Chapter 1. 1: Introduction and Research Methods

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The First Exam

PROLOGUE

YOU DON’T NEED TO BE A PSYCHOLOGIST to notice that the classroom atmosphere can be a little tense the day after the first exam. As we handed back the test results, several faces fell. Many of the students were freshmen and not yet accustomed to the self-paced learning required in a college course. But there were also several older adults, including two military vets, one recently returned from Afghanistan.

“So let’s go over these test questions,” your author Sandy began. “I noticed a lot of you had trouble with the difference between independent and dependent variables. Maybe we should talk about that again before we go on to Chapter 2.”

Jacob frowned. “I can’t understand why I did so badly,” he said. “I mean, I read the chapter! Look.” He held up his textbook. The pages were heavily underlined and covered with highlight colors—yellow, blue, and green.

It isn’t unusual for students to have trouble with their first real exam in college. Knowing that, we usually take some time to talk about study skills after exams are returned. “How did you prepare for the exam?” your author Susan asked the class.

“I made flashcards,” Latisha said. “But it didn’t seem to help that much. I only got a B-, and I thought I really knew this stuff.”

“Flashcards can be a great technique,” Sandy said, “if you use them correctly.”

Latisha looked puzzled. “What do you mean? I used them the way everybody uses flashcards. I tested myself and if I knew the answer, I set the card aside. I kept running through the ones I missed until they were all gone and I knew them all.”

“Well, believe it or not,” Sandy said, “psychologists have done a lot of research on learning new material, and it turns out that that’s not the most effective way to use flashcards.”

“What is, then?” Latisha asked.

“Stay tuned,” Sandy said with a smile. “We’re going to talk about it in today’s class.”

Jenna broke in. “I always freeze on tests. They stress me out so bad my mind goes blank.”

“I do too,” Tyler piped up. “So my girlfriend gave me this bracelet to wear for exams. She swears by hers. Do you think it helps?”

“What is that?” Sandy said. Tyler handed the heavy metal bracelet to Sandy. “What’s it supposed to do?”

“It’s made of some kind of special metal—maybe titanium?” Tyler said. “It’s magnetic. Oh, and the Web site said it generated a negative ion field, or maybe it neutralizes positive ions. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. But my girlfriend said that a lot of famous baseball players and golfers wear one. It’s supposed to help with pain but it’s also supposed to help you concentrate and give you a better memory. I figured it couldn’t hurt, so why not try it?”

“I’m not aware of any research on using magnets for concentration or memory,” Sandy said carefully. “But we can certainly look it up and let you know what we find out.”

Later in the chapter, we’ll share what we found out about magnetic jewelry—and more important, what psychologists have discovered about the most effective ways to study. You’ll also see how psychological research can help you critically evaluate new ideas and claims that you encounter outside the classroom.

As you’ll see throughout this book, psychology has a lot to say about many of the questions that are of interest to college students. In this introductory chapter, we’ll explore the scope of contemporary psychology as well as psychology’s historical origins. The common theme connecting psychology’s varied topics is its reliance on a solid foundation of scientific evidence. By the end of the chapter, you’ll have a better appreciation of the scientific methods that psychologists use to answer questions, big and small, about behavior and mental processes.

Welcome to psychology! 

KEY THEME

Today, psychology is defined as the science of behavior and mental processes, a definition that reflects psychology’s origins and history.

KEY QUESTIONS

Psychology is formally defined as the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. But this definition is deceptively simple. As you’ll see in this chapter, the scope of contemporary psychology is very broad—ranging from the behavior of a single brain cell to the behavior of a crowd of people or even entire cultures.

Many people think that psychologists are primarily—or even exclusively—interested in studying and treating psychological disorders and problems. But as this chapter will also show, psychologists are just as interested in “normal,” everyday behavior and mental processes—such as learning and memory, emotion and thought, relationships and loneliness. And, psychologists seek ways to use the knowledge that they discover through scientific research to optimize human performance and potential in many different fields, from classrooms to offices to the military.

The four basic goals of psychology are to describe, predict, explain, and control or influence behavior and mental processes. To illustrate how these goals guide psychological research, think about our classroom discussion. Most people, like Jenna, have an intuitive understanding of what the word “stress” refers to. Psychologists, however, seek to go beyond intuitive or “common sense” understandings of human experience.

       Here’s how psychology’s goals might help guide research on stress:

How did psychology evolve into today’s diverse and rich science? We begin this introductory chapter by stepping backward in time to describe the early origins of psychology and its historical development. As you become familiar with how psychology began and developed, you’ll have a better appreciation for how it has come to encompass such diverse subjects. Indeed, the early history of psychology is the history of a field struggling to define itself as a separate and unique scientific discipline. The early psychologists debated such fundamental issues as:

These debates helped set the tone of the new science, define its scope, and set its limits. Over the past century, the shifting focus of these debates has influenced the topics studied and the research methods used.

The earliest origins of psychology can be traced back several centuries to the writings of the great philosophers. More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote extensively about topics like sleep, dreams, the senses, and memory. Many of Aristotle’s ideas remained influential until the beginnings of modern science in the seventeenth century (Kheriaty, 2007).

At that time, the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) proposed a doctrine called interactive dualism—the idea that mind and body were separate entities that interact to produce sensations, emotions, and other conscious experiences. Today, psychologists continue to explore the relationship between mental activity and the brain.

Philosophers also laid the groundwork for another issue that would become central to psychology, the nature–nurture issue. For centuries, philosophers debated which was more important: the inborn nature of the individual or the environmental influences that nurture the individual. This debate was sometimes framed as nature versus nurture. Today, however, psychologists understand that “nature” and “nuture” are impossible to completely disentangle (Sameroff, 2010). So, while some psychologists do investigate the relative influences of heredity versus environmental factors on behavior, today’s researchers also focus on studying the dynamic interaction between environmental factors and genetic heritage (Meaney, 2010; Szyf, 2013).

Such philosophical discussions influenced the topics that would be considered in psychology. But the early philosophers could advance the understanding of human behavior only to a certain point. Their methods were limited to intuition, observation, and logic.

The eventual emergence of psychology as a science hinged on advances in other sciences, particularly physiology. Physiology is a branch of biology that studies the functions and parts of living organisms, including humans. In the 1600s, physiologists were becoming interested in the human brain and its relation to behavior. By the early 1700s, it was discovered that damage to one side of the brain produced a loss of function in the opposite side of the body. By the early 1800s, the idea that different brain areas were related to different behavioral functions was being vigorously debated. Collectively, the early scientific discoveries made by physiologists were establishing the foundation for an idea that was to prove critical to the emergence of psychology—namely, that scientific methods could be applied to answering questions about behavior and mental processes.

By the second half of the 1800s, the stage had been set for the emergence of psychology as a distinct scientific discipline. The leading proponent of this idea was a German physiologist named Wilhelm Wundt (Gentile & Miller, 2009). Wundt used scientific methods to study fundamental psychological processes, such as mental reaction times in response to visual or auditory stimuli. For example, Wundt tried to measure precisely how long it took a person to consciously detect the sight and sound of a bell being struck.

A major turning point in psychology occurred in 1874, when Wundt outlined the connections between physiology and psychology in his landmark text, Principles of Physiological Psychology (Diamond, 2001). He also promoted his belief that psychology should be established as a separate scientific discipline that would use experimental methods to study mental processes. A few years later, in 1879, Wundt realized that goal when he opened the first psychology research laboratory at the University of Leipzig. Many regard this event as marking the formal beginning of psychology as an experimental science (Kohls & Benedikter, 2010).

Wundt defined psychology as the study of consciousness and emphasized the use of experimental methods to study and measure consciousness. Until he died in 1920, Wundt exerted a strong influence on the development of psychology as a science (Wong, 2009). Two hundred students from around the world traveled to Leipzig to earn doctorates in experimental psychology under Wundt’s direction. Over the years, some 17,000 students attended Wundt’s afternoon lectures on general psychology, which often included demonstrations of devices he had developed to measure mental processes (Blumenthal, 1998).

One of Wundt’s most devoted students was a young Englishman named Edward B. Titchener. After earning his doctorate in Wundt’s laboratory, Titchener began teaching at Cornell University in New York. There he established a psychology laboratory that ultimately spanned 26 rooms.

