Chapter 2 - Psychology’s Scientific Method
Psychology is the SCIENTIFIC study of behavior and mental processes.
Psychology uses the scientific method
1. Observe phenomenon
2. Formulate hypotheses…which are making predictions
3. Test our hypotheses through research experiments
4. We draw conclusions
5. We evaluate our theories based upon our new conclusions.
Homework assignment # 2 - The Scientific Method - Explains and illustrates the fundamentals of the scientific method…including identifying independent and dependent variables and formulating and testing hypotheses.
People who do not understand that psychology is a science, often think that psychology is just intuition or common sense.
Prince Charles (2000) said” Buried deep within each and every one of us, there is an instinctive, heart-felt awareness that provides - if we allow it to - the MOST RELIABLE GUIDE”
Former President George W. Bush when asked by journalist Bob Woodward in 2002 to explain his decision to launch the Iraq war, said “I’m a gut player. I rely on my instincts”.
Intuition does exist as a mental process…..but we often overestimate its accuracy, and underestimate its risks.
For example : True of False? Jot down your answers in your notebook…..
…….Los Angeles is west of Reno, Nevada F
Rome, Italy is south of New York….. F
And Atlanta, Georgia is east of Detroit, Michigan….. F
.
There are 2 phenomenon that illustrate why we should not rely solely on intuition and common sense:
HINDSIGHT BIAS - And JUDGEMENTAL OVERCONFIDENCE
First, - Hindsight Bias - the “I knew it all along” phenomenon
The tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that you would have forseen it!
Ex. 9/11...After the 1 tower at the World Trade Center was hit, commentators said that people in the second tower SHOULD have immediately evacuated
What we didn’t know then…..that it was a deliberate attack
Ex. Hurricane Katrina…..The entire city should have been evacuated …
What we didn‘t know then…..it wasn’t just a hurricane……the levees broke!
Psychology research is often criticized as “obvious”. For example
Love breeds happiness……seems obvious….and it’s true
If you want to teach a habit, reward the desired behavior every time…..seems obvious……….but it’s FALSE!
Psychology has shown that intermittent reinforcement will create a stronger habit…….we’ll see more about this when we study learning
What about suitcases on wheels?….. And post -its? They seem obvious after they’ve been invented……………..all of that is the phenomenon of hindsight bias!
Keep this in mind the next time you’re watching the news or a channel with political commentary!
The 2nd phenomenon that points out why we shouldn’t rely solely on intuition or common sense is called OVERCONFIDENCE WE TEND TO THINK WE KNOW MORE THAN WE DO!
Numerous experiments have shown that people greatly overestimate their intuitive abilities.
One example is with personnel interviewers……studies show that they tend to be overconfident of their gut feelings about job applicants. Their confidence comes from remembering cases where they were impressed and it proved right,,,,but also from their not knowing rejected applicants who, after they were rejected, succeeded elsewhere.
(so larger corporations use psychological testing, and multiple interviews in hiring process).
Studies also show that people overestimate their ability to detect lying…..their eyewitness recollections, and their stock -picking talents
THE POINT TO REMEMBER: HINDSIGHT BIAS AND OVERCONFIDENCE OFTEN LEAD US TO OVERESTIMATE OUR INTUITION.
BUT SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY CAN HELP US DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN REALITY AND ILLUSION.
Psychology is a science…and we are committed to following the data and scientific results…. If we have some kind of intuition…then that is a STARTING point…from our intuition we can develop a hypothesis and TEST it out .
THE SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE
Consists of 4 attitudes :
curiosity…..
critical thinking ……
humility…
.objectivity
Curiosity- asking questions who what when where how why
Critical thinking….be skeptical - are you sure about that? How do you know that? What is that person’s agenda? What else could explain that? What is the evidence?
Humility.. An awareness of our vulnerability to error and bias…and to be open, not closed to alternative explanations and new perspectives……..you’ve got to check your ego at the door…….part of scientific approach is to re-examine each other’s findings and conclusions…..reliability….repeatability
Objectivity - avoiding bias…following the facts …using scientific methods
TYPES OF RESEARCH
……DESCRIPTIVE….CORRELATIONAL…..EXPERIMENTAL
DESCRIPTIVE - Descriptive research gives us information about a subject of interest, but it cannot answer questions about how and why things are the way they are.
