01 - 1 The Nature of Psychology

1 The Nature of Psychology

CHAPTER 1 THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY © MARIAGRAZIA ORLANDINI | DREAMSTIME.COM For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk

R eading opens the door to education and advancement. What’s the best way to encourage kids to read? One American chain of pizza restaurants believes it has the answer: Reward kids for reading. Kids’ teachers set monthly reading goals – in terms of books or pages read – and give them Pizza Award Certificates when they reach the goals. The kid who brings a certificate to a local participating restaurant gets a free pizza. Parents and teachers say the program works – it gets their kids to read more. Through this program, for nearly twenty years kids have been earning pizzas for reading across the United States. Perhaps you or one of your siblings got a free meal this way. But is this program PC? Is it ‘psychologically correct’? Let’s see what the research says. You might already be aware of one of the fundamental tenets of learning theory: When a reward follows a behavior, that behavior is strengthened. In Chapter 7 you’ll see that this powerful influence of rewards is termed the law of effect.1 When kids are rewarded with pizzas for reading, they read more. Seems like a great success, right? Consider other outcomes – like how kids feel about reading and whether they continue to read once the pizza program ends. Dozens of psychology experiments, many conducted in school classrooms, have addressed these questions. In one classic experiment (Greene, Sternberg, & Lepper, 1976),2 psychologists had teachers introduce several new math games to their students and then for two weeks simply observe how much time kids spent playing them. In the third week, kids in some classrooms were rewarded for playing these same math games, and kids in other classrooms were not. As expected, the rewards increased the amount of time kids played the math games; the law of effect held. But what happened several weeks later, when the rewards were discontinued? The kids who had received rewards suddenly lost interest in the math games and spent hardly any time on them. By contrast, those who were never rewarded continued to play the math games regularly. This experiment demonstrates how rewards sometimes backfire and undermine kids’ intrinsic interest in activities like reading and math. When people see that their behavior is caused by some external, situational factor – like a free pizza – they discount any internal, personal factors – like their own enjoyment of the activity. So when kids ask themselves why they read, they’ll say it’s for the pizza. And when there’s no more pizza to be had, they’ll see no particular reason to read. 1Throughout this book you will find core concepts printed in bold type with their definitions provided nearby. A list of these core concepts is also provided at the end of each chapter as a study aid. 2Throughout this book you will also find references, cited by author and date, that document or expand the statements made here. Detailed publishing information on these studies appears in the reference list at the end of the book. For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk CHAPTER OUTLINE THE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY Nature–nurture debate The beginnings of scientific psychology Structuralism and functionalism Behaviorism Gestalt psychology Psychoanalysis Later developments in twentieth-century psychology CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES The biological perspective The behavioral perspective The cognitive perspective The psychoanalytic perspective The subjectivist perspective Relationships between psychological and biological perspectives Major subfields of psychology CUTTING EDGE RESEARCH: TWENTY-FIRST–CENTURY PSYCHOLOGY HOW PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH IS DONE Generating hypotheses Experiments Correlation Observation Literature reviews Ethics of psychological research SEEING BOTH SIDES: ARE WE NATURALLY SELFISH? 3