Titchener shared many of Wundt’s ideas about the nature of psychology. Eventually, however, Titchener developed his own approach, which he called structuralism. Structuralism became the first major school of thought in psychology. Structuralism held that even our most complex conscious experiences could be broken down into elemental structures, or component parts, of sensations and feelings. To identify these structures of conscious thought, Titchener trained subjects in a procedure called introspection. The subjects would view a simple stimulus, such as a book, and then try to reconstruct their sensations and feelings immediately after viewing it. (In psychology, a stimulus is anything perceptible to the senses, such as a sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste.) They might first report on the colors they saw, then the smells, and so on, in the attempt to create a total description of their conscious experience (Titchener, 1896).

In addition to being distinguished as the first school of thought in early psychology, Titchener’s structuralism holds the dubious distinction of being the first school to disappear. With Titchener’s death in 1927, structuralism as an influential school of thought in psychology essentially ended. But even before Titchener’s death, structuralism was often criticized for relying too heavily on the method of introspection.

As noted by Wundt and other scientists, introspection had significant limitations. First, introspection was an unreliable method of investigation. Different subjects often provided very different introspective reports about the same stimulus. Even subjects well trained in introspection varied in their responses to the same stimulus from trial to trial.

Second, introspection could not be used to study children or animals. Third, complex topics, such as learning, development, mental disorders, and personality, could not be investigated using introspection. In the end, the methods and goals of structuralism were simply too limited to accommodate the rapidly expanding interests of the field of psychology.

By the time Titchener arrived at Cornell University, psychology was already well established in the United States. The main proponent of American psychology was one of Harvard’s most outstanding teachers—William James. James had become intrigued by the emerging science of psychology after reading one of Wundt’s articles. But there were other influences on the development of James’s thinking.

Like many other scientists and philosophers of his generation, James was fascinated by the idea that different species had evolved over time (Menand, 2001). Many nineteenth-century scientists in England, France, and the United States were evolutionists—that is, they believed that species had not been created once and for all but had changed over time (Caton, 2007).

In the 1850s, British philosopher Herbert Spencer had published several works arguing that modern species, including humans, were the result of gradual evolutionary change. In 1859, Charles Darwin’s groundbreaking work, On the Origin of Species, was published. James and his fellow thinkers actively debated the notion of evolution, which came to have a profound influence on James’s ideas (Richardson, 2006). Like Darwin, James stressed the importance of adaptation to environmental challenges.

In the early 1870s, James began teaching a physiology and anatomy class at Harvard University. An intense, enthusiastic teacher, James was prone to changing the subject matter of his classes as his own interests changed (B. Ross, 1991). By the late 1870s, James was teaching classes devoted exclusively to the topic of psychology.

At about the same time, James began writing a comprehensive textbook of psychology, a task that would take him more than a decade. James’s Principles of Psychology was finally published in 1890. Despite its length of more than 1,400 pages, Principles of Psychology quickly became the leading psychology textbook. In it, James discussed such diverse topics as brain function, habit, memory, sensation, perception, and emotion. James’s views had an enormous impact on the development of psychology in the United States.

James’s ideas became the basis for a new school of psychology, called functionalism. Functionalism stressed the importance of how behavior functions to allow people and animals to adapt to their environments. Unlike structuralists, functionalists did not limit their methods to introspection. They expanded the scope of psychological research to include direct observation of living creatures in natural settings. They also examined how psychology could be applied to areas like education, child rearing, and the work environment.

Both the structuralists and the functionalists thought that psychology should focus on the study of conscious experiences. But the functionalists had very different ideas about the nature of consciousness and how it should be studied. Rather than trying to identify the essential structures of consciousness at a given moment, James saw consciousness as an ongoing stream of mental activity that shifts and changes.

Like structuralism, functionalism no longer exists as a distinct school of thought in contemporary psychology. Nevertheless, functionalism’s twin themes of the importance of the adaptive role of behavior and the application of psychology to enhance human behavior continue to be evident in modern psychology.

WILLIAM JAMES AND HIS STUDENTS

Like Wundt, James profoundly influenced psychology through his students, many of whom became prominent American psychologists. Two of James’s most notable students were G. Stanley Hall and Mary Whiton Calkins.

In 1878, G. Stanley Hall received the first Ph.D. in psychology awarded in the United States. Hall founded the first psychology research laboratory in the United States at Johns Hopkins University in 1883. He also began publishing the American Journal of Psychology, the first U.S. journal devoted to psychology. Most important, in 1892, Hall founded the American Psychological Association and was elected its first president (Anderson, 2012). Today, the American Psychological Association (APA) is the world’s largest professional organization of psychologists, with approximately 150,000 members.

In 1890, Mary Whiton Calkins was assigned the task of teaching experimental psychology at a new women’s college—Wellesley College. Calkins studied with James at nearby Harvard University. She completed all the requirements for a Ph.D. in psychology. However, Harvard refused to grant her the Ph.D. degree because she was a woman and at the time Harvard was not a coeducational institution (Pickren & Rutherford, 2010).

Although never awarded the degree she had earned, Calkins made several notable contributions to psychology. She conducted research in many areas, including dreams, memory, and personality. In 1891, she established a psychology laboratory at Wellesley College. At the turn of the twentieth century, she wrote a well-received textbook, titled Introduction to Psychology. In 1905, Calkins was elected president of the American Psychological Association—the first woman, but not the last, to hold that position.

Just for the record, the first American woman to earn an official Ph.D. in psychology was Margaret Floy Washburn. Washburn was Edward Titchener’s first doctoral student at Cornell University. She strongly advocated the scientific study of the mental processes of different animal species. In 1908, she published an influential text, titled The Animal Mind. Her book summarized research on sensation, perception, learning, and other “inner experiences” of different animal species. In 1921, Washburn became the second woman elected president of the American Psychological Association (Viney & Burlingame-Lee, 2003).

Finally, one of G. Stanley Hall’s notable students was Francis C. Sumner. Sumner was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in psychology, awarded by Clark University in 1920. After teaching at several southern universities, Sumner moved to Howard University in Washington, D.C. At Howard he published papers on a wide variety of topics and chaired a psychology department that produced more African American psychologists than all other American colleges and universities combined (Guthrie, 2000, 2004). One of Sumner’s most famous students was Kenneth Bancroft Clark. Clark’s research on the negative effects of discrimination was instrumental in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to end segregation in schools (Jackson, 2006). In 1970, Clark became the first African American president of the American Psychological Association (Belgrave & Allison, 2010).

Wundt, James, and other early psychologists emphasized the study of conscious experiences. But at the turn of the twentieth century, new approaches challenged the principles of both structuralism and functionalism.

In Vienna, Austria, a physician named Sigmund Freud was developing an intriguing theory of personality based on uncovering causes of behavior that were unconscious, or hidden from the person’s conscious awareness. Freud’s school of thought, called psychoanalysis, emphasized the role of unconscious conflicts in determining behavior and personality. Freud himself was a neurologist, not a psychologist. Nevertheless, psychoanalysis had a strong influence on psychological thinking in the early part of the century.

Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality and behavior was based largely on his work with his patients and on insights derived from self-analysis. Freud believed that human behavior was motivated by unconscious conflicts that were almost always sexual or aggressive in nature. Past experiences, especially childhood experiences, were thought to be critical in the formation of adult personality and behavior. According to Freud (1904), glimpses of these unconscious impulses are revealed in everyday life in dreams, memory blocks, slips of the tongue, and spontaneous humor. Freud believed that when unconscious conflicts became extreme, psychological disorders could result.

Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality also provided the basis for a distinct form of psychotherapy. Many of the fundamental ideas of psychoanalysis continue to influence psychologists and other professionals in the mental health field. We’ll explore Freud’s theory in more depth in Chapter 11, on personality, and Chapter 15, on psychotherapy.

The course of psychology changed dramatically in the early 1900s when another approach, called behaviorism, emerged as a dominating force. Behaviorism rejected the emphasis on consciousness promoted by structuralism and functionalism. It also flatly rejected Freudian notions about unconscious influences, claiming that such ideas were unscientific and impossible to test. Instead, behaviorism contended that psychology should focus its scientific investigations strictly on overt behavior—observable behaviors that could be objectively measured and verified.

Behaviorism is another example of the influence of physiology on psychology. Behaviorism grew out of the pioneering work of a Russian physiologist named Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov demonstrated that dogs could learn to associate a neutral stimulus, such as the sound of a bell, with an automatic behavior, such as reflexively salivating to food. Once an association between the sound of the bell and the food was formed, the sound of the bell alone would trigger the salivation reflex in the dog. Pavlov enthusiastically believed he had discovered the mechanism by which all behaviors were learned.

