Sean Munroe

Psychology 101
Chapter 1 Textbook Notes

Section 1.1
We cannot use our intuition to truly understand people or to predict behavior. By contrast, psych
ology is the systematic, objective study of our mental activity and our behavior.

Every aspect of what we think and do relates to psychology?

What am I being asked to believe or accept?

What evidence is provided to support the claim?
What are the most reasonable conclusions?

Consider what happened when research revealed small gains in one type of performance task afte
r participants listened to a Mozart sonata for 10 minutes. The media dubbed these gains the Moza
rt effect and falsely reported that listening to Mozart could make people smarter.

Developing important abilities: analyzing information by breaking it into pieces, evaluating ideas
by drawing conclusions about them, and communicating about psychological concepts

Basically, as humans dealing with other humans, we all need to know psychology

Teachers need to understand how people learn.

People in medical professions need to know how to gauge peoples moods and their motivations
to recover.
To convince people to buy products, salespeople need to understand the relationship between
motivation and emotion

Opportunities for people with graduate degrees in psychology are expected to grow by about 12
percent by 2022

Checkpoint:
We experience psychological issues every minute of our lives, but we cannot understand them ba
sed on common sense alone.
Psychology is the scientific study of mental activity, behavior, and the brain.
Studying psychology helps improve critical thinking skills and study skills. It also helps develop
skills that make people successful in their jobs

Section 1.2
Both nature and nurture influence our psychological development
Mind/body problem: separate or not?
Greeks and Romans believed they were connected as people that took blows to the head
lost consciousness or mental ability
At other points in history scholars believed they were separate. This was strongly
religiously believed as it was thought that humans had a divine and immortal soul
 Descartes agreed with this saying the body was simply an organic reflex machine. This
separate not one view was referred to as dualism which is now rejected by psychologists.
The current view is that mind emerges from activity-information processing-in the brain.

Structuralism
Wilhelm Wundt (studied reaction time to complete a psychological task)
Edward Titchener (conscious experience can be broke down into underlying parts)
Identify the basic parts, or structures, of the conscious mind
Functionalism
William James (minds elements mattered less than the minds usefulness to people)
Charles Darwin
Describe how the conscious mind aids adaptation to an environment
Psychoanalytic Theory
Sigmund Freud
Understanding how unconscious thoughts cause psychological disorders
By creating psychological blockages within the individual, these forces produced
psychological discomfort and even mental disorders.
Gestalt Psychology(opposition to structuralism)
Max Wertheimer
Wolfgang Khler
Study subjective perceptions as a unified whole
Influenced many areas of psychology including study of vision and our
understanding of human personality
Behaviorism
John B. Watson
B. F. Skinner
Describe behavior in response to environmental stimuli
Humanistic Psychology
Abraham Maslow
Carl Rogers
Investigate how people become happier and more fulfilled; focus on the basic
goodness of people
Cognitive Psychology
George Miller
Ulric Neisser
Explore internal mental processes that influence behavior

The problem with introspection is that it is unique to each person who is having the experience.
Thought processes really do influence behavior

Section 1.3
Researches now typically focus on trying to understand a particular phenomenon by examining it
from many different perspectives
The biological level of analysis deals with how the physical body influences our thoughts and
behavior.
Listening to pleasant music increases activation of brain regions associated with positive
experiences
The individual level of analysis focuses on
individual differences in personality and mental processes that affect perception and understandi
ng.
Such associations do not mean that listening to music always causes these behaviors. Perhaps people
who already behaved that way also developed those musical preferences.

The cultural level of analysis explores how peoples thoughts, feelings, and actions are similar or
different across cultures

Researchers must be ethical:

1. Must respect participants privacy
2. Participants information must be kept confidential
3. Informed consent
4. If deception is necessary. The participants must be informed of the deception and why it
was used after the study
5. Risk/benefit ratio of research vs risk of pain or discomfort of participant. Is it worth it?

Section 1.4
Scientific method:
1. Develop and refine a theory
2. State a hypothesis
3. Test with a research method that can be reproduced
4. Analyze the data
5. Report results and embark on further inquiry

Research methods:
1. Descriptive Methods
a. Observational
b. Self-reports
c. Case studies
2. Correlational methods
3. Experimental methods
A good way to represent the whole population is to take a random sample