degree in a “business-related field,” such as industrial-organizational psychol-ogy or human factors Money is certainly not the most important thing in life, but it might interest you to know that people who get a master’s in I/O or human factors might

go on to earn a higher income than the PhD instructors they had in graduate school There are also interesting careers that one could pursue with a bachelor’s de-gree in psychology One could assist psychologists in a mental health setting One could work in advertising or sales Some of the psychology graduates of the univer-sity where I work have taken research positions at a local hospital And, of course, one could go on to an advanced degree program outside of psychology, such as medicine, business, or law

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

What are the three main perspectives in psychology? Can you name eight specialties in psychology? How does clinical psychology differ from psychiatry?

It is difficult to put one’s finger on the start of the field of

psychol-ogy because people have thought about psychological ideas for

millennia Nevertheless, it is often suggested that the discipline

of psychology began in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany That was the

year that Wilhelm Wundt started the first psychology laboratory

Thus, psychology emerged as a scientific endeavor, rather than

merely good conversation Wundt’s goal was to use the technique

of introspection, where one looks inward to study conscious

ex-perience Participants would be confronted with some sensory

information, such as a rapidly or slowly ticking metronome,

and would be asked to introspect and report their reactions

One of Wundt’s students, Edward Titchener, moved to the

United States and started a psychology laboratory at Cornell

University Titchener thought that conscious experience could be

broken down into psychological elements, just as chemical

com-pounds can be broken down into basic elements Consistent with

this emphasis on discovering the structure of conscious

experi-ence, this school of thought is called structuralism But Wundt

held to a different perspective, which he called “voluntarism” to

emphasize his view that attending to a sensory impression is an act of will (Thorne

& Henley, 2001)

Of course, not everyone agreed with structuralism Indeed, several historically

important schools of thought disagreed vehemently with structuralism and

introspec-tion William James was one who disagreed Unlike Titchener, the practical James

proposed that it is the function of conscious experience, not the structure, that is

important In other words, what are thoughts and behaviors good for? How do they

enable people and animals to achieve their goals? This school of thought came to be

called functionalism Incidentally, James’ Principles of Psychology (1890) is still

quoted from today (I quote from it in chapter 6) He also wrote a briefer version,

and I understand the two works came to be called the “James” and the “Jimmy.”

But James wasn’t the only one who disagreed with structuralism So did three

psychologists in Germany: Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka

They advocated gestalt psychology I understand the German term gestalt refers

to a form or pattern Contrary to the structuralist goal of breaking down mental

events, the gestalt psychologists emphasized that people see whole forms and that

the whole is more than the sum of the parts Why is the whole more than the sum of

the parts? Is that just some grandiose-sounding statement? No Rather, the whole is

more than the sum of the parts because we do not passively receive sensory

infor-mation; instead, our minds add to the parts of sensory information to help construct

the whole of perception

Consistent with gestalt psychology, Wertheimer demonstrated apparent

motion, where things appear to move even though they are stationary For

exam-ple, if you simultaneously turn off one light bulb and turn on another, it appears

that the light jumps from one to the other even though each light bulb is only going

on or off Perhaps when driving through construction on the highway you’ve seen

a sign where one set of lights in the shape of an arrow turns off just as another set

Functionalism

Proposed that it is the function, not the structure, of thoughts and behaviors that is important

Gestalt psychology

In contrast to structuralism, gestalt psychology emphasized that people see whole forms and that the whole is more than the sum of the parts

Apparent motion

A perceptual phenomenon

in which objects appear to move even though they are stationary

turns on, and then that second set turns off as a third set turns on It appears that the arrows move, perhaps indicating that the lane is about to end and you should change lanes before you crash into a crane Clearly it’s important to study wholes

as well as parts; if one only studied a single light bulb, one would never discover apparent motion

We’re not finished with those who disagreed with structuralism, but let’s take a brief aside Who is the most famous psychologist of all? Whose ideas have infiltrated our culture in numerous ways? For example, what do we call

it when we slip and say something we shouldn’t have? Do psychologists ask people to lie down on a couch and talk about their mothers? Ever heard of an Oedipus complex or penis envy? Do we repress painful memories? Is it true that, as a Disney song says, “A dream is a wish your heart makes”? And what psychologist was identified as a significant historical figure in that authorita-

tive and most triumphant film, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure? Of course,

it’s none other than Sigmund Freud

Freud was trained as a medical doctor, but he came to believe that many ailments had psychological causes, a view that many still subscribe to today

He also thought that sexual difficulties were the cause of many psychological problems, a view that few hold today Freud developed a comprehensive theo-

ry to explain such psychological problems as well as techniques to treat them

He proposed that our conscious minds are just the tip of the iceberg and that many

of our thoughts and activities are strongly influenced by our unconscious, a ing cauldron of sexual and aggressive drives, forbidden wishes, and memories

seeth-of traumatic events Because the different aspects seeth-of personality are struggling

against one another, his perspective is called psychodynamic Because Freud

believed that the task of the therapist is to bring problems into the open where

they can be addressed, his therapy, called psychoanalysis, involves exploring

the unconscious Patients might be asked to talk about whatever comes to mind,

a technique called free association, or to relate their dreams for the therapist to

interpret Freud’s ideas are still popular with some therapists, but in academic settings his views are often discussed primarily for their historical significance

Psychodynamic

Freud’s personality perspective,

which emphasizes aspects of

personality that are active and

primary goal of therapy is to

gain insight into what is buried

in one’s unconscious so those

problems can be addressed

Free association

A psychoanalytic technique in

which the client talks about

whatever comes to mind

In 1913 John B Watson published a landmark paper, “Psychology as the

Behaviorist Views It.” It’s probably one of the most influential articles in the

history of psychology In it, Watson described his perspective for the field of

psychology, a perspective called behaviorism Watson argued that

psychol-ogy should be the science of behavior In this view, there is no need to use

introspection or speculate about consciousness Psychology should be a natural

science focused exclusively on the prediction and control of observable

behav-ior Watson’s view was a radical departure from structuralism, but by 1920

behaviorism had become the dominant perspective in American psychology,

a position it held for about 40 years

Although Watson was successful in his career, his personal life was a

differ-ent story (Thorne & Henley, 2000, was very helpful in this section on

behavior-ism as well as in the following section on humanistic psychology) Although he

was married, Watson became romantically involved with one of his current

stu-dents, Rosalie Rayner (we’ll get to a famous demonstration they conducted on the

development of fear in the learning chapter) Watson was dismissed from Johns

Hopkins, but he obtained a position with the J Walter Thompson advertising

agen-cy Watson was successful in applying learning principles to advertising (including