In the United States, a young, dynamic psychologist named John B. Watson shared Pavlov’s enthusiasm. Watson (1913) championed behaviorism as a new school of psychology. Structuralism was still an influential perspective, but Watson strongly objected to both its method of introspection and its focus on conscious mental processes. As Watson (1924) wrote in his classic book, Behaviorism:

Behaviorism, on the contrary, holds that the subject matter of human psychology is the behavior of the human being. Behaviorism claims that consciousness is neither a definite nor a usable concept. The behaviorist, who has been trained always as an experimentalist, holds, further, that belief in the existence of consciousness goes back to the ancient days of superstition and magic.

The influence of behaviorism on American psychology was enormous. The goal of the behaviorists was to discover the fundamental principles of learning—how behavior is acquired and modified in response to environmental influences. For the most part, the behaviorists studied animal behavior under carefully controlled laboratory conditions.

Although Watson left academic psychology in the early 1920s, behaviorism was later championed by an equally forceful proponent—the famous American psychologist B. F. Skinner. Like Watson, Skinner believed that psychology should restrict itself to studying outwardly observable behaviors that could be measured and verified. In compelling experimental demonstrations, Skinner systematically used reinforcement or punishment to shape the behaviorc of rats and pigeons.

Between Watson and Skinner, behaviorism dominated American psychology for almost half a century. During that time, the study of conscious experiences was largely ignored as a topic in psychology (Baars, 2005). In Chapter 5, on learning, we’ll look at the lives and contributions of Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner in greater detail.

For several decades, behaviorism and psychoanalysis were the perspectives that most influenced the thinking of American psychologists. In the 1950s, a new school of thought emerged, called humanistic psychology. Because humanistic psychology was distinctly different from both psychoanalysis and behaviorism, it was sometimes referred to as the “third force” in American psychology (Waterman, 2013; Watson & others, 2011).

Humanistic psychology was largely founded by American psychologist Carl Rogers (Elliott & Farber, 2010). Like Freud, Rogers was influenced by his experiences with his psychotherapy clients. However, rather than emphasizing unconscious conflicts, Rogers emphasized the conscious experiences of his clients, including each person’s unique potential for psychological growth and self-direction. In contrast to the behaviorists, who saw human behavior as being shaped and maintained by external causes, Rogers emphasized self-determination, free will, and the importance of choice in human behavior (Elliott & Farber, 2010; Kirschenbaum & Jourdan, 2005).

Abraham Maslow was another advocate of humanistic psychology. Maslow developed a theory of motivation that emphasized psychological growth, which we’ll discuss in Chapter 8. Like psychoanalysis, humanistic psychology included not only influential theories of personality but also a form of psychotherapy, which we’ll discuss in later chapters.

By briefly stepping backward in time, you’ve seen how the debates among the key thinkers in psychology’s history shaped the development of psychology as a whole. Each of the schools that we’ve described had an impact on the topics and methods of psychological research. As you’ll see throughout this textbook, that impact has been a lasting one. In the next sections, we’ll touch on some of the more recent developments in psychology’s evolution. We’ll also explore the diversity that characterizes contemporary psychology.

KEY THEME

As psychology has developed as a scientific discipline, the topics it investigates have become progressively more diverse.

KEY QUESTIONS

Over the past half-century, the range of topics in psychology has become progressively more diverse. And, as psychology’s knowledge base has increased, psychology itself has become more specialized. Rather than being dominated by a particular approach or school of thought, today’s psychologists tend to identify themselves according to (1) the perspective they emphasize in investigating psychological topics and (2) the specialty area in which they have been trained and practice.

Any given topic in contemporary psychology can be approached from a variety of perspectives. Each perspective discussed here represents a different emphasis or point of view that can be taken in studying a particular behavior, topic, or issue. As you’ll see in this section, the influence of the early schools of psychology is apparent in the first four perspectives that characterize contemporary psychology.

THE BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

As we’ve already noted, physiology has played an important role in psychology since it was founded. Today, that influence continues, as is shown by the many psychologists who take the biological perspective. The biological perspective emphasizes studying the physical bases of human and animal behavior, including the nervous system, endocrine system, immune system, and genetics. More specifically, neuroscience refers to the study of the nervous system, especially the brain.

Advances in medicine and technology have reinforced interest in the biological perspective. The discovery of drugs that helped control the symptoms of severe psychological disorders sparked questions about the interaction among biological factors and human behavior, emotions, and thought processes.

Equally important have been technological advances that have allowed psychologists and other researchers to explore the human brain as never before. The development of sophisticated brain-scanning techniques, including the PET scan, MRI scan, and functional MRI (fMRI) scan, allowed neuroscientists to study the structure and activity of the intact, living brain. Later in the chapter, we’ll describe these brain-imaging techniques and identify how psychologists use them as research tools.

THE PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE

The key ideas and themes of Freud’s landmark theory of psychoanalysis continue to be important among many psychologists, especially those working in the mental health field. As you’ll see in Chapter 11, on personality, and Chapter 15, on therapies, many of Freud’s ideas have been expanded or modified by his followers. Today, psychologists who take the psychodynamic perspective may or may not follow Freud or take a psychoanalytic approach. However, they do tend to emphasize the importance of unconscious influences, early life experiences, and interpersonal relationships in explaining the underlying dynamics of behavior or in treating people with psychological problems.

THE BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE

Watson and Skinner’s contention that psychology should focus on observable behaviors and the fundamental laws of learning is evident today in the behavioral perspective. Contemporary psychologists who take the behavioral perspective continue to study how behavior is acquired or modified by environmental causes. Many psychologists who work in the area of mental health also emphasize the behavioral perspective in explaining and treating psychological disorders. In Chapter 5, on learning, and Chapter 15, on therapies, we’ll discuss different applications of the behavioral perspective.

THE HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE

The influence of the work of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow continues to be seen among contemporary psychologists who take the humanistic perspective (Serlin, 2012; Waterman, 2013). The humanistic perspective focuses on the motivation of people to grow psychologically, the influence of interpersonal relationships on a person’s self-concept, and the importance of choice and self-direction in striving to reach one’s potential. Like the psychodynamic perspective, the humanistic perspective is often emphasized among psychologists working in the mental health field. You’ll encounter the humanistic perspective in the chapters on motivation (8), personality (11), and therapies (15).

THE POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY PERSPECTIVE

The humanistic perspective’s emphasis on psychological growth and human potential contributed to the recent emergence of a new perspective. Positive psychology is a field of psychological research and theory focusing on the study of positive emotions and psychological states, positive individual traits, and the social institutions that foster those qualities in individuals and communities (Csikszentmihalyi & Nakamura, 2011; Peterson, 2006; Seligman & others, 2005). By studying the conditions and processes that contribute to the optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions, positive psychology seeks to counterbalance psychology’s traditional emphasis on psychological problems and disorders (McNulty & Fincham, 2012).

Topics that fall under the umbrella of positive psychology include personal happiness, optimism, creativity, resilience, character strengths, and wisdom. Positive psychology is also focused on developing therapeutic techniques that increase personal well-being rather than just alleviating the troubling symptoms of psychological disorders (Snyder & others, 2011). Insights from positive psychology research will be evident in many chapters, including the chapters on motivation and emotion (8); personality (11); stress, health, and coping (13); and therapies (15).

THE COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

During the 1960s, psychology experienced a return to the study of how mental processes influence behavior. Often referred to as “the cognitive revolution” in psychology, this movement represented a break from traditional behaviorism. Cognitive psychology focused once again on the important role of mental processes in how people process and remember information, develop language, solve problems, and think.

The development of the first computers in the 1950s contributed to the cognitive revolution. Computers gave psychologists a new model for conceptualizing human mental processes—human thinking, memory, and perception could be understood in terms of an information-processing model. We’ll consider the cognitive perspective in several chapters, including Chapter 7, on thinking, language, and intelligence. The cognitive perspective has also influenced other areas of psychology, including personality (Chapter 11) and psychotherapy (Chapter 15).

THE CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

More recently, psychologists have taken a closer look at how cultural factors influence patterns of behavior—the essence of the cross-cultural perspective. By the late 1980s, cross-cultural psychology had emerged in full force as large numbers of psychologists began studying the diversity of human behavior in different cultural settings and countries (Kitayama & Uskul, 2011; P. Smith, 2010). In the process, psychologists discovered that some well-established psychological findings were not as universal as they had thought.

For example, one well-established psychological finding was that people exert more effort on a task when working alone than when working as part of a group, a phenomenon called social loafing. First demonstrated in the 1970s, social loafing was a consistent finding in several psychological studies conducted with American and European subjects. But when similar studies were conducted with Chinese participants, the opposite was found to be true (Hong & others, 2008). Chinese participants worked harder on a task when they were part of a group than when they were working alone.