4 CHAPTER 1 THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY Getting kids to read for external reasons – like for free pizzas – can lead them to discount the contribution of any internal reasons for reading – like their own interest. This overjustification effect explains why rewarding desired behaviors sometimes backfires. Even though they enjoyed reading, the rewards loomed larger. This undermining influence of rewards is the overjustification effect – going overboard and explaining one’s own behavior with too much emphasis on salient situational causes and not enough emphasis on personal causes. You might be thinking that grades in college, or university, are also rewards for learning. Do they backfire in the same way as receiving pizza for reading? Not exactly. One important difference is that the grade you get in a college course depends on how well you perform. Research has shown that performance-contingent rewards are less likely to undermine interest – and at times can even increase interest – because they tell you that you are good at an activity (Tang & Hall, 1995). Even so, a focus on grades can sometimes overshadow the sheer interest you might have in a subject. It’s useful to remind yourself that two reasons to study course work can exist side by side: to get a good grade and to enjoy the material. It can be ‘both-and’, not ‘either-or’. Luckily, most students find psychology fascinating. We do, too, and we do our best to convey this fascination to you in the pages of this book. Psychology interests people For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk because it asks questions that touch virtually every aspect of our lives: How does the way your parents raised you affect the way you’ll raise your own children? What is the best treatment for drug dependency? Can a man care for an infant as capably as a woman can? Can you remember a traumatic experience in more detail under hypnosis? How should a nuclear power plant be designed to minimize human error? What effects does prolonged stress have on the immune system? Is psychotherapy more effective than drugs in treating depression? Psychologists are conducting research to find answers to these and many other questions. Psychology also affects our lives through its influence on laws and public policy. Psychological theories and research have influenced laws dealing with discrimination, capital punishment, courtroom practices, pornography, sexual behavior, and personal responsibility for actions. For example, so-called lie-detector tests are not admissible evidence in U.S. courts because psychological research has shown them to be unacceptably inaccurate. Because psychology affects so many aspects of our lives, even people who do not intend to specialize in it need to know something about this dynamic field. An introductory course in psychology should give you a better understanding of why people think, feel, and act as they do, as well as insights into your own attitudes and reactions. This course will also help you evaluate the many claims made in the name of psychology. Everyone has seen newspaper headlines like these: l New Form of Psychotherapy Facilitates Recovery of Repressed Memories l Anxiety Controlled by Self-Regulation of Brain Waves l Proof of Mental Telepathy Found l Babies Learn Speech Sounds While Snoozing l Emotional Stability Closely Related to Family Size l Sweet Drink May Boost Exam Performance l Transcendental Meditation Extends Life Expectancy l Appearance Concerns Take Mental Toll How can we decide whether to believe these claims? You need to know two things to evaluate the validity of psychological claims. First, you need to know what psychological facts are already firmly established. If the new claim is not compatible with those facts, you should be cautious. Second, you need to have the knowledge to determine whether the arguments that support the new claim meet the standards of scientific evidence. If they do not, again you have reason for skepticism. This book aims to meet both needs. First, it reviews the current state of knowledge in psychology. It presents the most important findings in the field so that you know the established facts. Second, it examines the nature of research – how a psychologist designs a research program that can provide strong evidence

for or against a hypothesis – so that you know the kind of evidence needed to back up a new claim. In this chapter, we begin by considering the kinds of topics that are studied in psychology. After a brief review of psychology’s historical origins, we discuss the THE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY Psychology can be defined as the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. An astonishing variety of topics fit this definition, as can be seen in the brief examples presented next. (All of these topics are discussed in more detail at various points in this book.) Brain damage and face recognition It is no surprise that when people suffer brain damage, their behavior is affected. What is surprising is that damage in a specific part of the brain may change a person’s behavior in one way but not in any other ways. In some cases, for example, people are unable to recognize familiar faces as a result of damage to a particular region on the right side of the brain – yet they can do just about everything else normally, a condition called prosopagnosia. A famous example of this condition was described by neurologist Oliver Sacks (1985) in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. In another case, a man with prosopagnosia complained to a waiter that someone was staring at him, only to be informed that he was looking in a mirror! Such cases tell us a lot about the way the normal brain works. They indicate that some psychological functions – like face recognition – are localized in particular parts of the brain. Attributing traits to people Suppose that in a crowded department store a person soliciting for a charity approaches a customer and implores her to make a contribution. The woman donates a small sum to the charity. Would you think the woman was generous, or would you think she had been pressured into making the donation because so many people were watching her? Experiments designed to study situations like this have shown that most people consider the woman generous, even though the situational pressures were so great that just about everybody would behave similarly. When explaining the behavior of others, people tend to overestimate the causal effect of personality traits and underestimate those of situational factors – a mistake social psychologists call the fundamental attribution error (see Figure 1.1). If we contrast the fundamental For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk THE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY perspectives that psychologists adopt in investigating these topics. Then we describe the research methods of psychological investigation, including the ethical guidelines that have been proposed for such research. attribution error with the overjustification effect (discussed in the context of earning pizzas for reading), we begin to see some important distinctions between how we judge others and how we judge ourselves. When making sense of our own behavior, we often overestimate – not underestimate – situational causes. Childhood amnesia Most adults can recall events from their early years, but only back to a certain point. Almost no one can accurately recall events from the first three years of life, a phenomenon called childhood amnesia. Consider a significant event like the birth of a sibling. If the birth occurred after you were 3 years old, you may have some memory of it. But if the birth occurred before age 3, you probably remember very little about it, if anything at all (see Figure 1.2). Childhood amnesia is particularly striking because our first three years are so rich in experience: We develop from helpless newborns to crawling, babbling infants to walking, talking children. But these remarkable transitions leave few traces in our memories. Situational pressures (e.g., pressure from solicitor, other people watching) Traits (e.g., generous, sensitive) Figure 1.1 Trait Attribution. In deciding whether another person’s substantial donation to charity is caused by the giver’s traits or by the situation, we are biased toward believing that a trait was the critical factor. This illustrates the fundamental attribution error.