a cold cream ad featuring the queen of Romania!) Watson also wrote psychology

articles for popular magazines like Harper’s and Cosmopolitan and so

communi-cated his psychological ideas to the general public

Like philosopher John Locke, Watson thought that an infant is a tabula rasa,

a “blank slate,” and that everything we become is the result of learning He made

a famous boast that if he were given a dozen healthy infants and his own world in

which to raise them, he could cause them to turn out however he chose He could

make one a doctor, another an artist, another a thief Watson also thought that

chil-dren were too coddled and that they should not be hugged or kissed, a view that,

not surprisingly, might have had negative consequences for his children However,

there can be no doubt that Watson was, and continues to be, a very influential figure

in psychology

But, although Watson’s influence on psychology was substantial, the impact

of another behaviorist, B F Skinner, was probably even greater Skinner was also

committed to the view that psychology should be the science of behavior, but he

was interested in the effects of reward on behavior Because in behaviorism there is

no need to consider thinking, Skinner, like many behaviorists, chose to work with

animals He was good at building gadgets, and he constructed a box (sometimes

called a “Skinner box,” although I understand that Skinner did not prefer that name)

in which an animal (e.g., a rat, a pigeon) could perform a behavior (e.g., press a

lever, peck a disk) to receive food Skinner went on to have a long and successful

career studying behavior, and he applied his ideas in a wide variety of settings

Among other accomplishments, he taught pigeons (his preferred research subject)

to guide missiles, designed a device (called “the baby-tender” and later marketed

as the Aircrib) to help raise children, built a self-paced teaching machine, and

wrote a novel, Walden Two, about a utopian community based on learning

prin-ciples Right up to his death in 1990, Skinner insisted that psychology should be

exclusively the study of behavior Although he did not found behaviorism, Skinner is

probably the most famous behaviorist and the most famous psychologist after Freud

Behaviorism

The view that psychology should focus exclusively on observable behavior

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

When was the first psychology lab started and by whom? What

is structuralism and who advocated it? What is functionalism and

on whose ideas is it based? What is gestalt psychology and who advocated it? What is apparent motion? Are Sigmund Freud’s views still popular in psychology? What is behaviorism and who proposed it? Which behaviorist was interested in the effects of reward? Can you name some of his accomplishments?

Abraham Maslow began his career working with animals, but he soon switched

to humans He came to believe that how we view our experiences is crucial to chology, a view that many still hold today The same event might happen to both you and me, but we might think about it differently and so react to it differently This focus

psy-on the subjective perceptipsy-on of events is sometimes called the phenomenological perspective Of course, this suggests that animal research is not very informative and that psychology should focus on humans; it should be a humanistic psychology

Maslow saw humanistic psychology as the third force, after behaviorism and Freud’s psychodynamic theory Unlike behaviorism and Freud’s theory, humanistic psychol-ogy emphasized personal freedom and growth Thus, humanistic psychology was hopeful Maslow is probably best known for his ideas about motivation (discussed in

chapter 6), particularly self-actualization, fulfilling one’s potential

Although Maslow might have been the academic leader of humanistic chology, the therapeutic leader was Carl Rogers In 1951 Rogers published a book

psy-called Client-Centered Therapy This therapy, now psy-called “person-centered

thera-py,” provides an accepting environment in which the therapist treats the client with

unconditional positive regard, that is, unconditional acceptance During the 1940s

and 1950s, Rogers became well known and his ideas were discussed in both therapeutic and academic settings In 1956 he received an award from the American Psychological Association Both the psychoanalytic community and the behaviorists viewed Rogers

as a challenge to their views, which indeed he was However, the humanistic tive has primarily been influential with regard to therapy rather than in research.We’re nearly done with history As I mentioned earlier, behaviorism dominated the field of psychology in America for most of the early and mid-20th century But it doesn’t anymore What happened? Well, as you might guess, although the behaviorists were making important contributions with their research on behavior, not everyone agreed that only behavior should be studied Consider this scenario Suppose you observe a young man sitting and thinking To a behaviorist, nothing important seems to be hap-pening because the man isn’t exhibiting any noteworthy behavior However, the man could be thinking about proposing marriage to his girlfriend, planning to murder his uncle, or deciding whether he should quit his desk job so he can focus on songwriting Clearly, thoughts are important even though you can’t see them

perspec-In addition, as my graduate school mentor pointed out to me, research findings were accumulating that presented problems for behaviorism For example, when view-ing the same round symbol, it makes a difference whether one thinks of it as the

letter O or the number zero (e.g., Jonides & Gleitman, 1972; Taylor & Hamm, 1997)

From a behaviorist standpoint, that’s difficult to explain because the round symbol

Phenomenological

perspective

The idea that subjective

perceptions of reality are

important

Humanistic psychology

An important movement in

psychology that suggested that

psychology should focus on

distinctively human qualities

Self-actualization

An aspect of the humanistic

perspective that involves

fulfilling one’s potential

Unconditional

positive regard

Care and approval that are

given unconditionally

that one sees is the same in both cases; only in the mind is

the difference important So the field was ready for a

revolu-tion Some would identify a particular date for the cognitive

revolution: September 11, 1956, the date of an important

symposium at MIT (Matlin, 1998) Today the cognitive

perspective, rather than behaviorism, dominates American

psychology However, it is important to note that although

few psychologists hold that only behavior should be studied,

many psychologists still study behavior; behaviorism might

have fallen, but the behavioral approach is still going strong

Diversity in Psychology

Although today most psychologists would never dream of

discriminating against people because of their sex, that was

not always true For example, Mary Whiton Calkins

stud-ied with William James in the late 1800s, but she was denstud-ied the PhD at Harvard

Despite this setback, Calkins became the first female president of the American

Psychological Association (APA) in 1905 The first woman to be awarded the PhD

in the U.S (in 1894) was Margaret Floy Washburn, who worked with Titchener

at Cornell (she transferred there after experiencing discrimination at Columbia)

She became the president of APA in 1921 However, today the situation is very

dif-ferent Far more women than men earn PhDs in psychology Is this because

psychol-ogy discriminates against men? I doubt it Probably it occurs because more women

are interested in psychology In an introductory psychology course it might not be

so obvious because many students are taking the course to fulfill a general studies

requirement, but in upper-division psychology courses women outnumber men by a

considerable margin Out of curiosity, I counted the number of men and women in

my three online upper-division psychology courses this semester Assuming I can

tell gender from the names, there were a total of 58 women and 11 men

With regard to racial (or ethnic) diversity, in 1920 Francis Sumner became the

first African American to be awarded a PhD in psychology in the U.S He went on to

become the psychology chairperson at Howard University, which has produced more

Black psychologists than any other university (Thorne & Henley, 2000) Kenneth

Clark became the first African-American president of APA in 1971 Kenneth Clark

and his wife, Mamie Phipps Clark, are well known for their finding that Black

chil-dren preferred white dolls (Clark & Clark, 1947) Fortunately, this has changed and

Black children now prefer black dolls (Porter & Washington, 1989)

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

Who are Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, and with what

perspective are they associated? How does the therapist behave

toward the client in client-centered (or person-centered) therapy?