Today, psychologists are keenly attuned to the influence of cultural factors on behavior (Heine, 2010; Henrich & others, 2010). Although many psychological processes are shared by all humans, it’s important to keep in mind that there are cultural variations in behavior. Thus, we have included Culture and Human Behavior boxes throughout this textbook to help sensitize you to the influence of culture on behavior—including your own. We describe cross-cultural psychology in more detail in the Culture and Human Behavior box below.

THE EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE

Evolutionary psychology refers to the application of the principles of evolution to explain psychological processes and phenomena (Buss, 2009, 2011a). The evolutionary perspective reflects a renewed interest in the work of English naturalist Charles Darwin. As noted previously, Darwin’s (1859) first book on evolution, On the Origin of Species, played an influential role in the thinking of many early psychologists.

The theory of evolution proposes that the individual members of a species compete for survival. Because of inherited differences, some members of a species are better adapted to their environment than are others. Organisms that inherit characteristics that increase their chances of survival in their particular habitat are more likely to survive, reproduce, and pass on their characteristics to their offspring. But individuals that inherit less useful characteristics are less likely to survive, reproduce, and pass on their characteristics. This process reflects the principle of natural selection: The most adaptive characteristics are “selected” and perpetuated in the next generation.

Psychologists who take the evolutionary perspective assume that psychological processes are also subject to the principle of natural selection. As David Buss (2008) writes, “An evolved psychological mechanism exists in the form that it does because it solved a specific problem of survival or reproduction recurrently over evolutionary history.” That is, those psychological processes that helped individuals adapt to their environments also helped them survive, reproduce, and pass those abilities on to their offspring (Confer & others, 2010). However, as you’ll see in later chapters, some of those processes may not necessarily be adaptive in our modern world (Loewenstein, 2010; Tooby & Cosmides, 2008).

Many people think that psychologists primarily diagnose and treat people with psychological problems or disorders. In fact, psychologists who specialize in clinical psychology are trained in the diagnosis, treatment, causes, and prevention of psychological disorders, leading to a doctorate in clinical psychology.

In contrast, psychiatry is a medical specialty. A psychiatrist has earned a medical degree, either an M.D. or D.O., followed by several years of specialized training in the treatment of mental disorders. As physicians, psychiatrists can hospitalize people, order biomedical therapies such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and prescribe medications. Clinical psychologists are not medical doctors and cannot order medical treatments. However, a few states have passed legislation allowing clinical psychologists to prescribe medications after specialized training (McGrath, 2010).

As you’ll learn, contemporary psychology is a very diverse discipline that ranges far beyond the treatment of psychological problems. This diversity is reflected in FIGURE 1.1, which shows the range of specialty areas and employment settings for psychologists. TABLE 1.1 provides a brief overview of psychology’s most important specialty areas.

KEY THEME

The scientific method is a set of assumptions, attitudes, and procedures that guides all scientists, including psychologists, in conducting research.

KEY QUESTIONS

Whatever their approach or specialty, psychologists who do research are scientists. And, like other scientists, they rely on the scientific method to guide their research. The scientific method refers to a set of assumptions, attitudes, and procedures that guide researchers in creating questions to investigate, in generating evidence, and in drawing conclusions.

Like all scientists, psychologists are guided by the basic scientific assumption that events are lawful. When this scientific assumption is applied to psychology, it means that psychologists assume that behavior and mental processes follow consistent patterns. Psychologists are also guided by the assumption that events are explainable. Thus, psychologists assume that behavior and mental processes have a cause or causes that can be understood through careful, systematic study.

Psychologists are also open-minded. They are willing to consider new or alternative explanations of behavior and mental processes. However, their open-minded attitude is tempered by a healthy sense of scientific skepticism. That is, psychologists critically evaluate the evidence for new findings, especially those that seem contrary to established knowledge.

Like any science, psychology is based on verifiable or empirical evidence—evidence that is the result of objective observation, measurement, and experimentation. As part of the overall process of producing empirical evidence, psychologists follow the four basic steps of the scientific method. In a nutshell, these steps are:

Following the basic guidelines of the scientific method does not guarantee that valid conclusions will always be reached. However, these steps help guard against bias and minimize the chances for error and faulty conclusions. Let’s look at some of the key concepts associated with each step of the scientific method.

STEP 1. FORMULATE A TESTABLE HYPOTHESIS

Once a researcher has identified a question or an issue to investigate, he or she must formulate a hypothesis that can be tested empirically. Formally, a hypothesis is a tentative statement that describes the relationship between two or more variables. A hypothesis is often stated as a specific prediction that can be empirically tested, such as “strong social networks are associated with greater well-being in college students.”

A variable is simply a factor that can vary, or change. These changes must be capable of being observed, measured, and verified. The psychologist must provide an operational definition of each variable to be investigated. An operational definition defines the variable in very specific terms as to how it will be measured, manipulated, or changed. Operational definitions are important because many of the concepts that psychologists investigate—such as memory, happiness, or stress—can be measured in more than one way.

For example, how would you test the hypothesis that “strong social networks are associated with greater well-being in college students”? To test that specific prediction, you would need to formulate an operational definition of each variable. How could you operationally define social networks? Well-being? What could you objectively observe and measure?

To investigate the impact of social networks on college students, Adriana Manago and her colleagues (2012) used Facebook data. They operationally defined network size as the participant’s number of Facebook friends. They asked participants to classify their Facebook friends into different categories, such as “close friends,” “acquaintances,” and “online” friends. FIGURE 1.2 shows the percentage of each type of friend in the participants’ social networks.

How was well-being operationally defined? Manago and her colleagues (2012) used a standard scale that measured life satisfaction. Students rated their agreement on a 5-point scale for nine statements like “I have a good life” and “I like the way things are going for me.” And what did Manago and her colleagues find? Students with larger networks were significantly happier with their lives.

STEP 2. DESIGN THE STUDY AND COLLECT THE DATA

This step involves deciding which research method to use for collecting data. There are two basic types of designs used in research—descriptive and experimental. Each research approach answers different kinds of questions and provides different kinds of evidence.

Descriptive research includes research strategies for observing and describing behavior, including identifying the factors that seem to be associated with a particular phenomenon. The study by Adriana Manago and her colleagues (2012) on social networks and student well-being is just one example of descriptive research. Descriptive research answers the who, what, where, and when kinds of questions about behavior. Who engages in a particular behavior? What factors or events seem to be associated with the behavior? Where does the behavior occur? When does the behavior occur? How often? In the next section, we’ll discuss commonly used descriptive methods, including naturalistic observation, surveys, case studies, and correlational studies.

In contrast, experimental research is used to show that one variable causes change in a second variable. In an experiment, the researcher deliberately varies one factor, then measures the changes produced in a second factor. Ideally, all experimental conditions are kept as constant as possible except for the factor that the researcher systematically varies. Then, if changes occur in the second factor, those changes can be attributed to the variations in the first factor.

STEP 3. ANALYZE THE DATA AND DRAW CONCLUSIONS

Once observations have been made and measurements have been collected, the raw data need to be analyzed and summarized. Researchers use the methods of a branch of mathematics known as statistics to analyze, summarize, and draw conclusions about the data they have collected.

Researchers rely on statistics to determine whether their results support their hypotheses. They also use statistics to determine whether their findings are statistically significant. If a finding is statistically significant, it means that the results are not very likely to have occurred by chance. As a rule, statistically significant results confirm the hypothesis. Appendix A provides a more detailed discussion of the use of statistics in psychology research.

Keep in mind that even though a finding is statistically significant, it may not be practically significant. If a study involves a large number of participants, even small differences among groups of subjects may result in a statistically significant finding. But the actual average differences may be so small as to have little practical significance or importance.

For example, Reynol Junco (2012) surveyed nearly two thousand college students and found a statistically significant relationship between GPA and amount of time spent on Facebook: Students who spent a lot of time on Facebook tended to have lower grades than students who spent less time. However, the practical, real-world significance of this relationship was low: It turned out that a student had to spend 93 minutes per day more than the average of 106 minutes for the increased time to have even a small (.12 percentage points) impact on GPA. So remember that a statistically significant result is simply one that is not very likely to have occurred by chance. Whether the finding is significant in the everyday sense of being important is another matter altogether.

A statistical technique called meta-analysis is sometimes used in psychology to analyze the results of many research studies on a specific topic. Meta-analysis involves pooling the results of several studies into a single analysis. By creating one large pool of data to be analyzed, meta-analysis can help reveal overall trends that may not be evident in individual studies.

