PSYC 200

Introduction
Biology Plus Environment… are part of psychology’s three “biopsychological”
levels of analysis.

The deep level Biology: genes, brain, neurotransmitters, survival, reflexes, and
sensation

In the middle Psychology: thoughts, emotions, moods, choices, behaviors, traits,

motivations, knowledge, perceptions

The outer level, Environment: social influences culture, education relationships

Perspectives
There are many perspectives for describing psychological phenomena:
From different angles, you can ask different questions:
Cognitive perspective - How reliable is memory? How can we improve our thinking?

Social-cultural - Could our behavior skills, and attitudes be “downloads” from our
culture?

Behavioral genetics - Could our behavior, skills, and attitudes be genetically

programmed instincts?

Neuroscience - What role do our bodies and brains play in emotions? How is pain
inhibited? Can we trust our senses?

Psychodynamic - Do inner childhood conflicts still plague me and affect my behavior?

Behaviorist - How is our problematic behavior enforced? How do our fears become
conditioned? What can we do to change these fears and behaviors?

Evolutionary - What are humans prone to panic, anger, and making irrational
judgements?
Let's play: “What’s my perspective?”
● “Obsessive compulsive disorder is a problem in the orbital cortex.”
○ Neuroscience
● “Compulsions start as habits and are rewarded by the anxiety relief they bring.”
○ Behaviorist
● “No, OCD is an inherited condition.”
○ Behavioral genetics
● “OCD comes from our natural instinct to control our environment.”
○ Evolutionary
● “No, it’s a sign of unresolved childhood issues.”
○ Psychodynamic
● “No, OCD is a matter of mental habits and errors that can be corrected.”
○ Cognitive perspective
● “OCD thinking and behavior is a reaction to our fast-paced, out-of-control
lifestyles.”
○ Social-cultural

Psychology’s Subfields

Basic Research Applied

● Biological ● Clinical Psychology
● Developmental ● Counseling Psychology
● Cognitive ● Educational Psychology
● Personality ● Industrial-Organizational
● Social ● Community Psychology
● Positive Psychology ● Clinical Psychology

Why do we need Psychological Science? When our natural thinking style fails:
● Hindsight bias: “I knew it all along.”
● Overconfidence error: “I am sure I am correct.”
● The coincidence error, or mistakenly perceiving order in random events: “The
dice must be fixed because you rolled three sixes in a row.”
These sayings all seem to make sense, in hindsight, after we read them.
● Absence makes the heart grow fonder
○ Out of sight, out of mind
● You can’t teach an old dog new tricks
○ You’re never too old to learn
● Good fences make good neighbors
○ No [wo]man is on an island
● Birds of a feather flock together
○ Opposites attract
● Seek and ye shall find
○ Curiosity killed the cat
● Look before you leap
○ S/He who hesitates is lost
● The pen is mightier than the sword
○ Actions speak louder than words

Hindsight “Bias”
Why call it “bias”?
● The mind builds its current wisdom around what we have already been told.
● We are “biased” in favor of old information.
● For example, we may stay in a bad relationship because it has lasted this far and
thus was “meant to be.”

Overconfidence Error: Overconfidence Error:

Predicting performance Judging our accuracy

● We overestimate our performance, ● When stating that we “know”

our rate of work, our skills, and our
degree of self-control.
● Test for this: “how long do you
think it takes you to…” (e.g. “just
finish this one thing I’m doing on
the computer before I got to
work”)?
● How fast can you unscramble
words? Guess, then try these:
something, our level of confidence
is usually higher than our level of
accuracy.
● Overconfidence is a problem in
preparing for tests. Familiary is not
understanding
● -> If you feel confident that you
know a concept try explaining it to
someone else.

HEGOUN ERSEGA

A: ENOUGH GREASE
Perceiving order in random events:
● Example: The coin tosses that “look wrong” if there are five heads in a row.
○ Danger: thinking you can make a prediction from a random series. If there
have been five heads in a row, you can not predict that “it’s time for tails”
on the next flip
○ Why this error happens: because we have the wrong idea about what
randomness looks like.

● Result of this error: reacting to coincidence as if it has meaning

○ If one poker player at a table got pocket aces twice in a row is the game
rigged?

Scientific Attitude Part 1: Curiosity

● Definition: always asking new questions
● “That behavior I’m noticing in that guy… is that common to all people? Or is it
more common when under stress? Or only common for males?”
● Hypothesis: Curiosity, if not guided by caution, can lead to the death of felines
and perhaps humans.

Scientific Attitude Part 2: Skepticism

● Definition: not accepting a ‘fact’ as true without challenging it; seeing if ‘facts’
can withstand attempts to disprove them
● Skepticism like curiosity, generates questions: “Is there another explanation for
the behavior I am seeing? Is there a problem with how I measured it? Do I need
to change my theory to fit the evidence?”