We will discuss 3 types of descriptive research :
1. Case studies
2. Surveys
3. Naturalistic observation
First - CASE STUDY - a type of descriptive research - examines one individual in depth in hopes of revealing things that are true of all of us
Famous case study : The wild boy of Aveyron….the FERAL CHild
Was first discovered in 1797...had apparently lived his entire
Childhood alone in the woods.
He was captured and displayed in the town…but escaped.
He was believed to be about 12 years old. He returned to the
Town on his own about 3 years later.
He was unable to speak…and as word of him traveled, he was
Taken for examination and documentation. He was eventually
Taken in by a Dr. where he remained until his death at approx.
Age 40.
Currently, this case study is viewed with skepticism as to whether
He was truly a feral child. Many now think that he was abused
And ran away, and may have had autism.
Because he was only able to learn minimal speech, his case led
To theories and research about critical periods for speech
Development.
A classic case study in the field of psychology is the study of another feral child who was given the pseudonym of GENIE.
The use of a case study is often the first step in using the scientific method. From a case study, many questions arise that can be the subject of further study or experimentation.
The weakness of a case study is that it’s findings cannot be generalized to a larger population…
What might be some of the questions that came out of the case study of Genie?
The case study of Genie also led to the further development of ethical guidelines in psychology research.
The homework assignment - # 5 - titled “Ethical Dilemmas”…goes into details about the ethical guidelines for research in psychology and gives different examples of actual research studies that were done. You are asked to decide if these studies would have been approved under the current ethical guidelines.
These guidelines are also discussed in the text on pages 47 - 50.
Would reality TV pass the institutional review board ( a panel of faculty at each college that approves or denies a research proposal based upon ethical guidelines) ? Discuss.
SURVEYS - another type of descriptive research
Surveys are a quick way to get information about people.
Problems with surveys - - people tend to “fake good” - they tend to answer in a way that makes them look good-
the wording of surveys can also influence how a person answers -
Defining the population that you’ve sampled is important before generalizing the results - For ex., if your survey is of college students…the results cannot be generalized to h.s. students or working adults
NATURALISTIC OBSERVATION - is observing behavior in real-world settings. For ex. Childcare settings, college campuses, city streets - but without manipulating or controlling the situation.
For ex. - This is often used in child or school psychology when a problem behavior is occurring. The child will be observed in the classroom (preferably from an observation window) and the behavior will be measured to obtain a baseline. Then treatment will occur.
Jane Goodall used naturalistic observation in her study of chimp behavior in their natural setting in Africa.
Homework assignment # 4 - Naturalistic Observation - gives you an opportunity to observe child behavior through videos and then rate the behavior that you have observed.
CORRELATIONS - besides descriptive research, we also have another type of research which is correlational research.With descriptive research we are only able to describe something. But with correlations we are able to show that variables or characteristics are related and ……correlations show us how closely they’re related and how well one predicts the other.
BUT…..Correlations do not show causation.
For ex. There is a positive correlation between length of marriage and hair loss in men. In other words, the longer you’ve been married, the more hair loss is reported in men.
Does this mean that marriage causes men to lose their hair?NO….in this case, as in many others, there is another factor involved…………..????Aging………………………….
Again, correlations don’t tell us cause and effect, but they tell us that there is some kind of relationship between the variables and this can cause us to ask questions for further researching.
Correlations are expressed in coefficients ranging from -1.00 to +1.00.
The correlation between marriage and hairloss is a positive correlation…which means that the variables increase or decrease together….as the years of marriage increase, the degree of hair loss increases as well
A negative correlation occurs when one variable goes up as the other goes down.
Ex. Toothbrushing and tooth decay are an example of a neg. correlation
As toothbrushing goes up, decay goes down…..Or as toothbrushing goes down, decay goes up
Pos. or neg sign does not tell us the strength of the correlation, just the relationship between the variables.