Meta-analysis is especially useful when a particular issue has generated a large number of studies with inconsistent results. For example, many studies have looked at the factors that predict success in college. British psychologists Michelle Richardson and her colleagues (2012) pooled the results of over 200 research studies investigating personal characteristics that were associated with success in college. “Success in college” was operationally defined as cumulative grade-point average (GPA). They found that motivational factors were the strongest predictor of college success, outweighing test scores, high school grades, and socioeconomic status. Especially important was a trait they called performance self-efficacy, the belief that you have the skills and abilities to succeed at academic tasks. We’ll talk more about self-efficacy in Chapter 8, on motivation and emotion.

STEP 4. REPORT THE FINDINGS

For advances to be made in any scientific discipline, researchers must share their findings with other scientists. In addition to reporting their results, psychologists provide a detailed description of the study itself, including who participated in the study, how variables were operationally defined, how data were analyzed, and so forth.

Describing the precise details of the study makes it possible for other investigators to replicate, or repeat, the study. Replication is an important part of the scientific process. When a study is replicated and the same basic results are obtained again, scientific confidence that the results are accurate is increased. Conversely, if the replication of a study fails to produce the same basic findings, confidence in the original findings is reduced.

Psychologists present their research at academic conferences or write a paper summarizing the study and submit it to one of the many psychology journals for publication. Before accepting papers for publication, most psychology journals send the paper to other knowledgeable psychologists to review and evaluate. If the study conforms to the principles of sound scientific research and contributes to the existing knowledge base, the paper is accepted for publication.

Throughout this text, you’ll see citations that look like the one you encountered in the discussion above on social networks and well-being: “(Manago & others, 2012).” These citations identify the sources of the research and ideas that are being discussed. The citation tells you the author or authors (Manago & others) of the study and the year (2012) in which the study was published. You can find the complete reference in the alphabetized References section at the back of this text. The complete reference lists the authors’ full names, the article title, the journal or book in which the article was published, and the DOI, or digital object identifier. The DOI is a permanent Internet “address” for journal articles and other digital works posted on the Internet.

FIGURE 1.3 shows you how to decipher the different parts of a typical journal reference.

As research findings accumulate from individual studies, eventually theories develop. A theory, or model, is a tentative explanation that tries to account for diverse findings on the same topic. Note that theories are not the same as hypotheses. A hypothesis is a specific question or prediction to be tested. In contrast, a theory integrates and summarizes numerous research findings and observations on a particular topic. Along with explaining existing results, a good theory often generates new predictions and hypotheses that can be tested by further research (Higgins, 2004).

As you encounter different theories, try to remember that theories are tools for explaining behavior and mental processes, not statements of absolute fact. Like any tool, the value of a theory is determined by its usefulness. A useful theory is one that furthers the understanding of behavior, allows testable predictions to be made, and stimulates new research. Often, more than one theory proves to be useful in explaining a particular area of behavior or mental processes, such as the development of personality or the experience of emotion.

It’s also important to remember that theories often reflect the self-correcting nature of the scientific enterprise. In other words, when new research findings challenge established ways of thinking about a phenomenon, theories are expanded, modified, and even replaced. Thus, as the knowledge base of psychology evolves and changes, theories evolve and change to produce more accurate and useful explanations of behavior and mental processes.

While the conclusions of psychology rest on empirical evidence gathered using the scientific method, the same is not true of pseudoscientific claims (J. C. Smith, 2010). As you’ll read in the Science Versus Pseudoscience box below, pseudosciences often claim to be scientific while ignoring the basic rules of science.

KEY THEME

Descriptive research is used to systematically observe and describe behavior.

KEY QUESTIONS

Descriptive research designs include strategies for observing and describing behavior. Using descriptive research designs, researchers can answer important questions, such as when certain behaviors take place, how often they occur, and whether they are related to other factors, such as a person’s age, ethnic group, or educational level. As you’ll see in this section, descriptive research can provide a wealth of information about behavior, especially behaviors that would be difficult or impossible to study experimentally.

When psychologists systematically observe and record behaviors as they occur in their natural settings, they are using the descriptive method called naturalistic observation. Usually, researchers engaged in naturalistic observation try to avoid being detected by their subjects, whether people or nonhuman animals. The basic goal of naturalistic observation is to detect the behavior patterns that exist naturally—patterns that might not be apparent in a laboratory or if the subjects knew they were being watched.

As you might expect, psychologists very carefully define the behaviors that they will observe and measure before they begin their research. Often, to increase the accuracy of the observations, two or more observers are used. In some studies, observations are recorded so that the researchers can carefully analyze the details of the behaviors being studied.

One advantage of naturalistic observation is that it allows researchers to study human behaviors that cannot ethically be manipulated in an experiment. For example, suppose that a psychologist wants to study bullying behavior in children. It would not be ethical to deliberately create a situation in which one child is aggressively bullied by another child. However, it would be ethical to study bullying by observing aggressive behavior in children on a crowded school playground (Drabick & Baugh, 2010).

As a research tool, naturalistic observation can be used wherever patterns of behavior can be openly observed—from the rain forests of the Amazon to restaurants, city streets, and classrooms. Because the observations occur in the natural setting, the results of naturalistic observation studies can often be generalized more confidently to real-life situations than can the results of studies using artificially manipulated or staged situations.

A case study is an intensive, in-depth investigation of an individual, a family, or some other social unit. Case studies involve compiling a great deal of information from numerous sources to construct a detailed picture of the person. The individual may be extensively interviewed, and his or her friends, family, and co-workers may be interviewed as well. Psychological and biographical records, neurological and medical records, and even school or work records may be examined. Other sources of information can include psychological testing and observations of the person’s behavior. Clinical psychologists and other mental health specialists routinely use case studies to develop a complete profile of a psychotherapy client.

Case studies are also used in psychological research investigating rare, unusual, or extreme conditions. These kinds of case studies often provide psychologists with information that can be used to help understand normal behavior. For example, the Chapter 3 Prologue features the story of Mike May, who partially regained his sight after being blind since early childhood. You’ll read how the information gained from extensive testing of Mike’s brain and visual abilities has provided insights into brain and visual development in normally sighted individuals.

While case studies can provide invaluable information, they also have limitations. The most important limitation is that the findings on people with rare or unusual conditions might not apply to people in the broader population.

How much time do you spend studying and preparing for class? Is it more, less, or about the same amount of time as other students at your college? Do students in some majors study more than students in other majors?

How could you find out the answers to such questions? A direct way to find out about the behavior, attitudes, and opinions of people is simply to ask them. In a survey, people respond to a structured set of questions about their experiences, beliefs, behaviors, or attitudes. One key advantage offered by survey research is that information can be gathered from a much larger group of people than is possible with other research methods.

Typically, surveys involve carefully constructed questionnaires. Questionnaires may be paper, Internet-based, computer-based, or administered in person or over the telephone by a trained interviewer.

Surveys are seldom administered to everyone within the particular group or population under investigation. Instead, researchers usually select a sample—a segment of the group or population. Selecting a sample that is representative of the larger group is the key to getting accurate survey results. A representative sample very closely parallels, or matches, the larger group on relevant characteristics, such as age, sex, race, marital status, and educational level.

How do researchers select the participants so that they end up with a sample that is representative of the larger group? The most common strategy is to randomly select the sample participants. Random selection means that every member of the larger group has an equal chance of being selected for inclusion in the sample. To illustrate, let’s look at the National Survey of Student Engagement, a survey of almost 300,000 U.S. college students and 22,000 Canadian college students. The NSSE surveys college freshmen and seniors about the nature and quality of their educational experience. TABLE 1.2 shows how the randomly selected sample surveyed in the NSSE compares to the broader population of U.S. undergraduates enrolled in four-year institutions.

What did the NSSE find? Among other findings, they discovered that first-year female students studied more than male students, and online students more than on-campus students. Engineering majors spent the most time preparing for class, while business majors spent the least. The researchers also surveyed faculty about their perceptions of student study habits. Interestingly, students studied less than instructors expected but more than their instructors believed that they did.

One potential problem with surveys and questionnaires is that people do not always answer honestly, especially when they are asked questions about sexual activity, drug or alcohol use, or illegal activities. The tendency to respond in socially desirable ways can be addressed in a carefully designed survey. One strategy is to rephrase the question and ask for the same information in a different way at different points during the survey. Researchers can then compare the responses to make sure that the participant is responding honestly and consistently. There is some evidence that participants are more likely to respond honestly to Internet or computer-administered surveys than surveys that are administered in person (Dennis & Li, 2007).

