INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY
2.3: BEHAVIORAL PSYCHOLOGY Radical behaviourism - philosophy of the science of
BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE
Emerging in contrast to psychodynamic psychology. It focuses
on observable behaviour as a means to studying the human
psyche.
The primary tenet of behaviourism is that psychology should
concern itself with the observable behaviour of people and
animals, not with unobservable events that take place in their
minds.
IVAN PAVLOV
» Russian Physiologist
» As we learn, we alter the way we perceive our
environment, the way we interpret the incoming
stimuli, and therefore the way we interact, or behave.
» Classical conditioning
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
1. The unconditioned stimulus (UCS) -stimulus that elicits
a reflective response without learning. automatic
2. The unconditioned response (UCR) - a reflective
response elicited by stimulus without learning.
3. Conditioned Stimulus - an initially neutral stimulus that
elicits a conditioned response (CR) after being associated
with unconditioned response (UR)
4. Conditioned Response - a response that is elicited by an
associated conditioned stimulus is associated with an
unconditioned stimulus (CS)
PAVLOV FINDINGS
» Supported the idea that we develop responses to
certain stimuli that are not naturally occurring.
» We do this instinctively with no learning involved.
The reflex is merely a survival instinct.
» discovered that we make associations that cause
us to generalize our response to one stimuli onto a
neutral stimuli it is paired with.
» Many of our behaviours today are shaped by the
pairing of stimuli. (smell of a cologne)
» It can trigger distinct memories, emotions, and
associations. When we make these types of
associations, then, we are experiencing classical
conditioning.
EDWARD LEE THORNDIKE
» American Psychologist
» Focused on Learning Theory
» Father of Educational Psychology
» Best known from his cat and puzzles experiment
that led to the development of his law of effect.
JOHN B. WATSON
» Conducted a study about animal behavior, child
rearing, and advertising while gaining notoriety for the
controversial “Little Albert” experiment.
» This study demonstrated how emotions could
become conditioned responses.
» First Behaviorist
» phobias can be learned
» Showed how classical conditioning could be
applied to conditioned fear.
BURRHUS FREDERICK SKINNER
behaviour. It seeks to understand behaviour as a function
of environmental histories of reinforcing consequences.
» This applied behaviourism does not accept private
events such as thinking, perceptions, and
unobservable emotions in a causal account of an
organism’s behaviour.
BF SKINNER’S EXPERIMENT
» Invented the operant conditioning chamber or
Skinner Box used to measure responses of
organisms (most often rats and pigeons) and their
orderly interactions with the environment.
OPERANT CONDITIONING
REINFORCEMENT
» means to strengthen, and is used in psychology to
refer to any stimulus which strengthens or
increases the probability of a specific response.
POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT
» adding something in order to increase a response.
NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT
» involves taking something negative away in order
to increase a response.
PUNISHMENT
» refers to adding something aversive in order to
decrease a behavior
POSITIVE PUNISHMENT
» adding something that is unpleasant
NEGATIVE PUNISHMENT
» Removing something valuable
EXTINCTION
» Weakening and eventual stop of the voluntary
conditioned response
2.4 HUMANISTIC, COGNITIVE AND EVOLUTIONARY
HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY
» emerged as the third force in psychology after
psychodynamic and behaviourist psychology. It holds
a hopeful, constructive view of human beings and
of their substantial capacity to be self-determining.
Humanistic psychologists strive to enhance the human qualities of
choice, creativity, the interaction of the body, mind, and spirit, and the
capacity to become more aware, free, responsible, life-affirming, and
trustworthy.
The early humanistic psychologists sought to restore the
importance of consciousness and offer a more holistic view of
human life.
Humanistic psychology acknowledges that the mind is strongly
influenced by determining forces in society and the unconscious,
and emphasizes the conscious capacity of individuals to develop
personal competence and self-respect.
 CARL ROGERS
» He agreed with the main assumptions of Abraham
Maslow
» introduced what he called person or client-centred
therapy, which relies on clients’ capacity for self-
direction, empathy, and acceptance to promote
clients’ development.
» People need unconditional positive regard.
ROLLO MAY
» Existential Psychologist
» brought European existential psychotherapy and
phenomenology into the field by acknowledging
human choice and the tragic aspects of human
existence
» delves further into the awareness of the serious
dimensions of a human's life than Maslow did.
