Psychology 101 Ticket 32121 M-218

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Psychology 101Ticket 32121M-218

• Melissa Ferguson, PhD
• T/Th 730-845

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Required Text Invitation to Psychology 4th
ed. Wade Tavris (2008)
ISBN 9780131750630

• Viking Bookstore
• [phone] ext. 2462
• Hours 730 am 7 pm M-Th
• 730 am 230 pm Fri,
• closed Sa/Su
• Online

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Psych 101Melissa Ferguson

• Email mferguson_at_lbcc.edu
• Office
• Office Hours after class and by appt

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Melissa Ferguson, PhD

• BA Psychology SDSU
• Developmental Psych Research

• MA Psychology SDSU
• Physiological Psych Research

• PhD Neuroscience USC
• Aging Plasticity in the brain

• Postdoc Biochemistry USC
• Aging

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Psych 101Course Description

• Survey course on
• Science of Psychology

• Development, Learning, Memory, Thinking,
  Motivation, Emotion, Perception, Abnormal
  Psychology, Biology of Behavior

• Critical Scientific Thinking

• Gender, Ethnic, Cultural Differences

• You will be tested on
• Text, lectures, class discussions, assignments,
  group activities and other multimedia supplements

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Tests

• 3 mid-term exams
• Multiple choice
• You will need to THINK CRITICALLY
• Active review session if time permits

• FINAL EXAM
• Cumulative
• OPTIONAL

• NO MAKEUP EXAMS!!!

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Quizzes and Assignments

• Quizzes
• 3 reading quizzes ? 1 per section
• 10 questions 10 points
• 30 points toward total grade
• Will be announced IN CLASS
• Combination MC, T/F, fill in blank, short
  answer

• Assignments
• 3 writing assignments 25 points each
• 75 points toward final grade

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Attendance Points

• Attendance Points
• 2 points/day starting Jan 26 50 points total
• If you are late or leave early, you risk getting
  only half the points for that day
• Can raise (or lower) your grade!
• Perfect attendance 5 extra points!

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Extra Credit

• Not a requirement
• Not guaranteed to raise your grade

• Opportunities throughout the semester

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FINAL GRADE CALCULATIONNO CURVE
90-100 of total possible points A 80-89 of
total possible points B 70-79 of total
possible points C 60-69 of total possible
points D Below 60 of total possible points
F   Tests 3 Exam Scores (x 100 points each)
300 points Assignments (3 x 10 points each)
75 points Quizzes (3 x 10 points
each) 30 points Attendance Points
50 points Total 455
points
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Miscellaneous

• Questions
• Please feel free to ask questions throughout the
  class as I want to encourage discussions

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What is Psychology?

• Learning Objectives
• Why is psychology a science, and how can it be
  distinguished from pseudoscience and folk wisdom?
• How did psychology come to be a science, i.e.
  what is its history?
• Understand the focus of the major perspectives,
  and how each explains and understands thoughts
  feelings and behavior.
• How do the potential jobs in psychology differ
  from one another in their training, and
  background?
• Be able to distinguish between psychotherapists,
  psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts

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What is Psychology

• How do you know that George Washington was the
  first President of the United States?

• Authority
• We trust the authority of historians and history
  books

• How do you know you really have a stomach?
• What makes you so sure the sun will rise tomorrow?

• Reason
• Deductive reasoning
• Inductive reasoning

• Are you sure you dont have a big hole in the
  back of your pants?
• How do you know the color of the shirt I am
  wearing?

• Observation

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What is psychology?
chapter 1

• Psychology is Empirical
• It relies on evidence gathered by careful
  observation, experimentation, or measurement

Definition The discipline concerned with
behavior and mental processes and how they are
affected by an organisms physical state, mental
state, and external environment.
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What Psychology is NOT
chapter 1

• Psychobabble
• Self-help books
• Talk shows

• Pseudoscience
• Handwriting analysis
• Astrology

• Common Sense
• Your baby will be smarter if he/she listens to
  classical music
• Abused children will become abusive parents

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Psychologys past
chapter 1

• Phrenology
• Bumps on the skull, are thought to related to the
  size of the underlying organs in the brain and
  account for specific character and personality
  traits

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Psychologys past
chapter 1

• Functionalism
• Emphasized function or purpose of behavior - how
  and why
• William James (1842-1910)
• broadened field of psychology to include the
  study of children, animals, religious
  experiences, and stream of consciousness