Who was the first female president of APA? Who was the first

woman to earn a PhD in psychology in the U.S.? Do men still

outnumber women in psychology? Who was the first African

American to earn a PhD in psychology in the U.S.? Who was the

first African-American president of APA?

Have you ever heard a conversation like this?

“I know what would be fun; let’s do some statistics problems at the party,” exclaimed Lars

“Great idea! We could talk about research methods too,” replied Vivienne

“Yeah! That sounds awesome,” said Lars

Not likely Admittedly, statistics and methods are not the most interesting pects of psychology However, they are probably the most important Why are they

as-so important? As we noticed earlier, psychology is a very diverse field Most chologists specialize in a particular area of psychology and know relatively little about the other areas Social psychologists typically do not know very much about clinical psychology Clinical psychologists typically do not know very much about the psychology of perception Perception psychologists typically do not know very much about developmental psychology But all of these psychologists learn statis-tics and research methods Statistics and methods enable the field of psychology

psy-to progress If psychologists knew nothing about statistics and research methods, how would they learn whether a new therapy really improves psychological health? How would they determine whether a new memory technique really helps people

to remember? How would they discern whether a new plan to reduce prejudice has much chance of success? The only way to know is to test such ideas, and that requires an understanding of statistics and research methods We might say that statistics and research methods are the foundation upon which psychology is built Chances are, you do not plan to go into psychology as a career Rather, you are probably taking this course to fulfill a general studies requirement That’s okay I won’t hold it against you I wanted to be a veterinarian when I started col-lege But let’s suppose you become so entranced by psychology that you change your major and then go on to graduate school You finish your PhD and get a job teaching at a university You might discover that only fifty percent of your job is teaching Fifteen percent is service (e.g., evaluating curriculum changes and new courses, advising students), and, most important for our current topic, thirty-five percent is scholarly activity (e.g., conducting research, publishing journal articles and books, seeking grant funding) Research will be quite important to you Truth be told, if you get an academic job, you probably already expect this and have ideas that you want to investigate Let’s consider such ideas as well as how they are generated

Theories, Hypotheses, and Science in General

Theories and hypotheses are not easy to distinguish because they overlap However,

we might say that a theory is a general idea or framework that helps to organize what we know or want to know about a particular topic In contrast, an hypothesis

is a testable idea derived from a theory (testable being the key word) For example,

suppose I think that opposites attract (they usually don’t, as we shall see in the social psychology chapter) How would I test my theory? I might throw a party

Theory

A general idea or framework

that helps to organize what we

know and want to know about

a topic

Hypothesis

A testable idea derived from a

theory

and give people a packet of psychological scales to

com-plete (fun!) Using the scales, I might identify those who

are opposites and those who are similar and observe them

with a spyglass, taking note of how long they speak to each

other My hypothesis would be that those who are

oppo-sites spend more time talking to each other than those who

are similar Clearly, I could test this hypothesis with the

information I gathered But I could investigate my theory

in a different way I could still use the packet of

question-naires, but instead of observing, I could simply ask people

at the end of the party which people they liked best My

hypothesis would be that people are more likely to mention

opposites than people who are similar to them Or I could

do something completely different, like hypothesizing that

married couples tend to be opposites So, one could test the theory “opposites

attract” with many different hypotheses

The fact that we gather data to test hypotheses is what makes psychology a

sci-ence Unfortunately, pop psychology has not always been scientifically grounded,

and, as we noticed, psychology is not usually presented as a science in the media

As a result, many people might think that psychology is either touchy-feely

non-sense or somewhat worthwhile stuff about relationships, but is certainly not real

science like chemistry or biology As I mentioned earlier, some psychologists get

quite upset if anyone suggests that psychology is less scientific than the natural

sciences; it has been said that psychologists have physics envy because they want

to be viewed like the natural sciences

It seems that part of the reason why psychology is

viewed as less scientific than the natural sciences is that not

everyone understands what makes a discipline a science

Some research (Krull & Silvera, in press) suggests that

people think that a science is at least partially defined by

content, that is, what is being studied and what equipment

is being used People seem to think that if you’re studying

recombinant DNA or using an electron microscope, that’s

science; but if you’re studying how children play in various

circumstances, that’s not as scientific (it seems that some

faculty think this way too) Of course, in reality what is

being studied has nothing to do with it Science is method,

not content If one is using the scientific method (generating

an hypothesis and testing it empirically, that is, testing it by

gathering data), then one is doing science One could

exam-ine DNA in a scientific manner or an unscientific manner;

one could examine how children play in a scientific manner

or an unscientific manner It’s the method that counts

Indeed, one might argue that method is particularly

im-portant in psychology because there are a variety of factors

that psychologists need to consider that other fields do not If

a researcher is studying comets, chemical interactions,

or chameleons, does it matter whether the researcher is a

People might think of something like this when they think

of science, but one can also study children playing in a scientific manner.

Black woman or a White man? Is it important whether the project is being ducted on a Monday morning or a Friday afternoon? Does one need to consider the chameleon’s emotional state? Probably not But psychologists who are working with people might need to consider such factors Perhaps for this reason, psychologists tend to emphasize research methods It might surprise you to know that psycholo-gists probably get more training in statistics and research methods than do those

con-in many other professions that require advanced degrees For example, Lehman and colleagues (1988) examined how the statistical and methodological reason-ing skills of students increased from the first year to the third year of law school, medical school, graduate school in chemistry, and graduate school in psychology There was no improvement in law and chemistry, about a 25% increase in medical school, and about a 70% increase in psychology

Now, interestingly, this emphasis on methods is sometimes viewed as a ness, at least when contrasted with hard facts Funder (2007) noted that “It is some-times said that the main thing psychologists know is not content, but method This statement is not usually meant as a compliment” (p 53) But in response to such a view he wrote, “Some people think that psychology is not really scientific because

weak-it has so few hard facts… This view is ironic because weak-it has things precisely ward Real science is the seeking of new knowledge, not the cataloguing of facts already known for certain” (p 54)

back-TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

How do theories and hypotheses differ? What makes a field of study a science?