The closer the number is to 1.00, the stronger the correlation.
For ex. .88 is a strong positive correlation
.15 is a weak positive correlation
-.90 is a strong negative correlation
-.20 is a weak negative correlation
Homework assignment #3 - Correlations - provides further illustrations of correlations.
The last type of research is EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH.
Here the scientific method is used to attempt to prove or disprove a hypothesis.
Again, Homework Assignment # 2 - The Scientific Method - illustrates the principles of experimental research.
BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF BEHAVIOR
No principle is more central to today’s psychology than this:
EVERYTHING PSYCHOLOGICAL IS SIMULTANEOUSLY BIOLOGICAL
Everything you experience is a biological happening.
Today we will be talking about the biology of the mind….
What is the mind ? The popular usage is that of thought…the private conversation with ourselves that we carry on inside our heads…..wikipedia
One of the attributes of the mind is that it is private…that no one else can know our minds…they can only interpret what we communicate.
Another way to think of this is ….the mind is what the brain does
If all your organs were transplanted, you would still be much the same person, unless one of those organs was the brain.
the 1800’s Franz Gall invented phrenology - a theory that claimed bumps on the skull could tell our mental abilities and character traits……although phrenology did not survive the test of time, Gall did focus our attention on the idea that various regions of the brain have particular functions
The best clue to a specie’s intelligence comes from the structures that are present in the brain
.In primitive animals like the shark…there is a simple brain that primarily regulates basic survival functions - breathing, resting, and feeding
.In lower mammals like rodents, a more complex brain enables emotion and greater memory.
In advanced mammals, such as humans, we have an expanded cerebral cortex which allows for more mental processes…….
The increasing complexity of mental processes arises from new brain systems built on top of old ones. And those old ones, for example the brainstem, perform for us much the way they did for our ancient ancestors.
THE BRAINSTEM
The oldest and innermost region of the brain.
Part 3a or 3T-4
It looks like a stem or stalk that extends from the spinal cord and goes deep inside the brain.
The Brainstem is a crossover point …where most nerves to and from each side of the brain connect with the body’s opposite side.
Brainstem -
Medulla…………..controls your heartbeat and breathing
Pons………………..governs sleep and arousal and helps to coordinate movements
Brainstem - these are your automatic survival functions In research with cats, it was found that if you separate the brain stem from the rest of the brain, …..the cat will still breathe and live……and even run, climb, and groom, but it won’t do so with any purpose…it won’t run or climb to get food
Reticular formation……. Inside the brain stem
A netlike network of neurons that extends from the spinal cord right up to the thalamus
It is involved in arousal
Back to cat research…..when stimulating the reticular formation of a cat….it immediately became an awake, alert animal…..when severed, the cat went into a coma and could not be awakenend.
Thalamus……sits at the top of the brainstem……………the brain’s sensory switchboard.
It receives information from all of the senses except smell, and routes this information to the higher brain regions.
Think of it as the Atlanta airport…..a hub through which traffic passes to other destinations.
The Cerebellum…….. means “little brain”….which its 2 halves resemble
Plays an important role in coordination and voluntary movement
when playing a sport, your cerebellum is in full swing
If you injured your cerebellum, you would have trouble walking, keeping your balance
There is also something else that can effect your cerebellum and create this same effect…………………………..???? Alcohol….roadside sobriety test
All of the brain functions discussed so far occur without conscious effort. And in fact our brain processes most information outside of our awareness. By not having to think about many of these brain functions, it frees up the new brain regions to think, talk, feel, imagine, and so forth.
___________________________________________________________ THE LIMBIC SYSTEM 3b in book
Limbus means “border”….and the limbic system is at the border between the brain stem and the older parts of the brain…and the cerebral cortex…with its hemispheres and lobes.
Made up of the amygdala, hypothalamus, and hippocampus.
The hippocampus is involved in processing memory.
If animals or human lose their hippocampus to surgery or injury, they become unable to process new memories of facts and episodes.
Research indicates that memories are not stored in the hippocampus. Instead, it serves more like a loading dock where the brain registers and temporarily holds the elements of a remembered episode before transferring it to the cortex for long term storage.
