The Science of

Psychology
Psychology:
A Concise Introduction
2nd Edition

Richard Griggs
Chapter 1

Prepared by
J. W. Taylor V
What is Psychology?
Psychology

 The science of behavior and mental

processes
 Psychologists attempt to understand
1. Observable behavior: Such as speech and
physical movement
2. Mental processes: Such as remembering and
thinking, which cannot be directly observed
Psychology

 Psychology is the scientific study of mind

and behavior
 The word “psychology” comes from the
Greek words “psyche,” meaning life, and
“logos,” meaning explanation
 One of the most popular majors
 Possible careers and work environments?
The Journey…

 The Four Major Research

Perspectives
 Research Methods Used by
Psychologists
 How to Understand Research
Results
 The Four Major
Research Perspectives
Perspectives Emphasizing
Internal Factors
Perspectives Emphasizing
External Factors
Four Perspectives

Biological Behavioral

Socio-
Cognitive
cultural

All four perspectives are complementary; they fit together

like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to give us the complete
picture.
No one perspective is “better’ than another, as each one
provides information of behavior and mental processing.
Perspectives Emphasizing
Internal Factors
 Biological perspective
 Views our physiological hardware (especially
the brain and nervous system) as the major
determinants of behavior and
mental processing

 Involves such things as studying the brain,

genetics, hormones, and the immune and
nervous systems
The Biological Perspective
 There are many reasons why people get depressed
 From a biological perspective, we would focus on a
deficiency of activity for certain chemicals in our
nervous system as the cause of this disorder,
and use anti-depressant drugs to alleviate the
disorder
 A few weeks after starting to ingest the drugs, we
feel better because mood is in part a function of
brain chemistry
 The Biological Perspective
 Biological psychologists also
study the involvement of the
various parts of the brain and
nervous system on our
behavior and mental
processing
 For instance, vision is actually
processed in the back of our
heads (hence, we really do
have eyes in the back of our
https://www.youtube.com/
heads,” or more precisely “the
watch?v=jyISR47xj5Y back of our brains”)
Perspectives Emphasizing
Internal Factors
 Cognitive perspective
 Emphasizes how our mental processes, such
as perception, memory, and problem solving,
work and impact our behavior

 The cognitive perspective is concerned

with “mental” functions such as:
 Memory, Perception & Attention
 It views people as being similar to computers
 Input / output & processing information
The Cognitive Perspective
 When explaining why people become depressed,
the cognitive psychology would focus on reasons
such as how people explain their successes and
failures
 If we blame ourselves for all of our setbacks (i.e., make
internal attributions), we might start to feel poorly about
ourselves
 However, if we realize the situation played a role in some
of our setbacks (i.e., make external attributions), we might
not feel so badly
 Of course, it is important for students not to blame their
academic failures on their teachers, because in so doing
they would fail to take personal responsibility for their lives!
The Cognitive Perspective
 Many people report problems remembering
other people’s names
 Often, we claim it is because we have bad
memories, but is that so?
 Or, is it that we never bothered to exert the
mental energy required in the first place to
encode other people’s names?
 Both explanations may have validity, and
such explanations would be of interest to a
cognitive psychologist
Perspectives Emphasizing
Internal Factors
 Cognitive perspective
 Cognitive Psychology revolves around the
notion that if we want to know what makes
people tick then the way to do it is to figure
out what processes are actually going on in
their minds
 It is an extremely scientific approach and
typically uses lab experiments to study
human behavior
https://www.youtu
be.com/watch?v=1
bzhb9kfJRA
Perspectives Emphasizing
External Factors
 Behavioral perspective
 Explains that we behave as we do because of
our past history of conditioning by our
environment

 Two main approaches: namely classical

conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical
conditioning involves learning by association,
and operant conditioning involves learning from
the consequences of behavior
Behavioral Perspective
Two types of conditioning:

