1.4 Review and Test Yourself

Psychology is the science of the mind and behavior.

The goals of psychology are to describe, explain, predict, and control mental events and behavior.

Psychology can best be understood by studying events at different levels of analysis: the levels of the brain, the person, and the group.

The level of the brain is where we examine the activity of brain systems, structural differences in people’s brains, and effects of genes and chemicals (such as hormones) on the mind and behavior.

The level of the person is where we study mental events: the function (mental processes) and content (mental content) of the mind. Mental contents include knowledge, beliefs, desires, and feelings; mental processes include operations that interpret, transform, and store mental contents.

The level of the group includes all our social interactions, past and present.

Events at the different levels are interdependent and are always interacting. They are also influenced by the physical environment.

The structuralists tried to identify the elements of consciousness and the rules by which these elements are combined into mental structures. The primary method of the structuralists was introspection (“looking within”).

The functionalists rejected the goal of identifying the building blocks of the mind in favor of seeking explanations for thoughts, feelings, and behavior. The functionalists were interested in how mental events adapt to help people survive in the natural world.

The Gestalt psychologists reacted against the structuralists’ emphasis on breaking mental processes and mental contents into distinct elements. The Gestaltists studied the way the mind organizes material into overall perceptual patterns.

Freud developed a detailed theory of mental events. His psychodynamic theory was formulated to explain how both conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings affect a person’s behavior.

The behaviorists rejected the assumption that psychology should focus on the mind; they urged psychologists to study what could be observed directly—stimuli, responses, and the consequences of responses.

The humanists, in part reacting against Freud’s theory and the psychotherapy it gave rise to, assumed that people have positive values and free will; Rogers developed a treatment for psychological problems that relied on respect for individuals and their potentials.

Elements of the various strands came together in the cognitive revolution, which began by conceiving of the mind by analogy to a computer program; in this view, mental processing is information processing.

Cognitive neuroscientists study the relation between events at all three levels of analysis, with an emphasis on how the brain gives rise to thoughts, feelings, and behavior (including social behavior).

Evolutionary psychology treats many cognitive strategies and goals as adaptations that are the results of natural selection.

The three major types of psychologists are distinguished by their training, work settings, and types of work: clinical and counseling psychologists administer and interpret psychological tests, provide psychotherapy, offer career and vocational counseling, help people with specific psychological problems, and help people function more effectively; (2) academic psychologists teach and do research, in addition to helping to run their universities, colleges, or institutions; and (3) applied psychologists use the findings and theories of psychology to solve practical problems.

The science of psychology relies on the scientific method, which involves systematically observing events, formulating a question, forming a hypothesis about the relation between variables in an attempt to answer the question, collecting new observations to test the hypothesis, using such data to formulate a theory, and testing the theory.

Psychologists test hypotheses and look for relations among variables using a variety of approaches, including naturalistic observation, case studies, surveys, correlational studies, experiments, quasi-experiments, and meta-analyses.

Naturalistic observation involves careful observation and documentation of events.

Case studies are detailed investigations of a single participant.

In surveys, participants are asked to answer sets of specific questions.

In correlational studies, researchers measure the relationship between the values of pairs of variables, to determine whether the values of one variable go up or down as the values of the other go up or down. Correlational studies cannot determine whether changes in the values of one variable cause changes in the other.

In an experiment, the effect of manipulating the value of one or more independent variables on the value of a dependent variable is measured, and participants are assigned randomly to groups.

Quasi-experiments are like experiments, but participants are not assigned to groups randomly, and conditions are selected from naturally occurring variations.

In a meta-analysis, researchers combine results from different studies in order to identify a relationship among variables that cuts across the entire set of studies.

When reading reports of studies, you should be alert for the following: (1) evidence that the data are reliable; (2) evidence that the data are valid; (3) biases, including response bias (the tendency to respond in particular ways to everything) and sampling bias (the nonrandom selection of participants); and (4) experimenter expectancy effects.

Pseudopsychology differs from psychology not necessarily in its content but in its methods and whether it is supported by data.

Research with humans or nonhuman animals at universities, hospitals, and most institutional settings requires approval from an IRB.

For research with humans, the IRB will insist that the participants provide informed consent, which means that they must be given information in advance about the possible risks and benefits of participation.

The IRB will also require debriefing, which is an interview after the study to ensure that the participants had no negative reactions and did, in fact, understand the purpose of the study.

The IRB will also rule out any deceiving of participants, unless the deception is harmless and absolutely necessary for the research (and the potential value of the research is large enough to outweigh the use of deception).

For research with animals, the IRB requires that the animals be treated well (for example, housed in clean cages) and that pain be inflicted only if that is what is being studied and it is justified by the benefits from the research.

In clinical practice, psychotherapists must follow clear ethical guidelines, which include maintaining confidentiality except when legal mandates conflict with such guidelines, as is the case when a specific other person (or, in some states, property) is clearly in danger, or suicide is an imminent genuine concern.

In addition, therapists should not use techniques that they have not been trained to use or are learning but are not being properly supervised. Therapists should not engage in inappropriate personal behavior with patients.

A new branch of ethics, called neuroethics, focuses on the possible dangers and benefits of research on the brain.