» He also have his own stages of development like
Freud but not as strict as Freud.
» For the betterment of the past (don’t dwell in the
future)
ABRAHAM MASLOW
» developed a hierarchy of motivation or hierarchy of
needs culminating in self-actualization.
» His view of human needs was more complex than
Rogers’s
» While Rogers believed that people needed
unconditional positive regard, Maslow acknowledged
that people have a variety of needs that differ in
timing and priority.
» Maslow called the bottom four levels of the pyramid
deficiency needs because a person does not feel
anything if they are met, but becomes anxious if
they are not.
» Maslow called the fifth level of the pyramid a growth
need because it enables a person to self-actualize
or reach his or her fullest potential as a human
being. Once a person has met the deficiency needs,
he or she can attend to self-actualization
THE EXPANSION OF HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY
CLIENT- CENTERED THERAPY
» therapy provides a supportive environment in which
clients can re-establish their true identity.
EXISTENTIAL THERAPY
» contrasts the psychoanalysts’ focus on the self and
focuses instead on “man in the world.”
GESTALT THERAPY
» focuses on the skills and techniques that permit an
individual to be more aware of their feelings’
Humanistic psychology gave birth to the self-help
movement, with concepts grounded in emotion and intuition.
The recent positive psychology movement is one form of
neo-humanistic psychology that combines emotion and
intuition with reason and research.
MARTIN SELIGMAN
» In 1998, a paradigm shift in thinking occurred in the
University of Pennsylvania.
» in his presidential address to the American
Psychological Association (APA), urged psychology to
“turn toward understanding and building the
human strengths to complement our emphasis on
healing damage” (1998b).
» Promoter of Positive Psychology
Seligman developed the concepts of learned optimism
(1998a) and authentic happiness (2002)
Learned optimism follows an ABCDE model:
When faced with adversity (A) such as a criticism or failure, a person might
form the belief (B) that he or she is underperforming or incapable, and
consider the consequence (C) of quitting. However, disputation (D) would
challenge the underlying assumptions or beliefs that have formed. The
person would then form a new belief in his or her capacity to grow from the
critique or learn from the failure. From there, the person would become
energized (E) as he or she pursues a new performance path.
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
» is the study of mental processes such as attention,
memory, perception, language use, problem solving,
creativity, and thinking.
» Much of the work derived from cognitive psychology
has been integrated into various other modern
disciplines of psychological study including social
psychology, personality psychology, abnormal
psychology, developmental psychology, educational
psychology, and economics.
ULRIC NEISSER
» Father of Cognitive Psychology
» credited with formally coining the term cognitive
psychology and defining it as “all processes by
which the sensory input is transformed, reduced,
elaborated, stored, recovered, and used”
» Researched and wrote about perception and
memory
FACTS ABOUT COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
» Cognition came to be seen as involved in
everything a human being might possibly do:
every psychological phenomenon is a cognitive
phenomenon
» Theories of cognition include developmental, cultural,
neural, computational, and moral perspectives.
» While behaviourism and cognitive schools of
psychological thought may not agree theoretically, they
have complemented each other in practical therapeutic
applications, such as in cognitive-behavioural therapy
(CBT) that has demonstrable utility in treating certain
pathologies, such as simple phobias, post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD), and addiction.
 ATTENTION
» attention is a state of focused awareness on a
subset of the available perceptual information.
» The key function of attention is to filter out irrelevant
data, enabling the desired data to be distributed
to the other mental processes.
PROCEDURAL MEMORY
» memory for the performance of particular types of
action, is often activated on a subconscious level,
or at most requires a minimal amount of conscious
effort (e.g., driving to work along the same route).
SEMANTIC MEMORY
» the encyclopedic knowledge that a person
possesses, such as what the Eiffel Tower looks like,
or the name of a friend from Grade 6.
EPISODIC MEMORY
» memory of autobiographical events that can be
explicitly stated, contains all memories that are
temporal in nature, such as when you last brushed
your teeth, or where you were when you heard about
a major news event.
PERCEPTION
» involves both the physical senses (sight, smell,
hearing, taste, touch, and proprioception) as well as
the cognitive processes involved in selecting and
interpreting those senses. It is how people come to
understand the world around them through
interpretation of stimuli.
