Solution Manual for Experience Psychology 5th Edition By Laura King Chapter 1-14
Chapter 1 The Science of Psychology Chapter Overview 1. Defining Psychology and Exploring Its Roots Psychology is defined as the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. As a science, psychology uses scientific methods to observe, describe, and predict behavior. Behavior is everything that a person does that can be directly observed. Mental processes are the thoughts, feelings, and motives that people experience privately but that cannot be observed directly.
A. The Psychological Frame of Mind At the core of the scientific approach that psychologists use are four attitudes: critical thinking, curiosity, scepticism, and objectivity. Scientists, including psychologists, engage in critical thinking. Critical thinking is the process of thinking deeply and actively, asking questions, and evaluating the evidence. Scientists are critical thinkers. They question and test what others consider factual. They accept nothing at face value. Scientists are curious. A scientist wants to know why things in the world are the way they are and how they became that way. Science is concerned with asking questions. Scientists are skeptical. They ask questions about things that other people take for granted. Psychological research often turns up the unexpected in human behavior. Such results are called counterintuitive because they contradict our intuitive impressions of how the world works. Scientists apply objectivity in conducting research. They try to see things as they really are, not just as the observer would like them to be. To gather objective evidence, they rely on empirical methods. The empirical method is gaining knowledge through observation of events, collecting data, and logical reasoning. B. Psychology as the Science of All Human Behavior
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The scope of psychology as a whole is much more than that of the clinical psychologists who treat and study psychological disorders. Psychology seeks to understand the truths of human life in all its dimensions, including people‘s best and worst experiences. The fact is that to be a truly general science of human behavior, psychology must address all sides of human experience. C. Psychology in Historical Perspective For thousands of years, people have been trying to answer the basic questions of human behavior, such as: a. How do we learn? b. What is memory? c. Why does one person grow and flourish while another struggles? Early philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, debated the nature of thought and behavior, including the possible link between the mind and the body. Psychology has its roots not only in philosophy but also in biology and physiology. Wilhelm Wundt, a German philosopher-physician, created the academic discipline of psychology. Structuralism was first studied by Wundt and his collaborators. They focused on the basic elements or structures of mental processes. Introspection was the method used to study these mental structures. Individuals were asked to think about what was occurring mentally as events were taking place. Functionalism, William James‘s approach to mental processes was concerned with the functions and purposes of the mind in individuals‘ adaptation to the environment. While structuralists were looking inside the mind, functionalists were focusing on how humans interacted with the outside world. Functionalism fit well with another intellectual development: Charles Darwin‘s principle of natural selection, an evolutionary process in which organisms that are best adapted to their environment will survive and, importantly, produce offspring. 2. Contemporary Approaches to Psychology Approaches to psychology include biological, behavioral, psychodynamic, humanistic, cognitive, evolutionary, and sociocultural. All of these perspectives consider important questions about human behavior from different but complementary vantage points. A. The Biological Approach The biological approach emphasizes the study of the body, especially the brain and the nervous system. Neuroscience is the scientific study of the structure, function, development, genetics, and biochemistry of the nervous system. It emphasizes that the brain and nervous system are central to understanding behavior, thought, and emotion. B. The Behavioral Approach IM – 1 | 2 Copyright © 2022 McGraw Hill LLC. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw Hill LLC.
The behavioral approach emphasizes the scientific study of observable behavioral responses and their environmental determinants. John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner were the first behaviorists. Behaviorism dominated psychological research during the first half of the 20th century. C. The Psychodynamic Approach The psychodynamic approach emphasizes unconscious thought, the conflict between biological instincts and society‘s demands, and early childhood family experiences. Sigmund Freud, the founder of the psychodynamic approach, theorized that early interactions with parents shape an individual‘s personality. His theory was also the basis for the therapeutic technique that he called psychoanalysis, which involves an analyst unlocking a person‘s unconscious conflicts by talking with the individual about their childhood memories, dreams, thoughts, and feelings. D. The Humanistic Approach The humanistic approach emphasizes a person‘s positive qualities, capacity for positive growth, and the freedom to choose any destiny. Humanistic psychologists stress that people have the ability to control their lives and are not simply controlled by the environment. E. The Cognitive Approach The cognitive approach emphasizes the mental processes involved in knowing: directing attention, perceiving, remembering, thinking, and problem solving. F. The Evolutionary Approach The evolutionary approach uses evolutionary ideas such as adaptation, reproduction, and natural selection as the basis for explaining specific human behaviors. G. The Sociocultural Approach The sociocultural approach emphasizes the ways in which the social and cultural environments influence behavior. H. Summing Up the Seven Contemporary Approaches These seven approaches to studying psychology provide different views of behavior; therefore, each may contribute uniquely valuable insights. These broad approaches are reflected in the variety of specialties within which psychologists work (e.g., neuroscience, learning, and development). All of these approaches fit within a biopsychosocial approach, which asserts that biological, psychological, and social factors are all significant to understanding human behavior. 3. Psychology’s Scientific Method IM – 1 | 3 Copyright © 2022 McGraw Hill LLC. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw Hill LLC.