KEY THEME

Correlational studies show how strongly two factors are related.

KEY QUESTIONS

Along with answering the who, what, where, and when questions, the data gathered by descriptive research techniques can be analyzed to show how various factors are related. A correlational study examines how strongly two variables are related to, or associated with, each other. Correlations can be used to analyze the data gathered by any type of descriptive method, and are also used to analyze the results of experiments.

To illustrate, let’s look at a correlational study conducted by psychologists Marissa K. Hartwig and John Dunlosky (2012). Hartwig and Dunlosky were interested in identifying the study habits most strongly linked to academic success. They surveyed 324 college students at a large state university. They used self-reported GPA as the operational definition of academic achievement. FIGURE 1.4 shows some of the survey results. Once the data were collected, Hartwig and Dunlosky used a statistical procedure to calculate a figure called a correlation coefficient.

A correlation coefficient is a numerical indicator of the strength of the relationship between two factors. A correlation coefficient always falls in the range from −1.00 to +1.00. The correlation coefficient has two parts—the number and the sign. The number indicates the strength of the relationship, and the sign indicates the direction of the relationship between the two variables.

More specifically, the closer a correlation coefficient is to 1.00, whether it is positive or negative, the stronger the correlation or association is between the two factors. Hence, a correlation coefficient of +.90 or −.90 represents a very strong association, meaning that the two factors almost always occur together. A correlation coefficient of +.10 or −.10 represents a very weak correlation, meaning that the two factors seldom occur together. (Correlation coefficients are discussed in greater detail in Appendix A, on Statistics, at the back of this book.)

Notice that correlation coefficients do not function like the algebraic number line. A correlation of −.80 represents a stronger relationship than does a correlation of +.10. The plus or minus sign in a correlation coefficient simply tells you the direction of the relationship between the two variables.

A positive correlation is one in which the two factors vary in the same direction. That is, the two factors increase or decrease together. For example, Hartwig and Dunlosky (2012) found that there was a strong positive correlation between GPA and use of self-testing as a study strategy. That is, as the use of self-testing increased, so did GPA. Other study strategies, such as using flashcards, rereading, or highlighting, were not associated with an increase in GPA. Wondering why not? Stay tuned—we’ll discuss that very question in the Psych for Your Life section at the end of the chapter.

In contrast, a negative correlation is one in which the two variables move in opposite directions: As one factor decreases, the other increases. In a study investigating the relationship between multi-tasking and GPA, Reynol Junco and Shelia Cotten (2012) found that there was a negative correlation between time spent sending text messages while studying and GPA: As time spent texting while studying increased, GPA decreased.

What can we conclude about the relationship between academic achievement and sending texts while studying? Or GPA and self-testing? Does the evidence allow us to conclude that texting while studying causes a decrease in grade-point average? Or that using self-testing as a study strategy causes people to achieve higher GPAs?

Not necessarily. Consider the negative correlation between GPA and time spent texting while studying. It could be that a third variable was responsible for the associations between texting and GPA. Perhaps students who send texts while studying do so because they lack academic motivation, or are uninterested in the subject matter. In other words, it might be that a lack of academic motivation or interest, rather than sending texts, was actually responsible for the lower grades.

Similarly, consider the positive correlation between self-testing and GPA. We cannot conclude that using self-tests in itself causes an increase in GPA. It’s entirely possible that people who are more academically motivated are also more likely to actively test their mastery of class material, which after all takes more effort than simply rereading or highlighting material in a textbook. Thus, it could be that highly motivated students are more likely to use self-testing as a study strategy than students who are less motivated.

Here is the critical point: Even if two factors are very strongly correlated, correlation does not necessarily indicate causality. A correlation tells you only that two factors seem to be related or that they co-vary in a systematic way. Although two factors may be very strongly correlated, correlational studies cannot be used to demonstrate a true cause-and-effect relationship. As you’ll see in the next section, the experimental method is the only scientific strategy that can provide compelling evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship between two variables.

KEY THEME

The experimental method is used to demonstrate a cause-and-effect relationship between two variables.

KEY QUESTIONS

In this chapter, we’ve noted a number of factors that are associated with higher or lower college grades. But all of these factors—such as time spent sending texts and on Facebook—are correlational, meaning that while they are linked, they do not necessarily indicate that the two factors are causally related.

In contrast to descriptive research and correlational studies, experimental research is used to demonstrate a cause-and-effect relationship between changes in one variable and the effect that is produced on another variable. Conducting an experiment involves deliberately varying one factor, which is called the independent variable. The researcher then measures the changes, if any, that are produced in a second factor, called the dependent variable. The dependent variable is so named because changes in it “depend on” variations in the independent variable.

To the greatest degree possible, all other conditions in the experiment are kept exactly the same for all participants. Thus, when the data are analyzed, any changes that are measured in the dependent variable can be attributed to the deliberate manipulation of the independent variable. In this way, an experiment can provide evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship between the independent and dependent variables.

In designing experiments, psychologists try to anticipate and control for confounding variables. Also called extraneous variables, these factors are not the focus of the experiment. However, confounding variables might produce inaccurate experimental results by influencing changes in the dependent variable. Confounding variables in a psychology experiment could include unwanted variability in such factors as the participants’ ages, gender, ethnic background, race, health, occupation, personal habits, education, and so on.

To illustrate how experimental research works, let’s look at a topic of interest to most college students: What types of study strategies are most effective?

In most educational settings, learning is thought to take place during study, instruction, and practice. Tests, in contrast, are neutral experiences and simply assess what has been learned. But some studies seemed to suggest that being tested on new information helped students learn and remember it better than simply studying it (see Roediger & Butler, 2011). Psychologists Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke (2006) set out to investigate the effects of testing on learning and memory.

How could you design an experiment that could show a difference between learning due to studying and learning due to testing? Roediger and Karpicke (2006) designed an experiment that compared the effects of repeated tests with the effects of repeated study periods. They predicted that students who repeatedly took tests after studying would have better long-term memory of the new information than students who repeatedly studied, but were not tested on, the same material. The hypothesis, then, was that “repeated testing improves learning more than repeated studying.”

The participants were 60 college undergraduates, aged 18 to 24. The researchers used random assignment to assign participants to one of two groups: the experimental or the control group. Random assignment means that all the participants have an equal chance of being assigned to any of the experimental groups or conditions. Random assignment helps ensure that any potential differences among the participants are spread out evenly across all experimental conditions. Random assignment also helps minimize the possibility of bias because the same criteria are used to assign all participants to the different experimental groups.

In any well-designed experiment, there is at least one control group. The control group serves as a baseline against which changes in the experimental group can be compared. In a typical experiment, the participants assigned to the control group go through all the experimental phases but are not exposed to the independent variable. Only the participants in the experimental group are exposed to the independent variable. In this study, the independent variable was repeated testing. The dependent variable was the score earned on a final test.

Here’s how the experiment was conducted. All of the participants were given a short prose passage to study. Participants in the control group read the passage for five minutes, and took a two-minute break. They then studied the passage again for five minutes before taking another two-minute break. They repeated this process for a total of four consecutive study periods. Note that this is the standard test-preparation method: to repeatedly study the same material until you felt certain that you had mastered it.

Participants in the experimental group were given the same prose passage to learn. They were also allotted five minutes to study the passage, and then took a two-minute break. But rather than restudying the passage, they took a test on the material: They were given a blank sheet of paper and were allowed ten minutes to write down as much information from the prose passage as they could remember. After another two-minute break, without studying the material again, they were given the same test, followed by a two-minute break. This procedure was followed for a total of one study period and three test periods. FIGURE 1.5 shows the setup of the experiment.

At the end of the session, all of the participants filled out a short questionnaire asking them to predict how well they would remember the material in a week. A week later, all participants were tested on the material.

How do you think the two groups would compare on a test of their retention of the material a week later? Conventional wisdom would suggest that the control group members, who studied the material in four periods for a total of twenty minutes, would have learned the material much better than the participants in the experimental group, who, after all, had only studied the material for a total of five minutes.

FIGURE 1.6 shows the results on the test one week later. Despite having studied the material only one-fourth as long as the control group, the experimental group trounced the control group: They remembered 61% of the material in the passage while the control group remembered only 40%. Interestingly, the control group participants were much more confident of their ability to remember the information than the experimental group.