Scientific Attitude Part 3: Humility

● Humility refers to seeking the truth rather than trying to be right ; a scientist
needs to be able to accept to being wrong
● “What matters is not my opinion or yours, but the truth nature reveals in response
to our questioning.” -David Myers
Research process: an example

Research goal and strategy:

Description
● Descriptive research is a systematic, objective observation of people
● The goal is to provide a, clear, accurate picture of people’s behaviors, thoughts,
and attributes
● Strategies for gathering this information:
○ Case study: observing and gathering information to compile an in-depth
study of one individual
○ Naturalistic observation: gathering data about behavior; watching but
not intervening
○ Surveys and interviews: having other people reports on their own
attitude and behavior

A possible result of many descriptive studies: discovering a correlation

Correlation
● General definition: an observation that two traits or attributes are related to
each other (thus, they are “co”-related)
○ In a case study: The fewer hours the boy was allowed to sleep, the more
episodes of aggression he displayed.
○ In a naturalistic observation: Children in a classroom who were dressed
in heavier clothes were more likely to fall asleep than those wearing lighter
clothes.
○ In a survey: The greater the number of Facebook friends, the less time
was spent studying.

● Scientific definition: a measure of how closely two factors vary together, or

how well you can predict a change in one from observing a change in the other

Correlation Coefficient
Correlation is not Causation!
● The correlation coefficient is a number representing how closely and in what
way two variables correlate (change together)
● The direction of the correlation can be positive (direct relationship; both
variables increase together) or negative (inverse relationship: as one increases,
the other decreases)
● The strength of the relationship, how tightly, predictably they vary together, is
measured in a number that varies from 0.00 to +/- 1.00

Guess the correlation coefficients

● Height vs shoe size. - Close to +1.0 (strong positive correlation)
● Years in school vs years in jail - Close to -1.0 (strong negative correlation)
● Height vs intelligence - Close to 0.0 (no relationship, no correlation)

So how do we find out about causation? By experimentation

● Experimentation: manipulating one factor in a situation to determine its effect
● Testing the theory that ADHD = sugar: removing sugar from the diet of children
with ADHD to see if it makes a difference
The Control Group
● If we manipulate a variable in an experimental group of people, and then we
see an effect, how do we know the change wouldn’t have happened anyway?
● We solve this problem by comparing this group to a control group, a group that
is the same in every way except the one variable we are changing.
○ Example: two groups of children have ADHD, but only one group stops
eating refined sugar

How do we make sure the control group is really identical in every way to the
experimental group?
● By using random assignment: randomly selecting some study participants to be
assigned to the control group or the experimental group

Placebo effect
● How do we make sure that the experimental group doesn’t experience an effect
because they expect to experience it?
● How can we make sure that both groups expect to get better, but only one gets
the real intervention being studied?

● Placebo effect: experimental effects that are caused by expectations about the
intervention

Working with the placebo effect:

● Control groups may be given a placebo - an inactive substance or other fake
treatment in the place of the experimental treatment
○ The control group is ideally “blind” to whether they are getting real or fake
treatment
○ Many studies are double-blind - neither participants nor research staff
knows which participants are in the experimental or control groups
Naming the variables
● The variable we are able to manipulate independently of what the other variables
are doing is called the independent variable (IV).
● The variable we expect to experience a change which depends on the
manipulation we’re doing is called the dependent variable (DV).

● If we test the ADHD/sugar hypothesis:

○ Sugar = Cause = Independent variable
○ ADHD = Effect = Dependent variable

● The other variables that might have an effect on the dependent variable are
confounding variables.
○ Did more hyper kids get to choose to be in the sugar group? Then their
preference for sugar would be a confounding variable. (preventing this
problem: random assignment)

Filling in our definition of experimentation

● An experiment is a type of research in which the researcher carefully
manipulates a limited number of factors (IVs) and measures the impact on other
factors (DVs).
○ *In psychology, you would be looking at the effect of the experimental
change (IV) on behavior or mental process (DV)
Summary of the types of research
Comparing research methods

Research Method Basic Purpose How Conducted What is Manipulated Weakness

Descriptive To observe and Perform case studies, Nothing No control of

record behavior surveys, or variables; single
naturalistic cases may be
observations misleading

Correlational To detect naturally Compute statistical Nothing Does not specify

occurring association, cause-effect; one
relationships; to sometimes among predicts another but
assess how well one survey responses this does not mean
variable predicts one causes the other
another

Experimental To explore Manipulate one or The independent Sometimes not

cause-effect more factors; variable(s) possible for practical
randomly assign or ethical reasons;
some to control group results may not
generalize to other
contexts
Stanford Prison Experiment
https://quizlet.com/240106886/stanford-prison-experiment-flash-cards/