Find two outside examples from the concepts covered in the attachment below and how they relate to the concepts in class
Directions
Find up to two outside examples of concepts covered on exam 1. These outside examples of concepts can be recent cartoons, newspaper articles, song lyrics, something that happened in a movie or on a TV show, etc. For each entry, you need to first describe the outside concept. This may involve posting a web link to an article or cartoon or simply a description of the TV show or news item. Then, you should explain how this relates to a concept in class including defining the psychological terms. Entries that do not sufficiently explain how the example relates to class will not receive full credit. (E.g. posting a link and saying “This site talks about parts of the racism” is not sufficient). These should be posted in the appropriate class forum.
Concepts covered in exam:
Introducing Psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. The word “psychology” comes from the Greek words “psyche,” meaning life, and “logos,” meaning explanation. Psychology is a popular major for students, a popular topic in the public media, and a part of our everyday lives. Television shows such as Dr. Phil feature psychologists who provide personal advice to those with personal or family difficulties. Crime dramas such as CSI, Lie to Me, and others feature the work of forensic psychologists who use psychological principles to help solve crimes. And many people have direct knowledge about psychology because they have visited psychologists, for instance, school counselors, family therapists, and religious, marriage, or bereavement counselors.
Because we are frequently exposed to the work of psychologists in our everyday lives, we all have an idea about what psychology is and what psychologists do. In many ways I am sure that your conceptions are correct. Psychologists do work in forensic fields, and they do provide counseling and therapy for people in distress. But there are hundreds of thousands of psychologists in the world, and most of them work in other places, doing work that you are probably not aware of.
Most psychologists work in research laboratories, hospitals, and other field settings where they study the behavior of humans and animals. For instance, my colleagues in the Psychology Department at the University of Maryland study such diverse topics as anxiety in children, the interpretation of dreams, the effects of caffeine on thinking, how birds recognize each other, how praying mantises hear, how people from different cultures react differently in negotiation, and the factors that lead people to engage in terrorism. Other psychologists study such topics as alcohol and drug addiction, memory, emotion, hypnosis, love, what makes people aggressive or helpful, and the psychologies of politics, prejudice, culture, and religion. Psychologists also work in schools and businesses, and they use a variety of methods, including observation, questionnaires, interviews, and laboratory studies, to help them understand behavior.
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This chapter provides an introduction to the broad field of psychology and the many approaches that psychologists take to understanding human behavior. We will consider how psychologists conduct scientific research, with an overview of some of the most important approaches used and topics studied by psychologists, and also consider the variety of fields in which psychologists work and the careers that are available to people with psychology degrees. I expect that you may find that at least some of your preconceptions about psychology will be challenged and changed, and you will learn that psychology is a field that will provide you with new ways of thinking about your own thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Research Methods-
Psychological Science
Psychologists study the behavior of both humans and animals, and the main purpose of this research is to help us understand people and to improve the quality of human lives. The results of psychological research are relevant to problems such as learning and memory, homelessness, psychological disorders, family instability, and aggressive behavior and violence. Psychological research is used in a range of important areas, from public policy to driver safety. It guides court rulings with respect to racism and sexism (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954; Fiske, Bersoff, Borgida, Deaux, & Heilman, 1991), [1] as well as court procedure, in the use of lie detectors during criminal trials, for example (Saxe, Dougherty, & Cross, 1985). [2] Psychological research helps us understand how driver behavior affects safety (Fajen & Warren, 2003),[3] which methods of educating children are most effective (Alexander & Winne, 2006; Woolfolk-Hoy, 2005), [4] how to best detect deception (DePaulo et al., 2003), [5] and the causes of terrorism (Borum, 2004). [6]
Some psychological research is basic research. Basic research is research that answers fundamental questions about behavior. 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. There is no particular reason to examine such things except to acquire a better knowledge of how these processes occur. Applied research is research that investigates 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, such as Head Start.