Classical Operant
Conditioning Conditioning

Can explain how we Involves the relationship

learn fear and other between our behavior
emotional responses, and its environmental
taste aversions, and consequences
certain other behaviors
Classical Conditioning
 When entering a department
store, you may catch the
scent of a perfume or
cologne of an old boyfriend
or girlfriend, and instantly be
reminded of that person
because during the
relationship, you came to
associate the scent with the
person
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
 Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, was a Russian and
Soviet experimental neurologist, psychologist
and physiologist known for his discovery of
classical conditioning through his experiments
with dogs

https://www.youtube.c
om/watch?v=jd7Jdug
5SRc&t=176s
Operant Conditioning
 If you ask a question in class, and the teacher
say “What a stupid question!” you are unlikely to
ask questions in the future to avoid such an
undesirable consequence
 But, if the teachers prefaces his or her response
to the question with “That’s an interesting
question,” you may continue to ask questions in
the future because of the desirable consequence
of being implicitly told you are smart
B.F. Skinner (1904 – 1990)
 B. F. Skinner was one of the most influential
of American psychologists. A behaviorist, he
developed the theory of operant conditioning -
- the idea that behavior is determined by its
consequences, be they reinforcements or
punishments, which make it more or less
likely that the behavior will occur again

https://www.youtub
e.com/watch?v=ne
6o-uPJarA
Behavioral Perspective
 The behavioral perspective is different from
most other approaches because they view
people (and animals) as controlled by their
environment and specifically that we are the
result of what we have learned from our
environment
John B. Watson (1878 – 1958)
 John B. Watson was an American psychologist who
popularized the scientific theory of behaviorism,
establishing it as a psychological school
 Through his behaviorist approach, Watson
conducted research on animal behavior, child
rearing, and advertising, as well as conducting the
controversial "Little Albert" experiment and the
Kerplunk experiment

https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=V09Fu
azW8bc&t=159s
Perspectives Emphasizing
External Factors
 Sociocultural perspective
 Focuses on the impact of other people and
culture on our behavior and mental
processing
The Sociocultural Perspective
 The sociocultural perspective proposes that individuals
will behave and even learn differently based on their
culture or way of life

 The socio-cultural theorists study various factors which

affect human behaviour and psychology like societal
attitude, gender norms and roles, family/kinship
structures, child grooming practices, racial and ethnic
factors, religious and regional differences or practices,
rituals, taboos and power play
The Sociocultural Perspective
 In 1964, Kitty Genovese was brutally attacked and
murdered while trying to enter her apartment building
in New York City late one night. Many of the people
living in the building heard
her screams and cries for help,
but no one called the police
under after the attacker had
killed her and fled more than
30 minutes later.
 Subsequently, researchers
devised laboratory experiments
that examined how particular
variables influence people’s decision
whether or not to help each other.
Major Research Perspectives
in Psychology
Perspective Major Explanatory Focus
Biological How our physiology (especially the brain
and nervous system) produces our behavior
and mental processes and how genetics
and evolution have impacted our physiology
Cognitive How our mental processes, such as
perception, memory, and problem solving,
work and how they impact our behavior
Behavioral How external environmental events
condition our observable behavior
Sociocultural How other people and the cultural context
impact our behavior and mental processes
Research Methods Used
by Psychologists
The Scientific Method
Descriptive Methods
Correlational Studies
Experimental Research
 What is the Scientific Method?
 The scientific method is the process of objectively
establishing facts through testing and experimentation.
The basic process involves making an observation,
forming a hypothesis, making a prediction, conducting
an experiment and finally analyzing the results
Getting to the truth:
The Scientific Method
The scientific method is the process of
testing our ideas about the world by:

analyzing
setting up making careful,
whether the
situations that organized
data fits with
test our ideas observations
our ideas

If the data doesn’t fit our ideas, then we modify

our ideas, and test again
Some research findings revealed by
the scientific method:
Scientific Method:
Tools and Goals
 The brain can recover from
massive early childhood The basics:
brain damage  Theory
 Sleepwalkers are not acting  Hypothesis
out dreams  Operational
 Our brains do not have Definitions
accurate memories locked  Replication
inside like video files Research Methods:
 There is no “hidden and  Descriptive
unused 90 percent” of our  Correlational
brain
 Experimental
 People often change their
opinions to fit their actions
Theory: the big picture

A theory, in the
language of
science, is a set Example of a
of principles, built theory: “All ADHD
on observations symptoms are a
and other reaction to eating
verifiable facts, sugar.”
that explains
some
phenomenon and
predicts its future
behavior
Hypotheses: informed
predictions
“Testable” means that the
hypothesis is stated in a
way that we could make
A hypothesis is a observations to find out if
testable prediction it is true
consistent with
our theory What would be a
prediction from the “All
ADHD is about sugar”
theory?