Basic and Applied Research

When I worked at a different university I became friends with a colleague in ematics If I recall, he was trying to find the largest number for which a particular formula held true I asked him, “Why do you want to know that?” He replied,

math-“That’s for the engineers to figure out.” He was referring to the distinction between

basic research and applied research Basic research is research designed to test theory,

to expand the borders of knowledge; as the Star Trek: The Next Generation

introduc-tion says, the goal is “to go where no one has gone before.” Oftentimes basic research does not have an obvious practical use It was not immediately apparent what value there was in solving my friend’s mathematics problem, but some time in the future engineers might find that this problem is crucial to building starships Along the same lines, several years ago Jody Dill and I conducted some research on the order in which different types of information are considered (Krull & Dill, 1996) Our work sug-gested that people are flexible and the type of information they consider first depends

on their goals I didn’t expect this work to eliminate poverty, crime, or drug abuse However, perhaps in the future it will prove to be important in a practical sense

In contrast, applied research does have obvious practical significance

A researcher might try to discover a good way to reduce smoking, or increase literacy, or reduce violent crime Even people who are not involved in the

project can easily see why someone would want to conduct research on such

topics Now, sometimes people talk about whether basic research or applied

research is better, but of course both are needed Basic research is of limited

value if it is never used outside the lab, but, as you might have guessed,

ap-plied research often relies on basic research that was done before It would

be difficult to know how to develop an antibiotic until one knows something

about bacteria It would be difficult to know how to reduce violent crime

un-less one first knows something about aggression If one doesn’t understand a

phenomenon, it’s hard to know what to do to modify it So, both basic research

and applied research are important

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

Think of examples of basic research and applied research that are

of interest to you

Generating ideas

Where do psychological ideas come from? As you might imagine, they come from

many different sources Some ideas come from personal interests For example,

one of my colleagues is an award-winning advisor who is interested in helping

students to make good career choices Not surprisingly, he began to do research on

vocational choice Also with regard to personal interests, one of our former students

is a drummer and music teacher Consistent with these interests, he chose to study

the relationship between music training and memory

Sometimes psychologists simply notice something in everyday life that grabs

their attention A psychologist might encounter a boy selling chocolate bars and

lat-er wondlat-er why it seemed so difficult to refuse (A psychologist named Bob Cialdini

recounted that an event like this prompted some of his work on influence; some

of his work is described in the social psychology chapter.) A psychologist might

observe people from different ethnic groups working together as a team on a

bas-ketball court and theorize that such cooperative interaction reduces prejudice (also

discussed in the social psychology chapter) A psychologist might see a story in the

newspaper about people being unhelpful in an emergency and set out to study the

issue empirically (yes, research on why people sometimes fail to help also appears

in the social psychology chapter)

Ideas often spring to mind when one reads about or conducts research One might

think of an idea when reading an article (Hmm Dr Mnemonic found that

men-tal imagery improves memory I wonder if rhymes also improve memory?)

One might notice a lack of work on a particular subject (Hmm It seems that we

know relatively little about creativity I think I’ll study that.) Ideas often emerge

in the course of conducting research Not a few psychologists have set out to

demonstrate a particular effect, only to discover something more interesting

along the way In sum, there are many ways to get ideas As one of my mentors

said, generating ideas is not difficult; what’s difficult is getting good data to back

up your ideas

Before we launch into how research is conducted, let’s take a brief aside and notice some basic statistics Such statistics sometimes appear in an appen-dix, but I suspect that material in appendices tends to get ignored With regard to statistics, that’s bad, because we really need to know something about statistics

to understand psychology Knowing something about statistics is important when conducting research, and, as we have noticed, an emphasis on research methods is

a characteristic of the field of psychology

Some Descriptive Statistics

As you might imagine, people conducting research often want to summarize their

findings for others Descriptive statistics describe characteristics of the data the

re-searcher has collected For example, suppose a psychology department is designing

a flyer to tell students about their program and wants to provide information about the average income of their graduates They might try to contact all of their grad-uates from the last three years and ask about their incomes However, it would be unwieldy to report every graduate’s income Rather, they might provide an average,

which, as you probably know, is called the mean Notice the following hypothetical

set of twelve incomes (the average psychology department would have many more graduates than this in three years, but let’s keep it simple):

Because there are twelve incomes, we divide the total by 12 to get the mean (average) Since $372,000/12 = $31,000, the mean income is $31,000 That would give students a reasonable idea about what kind of income they could expect to earn But it’s important to note that the mean is very sensitive to extreme values For example, suppose one graduate had played in a band while in college Using his newfound psychological skills, he found a better way to market his talent and became a rock star earning $3,800,000 instead of the $38,000 in the example above

If we make this change, notice what happens to the mean

Descriptive statistics

Characteristics of the data,

such as the mean

Mean

The average

The mean of these twelve incomes is $344,500, but that would be quite

mis-leading, wouldn’t it? If a psychology department told prospective majors that the

average income of their graduates was almost $350,000, they might soon have a

lawsuit on their hands because that mean does not accurately reflect the income that

a typical graduate could expect

So, when there are extreme values, researchers sometimes use a different

sta-tistic instead of the mean The median is not the average value, but the middle

value To find it, one lines up the numbers from smallest to largest and finds the

number that is in the middle of the list

Oh no! Because there are twelve numbers, there is no number right in the

middle! But wait, there’s no need to panic We can defeat the villainous set of

incomes that has no number in the middle When there’s an even number of

numbers (and so no number in the middle), we average the numbers on each side

of the middle So, in this example, the median is $30,500

The median can be used when there are extreme values that throw off the

mean, but there is another statistic that is sometimes used: the mode The mode

is the most frequent number in the set, the number that occurs most often

You can see that in this set $30,000 occurs most often (three times), so the

mode is $30,000 Like the median, the mode is not easily distorted by extreme

values We could add Bill Gates’ income to the set and the mode would still

be $30,000

In addition to the mean, median, or mode, we might also want to know about

the variability of the data (how spread out the numbers are) For example,

sup-pose Meredith earns 84% on her first psychology exam and 86% on her second

psychology exam In contrast, Bernard earns 75% on his first psychology exam and

95% on his second psychology exam Both have averages of 85%, but Meredith’s

performance is very consistent and Bernard’s performance is quite variable

We might be fairly confident that Meredith will have an average in the 80s at the

end of the course, but with Bernard, who knows? So, the variability of the

numbers provides information that the mean does not

The range is perhaps the simplest measure of variability It is the distance from

the lowest value to the highest Meredith has a range of 2 (84 to 86) and Bernard has a range of 20 (75 to 95) But the most common measure of variability is proba-

bly the standard deviation A high standard deviation means that the numbers are

relatively spread out (like Bernard’s scores), and a low standard deviation means that the numbers are clustered close to the average (like Meredith’s scores) If you go on

in psychology, you’ll probably learn to calculate the standard deviation (lucky you!), but for now it’s enough to know that it’s a useful and common measure of variability