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For next class

• Get textbook!
• Read Ch 1 at least through Critical Thinking
  Guidelines

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Last Class in Review

• What is Psychology?
• A science that relies on empirical evidence
  gathered by observation, experimentation or
  measurement
• It examines behavior and mental processes and how
  they are affected by the physical and mental
  state, as well as the external environment
• It is NOT psychobabble, a pseudoscience or simply
  common sense
• What are the foundations of modern psychology,
  i.e. psychologys past?
• Phrenology bumps on skull relate to character
• Wilhelm Wundt first psychological lab,
  observation
• Functionalism how and why of behavior
• Psychoanalysis unconscious mind controls
  behavior
• FREUD

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What is Psychology?Major Perspectives and Jobs

• Learning Objectives
• Understand the focus of the major perspectives,
  and how each explains and understands thoughts
  feelings and behavior.
• How do the potential jobs in psychology differ
  from one another in their training, and
  background?
• Be able to distinguish between psychotherapists,
  psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts.
• What are the 8 critical thinking guidelines that
  help in understanding psychological issues?

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Major Psychological perspectives
chapter 1

• Biological perspective
• Learning perspective
• Cognitive perspective
• Sociocultural perspective
• Psychodynamic perspective

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Albert Einstein
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The biological perspective
chapter 1

• Psychological approach that focuses on how genes,
  hormones, brain function, and other biological
  factors affect behavior, feelings, perceptions,
  and thoughts

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The learning perspective
chapter 1

• Emphasizes how the environment and experience
  affect a persons or animals actions

• Behaviorists
• Focus on environmental rewards and punishers
• Observation is key

• Social-Cognitive
• Combines behavioralism with research on thoughts,
  values, and intentions
• Environment, imitation, and internal thoughts
  influences behavior

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The cognitive perspective
chapter 1

• Psychological approach that emphasizes what goes
  on in peoples heads

• Examines internal mental processes
• Creativity
• Perception
• Thinking
• Problem Solving
• Memory
• Language

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The sociocultural perspective
chapter 1

• Psychological approach that emphasizes social and
  cultural forces outside the individual

• Addresses ethnicity, gender, culture, and
  socio-economic status and how peoples behavior
  and outlook differ because of these factors.

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The psychodynamic perspective
chapter 1

• Psychological approach that emphasizes
  unconscious dynamics within the individual, such
  as inner forces, conflicts, or the movement of
  instinctual energy

• Unconscious thoughts, desires, and conflicts
• Outgrowth from Freud

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Humanist psychology
chapter 1

• Psychological approach that emphasizes personal
  growth and the achievement of human potential,
  rather than the scientific understanding of
  behavior

• Free will, personal growth, resilience,
• achievement of human potential and self-
• fulfillment

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What can you do with a background in Psychology?

• Teaching and research at colleges and
  universities
• Psychological practice
• Research or application of psychology in
  non-academic settings

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Psychological research
chapter 1

• Research in areas of basic or applied psychology

• Experimental psychologists
• Physiological psychologists
• Developmental psychologists
• Social psychologists
• Educational psychologists
• Industrial/organizational psychologists
• Psychometric psychologists

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Psychological practice
chapter 1

• Counseling psychologists
• help people deal with problems associated with
  everyday life

• School psychologists
• work to enhance student performance and provide
• a supportive learning environment

• Clinical psychologists
• diagnose, treat, and study mental or emotional
  problems.
• PhD, PsyD or EdD
• Psychiatrists
• diagnose, treat, and study mental or emotional
  problems
• have an MD

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Psychologists in other settings
chapter 1

• Sports
• Consumer issues
• Advertising
• Organizational problems
• Environmental issues
• Public policy
• Opinion polls
• Military training
• Animal behavior
• Legal issues

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Critical thinking guidelines
chapter 1
1. Ask Questions
2. Define you terms
3. Examine the evidence
4. Analyze Assumptions and Biases
5. Avoid emotional reasoning
6. Dont oversimplify
7. Consider other interpretations
8. Tolerate uncertainty
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For Next Class

• Finish reading Ch 1

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Last class in review

• 5 Psychological Perspectives
• Biological genes, hormones, brain function
• Learning environment and experience
• Cognitive what is in peoples heads
• Sociocultural ethnicity, gender, culture, and
  socioeconomic status
• Psychodynamic unconsciousness
• Plus Humanism self- fulfillment and
  achievement
• Jobs in Psychology
• Research basic applied
• Practice counseling, school psych, clinical
• Other settings
• Critical Thinking Guidelines

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Critical Thinking Guidelines and Research Methods

• Learning Objectives
• What are the 8 critical thinking guidelines that
  help in understanding psychological issues?
• What are the defining elements of descriptive
  research? Can you give an example of a case
  study, observational study, a psychological test,
  and a survey?
• What are positive and negative correlations and
  what do they look like?