One hypothesis: If a kid gets sugar, the kid will act more
distracted, impulsive, and hyper
To test the “All” part of the theory: ADHD symptoms will
continue for some kids even after sugar is removed
from the diet
 Danger when testing hypotheses:
theories can bias our observations
We might select only the
data, or the interpretations of
the data, that support what
we already believe. There
are safeguards against this:
 Hypotheses designed to
disconfirm
 Operational definitions:
is the statement of
procedures the researcher
is going to use in order to
measure a specific
variable
Guide for making
useful observations:
 How can we measure
“ADHD symptoms” in
the previous example
in observable terms?
 Impulsivity = # of
times/hour calling
out without raising
hand.
 Hyperactivity = #
of times/hour out of
seat
 Inattention = #
minutes
continuously on
task before
becoming
distracted
Operational definitions

 Aggression
 Number of seconds taken to honk the horn at the car
ahead after a stoplight turns green
 Employee satisfaction
 Number of days per month an employee shows up to
work on time
 Depression
 Number of appointments made with a psychotherapist

 Decision-making skills
 Number of seconds in which a person solves a
problem
The next/final step in the
scientific method:
replication

Replicating research
means trying it again
using the same
operational definitions
of the concepts and
procedures

You could introduce a small change in the study,

e.g. trying the ADHD/sugar test on college
students instead of elementary students
Research
Process: the
depression
example

https://www
.youtube.co
m/watch?v
=yi0hwFD
QTSQ
Research Design

Correlational

Descriptive Experimental
• A research design is the specific method a researcher uses to collect,
analyze, and interpret data
Research Design / Methods
 Descriptive research is research designed to provide
a snapshot of the current state of affairs

 Correlational research is research designed to

discover relationships among variables and to allow
the prediction of future events from present knowledge

 Experimental research is research in which initial

equivalence among research participants in more than
one group is created, followed by a manipulation of a
given experience for these groups and a
measurement of the influence of the manipulation
Descriptive Methods
 Include
 Observational techniques
 Case studies
 Survey research
 Seek to provide objective and detailed
descriptions of behavior and mental
processes
Descriptive Methods:
Observational Techniques

 The researcher directly observes the

behavior of interest
 Naturalistic observation: The behavior being
observed occurs in its natural setting, without the
researcher intervening in the behavior being
observed.
 Participant observation: The observer becomes
part of the group being observed. This type of
research is similar to undercover police work.
Naturalistic Observation
 Researchers use naturalistic
observation when they are
interested in how humans
or other animals behave in
their natural environments
 For instance, two well-known
observational studies were
done by Dian Fossey in a
study of mountain gorillas in Africa, and Jane
Goodall’s study of chimpanzees in Africa
 This technique is also used in settings such as
schools, the workplace, and bars
Participant Observation

 In most observational studies, the observer begins the

study as a participant, whether in a laboratory or a
natural setting
 One famous example of participant observation was
conducted by Rosenhan (1973). In this study,
psychologists posing as patients with symptoms of a
major mental disorder were admitted to psychiatric
hospitals because the doctors could not tell the
psychologists from the real disordered patients. Once
admitted, these “pseudopatients” acted normally and
asked to be released. However, they were not
released until many days later!
Descriptive Methods:
Case Studies
 The researcher studies an individual in depth
over an extended period of time to attempt to
learn as much as possible about the
individual being studied
 Often used in clinical settings to gather
information that will help in the treatment of
the patient
 Results of case studies cannot be
generalized to other people
Descriptive Methods:
Survey Research

 Uses questionnaires and interviews to collect

information about the behavior, beliefs, and
attitudes of particular groups of people
 It is critical to note that the wording, order, and
structure of the survey questions may lead the
participants to biased answers
 For instance, some questions might evoke socially-
desirable responses in an effort to make certain
impressions on the researchers
Descriptive Methods:
Survey Research

 Another concern for survey researchers is

defining the population, or the entire group of
people to be studied
 From that population, a representative
sample, or subset of the people in the
population, is surveyed
 The sample must be representative of the larger
relevant population so you can generalize results of
the survey from the smaller sample to the larger
population
A representative sample?