LANGUAGE USE
» Cognitive psychologists began exploring the cognitive
processes involved with language in the 1870s when
Carl Wernicke (1848-1905) proposed a model for
the mental processing of language (1875/1995).
Significant work has been done recently on
understanding the timing of language acquisition and
how it can be used to determine if a child has, or is at
risk of developing, a learning disability.
PROBLEM SOLVING
» Metacognition involves conscious thought about
thought processes and might include monitoring a
person’s performance on a given task, understanding
a person’s capabilities on particular mental tasks, or
observing a person’s ability to apply cognitive
strategies.
» Much of the current study regarding metacognition
within the field of cognitive psychology deals with its
application within the area of education. Educators
strive to increase students’ metacognitive abilities in
order to enhance their learning, study habits, goal
setting, and self-regulation.
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY
» It has emerged as a major perspective in
psychology. It seeks to develop and understand
ways of expanding the emotional connection
between individuals and the natural world, thereby
assisting individuals with developing sustainable
lifestyles and remedying alienation from nature.
» The main premise of evolutionary psychology is that
while today the human mind is shaped by the
modern social world, it is adapted to the natural
environment in which it evolved
SEVERAL CORE PREMISES
» The brain is an information-processing device, and it
produces behaviour in response to external and internal
inputs.
» The brain’s adaptive mechanisms were shaped by
natural selection.
» Different neural mechanisms are specialized for solving
problems in humanity’s evolutionary past.
» The brain has evolved specialized neural mechanisms
that were designed for solving problems that recurred over
deep evolutionary time, giving modern humans stone-age
minds.
» Most contents and processes of the brain are
unconscious; and most mental problems that seem easy
to solve are actually extremely difficult problems that are
solved unconsciously by complicated neural mechanisms.
» Human psychology consists of many specialized
mechanisms, each sensitive to different classes of
information or inputs. These mechanisms combine to
produce manifest behaviour.
Evolutionary psychologists sometimes present their approach as
potentially unifying, or providing a foundation for, all other work that
aims to explain human behaviour
This claim has been met with skepticism by many social scientists who see
a role for multiple types of explanation of human behaviour, some of which
are not reducible to biological explanations of any sort.
WHAT IS RESEARCH AND ITS IMPORTANCE?
RESEARCH
» In psychology, some psychological research is basic
research and some are applied research.
BASIC RESEARCH
» research that answers fundamental questions
about behaviour.
There is no particular reason to examine such things except to acquire a better
knowledge of how these processes occur.
For instance, biopsychologists study how nerves conduct impulses from the
receptors in the skin to the brain, and cognitive psychologists investigate how
different types of studying influence memory for pictures and words.
» tends to focus more on "big picture" topics, such as
increasing the scientific knowledge base around a
particular topic.
APPLIED RESEARCH
» research that investigate issues that have
implications for everyday life and provides
solutions to everyday problems.
Applied research has been conducted to study, among many other things, the
most effective methods for reducing depression, the types of advertising
campaigns that serve to reduce drug and alcohol abuse, the key predictors of
managerial success in business, and the indicators of effective government
programs.
» tends to drill down more toward solving specific
problems that affect people in the here and now.
However, researchers also suggest that basic research and applied
research are actually closely intertwined.
The information learned from basic research often builds the basis on
which applied research is formed.
 3.1 PSYCHOLOGISTS ON SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
Psychologists aren’t the only people who seek to understand
human behaviour and solve social problems. Philosophers,
religious leaders, and politicians, among others, also strive to
provide explanations for human behaviour.
But psychologists believe that research is the best tool for
understanding human beings and their relationships with
others.
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
» is the set of assumptions, rules, and procedures
scientists use to conduct research.
» demands that the procedures used be objective, or
free from the personal bias or emotions of the
scientist.
» prescribes how scientists collect and analyze data,
how they draw conclusions from data, and how they
share data with others. These rules increase
objectivity by placing data under the scrutiny of other
scientists and even the public at large.
Most new research design is to replicate
» -that is, to repeat, add to, or modify — previous
research findings.
» The scientific method therefore results in an
accumulation of scientific knowledge through the
reporting of research and the addition to and
modification of these reported findings by other
scientists.
One goal of research
» is to organize information into meaningful
statements that can be applied in many situations.