Rat study - rats were taught a new location for food. When their hippocampus was removed after 3 hrs, they no longer remembered the location. However, when their hippocampus was removed after 24 hrs., they did remember the location. So after 3 hrs, the memory was still in the hippocampus, so it was destroyed along with the hippocampus. After 24 hrs, however, the memory had been transferred to the cortex, so destruction of the hippocampus did not destroy the memory!
The amygdala influences aggression and fear. It is also involved in helping to determine the appropriate objects that are necessary for survival such as food, mates, and social rivals.
In brain stimulation research with rhesus monkeys, when the amygdala was injured, the normally ill-tempered monkeys turned into mellow creatures that would not react to being poked or prodded.
Using electrical brain stimulation in cats, it was found that stimulating one area of the amygdala would cause the cat to hiss and prepare to attack…..whereas stimulating another area of the amygdala would cause a cat with a mouse in its cage to cower in fear!
So the amygdala is involved in the emotions of anger and fear.
Important to understand that anger and fear involve activation of many brain areas. Stimulating other areas of the brain….without stimulating the amygdala can produce these emotions. ……these are the characteristics of complexity and integration that are discussed in the book .
Last part of the Limbic System : The Hypothalamus - the regulator of the body’s internal state. - hunger, thirst, body temperature, sexual behavior.
It is also involved in the release of hormones and the experience of pleasure from eating, drinking, and sex.
The book explains the experiments of Olds and Milner and later Olds in their identification of “pleasure centers” which we now refer to as “reward centers” in the hypothalamus.
The electrode was place in the hypothalamus of the rat, and they were conditioned to hit the stimulation pedal…………….probably it was first paired with food, and then the food was removed. They found that rats would push the pedal between 2,000 - 7,0000 times per hour and to the point of exhaustion to push the pedal and receive the stimulation. They would even cross an electrified floor…and they did a comparison with starving rats and food….and the starving rats would not cross the electrified grid for food, but they did for brain stimulation.
THE CEREBRAL CORTEX
As we have seen , the older brain structures sustain basic life functions and enable memory, emotions, and basic drives.
Now we come to the cerebrum……the two large hemispheres of the brain that make up about 85% of the brain’s weight.
Covering those hemispheres, like bark on a tree, is the CEREBRAL CORTEX - A THIN SURFACE LAYER OF INTERCONNECTED NEURAL CELLS.IT IS YOUR BRAIN’S THINKING CROWN….THE ULTIMATE CONTROL AND INFORMATION PROCESSING CENTER.What makes us distinctly human mostly arises from the complex functions of our cerebral cortex.
In humans, the cerebral cortex has lots of grooves and bulges…and looks like an oversized walnut. Without those wrinkles and grooves, a flattened cerebral cortex would require triple the surface area….roughly the size of an extra large or party-size pizza.
The cerebral cortex has two hemispheres - right and left.
Each hemisphere is divided into 4 lobes….
Frontal lobe - involved in the control of voluntary muscles, intelligence, and personality
Parietal lobe - involved in registering spatial location, attention, and motor control
Temporal lobe - involved in hearing, language processing, and memory
Occipital lobe - involved in processing visual information such as color, shape, and motion
The somatosensory cortex processes information about body sensations
The motor cortex processes information about voluntary movement.
The Association Cortex also known as Association Areas….comprise about 75% of the cerebral cortex…and are imbedded in the lobes…….involved in integrating information and linking input from our senses to stored memories….an important part of our thinking.
Also important to know is the Corpus Callosum - a wide band of axon fibers connecting the two hemispheres of the brain, and carrying messages between them
One area of brain research has to do with the study of Synaesthesia - which occurs when one or more senses are experienced at the same time.
Although the video states that this is a very rare condition, it is now considered that up to 1 in 20 people may have some form of synaesthesia.
In fact, synaesthesia may be a part of language development. When we combine sound and shape, this is a form of synaesthesia.
A classic experiment was conducted to illustrate this in which subjects were asked to assign the names "Booba" or "Kiki" to two different shapes.
This was illustrated in class.