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

What are descriptive statistics? How do you calculate the mean

of a group of numbers? How do you find the median? What is the mode? Why might one use the median rather than the mean? What is the range? Name one other measure of variability Try to think of examples, pictures, or rhymes that will stick in your mind

That’s enough statistics for the moment Now back to our regular ming How do we go about conducting research? Well, it depends on the type of research Broadly speaking, one can divide research designs into three categories: descriptive research, correlational research, and experimental research

program-Descriptive Research Descriptive research seeks to describe a phenomenon Did that shock you or what?

Descriptive research describes things! Who would have thought it? But consider a few examples (thanks to Pelham, 1999, for these types of descriptive research) Suppose you want to know how marriage ceremonies are conducted in Ethiopia You could go there and observe several marriage ceremonies, taking note of the distinctive elements Not surprisingly, research that involves observing behavior

in its natural setting is called naturalistic observation No doubt anthropologists

conduct this type of research more often than psychologists do, but psychologists sometimes conduct naturalistic observation studies

Another type of research that is usually descriptive is a case study Sometimes

people learn that I’m a psychologist and they say something like, “You should do a study of my uncle Chuck He’d make a great study.” They are recommending a case study, an in-depth investigation of a single person or small group of people As you might guess, case studies are typically conducted because there is something dis-tinctive and potentially informative about the person or group For example, in the area of cognition there is a famous individual known as H M., who had surgery on August 23, 1953, to try to alleviate severe epilepsy Part of his brain (hippocampus and part of the temporal lobes) was removed As we shall see in the biopsychology and cognition chapters, the hippocampus seems to be involved in the formation

of new memories After the surgery, H M still had fairly good memory of what had happened before, but, tragically, his ability to learn and remember new things was severely impaired Because both the location of the affected brain areas and the exact day of the surgery are known, H M.’s condition, although tragic, is very informative for memory researchers

Research that involves

observing behavior in its

A public opinion poll is another type of descriptive research Suppose you

want to know what citizens of the United States think about various political

is-sues You could survey people and count up the responses You might find, for

example, that 34% favor nuclear power, 37% oppose it, and the rest are undecided

The group of people you want to study (U.S citizens in this case) is called the

population, and the subset of them who actually complete your survey is called

the sample It should be noted that whenever one wants to know something about

a population of people, it is extremely important that one have a representative

sample A representative sample is a subset of the total group (the population) that

accurately represents the whole group For example, suppose one wants to know

what U.S citizens think of the president If one only asked Democrats or only

asked Republicans, one would get a biased sample Neither of these groups alone

represents what citizens of the U.S think Rather, one should randomly choose

citizens from across the U.S., thereby obtaining a sample of people who more

ac-curately represent what U.S citizens, in general, think A representative sample is

sometimes called a random sample because recruiting participants randomly, rather

than in a biased manner, is a good way to get a sample that accurately reflects the

population in which one is interested

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

Name three types of descriptive research Think of a naturalistic

observation study that could be done to learn about another

culture Why would anyone do a case study? Why is it important

to have a representative sample? How does one obtain a

representative sample?

Correlational Research

Correlational research seeks to discover if two variables are correlated, that is,

related or associated in some way A variable is a characteristic that can hold

dif-ferent values, but each person has only one value at a time For example, difdif-ferent

people have different ages, but each person only has one age at any moment in

time In a research project, you might record the age of each participant as one of

your variables, along with whatever other variables you’d like to investigate Some

variables, like age, are continuous variables because there are no natural divisions

A researcher could divide people into different age groups (e.g., 15-19, 20-24,

25-29), but those divisions are purely arbitrary In contrast, other variables are discrete

or categorical because there are natural categories For example, either one has

declared a major or one has not Either one has a license to drive or one does not

One cannot be one-quarter declared as a psychology major or two-thirds licensed

to drive Correlational research is typically conducted with continuous variables

One reason to conduct correlational research is that correlations help us to

pre-dict one variable from another For example, people who work in university

admis-sions might be interested to know whether ACT or SAT scores are correlated with

college performance If they are correlated, then knowing a high school senior’s

test scores would allow the admissions people to take an educated guess about

whether the student is likely to have an easy time or a difficult time handling

Public opinion poll

A type of descriptive research

in which people are surveyed about their view on a topic or issue

Variable

A characteristic that can hold different values, but each person has only one value at

a time

Continuous variables

Variables that have no natural divisions

Discrete (or categorical)

Variables that have natural divisions

college-level work In the same way, a company might want to know if, for example, measures of conscientiousness (how responsible and hardworking one is) are correlated with job performance If so, then a job applicant’s conscien-tiousness score provides some information about how well that person would perform on the job

There are a few things that we really need to know about correlations Here goes Correlations can range from -1 to 1 If a correlation seems to be “4 and 3/8,” “a platypus,” or “buy low, sell high,” something’s wrong, because correlations can only be a number in the range of -1 to 1 We can break this down into 1) the sign, that is, whether the correlation is a positive number or a negative number, and 2) the

magnitude, that is, how large the number is First, the sign If a correlation is a

posi-tive number, this indicates that the two variables rise and fall together For example,

we might expect time spent studying and grades to be positively correlated As ing goes up, grades go up As studying goes down, grades go down On the other hand, if a correlation is a negative number, this indicates that the variables move in opposite directions As one variable rises, the other falls For example, we might ex-pect skipping classes and grades to be negatively correlated As the number of classes skipped goes up, grades go down But, as the number of classes skipped goes down, grades go up As I mentioned earlier, correlations allow us to predict, to make educat-

study-ed guesses For example, if we know that Enrique studies three hours/day, we might predict that he will get good grades If we know that Bert never studies except when

he crams for a few hours the night before an exam, we might predict that he will get poor grades Similarly, if we know that Julia rarely skips classes, we might predict that she will get good grades And if we know that Cassandra often skips classes, we might predict that she will get poor grades If two variables are correlated zero, then they are uncorrelated or unrelated, so knowing one tells nothing at all about the other

As Number of Classes Skipped Goes

Up, Grades Go Down

Let’s do some practice Suppose we find that attractiveness and GPA are

posi-tively correlated If Talijah is very attractive, will her GPA probably be high or low?