 In a study of women and love, a sample was drawn

mainly from women’s organizations and political
groups, plus some women who requested and
completed a survey following the researcher’s talk
show appearances
 Thus, the results (which said that women having
affairs and being disenchanted in their relationships
with men was typical) were not representative of the
population of American women
Random Sampling
 Each individual in the
population has an equal
opportunity of being in the
sample
 It is much like drawing
names from a hat
 Random sampling allows
the researcher to
generalize his or her
findings from the sample
to the larger population
Jean William Fritz Piaget – 1896
-1980
 Piaget's theory of cognitive development is a
comprehensive theory about the nature and
development of human intelligence. It was
originated by the Swiss developmental
psychologist Jean Piaget. The theory deals
with the nature of knowledge itself and how
humans gradually come to acquire, construct,
and use it
https://www.yout
ube.com/watch?
v=IhcgYgx7aAA
Correlational Methods
 Two variables are measured to determine if
they are related
 A variable is any factor that can take on more
than one value (e.g., height, age, GPA,
extraversion level)
Positive Correlation
 A positive correlation indicates a direct
relationship between two variables, with
low scores on one variable tending to be
paired with low scores on the other variable,
and high scores on one variable tending to
be paired with high scores on the other
variable
 For instance, SAT scores and first-year college
GPA tend to be positively correlated
 A person’s height and weight also tend to be
positively correlated
Negative Correlation
 A negative correlation is an inverse
relationship between two variables, with low
scores on one variable tending to be paired
with high scores on the other variable
 For instance, there is a negative correlation
between how much time a student watches TV
and his or her grades in school
 Mountain elevation level and temperature are also
negatively correlated
Strength of Relationship

 The second part of the correlation coefficient

is its absolute value, which ranges from 0 to 1
 Zero and absolute values near zero indicate no
relationship
 As the absolute value increases toward 1.0, the
strength of the relationship increases
 It is critical to note that the sign of the
coefficient tells us nothing about the strength
of the relationship
Scatterplots

 A scatterplot is a visual depiction of

correlational data
 On the X axis are scores on one variable; on the
Y axis are scores on the second variable
 Each data point in the scatterplot is a person’s
scores on each of the two variables
 Correlation Coefficient
 The correlation coefficient is a number representing the
strength and direction of correlation.
 The strength of the relationship refers to how close the dots
are to a straight line, which means one variable changes
exactly as the other one does; this number varies from 0.00
to +/- 1.00.
 The direction of the correlation can be positive (both
variables increase together) or negative (as one goes up, the
Guess the Correlation Coefficients
other goes down). No
Perfect Perfect
positive negative relationship,
correlation correlation no correlation

+ 1.00 - 1.00 0.00

The Third-Variable Problem
 Strong correlations give us excellent
predictability, but they do not allow us to draw
cause-and-effect conclusions about the
relationships between the two variables
 The third-variable problem occurs when a third,
unmeasured variable is responsible for the
relationship observed between the two measured
variables
 For example, the length of time a man is married is
negatively correlated with the amount of hair on his head
 Does this mean that being married longer causes a
man’s hair to fall out?
Experimental Research

 The key aspect of experimental research is

that the researcher controls the
experimental setting
 It is this control that allows the researcher to
make cause-and-effect statements about
the experimental
results
Experimental Control

 First, the experimenter controls for the influence of

possible third-variables by making sure that they are
held constant across all of the experimental
groups/conditions
 Second, the experimenter controls for any possible
influence due to the individual characteristics of the
participants, such as intelligence, by using random
assignment, which is randomly assigning the
participants to groups in an experiment to equalize
participant characteristics across the various groups
in the experiment
Designing an Experiment
 When a researcher designs an experiment, the
researcher begins with a hypothesis about the
cause-and-effect relationship between two variables
 One of the variables is assumed to be the cause,
and the other variable is the one to be affected
 The independent variable is the
hypothesized cause, and the
experimenter manipulates it
 The dependent variable is the
variable that is hypothesized to
be affect by the independent
variable and thus is measured by
the experimenter
Designing an Experiment
 The simplest of experiments is one with two groups,
in which participants are randomly assigned to one of
the groups
 One of the groups will be exposed to the independent
variable, and the other group will not be
 The group exposed to the
independent variable is
called the experimental
group
 The group not exposed to
the independent variable is
called the control group
For example…
 If the hypothesis is that aerobic exercise reduces anxiety,
then the independent variable to be manipulated is aerobic
exercise, and the dependent variable will be anxiety level
 The experimental group will participate in some aerobic
exercise program, and the control group will not
 The experiment must measure the anxiety levels for the
groups at the beginning of the study before
the independent variable is manipulated
and then again after the manipulation
 If the two groups are truly equivalent, the
average anxiety level for each group at
the start of the study should be the same
 If aerobic exercise does reduce anxiety,
then we should see this difference in the
second measurement at the end of the
experiment
The Placebo Group
 In addition to the experimental and control groups, we
need to add a placebo group to improve the
experiment
 A placebo group is a group of participants that
believes they are receiving treatment but are not
 They receive a placebo, a
harmless pill that has no
active ingredients
 For example, this group
would be told they are
getting an anti-anxiety
drug, but they would only
get a placebo
The Placebo Group