Psychologists use the scientific method to address research questions. This method may be summarized in five steps and involves starting with a theory and then making observations, formulating hypotheses, testing these through empirical research, drawing conclusions, and evaluating these conclusions. The science of psychology is an ongoing conversation among scholars. 1. Observing Some Phenomenon The first step in conducting scientific research is observing some phenomenon. The phenomena that scientists study are called variables. A variable is anything that can change. A theory is a broad idea or set of closely related ideas that attempts to explain observations and to make predictions about future observations. A scientific theory must be falsifiable, which means a scientist who believes a theory is true must be able to generate ideas about research that would prove the theory wrong and test those ideas. 2. Formulating Hypotheses and Predictions The second step in conducting scientific research is stating a hypothesis, a testable prediction that derives logically from a theory. 3. Testing Through Empirical Research The third step in conducting scientific research is to test the hypothesis by collecting and analyzing data (i.e., doing empirical research). An operational definition provides an objective definition of how a variable is going to be measured and observed in a particular study. One of the key aspects of testing a hypothesis is data analysis, which applies mathematical procedures to understand what the data mean. Data are the information collected in a study and statistics are numbers used to describe data. 4. Drawing Conclusions Based on the results of the data analysis, researchers can draw conclusions from their research. A research finding is considered reliable when a study undergoes replication—a process in which another scientist is able to reproduce the study with similar findings. 5. Evaluating Conclusions Evaluation never really ends. Conclusions become part of the research community, which continues to question them. In sum, steps 3, 4, and 5 of the scientific method are part of an ongoing process. 4. Types of Psychological Research Three types of research commonly used in psychology are descriptive research (finding out about the basic dimensions of some variable), correlational research (finding out if and how two variables change together), and experimental research (determining the causal relationship between variables). In an experiment, the independent variable is manipulated to see whether it produces changes in the dependent variable. Experiments involve comparing two groups: the experimental group (the one that receives the treatment or manipulation of the independent variable) and the control group (the comparison group or baseline that is equal to the experimental group in every way except for the IM – 1 | 4 Copyright © 2022 McGraw Hill LLC. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw Hill LLC.
independent variable). Experimental research relies on random assignment to ensure that the groups are roughly equivalent before the manipulation of the independent variable. A. Descriptive Research Descriptive research is about describing some phenomenon. Research allows the researcher to develop a sense for something but does not answer questions of causality. Descriptive research methods include observation, surveys and interviews, and case studies. Observation For observations to be effective, they must be systematic. Researchers must know what they are looking for, who they are observing, where and when observations will take place, and how observations will be made. Surveys and Interviews One method to gain information about people is to interview them directly. When information needs to be obtained from a large group of people, a survey or questionnaire can be used. A survey consists of questions about a person‘s self-reported attitudes or beliefs about a topic. Surveys and interviews can be problematic because sometimes participants will answer the questions in a way they believe is socially acceptable instead of how they really feel. Survey construction can also be problematic due to unclear language. Case Studies A case study (also known as a case history) is conducted when a researcher takes an in-depth look at a single individual. A case study is usually conducted by a clinical psychologist when the unique aspects of an individual‘s life cannot be duplicated in other individuals. The Value of Descriptive Research Descriptive research allows researchers to get a sense of something but cannot answer questions about how and why things are the way they are. Descriptive findings provide a foundation for researchers to further examine a topic or subject in different cultural settings. B. Correlational Research Correlational research is conducted when studies are concerned with identifying the relationships between two or more variables so it can be understood how the variables change together. In a correlational study, the variables are measured by the researcher to see how they relate. The strength of the relationship between two variables is expressed as a correlational coefficient, represented as a lowercase r. The numeric value of a correlation coefficient falls between −1.00 and +1.00, where the number determines the strength of the relationship between the variables and the − or + sign determines the direction of the relationship between the variables. A positive correlation occurs when the variables move in the same direction, so that if one variable increases, the other variable also increases, and if one IM – 1 | 5 Copyright © 2022 McGraw Hill LLC. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw Hill LLC.