Right, high, because they rise together Suppose Franklin has a low GPA (no offense

to any of you named Franklin) Should you expect him to be relatively attractive

or relatively unattractive? Right, relatively unattractive, because attractiveness and

GPA fall together Now suppose we find that as height increases, weight increases

What kind of correlation is that, positive or negative? Right, positive Suppose we

find that as reading ability goes down, income goes down What kind of correlation

is that, positive or negative? That was tricky It’s positive, but I think this is easy

to miss because they’re both moving in a negative direction, so we might want to

say “negative.” However, it’s not the direction they are moving that’s important,

but whether they move together If they fall together, that’s positive If they move

in opposite directions, that’s negative Suppose as the number of hours worked in a

part-time job goes up, GPA goes down What kind of correlation is that, positive or

negative? Right! Negative, because they move in opposite directions

Second, let’s consider the size of the number This is called the magnitude

The magnitude indicates the degree to which the variables are related Are they

strongly related or only weakly related? If a correlation has a high magnitude (that is,

it’s a relatively large correlation, ignoring the sign, like 87 or -.91), this indicates that

we can make predictions with confidence because the two variables are so strongly

related that knowing one really tells us what to expect about the other On the other

hand, if the magnitude is low (that is, it’s a relatively small correlation, ignoring the

sign, like 12 or -.09), this indicates that the variables are weakly related and so

know-ing one tells very little about the other

Consider two examples Suppose the number of hours one spends each week

in aerobic exercise and one’s resting heart rate are correlated -.80 (the correlation

probably isn’t anywhere near that high, but this is hypothetical) This substantial

correlation indicates that if we know how much aerobic exercise Natasha gets, we

can take a good guess at whether her resting heart rate will be relatively high or

low Keep in mind that this is a negative correlation (the variables move in opposite

directions), so greater exercise would suggest a lower resting heart rate In contrast,

suppose the amount of potato chips one eats and resting heart rate are correlated

.20 This weak correlation indicates that, although there is some tendency for

peo-ple who eat more chips to have a higher heart rate (the correlation is positive,

so they rise together), the relationship is weak, so we can’t have much confidence

in our ability to predict

Incidentally, although correlations can tell us what to expect about whether

a variable will tend to be higher or lower, they do not allow us to make a specific

prediction about the variable’s value So, for example, if ACT scores and college

GPA are positively correlated, we would expect a student with an ACT score of 30

(a very high score) to get good grades, but we could not predict an exact value for

his or her GPA In contrast, a related analysis called regression would enable us to

make a specific prediction If we knew that Adrienne’s ACT score was 30,

regres-sion would enable us to estimate what her college GPA is likely to be Of course,

this would only be an estimate If you go on in psychology, you’ll probably learn

more about regression

Magnitude

The strength of a correlation The degree to which the variables are related

Regression

An analysis related to correlation but that enables one to predict a specific value for one variable based on one

or more other variables

Just one more thing about correlations, but it’s the most important thing It’s ally important That’s why I said it’s the most important thing It’s the sort of thing your instructor will probably ask about on an exam Are you ready for the premiere

re-of the most important thing about correlations? Okay, here it is Correlation does not imply causation In other words, if we know two variables are correlated, this

does not indicate that one of them causes the other It doesn’t even tell a little about causality It tells nothing Zippo Nada (well, except on very rare occasions, as de-scribed below) Sometimes people fail to recognize this For example, suppose we find that self-esteem and GPA are positively correlated It would not be surprising

to hear someone say that we need to build up students’ esteem because then their grades will go up But the idea that raising esteem will cause an increase in GPA would only make sense if esteem causes GPA, and there are at least two reasons why we cannot conclude this from a correlation

First, the direction problem is that, if two variables are correlated, we cannot

know which might cause which For example, if esteem and GPA are correlated, esteem might cause GPA (perhaps people who have higher esteem have higher expectations and so study harder), but GPA might cause esteem (perhaps having a high GPA makes people think well of themselves) If esteem causes GPA, building

up students’ esteem should help their GPAs But if GPA causes esteem, building

up students’ esteem will not do anything to their GPAs Now, admittedly, I picked

an example where we could see it either way Sometimes it’s fairly clear that the direction of causality probably isn’t one way For example, suppose years ago, before we knew that smoking causes lung cancer, a researcher learned that ciga-rette smoking and lung cancer are positively correlated Probably the researcher would rule out the possibility that lung cancer causes smoking (“I’ve got cancer! What a great time to start smoking!” Not likely.) So, it must be the other way, right? If smoking and cancer are correlated, and cancer doesn’t cause smoking, then smoking must cause cancer Of course, smoking does cause cancer, but, in general,

if two variables are correlated and one direction of sality can be ruled out, this doesn’t mean the other direc-tion is right Why not? Because there’s a larger problem than the direction problem: the third variable problem

cau-The third variable problem has to do with the fact

that two variables could be correlated and neither might cause the other For example, if esteem and GPA are cor-related, it might be that esteem doesn’t cause GPA and GPA doesn’t cause esteem either Then how can they be cor-related? They can be correlated because both are caused by something else, some third variable Perhaps good nutrition causes people to have high esteem and also causes them to get good grades But it might not be good nutrition Perhaps getting enough sleep causes people to have high esteem and also causes them to get good grades But it might not be sleep Perhaps a supportive family causes people to have high esteem and also causes them to get good grades As you can see, the possibilities are endless, so there’s no way

to know the cause, at least in correlational research That’s why we say that correlation does not imply causation

CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION

Example: A correlation between self-esteem

and GPA does not indicate that esteem causes

GPA because:

Direction problem: Esteem could cause

GPA but GPA could cause esteem

Third variable problem: Some other

variable could cause both

Direction problem

A reason why causation cannot

be inferred from correlation If

two variables are correlated,

either might cause the other

Third variable problem

A reason why causation

cannot be inferred from

correlation If two variables are

correlated, neither might cause

the other because both are

caused by a third variable

Let me give you one of my favorite illustrations of the third variable problem

As I read somewhere years ago, ice cream sales vary with the month of the year

Less ice cream is sold in January, but this increases and reaches its peak in summer

Then it begins to decline and is quite low in December Assaults also vary with the

month of the year They are low in January, peak in summer, and are low again in

December Ice cream sales and assaults are positively correlated Now, why do

you think that is? Is it because eating ice cream makes people really mad, so

they rush out and look for someone to beat up? Nah Maybe it’s the other way

Maybe after people beat someone up they think, “You know what would top off

this evening really well? A big bowl of ice cream.” Do you think that’s it? I don’t

either What could explain the correlation between ice cream sales and assaults?

