SCHOOL WORK


Psycholgy Notes

Year: 2005 | School year: 11 | Subject: Psychology | Format: Report/Speech | Grade: A  

PSYCHOLOGY
The systematic study, interpretation, prediction and human behaviour,
thought processes, cognition and emotion.
- Psychology (ancient Greek: psyche = soul and logos = word)
- Several schools, but borders do blur somewhat

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BEHAVIORAL
B.F. Skinner (radical behaviorism), Albert Bandura
- Thought that Aristotle was one of the first behaviorists, also Hobbes, Descartes
- Negative reinforcement not as effective as positive
- Observing people's behaviour to get an insight into their psyche and thoughts

COGNATIVE
- Material processes of an individual
- Memory, attention, perception, action, problem solving
COGNATIVE DISSONANCE THEORY
- That people react to an authority above their own feelings Leon Festinger, 1957
- Quantitative, positivist
- MILGRAM (The horrible shock one) 1963 Stanley Milgram, 65% did maximum shock when victim could not be seen, 62% when on phone, 30% when holding hand on electrodes (Behaviorist / Cognitive, use as an example of crossover between fields)
- STANFORD (Power of situation) 1971, initially to study human response to captivity

HUMANISTIC
Founding theorist (Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers)
- B.F. Skinner (prominent from school of Behaviorism) is in American Humanist Assosiation
- Emerged in the 1950s
- Qualitative
- Emerged as a response to Cognitive psychology

PSYCHOANALYTICAL AKA PSYCHODYNAMIC
(Sigmunt Frued, Carl Jung, Wilhiem Reich)
- Emerged 1980s, Vienna, from Freud's studies into hysterical cases
- Interpretation of dreams/subconscious
- Free association
- Childhood effecting later life
- Concious / subconscious interaction

BIOPSYCHOLOGICAL
(Eric Kandell)
- The relation of other biological processes on thought ie. PMS, neuroscience
- Uses technology etc. to study what parts of brain fires when emotions change (refer to experiment with monk from Catalyst)

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ETHICS
- LITTLE ALBERT EXPERIMENT (making 9 month old baby fear rat by association one), would not be allowed today.

ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY AKA COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY
(B.F. Skinner leader in field, also Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen)
- Highly controversial (see ethics)
- 1920s to 1950s

ANIMAL ETHICS
In the end, some are harmful and pointless
- RAT PACK EXPERIMENT
Dr. Bruce Alexander tries to prove addiction is a myth, injected rats with heroin. Harmed rats, Alexander's findings were ignored.
- HARLOW ATTATCHMENT EXPERIMENT
(looking into attachment theory) 1958, eight monkeys used, monkeys preferred cloth surrogate to wire one. Caused self harm without mother's nursing.
- HAILMAN'S HERRING GULL EXPERIMENT
(not harmful, but rather pointless. Seeing if Herring gulls preferred food from their own species than Laughing gulls. They did.)

- APA guidelines state "Psychologists undertake research with animals
'...with a clear scientific purpose.' ...There should be a reasonable expectation that the research will a) increase knowledge of the processes underlying the evolution, development, maintenance, alteration, control, or biological significance of behavior, b) increase understanding of the species under study, or c) provide results that benefit the health or welfare of humans or other animals."


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HYPOTHESIS
A tentative explanation of an event or relationship - an educated guess
about behavior.

QUALATATIVE
Subjective data, biases

QUANTITATIVE
Logical, numerical data

STEPS OF RESEARCH
1) Identify problem
2) Formulate hypothesis
3) Design Method
4) Collect Data
5) Analyze Data
6) Interpreter Data
7) Report/write thesis

EXPERIMENTAL
Data from clinical, highly regulated experiment

SURVEY
Random sample asked things. Biased, more indicative of attitudes than facts.

CASE STUDY
Detailed, but too narrow to be of true use.

 


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