Were you surprised by the results? In fact, the basic results have been replicated by many different researchers (see Bjork & others, 2013; Roediger & Butler, 2011). Multiple studies have supported what has been dubbed the testing effect: the finding that practicing retrieval of information from memory produces better retention than restudying the same information for an equivalent amount of time. In other words, testing—rather than simply being a neutral assessment of what has been learned—is a powerful learning tool in its own right (Carpenter, 2012).

We’ll discuss some of the reasons for the testing effect in Chapter 6, Memory. In Psych for Your Life at the end of this chapter, we’ll describe some of the other ways in which the testing effect has been explored. And, we’ll discuss additional ways in which you can use psychological research to improve your own memory for new information.

Some experiments involve extra controls to increase the reliability of their findings. One important safeguard is the double-blind technique, which is often used when researchers are testing the effectiveness of a procedure or drug treatment. In a double-blind study, both the participants and the researchers interacting with them are blind, or unaware of the treatment or condition to which the participants have been assigned.

Using a double-blind technique helps guard against the possibility that the researcher inadvertently becomes an extraneous or confounding variable in the study. This can happen when a researcher, without realizing it, displays demand characteristics. These are subtle cues or signals that can bias the outcome of the study by communicating the behavior or response that is expected of the participants. A behavior as subtle as the researcher slightly smiling or frowning when dealing with some participants, but not others, could bias the outcome of a study.

Such studies also often involve the use of a placebo, which is a so-called “sugar pill” or other inactive substance or procedure. Although it is inactive, a placebo can produce real effects. A placebo effect is any change that can be attributed to beliefs and expectations rather than an actual drug, treatment, or procedure.

For example, one student in our class asked us whether we believed that the herb ginkgo biloba could improve memory. To test that notion, psychologist Paul Solomon and his colleagues (2002) used a placebo in a double-blind study to test whether ginkgo biloba improved memory and concentration in older adults. Participants in the experimental group took the manufacturer’s recommended daily dosage of ginkgo biloba for six weeks, while those in the control group took an identical dosage of placebo capsules.

The researchers who interacted with the participants did not know which participants received the real or fake ginkgo biloba. The researchers who did know the group assignments did not interact with or evaluate the participants. Memory and other cognitive abilities were assessed at the beginning and end of the six-week study.

Can you predict the results of the ginkgo biloba experiment? At the end of the six-week study, the test scores of both groups rose. However, there were no significant differences between the improvement in the ginkgo biloba and placebo groups. So why did both groups improve? The researchers concluded that it was probably due to the practice effect. The participants’ experience with the tests—the practice they got by simply taking the mental ability tests twice—was the most likely reason that test scores improved in both groups. This experiment illustrates the importance of the control group: Without a control group to compare, the improvement in the experimental group might have been attributed to the drug. But since the control group participants also improved, there must have been another explanation.

A well-designed and carefully executed experiment can provide convincing evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship between the independent and dependent variables. But experiments do have limitations. Because experiments are often conducted in highly controlled laboratory situations, they are sometimes criticized for having little to do with actual behavior. That is, the results may not generalize well, meaning that the results cannot be applied to real-world situations or to more general populations beyond the participants in the study. To minimize this, experiments are sometimes carried out in natural settings, rather than in a laboratory. A second potential limitation is that the phenomena the researchers want to study may be impossible or unethical to control experimentally.

But researchers are sometimes able to take advantage of naturally occurring events or conditions. In a natural experiment, researchers carefully observe and measure the impact of a naturally occurring event or condition on their study participants (Rutter, 2008). Although not true experiments, psychologists can use natural experiments to study the effects of disasters, epidemics, or other events.

Sometimes natural experiments involve everyday settings. Psychologists Kandice Kapinos and Olga Yakusheva (2011) were interested in better understanding the relationship between environmental factors and weight gain. Previous research had shown that environmental factors, such as high concentrations of fast-food restaurants, are correlated with the average weight of nearby residents (Inagami & others, 2009). However, since the research was correlational, it wasn’t possible to conclude that proximity of fast-food restaurants caused weight gain. It could be that people with unhealthy eating habits were more likely to choose to live in neighborhoods with easy access to fast food.

Of course, researchers can’t randomly assign large numbers of participants to long-term living situations. But Kapinos and Yakusheva identified a naturally occurring situation in which people are randomly assigned to housing—college dormitories.

College freshmen do tend to gain weight during their first year away from home—the so-called “freshman fifteen”—although the weight gain is typically closer to five pounds (Holm-Denoma & others, 2008). Kapinos and Yakusheva took advantage of the naturally occurring conditions on their own college campus by comparing weight changes in freshmen who lived in dorms with on-site cafeterias and snack bars with weight changes in freshman who lived in dorms that did not have on-site food services. Since freshmen were randomly assigned to the dormitories, the researchers could safely assume that there wasn’t some other factor that might cause differences between the two groups.

What did Kapinos and Yakusheva (2011) find? Female students who were assigned to dormitories with on-site dining facilities gained more weight and exercised less than students who were assigned to dormitories without food services. Male students assigned to dormitories with food service reported eating more meals and more snacks, but did not report gaining weight. Kapinos and Yakusheva (2011) concluded that campus design did play a significant role in influencing healthy—and unhealthy—behaviors in college students.

Before leaving the topic of research methods, one contemporary trend deserves special mention: the increasing use of brain-imaging techniques in virtually every area of psychology. To help highlight the importance of neuroscience, every chapter includes a special “Focus on Neuroscience” feature. This chapter’s Focus on Neuroscience explores brain-imaging techniques and discusses their increasing use in psychological research (see pp. 32–33).

This brief introduction to research methods will give you some idea of how psychologists conduct research. But we hope it also illustrates some of the ways in which scientists—and others—evaluate claims and evidence. In the Critical Thinking box “Think Like a Scientist,” we offer several suggestions to help you evaluate claims that you encounter both inside and outside the classroom.

KEY THEME

Psychological research conducted in the United States is subject to ethical guidelines developed by the American Psychological Association (APA).

KEY QUESTIONS

What might happen if you were to volunteer to participate in a psychology experiment or study? Are psychologists allowed to manipulate or control you without your knowledge or consent? Could a psychologist force you to reveal your innermost secrets? Could he or she administer electric shocks?

The answer to all these questions is “no.” The American Psychological Association (APA) has developed a strict code of ethics for conducting research with both human and animal subjects. This code is contained in a document called Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (APA, 2002, 2010). You can download a copy of the document at the Web site www.apa.org/ethics.

In general, psychologists must respect the dignity and welfare of participants. Psychologists cannot deceptively expose research participants to dangerous or harmful conditions that might cause either physical or emotional harm. At most institutions, any psychological research using human or animal subjects is scrutinized by an institutional review board before approval is granted (Fisher & Vacanti-Shova, 2012).

Here are highlights of five key provisions in the most recent APA ethical principles regulating research with human participants:

What about research involving nonhuman animal subjects? Only a fraction of psychological research studies conducted in a given year involve animal subjects—typically about 7 to 8 percent. About 90 percent of those studies involve rodents or birds, typically rats, mice, and pigeons. Why are animals used in psychological research? Here are a few of the main reasons:

1. Many psychologists are interested in the study of animal behavior for its own sake.

The branch of psychology that focuses on the study of the behavior of nonhuman animals is called comparative psychology. Some psychologists also do research in animal cognition, which is the study of animal learning, memory, thinking, and language (Wasserman & Zentall, 2006). And research is also pursued for its potential to the animals themselves. For example, psychological research on animal behavior has been used to improve the quality of life of animals in zoos and to increase the likelihood of survival of endangered species in the wild (Blumstein & Fernandez-Juricic, 2010; Goulart & others, 2009).

2. Animal subjects are sometimes used for research that could not feasibly be conducted on human subjects.

There are many similarities between human and animal behavior, but animal behavior tends to be less complex. Thus, it is sometimes easier to identify basic principles of behavior by studying animals. Psychologists can also observe some animals throughout their entire lifespan. To track such changes in humans would take decades of research. Finally, psychologists can exercise greater control over animal subjects than over human subjects. If necessary, researchers can control every aspect of the animals’ environment and even their genetic background (Ator, 2005).

The use of nonhuman animal subjects in psychological research is also governed by specific ethical guidelines (APA, 2011; Perry & Dess, 2012). The American Psychological Association publishes the Guidelines for Ethical Conduct in the Care and Use of Animals, which you can read at http://www.apa.org/science/leadership/care/guidelines.aspx. The APA guidelines for animal care have been praised as being the most comprehensive set of guidelines of their kind. In addition, psychologists must adhere to federal and state laws governing the use and care of research animals.