» Principles that are so general as to apply to all
situations in a given domain of inquiry are known as
laws.
The next step down from laws in the hierarchy of organizing
principles is theory. A theory is an integrated set of
principles that explains and predicts many, but not all,
observed relationships within a given domain of inquiry.
FOUR CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD THEORIES
GENERAL meaning they summarize many different
outcomes.
PARSIMONIOUS meaning they provide the simplest
possible account of those outcomes.
PROVIDES IDEAS Provides ideas to new research
FALSIFIABLE which means the variables of interest can be
adequately measured and the relationships between the
variables that are predicted by the theory can be shown
through research to be incorrect.
No single theory is able to account for all behaviour in all cases.
Rather, theories are each limited in that they make accurate
predictions in some situations or for some people but not in other
situations or for other people.
As a result, there is a constant exchange between theory and data:
existing theories are modified on the basis of collected data, and the
new modified theories then make new predictions that are tested by
new data, and so forth. When a better theory is found, it will replace
the old one.
STEPS OF SCIENTIFIC METHODS
RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS
A research hypothesis is a specific and falsifiable
prediction about the relationship between or among two or
more variables, where a variable is any attribute that can
assume different values among different people or across
different times or places.
The research hypothesis states the existence of a
relationship between the variables of interest and the
specific direction of that relationship.
CONCEPTUAL VARIABLES
When stated in an abstract manner, the ideas that form the
basis of a research hypothesis are known as conceptual
variables.
Conceptual variables are abstract ideas that form the basis of
research hypotheses. Sometimes the conceptual variables are
rather simple.
for instance, age, gender, or weight. In other cases the
conceptual variables represent more complex ideas, such as
anxiety, cognitive development, learning, self-esteem, or
sexism.
First step in testing a research hypothesis
» turning the conceptual variables into measured
variables, which are variables consisting of numbers
that represent the conceptual variables.
» For instance, the conceptual variable “participating in
psychotherapy” could be represented as the measured
variable “number of psychotherapy hours the patient has
accrued,” and the conceptual variable “using marijuana”
could be assessed by having the research participants rate,
on a scale from 1 to 10, how often they use marijuana or by
administering a blood test that measures the presence of
the chemicals in marijuana.
Psychologists use the term operational definition to refer to a
precise statement of how a conceptual variable is turned into a
measured variable.
ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Research in psychology may cause some stress, harm, or
inconvenience for the people who participate in that research.
For instance, researchers may require introductory psychology
students to participate in research projects and then deceive these
students, at least temporarily, about the nature of the research.

How to know if your research is ethical?
Decisions about whether research is ethical are made using
established ethical codes developed by scientific organizations, such
as the Philippine Association of Psychology (PAP) and American
Psychological Association (APA).
Informed Consent
» It is conducted before a participant begins a
research session, is designed to explain the
research procedures and inform the participant of his
or her rights during the investigation.
» The informed consent explains as much as possible
about the true nature of the study, particularly
everything that might be expected to influence
willingness to participate, but it may in some cases
withhold some information that allows the study to
work.
Informed consent should address the following issues
A very general statement about the purpose of the study
» A brief description of what the participants will be asked to
do
» A brief description of the risks, if any, and what the
researcher will do to restore the participant
A statement informing participants that they may refuse to participate
or withdraw at any time without being penalized
• A statement regarding how the participant’s confidentiality will be
protected
• Encouragement to ask questions about participation
• Instructions regarding whom to contact if there are concerns
• Information regarding where the subjects may be informed about
the study’s findings
DEBRIEFING
The debriefing is a procedure designed to fully explain the
purposes and procedures of the research and remove any
harmful after-effects of participation.
3.2 RESEARCH DESIGN
A research design is the specific method a researcher uses
to collect, analyze, and interpret data.
Psychologists use three major types of research designs in
their research, and each provides an essential avenue for
scientific investigation.
DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH
» is designed to create a snapshot of the current
thoughts, feelings, or behaviour of individuals.
CASE STUDIES
» descriptive records of one or more individual’s
experiences and behaviour.
SURVEY
» a measure administered through either an interview or
a written questionnaire to get a picture of the beliefs
or behaviours of a sample of people of interest.
NATURALISTIC BEHAVIOUR
» is research based on the observation of everyday
events.