Yes, the third variable is probably heat It’s hot in summer, and heat tends to make

people buy more ice cream and get into more fights However, we can’t know for

sure from a correlation If we want to know about cause, we must do an experiment

But before we turn to experiments, let’s notice briefly that, as Kalat (2008)

pointed out, there are very rare occasions when inferring causation from correlation

is reasonable It’s reasonable to infer causation from correlation when it seems to be

the only possibility For example, suppose we discover that after a terrorist attack

there’s an increase in anxiety If so, terrorism and anxiety would be positively

cor-related If you think about the direction problem and the third variable problem, you

can probably see why it would be reasonable to infer that terrorism causes anxiety

Would anxiety cause terrorism? What third variable would cause both terrorism and

anxiety? However, such instances are extremely rare, so our rule about not inferring

causation from correlation holds pretty much all the time

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

Think of a positive correlation and a negative correlation

other than those given in the text What is the magnitude of

a correlation? What advantage does regression have over

correlation? What’s the most important thing to keep in mind

about correlations? Describe the two problems that prevent us

from inferring causation from correlation Think of another example

of two variables that go together because both are caused by

something else

Experimental Research

Experimental research seeks to discover if one variable causes another We often

want to know this For example, does violent TV increase aggression? Does daycare

cause behavioral problems in children? Does antidepressant medication alleviate

depression? Does forming a mental image improve memory?

How do we determine if something causes something else? Let me give you

an example and perhaps you can reason it out for yourself Suppose you pursue

a career in psychology and get a job working at a university One day you’re

sitting in your office when you get a call “Hi, I’m Mr Wellington, president

of Wellington Pharmaceuticals We have developed a drug that improves memory

Experimental research

Seeks to discover if one variable causes another

We’re calling it Xtreme Memory Boost We would like you to conduct some dependent tests for us to determine if Xtreme Memory Boost really does improve memory.” Mr Wellington agrees to pay you for your time regardless of the outcome, and you happen to be interested in memory improvement, so you agree How will you do your study? What would you think of doing it like this? Bring in a group

in-of students from your university Have them study a list in-of 25 words Then test their memory for the list and record the number of words that each person remem-bers Then give them two Xtreme Memory Boost capsules (with their consent, of course), have them study the list again, and then test them again The design would look like this:

The hypothesis would be that they will remember more words after taking Xtreme Memory Boost than before Great idea, huh? Not really What’s wrong with this plan? As you probably noticed, recall for the words might increase for the sec-ond test whether Xtreme Memory Boost works or not because the participants get

to study again Studying material twice is usually better than studying once (a good thing to keep in mind when preparing for exams) What research design would be better? Suppose you used different lists of words, like this:

That’s an improvement, but there are some problems For example, have you ever had to take two exams in the same day? If so, you might have found that the information you learned for the first exam interfered with your ability to remember information for the second exam (not surprisingly, we call this interference; more

on that in the cognition chapter) Also, one would need to do something about the fact that the lists might not be equally difficult There’s a better way Can you think of it?

As you might have realized, a good way to conduct this research would be to have two groups of people study the same list Both receive two capsules of something, but only one group receives Xtreme Memory Boost in their capsules We call the group

that receives Xtreme Memory Boost the experimental group The group that doesn’t

get Xtreme Memory Boost (perhaps they get water in their capsules instead) is the

control group Both groups study and are tested under identical conditions So the

design would look like this:

Study List of WordsFirst Memory Test Take Xtreme Memory Boost Study List of Words AgainSecond Memory Test

Study List 1Memory Test for List 1Take Xtreme Memory BoostStudy List 2

Memory Test for List 2

Experimental group

The participants who receive

the factor (e.g., a drug, a

violent film) that the researcher

is investigating

Control group

The participants who do not

receive the factor (e.g., a

drug, a violent film) that the

researcher is investigating

The control group is used as

a standard or baseline against

which the experimental group

is compared

Can you see why this design would allow us to conclude something about

whether Xtreme Memory Boost causes memory improvement? Both groups get

identical looking capsules, study the same words, are tested in the same way

Everything is the same except for what the capsules contain So, if the Xtreme

Memory Boost group does better, it must really work It must be the cause

Now, you might be thinking, “Wait just a minute What if the experimental

group folks (Xtreme Memory Boost group) happened to be better than the

con-trol group folks (water group) at memorizing?” Right you are! You might have

a bright future in psychology We need to make sure that the groups are the

same to start with Let’s think about this with a different illustration Suppose

I think violent films make people more aggressive (they do, as we shall see

in the motivation chapter) I decide to test my idea I need some participants,

so I take my equipment down to the local high school where a football game is

soon to begin I think, “Hmm I need some people to watch my violent film clip

Ah, football players! Hey, you football players! Would you mind watching this

film clip? It just takes a few minutes.” They watch the violent clip and afterward

I measure their aggressiveness Now I need some participants for the control

condition (perhaps I have them watch some neutral film clip, like a clip from a

documentary on elephant seals) I think, “Where can I find more participants?

Ah, the band! Hey, you band members! Would you mind watching this film clip?

It just takes a few minutes.” They watch the non-violent clip and afterward I

mea-sure their aggressiveness Suppose I discover that the participants who watched the

violent film clip are more aggressive, so I conclude that violent films make people

more aggressive Is that conclusion justified? I have a problem, don’t I? In fact,

I have a problem called a confound

A confound means that I have more than one possible explanation for my

find-ing It could be that my violent film clip really is the cause of the greater

aggres-siveness But it could be that football players are just more aggressive than band

members and my film clip has nothing to do with it Notice that a confound doesn’t

mean that I failed to find something I did find something I found that participants

who watched the violent film clip (the experimental group) were more aggressive

than those who watched the clip on elephant seals (the control group) The problem

is that I don’t know why I found what I found; was the difference in aggressiveness

due to the different clips or the different groups of participants? So I have a

con-found We could probably make a rap song out of that

Study List of Words Study List of Words

I don’t know why I found The finding that I found

I have a confound And it’s knocked me to the ground

Huh!