6 CHAPTER 1 THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY Mean number of questions answered 10 0 1 – 3 3 – 5 5 – 7 7 – 9 9+ Subject’s age when sibling was born Figure 1.2 Recall of an Early Memory. In an experiment on childhood amnesia, college-age participants were asked 20 questions about the events surrounding the birth of a younger sibling. The average number of questions answered is plotted as a function of the participant’s age when the sibling was born. If the birth occurred before the participant’s 4th year of life, no participant could recall a thing about it; if the birth occurred after that, recall increased with the participant’s age at the time of the event. (K. Sheingold and Y. J. Tenney (1982) ‘Recall of An Early Memory adapted from ‘Memory for a Salient Childhood Event’ from U. Neisser (ed.) Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Context, copyright © 1982 by W. H. Freeman & Company. Adapted by permission of the publisher.) Obesity More than a quarter of U.S. adults are obese; their weight is 30 percent or more above the level that would be appropriate for their body structure and height. Obesity is dangerous. It increases vulnerability to diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. Psychologists are interested in what factors lead people to eat too much. One factor seems to be a history of deprivation. If rats are first deprived of food, then allowed to eat until they return to their normal weight, and finally allowed to eat as much as they want, they eat more than rats that have no history of deprivation. Effects of media violence on children’s aggression The question of whether watching violence on television causes children to be more aggressive has long been controversial. Although many observers believe that televised violence affects children’s behavior, others suggest that watching violence has a cathartic effect. It may actually reduce aggression by allowing children to express it vicariously and ‘get it out of their system’. But research evidence does not support the cathartic effect view. In one experiment, one group of children watched violent cartoons while another group watched nonviolent cartoons for the same amount of time. Children who watched violent cartoons became more aggressive in their interactions with peers, but the children who viewed nonviolent For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk ª KATI NEUDERT j DREAMSTIME.COM Psychologists are interested in what causes people to eat too much. Among the possible causes they have studied are genetic factors and environmental influences, such as a tendency to overeat in the presence of certain stimuli. Peer-rated aggression (10 years later) 100 0 Low Moderate High Viewing of violence in childhood Figure 1.3 The Relationship Between Childhood Viewing of Violent Television and Adult Aggression. A classic study shows that preference for viewing violent TV programs by boys at age 9 is related to aggressive behavior as rated by peers at age 19. (L. Eron, et al. (1972) ‘Does Television Violence Cause Aggression?’ American Psychologist, 27:253–262. Copyright © 1972 by The American Psychological Association. Adapted by permission.)