Remember the students in the chapter Prologue who wanted help with studying for tests? Many students come to psychology courses with questions about personal experiences, seeking help for common problems or explanations for common and uncommon behaviors. As you’ll see throughout this book, psychological research has produced many useful insights into behavior and mental processes. At the end of each chapter, we present research-based strategies that you can implement to improve your everyday life.

At several points in this chapter, we’ve described research on factors affecting academic success in college. Fortunately, psychologists have identified several techniques that anyone can use to improve their mastery of new information. We discuss these techniques in the next section, “Psych for Your Life.”

Successful Study Techniques

Psychologists have conducted literally thousands of research studies investigating learning and memory. In Chapter 6, you’ll learn some strategies to improve your memory for specific tasks, such as memorizing lists of items. For now, here are six research-based suggestions that you can use to help you study more effectively—and succeed in this course and others.

1. Focus your attention

Many students think they are good multi-taskers. But do you remember the correlational research on multi-tasking during studying? The psychological research is clear: Attention is a limited resource (Chun & others, 2011). So, when you sit down to study, put your cell phone on “silent” and try to avoid going online except for topic-related material. If you find it hard to stay on task, set a timer on your phone and challenge yourself to read for 30 minutes without interruption. You’ll be amazed at how much more efficient your studying is.

2. Engage your mind: Be an active reader

One of the most common study techniques used by students is to highlight or underline text in handouts and textbooks. Highlighting and underlining can be helpful, but only if done properly (Dunlosky & others, 2013).

Research has found that you’re more likely to remember text marked by highlighting or underlining. The problem is that you are less likely to remember material that you don’t mark. Thus, if you highlight the wrong material, highlighting may be more harmful than helpful. It’s also a problem if you highlight too much material. If your textbook looks like your younger brother’s coloring book, you’re probably doing it wrong. One early study found a negative correlation (see p. 25 if you don’t remember what that means) between the amount of text highlighted and test scores over the material: The more material students highlighted, the lower their test scores (Fowler & Barker, 1974).

How can you use highlighting and underlining to improve learning? Be an active reader—and a selective highlighter, highlighting only the most important information. If you have a tendency to highlight entire paragraphs, instead choose no more than one or two points per paragraph to highlight. In this textbook, the “Key Questions” at the beginning of each section will help you identify the most important points.

3. In the classroom, take notes by hand, not on your laptop

A new study shows that using handwriting to take notes rather than typing notes on a laptop increases both conceptual understanding and factual retention of the material. Students also had higher test scores when they studied from their handwritten notes versus studying from typed notes, even though their typed notes included more information. The explanation? Students who typed on a laptop tended to simply transcribe verbatim what they heard. In contrast, note-takers using longhand had to listen, digest, and summarize the information in their own words. Doing so required them to deeply engage with the material, which led to better memory for the material (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014). Paying attention pays off!

4. Practice retrieval: The testing effect

Hundreds of experiments have shown that tests do more than simply assess learning; they are powerful tools in their own right (see Dunlosky & others, 2013; Bjork & others, 2013). Earlier in the chapter, we described an experiment that demonstrated the power of the testing effect—the finding that retrieving information from memory produces better retention than restudying the same information (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006; Roediger & Butler, 2011).

Are practice tests helpful only for factual material? Does the testing effect only enhance rote memorization? No. Practice tests need not be multiple-choice or short-answer tests. Essay questions or other tasks that require you to retrieve information from your memory also produce improved retention (Roediger, Putnam, & Smith, 2011; Roediger, Agarwal, & others, 2011).

And, studies have shown that practice tests enhance memory for all types of information. Some examples include spatial information, such as map-learning, and even the learning of new skills like CPR (Dunlosky & others, 2013; Kromann & others, 2009). Research also shows that material learned via retrieval practice transfers to novel situations, when the material is tested in other ways. Thus, it represents more than “teaching to the test” (Roediger, Finn, & Weinstein, 2012).

Why is practice testing such a powerful study technique? One reason may be that practice tests counteract the fluency effect. When you reread text or review your notes, the material seems familiar and easy to understand, so the tendency is to assume that you know the material. But often we mistake familiarity for knowledge. Practice testing allows you to identify the gaps that exist in your knowledge so that you can better allocate your study time (Roediger, Putnam, & Smith, 2011).

Practice tests also allow you to practice the very skills that you will need to succeed—retrieving information you’ve learned from memory (Roediger, Finn, & Weinstein, 2012). And, some research suggests that repeatedly retrieving information seems to help you organize that information in memory, making it easier to remember in the future.

How can you incorporate practice tests into your own studying? Take advantage of any practice quizzes that may be offered by your professor, in study guides, or in your textbook. Challenge yourself to write out the definitions for each of the boldfaced key terms in each section of your text. Even simpler, duplicate the procedure used in the experiment described on pages 26–28. After you finish reading a section of material, close your book and write down ten key points that were in the section you just read. Make sure you go back and check your work against the material you are trying to master; correct any inaccurate information, and fill in any missing ideas.

5. Use flashcards and practice tests correctly

Millions of school children have been taught how to use flashcards: Quiz yourself, and if you answer an item correctly, set the card aside. Keep quizzing yourself on the remaining cards until all cards have been set aside, at which point you can conclude that you have successfully mastered the information.

But is this an effective study technique? Should students skip material that they have learned in order to focus their effort on material that they have not learned? Let’s take a look at a clever experiment that tested this notion.

Jeffrey Karpicke & Henry Roediger (2008) gave participants a list of 40 Swahili words and their English translations. All of the participants studied and were tested on the complete list in first study session. Then, the participants were divided into four groups and tested a week later after completing three study/test sessions (see figure). The results:

In other words, repeated study had no effect on final test performance—but repeated testing did. How can you apply this finding to your own study habits? For any type of practice test, don’t stop practicing items that you’ve answered correctly. Especially if you are using flashcards, don’t drop those cards once you think you have mastered the information—keep testing yourself on them.

6. Space out your study time: The benefits of distributed vs. massed practice

Psychologists call it “massed practice.” Students call it “cramming.” A common strategy for time-challenged students, massed practice involves trying to study as much as possible in a short period of time, typically right before an exam. Interestingly, massed practice is effective—but only in the short term (Bjork & others, 2013). Typically, information learned through cramming is forgotten very quickly.

A much more effective study strategy is what psychologists call distributed practice, which means that you learn the information over several sessions, separated in time. Countless studies have shown that information learned over distributed sessions is much better retained than information learned in a single session (see Dunlosky & others, 2013; Roediger, Finn, & Weinstein, 2012). One reason may be that the time between sessions gives you a chance to organize and incorporate new information into your memory (Carpenter & others, 2012).

We hope you find these suggestions helpful, both in psychology and in your other courses. Welcome to psychology!

Introduction and Research Methods

Introduction: What Is Psychology?

Contemporary Psychology

The Scientific Method

Descriptive Research

Experimental Research

Ethics in Psychological Research

Match each of the terms on the left with its definition on the right. Click on the term first and then click on the matching definition. As you match them correctly they will move to the bottom of the activity.

Question

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) German physiologist who founded psychology as a formal science; opened first psychology research laboratory in 1879. (p. 4)

Edward B. Titchener (1867–1927) American psychologist who founded structuralism, the first school of psychology. (p. 4)

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher and psychologist who founded psychology in the U.S. and established the psychological school called functionalism. (p. 5)

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) English naturalist and scientist whose theory of evolution through natural selection was first published in On the Origin of Species in 1859. (p. 5)

G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924) American psychologist who established the first psychology research laboratory in the U.S.; founded the American Psychological Association. (p. 6)

Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930) American psychologist who established one of the first U.S. psychology research laboratories; first woman president of the American Psychological Association. (p. 6)

Margaret Floy Washburn (1871–1939) American psychologist who was the first woman to earn a doctorate in psychology in the U.S. (p. 7)

Francis C. Sumner (1895–1954) American psychologist who was the first African American to receive a doctorate in psychology in the U.S. (p. 7)

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis. (p. 7)

Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) Russian physiologist who contributed to the development of behaviorism; discovered the basic learning process that is now called classical conditioning, discussed in Chapter 5. (p. 8)

John B. Watson (1878–1958) American psychologist who founded behaviorism. (p. 8)

B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) American psychologist and leading proponent of behaviorism; developed a model of learning called operant conditioning, discussed in Chapter 5. (p. 8)

Carl Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist who founded the school of humanistic psychology. (p. 9)

Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) American humanistic psychologist who developed a theory of motivation. (p. 9)