Results of Descriptive Research
The results of descriptive research projects are analyzed using
descriptive statistics — numbers that summarize the distribution of
scores on a measured variable. Most variables have distributions
similar where most of the scores are located near the centre of the
distribution, and the distribution is symmetrical and bell-shaped. A
data distribution that is shaped like a bell is known as a normal
distribution.
Properties of a Normal Distribution
1. Called as Gussian distribution
2. It is bell-shaped, where most of the area of curve is
concentrated around the mean, with rapidly decaying tails.
3. It has two parameters that determine its shape. Those
parameters are the population mean and population
standard deviation.
4. It is symmetric with respect to its mean.
5. The mean, median and mode of the distribution coincide
Central Tendency
» A distribution can be defined as Central Tendency
» -the point in the distribution around which the
data are centred — and its dispersion, or spread.
Measures of Central Tendency
Mean - symbolized by the letter M, is the most commonly
used measure of central tendency.
» the mean is calculated by taking the sum of all the
data values and then dividing it by the number of
data.
Median - is used as an alternative measure of central
tendency when distributions are not symmetrical. The median
is the score in the center of the distribution, meaning that 50%
of the scores are greater than the median and 50% of the
scores are less than the median.
» is to order the data points in ascending order, and
then locate the data point in the middle.
Mode- · Final measure of central tendency represents
the value that occurs most frequently in the distribution
» is the most frequently occurring value in the set of
data.
Dispersion- is the amount of spread of data about the center
of a data set.
Range- is simply the highest value minus the lowest value.
Standard Deviation- Is an approximation of the average
around the mean. It is the square root of the average squared
deviation around the mean.
Skewness
» is a measure of the asymmetry of the probability
distribution of a real-valued random variable about its
mean.
 CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH
Correlational research involves the measurement of two or
more relevant variables and an assessment of the relationship
between or among those variables
When there are two variables in the research design, one of
them is called the predictor variable and the other the outcome
variable.
How to organize the data from a correlational study?
SCATTER PLOT -is a visual image of the relationship
between two variables. A point is plotted for each individual
at the intersection of his or her scores for the two variables.
LINEAR RELATIONSHIPS- When the association between
the variables on the scatter plot can be easily approximated
with a straight line.
POSITIVE LINEAR- When the straight line indicates that
individuals who have above-average values for one variable
also tend to have above-average values for the other variable.
NEGATIVE LINEAR- occur when above-average values for
one variable tend to be associated with below-average
values for the other variable.
NON LINEAR- Relationships between variables that cannot
be described with a straight line
CURVILINEAR- Relationships that change in direction and
thus are not described by a single straight line
PEARSON CORRELATION COEFFICIENT
» The most common statistical measure of the
strength of linear relationships among variables
» It is symbolized by the letter r.
MULTIPLE REGRESSION
» a statistical technique, based on correlation
coefficients among variables, that allows predicting a
single outcome variable from more than one predictor
variable.
Importance of Correlational Design
» They cannot draw conclusions about the causal
relationships among the measured variables.
Although the researcher is tempted to assume that viewing
violent television causes aggressive play, there are other
possibilities.
One alternative possibility is that the casual direction is exactly
opposite from what has been hypothesized.
Common Causal Variable
is a variable that is not part of the research hypothesis but that
causes both the predictor and the outcome variable and thus
produces the observed correlation between them.
EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH
The goal of experimental research design is to provide more
definitive conclusions about the causal relationships among
the variables in the research hypothesis than is available from
correlational designs.
In an experimental research design, the variables of interest
are called the independent variable (or variables) and the
dependent variable.
Experimental Research involves the manipulation of an
independent variable and the measurement of a
dependent variable. Random assignment to conditions is
normally used to create initial equivalence between the groups,
allowing researchers to draw causal conclusions.
INDEPENDENT VARIABLE
causing variable that is created (manipulated) by the
experimenter.
DEPENDENT VARIABLE
measured variable that is expected to be influenced by the
experimental manipulation.
LIMITATIONS OF EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH
They are conducted in laboratory situations rather than in
everyday lives of people. Therefore, we do not know whether
results that we find in a laboratory setting will necessarily hold
up in everyday life.
Some of the interesting and key social variables cannot be
experimentally manipulated.