Basic research and applied research inform each other, and advances in science occur more rapidly when each type of research is conducted (Lewin, 1999). [7]For instance, although research concerning the role of practice on memory for lists of words is basic in orientation, the results could potentially be applied to help children learn to read. Correspondingly, psychologist-
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practitioners who wish to reduce the spread of AIDS or to promote volunteering frequently base their programs on the results of basic research. This basic AIDS or volunteering research is then applied to help change people’s attitudes and behaviors.
The results of psychological research are reported primarily in research articles published in scientific journals, and your instructor may require you to read some of these. The research reported in scientific journals has been evaluated, critiqued, and improved by scientists in the field through the process of peer review. In this book there are many citations to original research articles, and I encourage you to read those reports when you find a topic interesting. Most of these papers are readily available online through your college or university library. It is only by reading the original reports that you will really see how the research process works. Some of the most important journals in psychology are provided here for your information.
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Psychological Journals The following is a list of some of the most important journals in various subdisciplines of psychology. The research articles in these journals are likely to be available in your college library. You should try to read the primary source material in these journals when you can.
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Educational Psychologist |
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In this chapter you will learn how psychologists develop and test their research ideas; how they measure the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals; and how they analyze and interpret the data they collect. To really understand psychology, you must also understand how and why the research you are reading about was conducted and what the collected data mean. Learning about the principles and practices of psychological research will allow you to critically read, interpret, and evaluate research.
In addition to helping you learn the material in this course, the ability to interpret and conduct research is also useful in many of the careers that you might choose. For instance, advertising and marketing researchers study how to make advertising more effective, health and medical researchers study the impact of behaviors such as drug use and smoking on illness, and computer scientists study how people interact with computers. Furthermore, even if you are not planning a career as a researcher, jobs in almost any area of social, medical, or mental health science require that a worker be informed about psychological research.
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Brains, Bodies, and Behavior – |
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Did a Neurological Disorder Cause a Musician to Compose Boléro and an Artist to Paint It 66 Years Later? In 1986 Anne Adams was working as a cell biologist at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. She took a leave of absence from her work to care for a sick child, and while she was away, she completely changed her interests, dropping biology entirely and turning her attention to art. In 1994 she completed her painting Unravelling Boléro, a translation of Maurice Ravel’s famous orchestral piece onto canvas. As you can see inFigure 3.1, this artwork is a filled with themes of repetition. Each bar of music is represented by a lacy vertical figure, with the height representing volume, the shape representing note quality, and the color representing the music’s pitch. Like Ravel’s music (see the video below), which is a hypnotic melody consisting of two melodial themes repeated eight times over 340 musical bars, the theme in the painting repeats and builds, leading to a dramatic change in color from blue to orange and pink, a representation of Boléro’s sudden and dramatic climax. Shortly after finishing the painting, Adams began to experience behavioral problems, including increased difficulty speaking. Neuroimages of Adams’s brain taken during this time show that regions in the front part of her brain, which are normally associated with language processing, had begun to deteriorate, while at the same time, regions of the brain responsible for the integration of information from the five senses were unusually well developed (Seeley et al., 2008). [1] The deterioration of the frontal cortex is a symptom of frontotemporal dementia, a disease that is associated with changes in artistic and musical tastes and skills (Miller, Boone, Cummings, Read, & Mishkin, 2000), [2] as well as with an increase in repetitive behaviors (Aldhous, 2008). [3] |
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What Adams did not know at the time was that her brain may have been undergoing the same changes that Ravel’s had undergone 66 years earlier. In fact, it appears that Ravel may have suffered from the same neurological disorder. |
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Ravel composed Boléro at age 53, when he himself was beginning to show behavioral symptoms that were interfering with his ability to move and speak. Scientists have concluded, based on an analysis of his written notes and letters, that Ravel was also experiencing the effects of frontotemporal dementia (Amaducci, Grassi, & Boller, 2002). [4] If Adams and Ravel were both affected by the same disease, this could explain why they both became fascinated with the repetitive aspects of their arts, and it would present a remarkable example of the influence of our brains on behavior. |
Every behavior begins with biology. Our behaviors, as well as our thoughts and feelings, are produced by the actions of our brains, nerves, muscles, and glands. In this chapter we will begin our journey into the world of psychology by considering the biological makeup of the human
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being, including the most remarkable of human organs—the brain. We’ll consider the structure of the brain and also the methods that psychologists use to study the brain and to understand how it works.