 The placebo effect is improvement due to the

expectation of improving because of receiving
treatment
 The reduction of anxiety in the experimental group
participants may, in fact, be partially or completely
due to a placebo effect
 To conclude that the reduction of anxiety in the
experimental group was not due to a placebo
effect, it would have to be significantly greater
than that observed for the placebo group
The Double-Blind Procedure

 A control measure in which neither the

experimenter nor the participants know
which participants actually got the treatment
and or got the placebo
 Controls for experimenter expectations
 If the experimenter knew which condition the
participants were in, then s/he might
unintentionally treat them differently and thereby
impact their behavior
Summary of Research Methods
How to Understand
Research Results
Descriptive Statistics
Frequency Distributions
Types of Statistics

Descriptive Inferential
Statistics Statistics

Used to describe the Indicate the probability

data of a research that the results of the
study in a concise study are due to
fashion random variation
Descriptive Statistics
 Two types of descriptive statistics
 Measures of central tendency
 Measures of variability
 A researcher will also often examine a
frequency distribution, which
depicts in a table or graph,
the number of participants
receiving each score for
a variable
Measures of Central Tendency
 Designed to summarize a set of data with a single number
 Three measures of central tendency
1. The mean is the numerical average for a distribution of score
2. The median is the score that is positioned in the middle of the
distribution of scores when scores are listed from lowest to highest
 If there is an odd number of scores,
the median is the middle score
 If there is an even number of scores, the
median is the average of the two center scores
3. The mode is the most frequently-occurring
score in a distribution of scores
 If two scores occur with equal
frequency, both can be the mode
About the Mean…
 The mean is the most commonly
used measure of central tendency
because it is used to analyze data
in many inferential statistical tests
 However, the mean,
because it uses all
scores in its
computation, can
be distorted by
extremely high or
extremely low scores
Measures of Variability
 Designed to provide an idea of how scattered a set
of scores tends to be
 Two measures of variability
1. The range is the difference between the highest and
lowest scores in a distribution of scores
 Like the mean, the range can be greatly distorted by
extremely high or extremely low scores
2. The standard deviation is the average extent to which
the scores vary from the mean of the distribution
 A small standard deviation means that scores do not
vary very much from the mean
 A larger standard deviation means that scores tend to
vary greatly from the mean
Summary of
Descriptive Statistics
Frequency Distributions
 Organizes the data in a score distribution so
that we know the frequency of each score
 Types of distributions

Normal Skewed
Distributions Distributions
Normal Distributions
 The mean, the median, and the mode are all
equal because the normal distribution is
symmetric about its center
 The percentage of scores falling within a certain
number of standard deviations of the mean is set
 About 68% of the scores fall within 1 standard deviation
of the mean
 About 95% fall within 2 standard deviations of the mean
 More than 99% fall within 3 standard deviations of the
mean
 It is these percentages that give the normal
distribution its bell shape
The Normal Distribution
Normal Distributions with
Different Standard Deviations
Percentile Rank
 The percentage of
scores below a
specific score in a
distribution of scores
 For instance, the percentile rank of a score that is 1
standard deviation above the mean is roughly 84%
 Note that you can never have a percentile rank
of 100% because it is impossible to outscore
yourself
 You can, however, have a percentile rank of 0% if
you have the lowest score in the distribution
Skewed Distributions

 Are asymmetrical in shape

 A right-skewed (also called positively
skewed) distribution is a frequency distribution
in which there are some unusually high
scores, but most scores tend to be low
 A left-skewed (also called negatively skewed)
distribution is a frequency distribution
in which there are some unusually low score,
but most scores tend to be high
Sample Skewed Distributions
Skewed Distributions

 Because unusually high or low scores distort a mean,

such distortion occurs for the means of skewed
distributions
 The mean for a right-skewed distribution is distorted
toward the tail created by the few high scores and so
is greater than the median
 The mean for a left-skewed distribution is distorted
toward the tail created by the few low scores and so is
less than the median
 Consequently, when you have a skewed distribution, you
should use the median because atypical scores in the
distribution do not distort the median