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Group Exercise

• Work in groups of 3-4
• Identify the critical thinking guidelines that
  were violated in the stories presented on the
  handout

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Methods used to gather empirical evidence

• Descriptive Studies

• Correlations

• Experiments

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Descriptive methods
chapter 1

• Methods that yield descriptions of behavior, but
  not necessarily causal explanations

• Case Studies
• Observational Studies
• Tests
• Surveys

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Case studies
chapter 1

• A detailed description of a particular individual
  being studied or treated, which may be used to
  formulate broader research hypotheses

• Most commonly used by clinicians
• Occasionally used by researchers

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Observational studies

• Researchers carefully and systematically observe
  and record behavior without interfering with
  behavior

• Naturalistic observation
• Natural environments

• Laboratory observation
• Controlled setting

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Psychological tests

• Procedures used to measure and evaluate
  personality traits, emotional states, aptitudes,
  interests, abilities, and values
• Objective - inventories
• Projective ambiguous stimuli

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Psychological tests cont.

• Characteristics of a good test include
• Standardization
• Reliability
• Validity
• content criterion

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Surveys

• Questionnaires and interviews that ask people
  about experiences, attitudes, or opinions

• Representative sample
• Group of subjects, selected from the population
  for study, which matches the population on
  important characteristics such as age and sex

• Volunteer Bias

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Correlational study

• A descriptive study that looks for a consistent
  relationship between two phenomena

• Correlation
• A statistical measure of how strongly
• two variables are related to one another
• Correlational coefficients can range from
• 0.0  1.0
• negative or positive

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Direction of correlations
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Scatterplots

• Correlations can be represented by scatterplots.

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Your turn

• What kind of correlation is this?
• 1. Positive
• 2. Negative
• 3. No correlation

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Your turn

• What kind of correlation is this?
• 1. Positive
• 2. Negative
• 3. No correlation

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Correlations do NOT prove Cause and Effect!

• It is very important to remember that just
  because 2 variables are correlated, that doesnt
  mean that 1 causes the other
• X and Y are positively correlated
• X causes Y
• Y causes X
• X and Y can be the result of variable Z

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Causal and Non-causal language

• Sexual lyrics prompt teens to have sex
• Listening to sexual lyrics associated with teen
  sex
•  
• Memory retention enhanced by sleep
• People who sleep more, remember more!
•  
• Kids who take music lessons have bigger brains
• Music lessons improve kids' brain development

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Causal and Non-causal language

• Sexual lyrics prompt teens to have sex
• Listening to sexual lyrics associated with teen
  sex
•  
• Memory retention enhanced by sleep
• People who sleep more, remember more!
•  
• Kids who take music lessons have bigger brains
• Music lessons improve kids' brain development

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Causal and Non-causal language

• Sexual lyrics prompt teens to have sex
• Listening to sexual lyrics associated with teen
  sex
•  
• Memory retention enhanced by sleep
• People who sleep more, remember more!
•  
• Kids who take music lessons have bigger brains
• Music lessons improve kids' brain development

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Causal and Non-causal language

• Sexual lyrics prompt teens to have sex
• Listening to sexual lyrics associated with teen
  sex
•  
• Memory retention enhanced by sleep
• People who sleep more, remember more!
•  
• Kids who take music lessons have bigger brains
• Music lessons improve kids' brain development

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Experimental Method
chapter 1

• A controlled test of a hypothesis in which the
  researcher manipulates one variable to discover
  its effect on another.

• Variables
• Control conditions
• Random assignment
• Statistics

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Group ExerciseResearch Methods

• With your group match the appropriate research
  method with its description
• Well discuss the answers as a class when all the
  groups are done

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Last Class in Review

• 8 Critical Thinking Guidelines
• Ask questions
• Define your terms
• Examine the evidence
• Analyze assumptions and biases
• Dont over-simplify
• Consider other interpretations
• Tolerate uncertainty
• Psychological Methods
• Descriptive
• case studies, observational studies, psych tests,
  surveys
• Correlational
• Positive or Negative
• Do not prove cause and effect!

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Research Methods Experimental Methods
Statistics

• What is the difference between and independent
  variable and dependent variable?
• What is the difference between an experimental
  and control group?
• What is the difference between random selection
  and random assignment? Why do researchers use
  random selection and random assignment?
• What is the difference between a single-blind and
  double blind experiment?
• Why would someone use descriptive vs inferential
  statistics?

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Experimental Method
chapter 1

• A controlled test of a hypothesis in which the
  researcher manipulates one variable to discover
  its effect on another.

