psy 101 chapter 1
Terms
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- Psychology
- The science of behavior and cognitive processes.
- Evolutionary Psychology
- A new branch of psychology, suggesting that as a result of evolution, Human beings possess a number of evolved psychological mechanisms that help (or once helped) us deal with important problems relating to survival.
- Multicultural Perspective
- A perspective that clearly recognizes the potential importance of gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, religious orientation, and many other social and cultural dimensions.
- Confirmation Bias
- The tendency to notice and remember primarily information that lends support to our views.
- Availability Heuristic
- A mental shortcut suggestion that the easier it is to bring something to mind the more frequent or important it is.
- Critical Thinking
- Thinking that avoids blindly accepting conclusions or arguments and, instead, closely examines all assumptions, evidence, and conclusions.
- Systematic Observation
- A basic method of science in which the natural world, or various events or processes in it, are observed and measured in a very careful manner.
- Case Method
- A method or research in which detailed information about individuals is used to develop general principles about behavior.
- Survey Method
- A research method in which large numbers of people answer questions about aspects of their views or their behavior.
- Sampling
- With respect to the survey method, sampling refers to the methods used to select persons who respond to the survey.
- Correlational Method (of research)
- A research method in which researchers attempt to determine whether and to what extent different variables are related to each other.
- Experimentation (the experimental method of research)
- A research method in which researchers systematically alter one of more variables in order to determine whether such changes influence some aspect of behavior.
- Independent Variable
- The variable that is systematically changed in the experiment.
- Dependant Variable
- THe variable that is measured in the experiment
- Random Assignment of Participants to Experimental Conditions
- Assuring that all research participants have an equal chance of being exposed to each level of the independent variable(i.e., of being assigned to each experimental condition).