Confound

A problem in which there are multiple explanations for an experimental result, making it difficult to know why the result occurred

HOW NOT TO DO A VIOLENT

FILM EXPERIMENT

Football Players

Violent Film Non-Violent Film Band Members

Measure

Aggression Aggression Measure

But I digress Suppose I want to fix the confound but I still have only football players and band members

as possible participants What can I do? Right, I could mix them up so that I end up with some football play-ers and some band members in my experimental group (violent film) and some football players and some band members in my control group (elephant seals) How do

I know that I divided them up properly? A good way to

do this is to use random assignment Random

assign-ment means that I randomly determine where each ticipant goes In this case, there are only two conditions (violent film, elephant seals), so I could flip a coin for each participant If the coin comes up heads, that person watches the violent film; if it comes up tails, that person watches elephant seals

par-My understanding is that before the use of random assignment, researchers might have tried to make their groups equal by matching people (“Let’s see, Deven

‘The Mallet’ Mulholland, who is 6’ 4” and 229 pounds, will watch the violent film, so I’d better have Bryan

‘Crusher’ Carrington, who is 6’ 3” and 226 pounds, watch the elephant seals because these two football players are kind of alike.”) Of course, the problem is that people differ in many ways What if these individ-uals differ in how aggressive they are, or how suscepti-ble to violent TV they are, or whether they have seen the film clip before, or any one of a hundred different ways?

So, it’s difficult to match people very well Fortunately, someone came up with the brilliant insight that we don’t have to match individual participants as long as the groups overall are the same; and we can make the groups the same by randomly placing participants in the groups, because if the coin is fair, the groups will turn out about equal in everything: height, weight, aggressiveness, etc

If you don’t believe me, try it yourself Take 50 pieces of paper (a reasonable number of participants for a study like this one) and write a height, a weight, and a level of aggressiveness (maybe from 1-Not aggressive to 10-Very aggres-sive) on each piece of paper Then flip a coin for each, dividing the 50 into two groups Then find the average for height, weight, and aggressiveness for each of the two groups You should find that the averages (the means, as you might recall from our descriptive statistics discussion earlier) for the two groups are very similar So, if the groups are the same before they view the film (either violence or elephant seals), and they differ in aggressiveness afterward, and everything except the film was identical,

it must be the film This is why we say experiments allow one to determine causality.Time for a bit of terminology In experiments there are two types of vari-ables: those that the experimenter varies (manipulates) and those that are mea-

sured The variables that the experimenter manipulates are called independent ables The variables that are measured are called dependent variables For example,

vari-BUT WE CAN FIX THE CONFOUND

WITH RANDOM ASSIGNMENT

Violent Film Non-Violent Film

Measure

Aggression Aggression Measure

Randomly assign football

players and band members

Random assignment

Randomly determining which

condition each participant is

assigned to

Independent variables

The variables that are

manipulated in an experiment

in this violent film experiment, the film that participants viewed (violent film or

el-ephant seals) was manipulated (varied), so this was the independent variable (IV)

Aggressiveness was measured, so this was the dependent variable (DV) There are

various ways to remember this For example, we might say that the dependent

vari-able (DV) depends on the independent varivari-able (IV) In this violent film experiment,

we are hypothesizing that how aggressive the participants will be (the DV) will depend

on which film they see (the IV)

In this violent film experiment there’s only one independent variable (IV),

but researchers often manipulate more than one thing at a time (there are usually

several DVs also) Varying more than one thing at a time allows us to see if the

in-dependent variables influence one another For example, suppose we want to know

if both violence and heat cause aggression We could do one experiment on violence

and another experiment on heat, but if we combine them we can see if violence and

temperature influence one another We might conduct an experiment in which some

participants see a violent film in a hot room, others see a violent film in a comfortable

room, others see a film on elephant seals in a hot room, and others see a film on

ele-phant seals in a comfortable room The experimental design would look like this:

Let’s suppose we measure aggression by asking people to choose the level of

electric shock they would like to give a person who angered them, on a scale from

1-10 (but the other person doesn’t actually get the shock) We might find something

like this (the numbers in the boxes are the means for the four groups, and higher

numbers indicate greater aggressiveness):

4.9 3.7

As you can see, these hypothetical results suggest that both violent films and

high temperatures produce greater aggression We call these main effects A main effect is an effect due to a single independent variable In this case, there appear

to be two main effects, one for film (overall, the means are higher in the violent conditions than in the elephant seal conditions) and one for temperature (overall, the means are higher in the hot conditions than in the comfortable conditions)

However, there also appears to be an interaction An interaction is a result that is

caused by two or more independent variables working together In this case, we can see that, although the violent film and the hot room produced main effects, the num-ber that really stands out is the 9.2 in the violent film/hot room condition From these hypothetical results, it would appear that violence and heat are a potentially dangerous combination If we studied violent films and heat separately we would never learn this, so it is often a good idea to study multiple independent variables simultaneously

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

We’ve covered a great deal of ground, so please make sure you understand how experiments work and all the terminology before going on What is random assignment? Why do we say that randomly assigning participants to an experimental group or a control group allows us to establish causality? What is a confound? What is the difference between an independent variable and a dependent variable? What is the difference between a main effect and an interaction?

internal Validity and External Validity

Ideally, experiments should have both internal validity and external validity

Internal validity refers to the degree to which an experiment is free from

con-founds, and so one can be fairly sure that any effects on the dependent variable ally are due to the independent variable Earlier we noticed that a confound might exist if one doesn’t randomly assign participants As you might recall, if the par-ticipants who watch a violent film are all football players and the participants who watch elephant seals are all band members, we can’t know if a difference in aggression is due to the film or the participants, so we have a confound However,

re-I can randomly assign participants and still have a confound For example, suppose

I randomly assign participants to view either a violent film or a film on elephant seals, but I show the violent film in a small, crowded room and the elephant seal film in a spacious, uncrowded room Now if I find a difference I don’t know if my finding is due to the violent film or crowding, and again, I would have a confound

To the degree that we avoid such confounds and have confidence that only the independent variable is affecting the dependent variable, internal validity is high There are many potential threats to internal validity (potential confounds) Let’s consider three, and how we might deal with them

I understand in baseball there’s a phenomenon called the Sophomore Slump

An athlete does extremely well in his first year in professional baseball, but then does less well in his second (sophomore) year People might begin to speculate about why he’s in a slump compared to his previous outstanding year “Maybe the

Main effect

An effect due to a single

independent variable

Interaction

An effect that is caused by two

or more independent variables

working together

Internal validity

The degree to which an

experiment is free from

confounds, and so one can be

fairly sure that any effects on

the dependent variable are due

to the independent variable