We will see that the body is controlled by an information highway known as thenervous system, a collection of hundreds of billions of specialized and interconnected cells through which messages are sent between the brain and the rest of the body. The nervous system consists of the central nervous system (CNS), made up of the brain and the spinal cord, and
the peripheral nervous system (PNS), the neurons that link the CNS to our skin, muscles, and glands. And we will see that our behavior is also influenced in large part by
the endocrine system, the chemical regulator of the body that consists of glands that secrete hormones.
Although this chapter begins at a very low level of explanation, and although the topic of study may seem at first to be far from the everyday behaviors that we all engage in, a full understanding of the biology underlying psychological processes is an important cornerstone of your new understanding of psychology. We will consider throughout the chapter how our biology influences important human behaviors, including our mental and physical health, our reactions to drugs, as well as our aggressive responses and our perceptions of other people. This chapter is particularly important for contemporary psychology because the ability to measure biological aspects of behavior, including the structure and function of the human brain, is progressing rapidly, and understanding the biological foundations of behavior is an increasingly important line of psychological study.
Consciousness is defined as our subjective awareness of ourselves and our environment (Koch, 2004). [4] The experience of consciousness is fundamental to human nature. We all know what it means to be conscious, and we assume (although we can never be sure) that other human beings experience their consciousness similarly to how we experience ours.
The study of consciousness has long been important to psychologists and plays a role in many important psychological theories. For instance, Sigmund Freud’s personality theories differentiated between the unconscious and the conscious aspects of behavior, and present-day
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psychologists distinguish betweenautomatic (unconscious) and controlled (conscious) behaviors and betweenimplicit (unconscious) and explicit (conscious) memory (Petty, Wegener, Chaiken, & Trope, 1999; Shanks, 2005). [5]
Some philosophers and religious practices argue that the mind (or soul) and the body are separate entities. For instance, the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) was a proponent
of dualism, the idea that the mind, a nonmaterial entity, is separate from (although connected to) the physical body. In contrast to the dualists, psychologists believe that consciousness (and thus the mind) exists in the brain, not separate from it. In fact, psychologists believe that consciousness is the result of the activity of the many neural connections in the brain, and that we experience different states of consciousness depending on what our brain is currently doing (Dennett, 1991; Koch & Greenfield, 2007). [6]
The study of consciousness is also important to the fundamental psychological question regarding the presence of free will. Although we may understand and believe that some of our behaviors are caused by forces that are outside our awareness (i.e., unconscious), we nevertheless believe that we have control over, and are aware that we are engaging in, most of our behaviors. To discover that we, or even someone else, has engaged in a complex behavior, such as driving in a car and causing severe harm to others, without being at all conscious of one’s actions, is so unusual as to be shocking. And yet psychologists are increasingly certain that a great deal of our behavior is caused by processes of which we are unaware and over which we have little or no control (Libet, 1999; Wegner, 2003). [7]
Our experience of consciousness is functional because we use it to guide and control our behavior, and to think logically about problems (DeWall, Baumeister, & Masicampo,
2008). [8] Consciousness allows us to plan activities and to monitor our progress toward the goals we set for ourselves. And consciousness is fundamental to our sense of morality—we believe that we have the free will to perform moral actions while avoiding immoral behaviors.
But in some cases consciousness may become aversive, for instance when we become aware that we are not living up to our own goals or expectations, or when we believe that other people perceive us negatively. In these cases we may engage in behaviors that help us escape from consciousness, for example through the use of alcohol or other psychoactive drugs (Baumeister, 1998). [9]
Because the brain varies in its current level and type of activity, consciousness is transitory. If we drink too much coffee or beer, the caffeine or alcohol influences the activity in our brain, and our consciousness may change. When we are anesthetized before an operation or experience a concussion after a knock on the head, we may lose consciousness entirely as a result of changes in brain activity. We also lose consciousness when we sleep, and it is with this altered state of consciousness that we begin our chapter.
