Advanced Placement Psychology – Mr. Massmann
Student Version: Guided Study by Unit
Fall 2013
UNIT Prologue: The Story of Psychology
UNIT 1: Thinking Critically with Psychological Science
Big Questions (Unit Focus)Prologue
1. When and how did psychological science begin?
2. How did psychology continue to develop from the 1920s through today?
3. What is psychology’s historic big issue?
4. What are psychology’s levels of analysis and related perspectives?
5. What are psychology’s main subfields?
6. How can psychological principles help you as a student?
Unit 1
1. Why are the answers that flow from the scientific approach more reliable than those based on intuition and common sense?
2. What are three main components of the scientific attitude?
4. How do psychologists observe and describe behavior?
5. What are positive and negative correlations, and why do they enable prediction but not cause-effect explanation?
6. What are illusory correlations?
7. How do experiments, powered by random assignment, clarify cause and effect?
8. How can we describe data with measures of central tendency and variation?
9. What principles can guide our making generalizations from samples and deciding whether differences are significant?
10. Can laboratory experiments illuminate everyday life?
11. Does behavior depend on one’s culture and gender?
12. Why do psychologists study animals, and is it ethical to experiment on animals?
13. Is it ethical to experiment on people?
Key Terms
structuralism, 3 nature-nurture issue, 7 applied research, 10 functionalism, 3 natural selection, 8 counseling psychology, 10 behaviorism, 5 levels of analysis, 9 clinical psychology, 10 humanistic psychology, 5 biopsychosocial approach, 8 psychiatry, 11 cognitive neuroscience, 5 basic research, 10 SQ3R, 12 psychology, 6
---hindsight bias, 16 correlation, 25 dependent variable, 32 critical thinking, 20 correlation coefficient, 25 mode, 34
theory, 21 scatterplots, 25 mean, 34
hypothesis, 21 illusory correlation, 28 median, 34 operational definition, 21 experiment, 31 range, 35
replication, 21 random assignment, 31 standard deviation, 35 case study, 22 double-blind procedure, 31 normal curve, 36
survey, 23 placebo effect, 31 statistical significance, 37 population, 24 experimental group, 31 culture, 39
random sample, 24 control group, 31 naturalistic observation, 24 independent variable, 32
Key Psychologists - History & Approaches Calkins, Mary Whiton (1863-1930)
-studied psychology under William James
-denied a Ph.D. at Harvard, she established a psychological laboratory at Wellesley College -served as the first elected female president of the American Psychological Association (APA)
Darwin, Charles (1809-1882)
-a British naturalist whose controversial and groundbreaking theory of evolution had a significant influence on the early development of psychology
-his theory of natural selection continues to influence the modern evolutionary perspective
Dix, Dorthea (1802-1887)
-known as an American reformer who documented the deplorable conditions of how states cared for their insane poor
-helped persuade state legislatures to create the first generation of American mental hospitals
Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939)
-believed he discovered the unconscious mind; a part of our mind over which we do not have conscious control that determines, in part, how we think and behave
-proposed that we must examine the unconscious mind through dream analysis, word association, and other psychoanalytic therapy techniques if we are to understand human thought and behavior -has been criticized for being unscientific and creating unverifiable theories
-placed special emphasis on how childhood experiences influenced adult personality
Hall, G. Stanley (1844-1924)
-studied psychology under William James
-established America’s first psychology laboratory
-served as the first president of the American Psychological Association (APA)
James, William (1842-1910)
-published The Principles of Psychology, the science’s first textbook
-Harvard professor who played major role in establishing psychology in the United States -emphasized studying the purpose, or function, of behavior and mental experiences -James-Lange theory of emotion follows a three-part sequence: perception of a stimulus,
Pavlov, Ivan (1849-1936)
-performed pioneering conditioning experiments on dogs (salivating)
-these experiments led to the development of the classical conditioning model of learning
Piaget, Jean (1896-1980) (Cognitive Developmental Theory)
-Swiss psychologist who focused on the rational, perceiving child who has the capacity to make sense of the world; developed a stage theory describing how infants, children, and adolescents use
distinctly different cognitive abilities to understand the world
-describes how children view the world through schemata, cognitive rules we use to interpret the world -normally we incorporate our experiences into these existing schemata in a process called assimilation -sometimes information doesn’t fit into or violates our schemata, so we must accommodate and change
our schemata.
Rogers, Carl (1902-1987)
-rejected Freud’s pessimistic view of human nature
-offered optimistic view that people are innately good, positive, forward-moving, constructive, realistic, and trustworthy
-argued that “self-concept” is the cornerstone of a person’s personality
-if self-concept matches a person’s life experiences, those people usually have higher self-esteem and better mental health
-Rogers believed that people are motivated to achieve their full potential or self-actualize
Skinner, B.F. (1904-1990)
-expanded the basic ideas of behaviorism to include the idea of reinforcement – environmental stimuli that either encourage or discourage certain responses
-helped establish and popularize operant conditioning model of learning -his intellectual influences lasted for decades
Washburn, Margaret Floy (1871-1939)
-she was the first American woman to be awarded a Ph.D. in psychology -she is best known for her experimental work in animal behavior
Watson, John B. (1878-1958)
-declared that psychology must limit itself to observable phenomena, not unobservable concepts like the unconscious mind, if it is to be considered a science; he broke away from Wundt and early
psychologists
-wanted to establish behaviorism as the dominant paradigm of psychology
-behaviorists contend that psychologists should look at only behavior and causes of behavior – stimuli (environmental events) and responses (physical reactions) – and not concern themselves with
describing elements of consciousness
Wertheimer, Max (1880-1943)
-Gestalt psychologist; argued against dividing human thought and behavior into discrete structures -Gestalt psychology tried to examine a person’s total experience because the way we experience the
world is more than just an accumulation of various perceptual experiences
-Gestalt theorists demonstrated that the whole experience is often more than just the sum of the parts of the experience
Wundt, Wilhelm (1832-1920)
-set up the first psychological laboratory in an apartment near the university at Leipzig, Germany -trained subjects in introspection; subjects were asked to accurately record their cognitive reactions to
simple stimuli
Key Theories & Processes
1. Structuralism
3. Behaviorism
4. Gestalt
5. Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic
6. Humanism
7. Evolutionary
8. Biological