• Variables
• Control conditions
• Random assignment
• Statistics

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Experimental MethodVariables of interest
chapter 1

• Independent
• variables
• Variables the experimenter manipulates

Dependent variables Variables the experimenter
predicts will be affected by manipulations of the
independent variable(s)
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Your turn
chapter 1

• An experimenter wants to study the effects of
  music on studying. He has some students study
  while listening to music and others study in
  silence, and then compares their test scores.
  What is the independent variable in this
  experiment?
• 1. The students
• 2. The presence of music while studying
• 3. The kind of music
• 4. The test scores

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Your turn
chapter 1

• An experimenter wants to study the effects of
  music on studying. He has some students study
  while listening to music and others study in
  silence, and then compares their test scores.
  What is the independent variable in this
  experiment?
• 1. The students
• 2. The presence of music while studying
• 3. The kind of music
• 4. The test scores

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Control conditions
chapter 1

• A comparison condition in which subjects are not
  exposed to the same treatment as in the
  experimental condition

Experimental Control Conditons
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Random assignment
chapter 1

• Each individual participating in the study has
  the same probability as any other of being
  assigned to a given group.

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Experimenter effects
chapter 1

• Unintended changes in subjects behavior due to
  cues inadvertently given by the experimenter.

Strategies for preventing experimenter effects
include single- and double-blind studies.
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Descriptive statistics
chapter 1

• Statistical procedures that organize and
  summarize research data

• Examples
• Arithmetic mean
• Standard deviation

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Descriptive statistics
chapter 1
Scores on a test 99 92 86 88 70 91 77 85 89 90
Mean 867 / 10 86.7
Standard Deviation 8.1
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Inferential statistics
chapter 1

• Statistical procedures that allow researchers to
  draw inferences about how statistically
  meaningful a studys results are.

• Significance tests
• Significance means that the possibility your
  results occurred by chance is very small

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Statistics
chapter 1
Hypothesis Students who sleep less than 4
hours before an exam will perform more poorly
than those getting 8 hours or more.
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Statistics
chapter 1
Hypothesis Students who sleep less than 4
hours before an exam will perform more poorly
than those getting 8 hours or more.
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Random Selection vs. Random Assignment
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• Random Selection

• Every member of a given population has an equal
  chance of being selected for the sample

• Background characteristics (variables) are
  similar in selected sample and population
• e.g. age, gender or race

• External validity

• Random Assignment

• Every member of the sample has an equal chance of
  being placed in the the experimental or control
  groups

• Distributes variability (background
  characteristics) evenly among groups

• Internal validity

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How to Select a Simple Random Sample?

• 1. Define the population
• Head Start families in Los Angeles (100)

• 2. Determine desired sample size
• 25 families

• 3. List all members of population
• Sampling frame

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Sampling FrameHead Start Families in Los Angeles
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How to Select a Simple Random Sample?

• 1. Define the population
• Head Start families in Los Angeles (100)

• 2. Determine desired sample size
• 25 families

• 3. List all members of population
• Sampling frame

• 4. Randomly select individuals from population
• Random number table, computer program, hat model,
  coin toss
• www.random.org
• Excel formula RAND()

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Random Selection of Sample from Population Using
Excel
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Benefits of using Random Selection
Sample generalizes to population External
Validity
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What happens if we dont use Random Selection?
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What happens if we dont use Random Selection?
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What happens if we dont use Random Selection?
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What happens if we dont use Random Selection?
Sample is NOT representative of the population
Difficult to generalize results to the population
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Random Assignment

• Use of random number table, computer program, hat
  model, or coin toss to assign individuals in a
  sample to a control or experimental group

• Evenly distributes background variables among the
  groups

• Allows for experimenters to make statements about
  cause and effect

Primary Goal of Research!
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Benefits of using Random Assignment
Groups are similar to each other
Internal Validity
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What if we dont use Random Assignment?
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What if we dont use Random Assignment?
Groups are NOT similar difficult to determine
causality
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Head Start Families N 100
External Validity
Representative Sample N 25
Internal Validity
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Hypothesis Early literacy intervention will
improve emergent literacy in low-income children
Independent variable
Dependent variable
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Writing Assignment 1

• Due 2/9

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For NEXT WEEK

• READ CHAPTER 4!!
• Lots of definitions and new terms

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Group Exercise

• What youll need
• Deck of cards
• Coin or dice
• Background
• Deck of cards random sample
• Cards participants/individuals
• Card have unique characteristics background
  variables
• e.g. 26 black and 26 red 13 each hearts, spades,
  clubs and diamonds
• Goal
• Each group will be given instructions on what to
  do with their deck of cards, give me your results
  before you leave class and Ill show you
  everyones results next class
• This is to help you get a better understanding of
  how important random assignment is