ª BILL ARON/PHOTOEDIT Psychological studies provide evidence that violent television programming may have harmful effects on young viewers. cartoons showed no change in aggressive behavior. These effects can persist over time: The more violent programs a boy watches at age 9, the more aggressive he is likely to be at age 19 (see Figure 1.3). INTERIM SUMMARY l Psychology touches on many aspects of our lives and influences laws and public policy. l To evaluate new claims made about psychology, you need to know (1) what psychological facts are already firmly established and (2) the standards for scientific evidence. l Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. l The scope of psychology is broad, covering topics such as face recognition, social judgments, memory, obesity, violence, and many more. For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1 Review the newspaper headlines about psychology printed on page 4. Find an article in the newspaper or on the Internet that covers psychological findings. Do you believe what the news account claims? Why or why not? 2 How do you know when to trust a news article? What more would you need to know to accept as fact the psychological claim you located? THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY The roots of psychology can be traced to the great philosophers of ancient Greece. The most famous of them, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, posed fundamental questions about mental life: What is consciousness? Are people inherently rational or irrational? Is there really such a thing as free choice? These questions, and many similar ones, are as important today as they were thousands of years ago. They deal with the nature of the mind and mental processes, which are the key elements of the cognitive perspective in psychology. Other psychological questions deal with the nature of the body and human behavior, and they have an equally long history. Hippocrates, often called the ‘father of medicine’, lived around the same time as Socrates. He was deeply interested in physiology, the study of the functions of the living organism and its parts. He made many important observations about how the brain controls various organs of the body. These observations set the stage for what became the biological perspective in psychology. Nature–nurture debate One of the earliest debates about human psychology is still raging today. This nature–nurture debate centers on the question of whether human capabilities are inborn or acquired through experience. The nature view holds that human beings enter the world with an inborn store of knowledge and understanding of reality. Early philosophers believed that this knowledge and understanding could be accessed through careful reasoning and introspection. In the seventeenth century, Descartes supported the nature view by arguing that some ideas (such as God, the self, geometric axioms, perfection, and infinity) are innate. Descartes is also notable for his conception of the body as a machine that can be studied much as other machines are studied. This is the root of modern

8 CHAPTER 1 THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY ª BETTMANN/CORBIS The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates posed fundamental questions about mental life. Many of these questions are as important today as they were in Socrates’ time. information-processing perspectives on the mind, discussed later in this chapter. The nurture view holds that knowledge is acquired through experiences and interactions with the world. Although some of the early Greek philosophers had this opinion, it is most strongly associated with the seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke. According to Locke, at birth the human mind is a tabula rasa, a blank slate on which experience ‘writes’ knowledge and understanding as the individual matures. This perspective gave birth to associationist psychology. Associationists denied that there were inborn ideas or capabilities. Instead, they argued that the mind is filled with ideas that enter by way of the senses and then become associated through principles such as similarity and contrast. Current research on memory and learning is related to early association theory. The classic nature–nurture debate has become much more nuanced in recent decades. Although some psychologists still argue that human thought and behavior result primarily from biology or primarily from experience, most psychologists take a more integrated approach. They acknowledge that biological processes (such as heredity or processes in the brain) affect thoughts, feelings, and behavior, but say that experience leaves its mark, too. So the current question is not For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk whether nature or nurture shapes human psychology but rather how nature and nurture combine to do so (Plomin & Asbury, 2005). The nature–nurture issue comes up at numerous points in later chapters. The beginnings of scientific psychology Although philosophers and scholars continued to be interested in the functioning of both the mind and the body through the centuries, scientific psychology is usually considered to have begun in the late nineteenth century, when Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychological laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany in 1879. The impetus for the establishment of Wundt’s lab was the belief that mind and behavior, like planets or chemicals or human organs, could be the subject of scientific analysis. Wundt’s own research was concerned primarily with the senses, especially vision, but he and his coworkers also studied attention, emotion, and memory. Wundt relied on introspection to study mental processes. Introspection refers to observing and recording the nature of one’s own perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. Examples of introspections include people’s reports of how heavy they perceive an object to be and how bright a flash of light seems to be. The introspective method was inherited from philosophy, but Wundt added a new dimension to the concept. Pure self-observation was not sufficient; it had to be supplemented by experiments. Wundt’s experiments systematically varied some physical dimension of a stimulus, such as its intensity, and used the introspective method to determine how these physical changes modified the participant’s conscious experience of the stimulus. The reliance on introspection, particularly for very rapid mental events, proved unworkable. Even after extensive training, different people produced very different introspections about simple sensory experiences, and few conclusions could be drawn from these differences. As a result, introspection is not a central part of the current cognitive perspective. And, as we will see, some psychologists’ reactions to introspection played a role in the development of other modern perspectives. Structuralism and functionalism During the nineteenth century, chemistry and physics made great advances by analyzing complex compounds (molecules) into their elements (atoms). These successes encouraged psychologists to look for the mental elements that combined to create more complex experiences. Just as chemists analyzed water into hydrogen and oxygen, perhaps psychologists could analyze the taste of lemonade (perception) into elements such as sweet, bitter, and cold (sensations). The leading proponent of this approach in the United States was E. B. Titchener, a Cornell University

ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY, THE UNIVERSITY OF AKRON Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychological laboratory at the University of Leipzig. Here he is shown (third from left) in the laboratory with his associates. psychologist who had been trained by Wundt. Titchener introduced the term structuralism – the analysis of mental structures – to describe this branch of psychology. But some psychologists opposed the purely analytic nature of structuralism. William James, a distinguished psychologist at Harvard University, felt that analyzing the elements of consciousness was less important than understanding its fluid, personal nature. His approach was named functionalism, studying how the mind works to enable an organism to adapt to and function in its environment. Nineteenth-century psychologists’ interest in adaptation stemmed from the publication of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Some argued that consciousness had evolved only because it served some purpose in guiding the individual’s activities. To find out how an organism adapts to its environment, functionalists said that psychologists must observe actual behavior. However, both structuralists and functionalists still regarded psychology as the science of conscious experience. Behaviorism Structuralism and functionalism played important roles in the early development of twentieth-century psychology. Because each viewpoint provided a systematic approach to the field, they were considered competing schools of psychology. By 1920, however, both were being displaced by three newer schools: behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, and psychoanalysis. Of the three, behaviorism had the greatest influence on scientific psychology in North America. Its founder, John B. Watson, reacted against the view that conscious experience was the province of psychology. Watson made no assertions about consciousness when he studied the For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY behavior of animals and infants. He decided not only that animal psychology and child psychology could stand on their own as sciences but also that they set a pattern that adult psychology might follow. For psychology to be a science, Watson believed, psychological data must be open to public inspection like the data of any other science. Behavior is public; consciousness is private. Science should deal only with public facts. Because psychologists were growing impatient with introspection, the new behaviorism caught on rapidly, and many younger psychologists in the United States called themselves ‘behaviorists’. (The Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov’s research on the conditioned response was regarded as an important area of behavioral research, but it was Watson who was responsible for behaviorism’s widespread influence.) Watson, and others ascribing to behaviorism, argued that nearly all behavior is a result of conditioning and the environment shapes behavior by reinforcing specific habits. For example, giving children cookies to stop them from whining reinforces (rewards) the habit of whining. The conditioned response was viewed as the smallest unit of behavior, from which more complicated behaviors could be created. All types of complex behavior patterns coming from special training or education were regarded as nothing more than an interlinked fabric of conditioned responses. Behaviorists tended to discuss psychological phenomena in terms of stimuli and responses, giving rise to the term stimulus–response (S–R) psychology. Note, however, that S-R psychology itself is not a theory or perspective but a set of terms that can be used to communicate psychological information. S–R terminology is still sometimes used in psychology today. Gestalt psychology About 1912, at the same time that behaviorism was catching on in the United States, Gestalt psychology was appearing in Germany. Gestalt is a German word meaning ‘form’ or ‘configuration’, which referred to the approach taken by Max Wertheimer and his colleagues Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler, all of whom eventually emigrated to the United States. The Gestalt psychologists’ primary interest was perception, and they believed that perceptual experiences depend on the patterns formed by stimuli and on the organization of experience. What we actually see is related to the background against which an object appears, as well as to other aspects of the overall pattern of stimulation (see Chapter 5). The whole is different from the sum of its parts, because the whole depends on the relationships among the parts. For example, when we look at Figure 1.4, we see it as a single large triangle – as a single form or Gestalt – rather than as three small angles.

Among the key interests of Gestalt psychologists were the perception of motion, how people judge size, and the appearance of colors under changes in illumination. These interests led them to a number of perception-centered interpretations of learning, memory, and problem solving that helped lay the groundwork for current research in cognitive psychology. The Gestalt psychologists also influenced key founders of modern social psychology – including Kurt Lewin, Solomon Asch, and Fritz Heider – who expanded on Gestalt principles to understand interpersonal phenomena (Jones, 1998). For instance, Asch (1946) extended the Gestalt notion that people see wholes rather than isolated parts from the simple case of object perception to the more complex case of person perception (Taylor, 1998). Plus, they saw the process of imposing meaning and structure on incoming stimuli as automatic and outside conscious awareness, a Gestalt view that continues to infuse contemporary research on social cognition to this day (see Chapter 18; Moskowitz, Skurnik, & Galinsky, 1999). Psychoanalysis Psychoanalysis is both a theory of personality and a method of psychotherapy originated by Sigmund Freud around the turn of the twentieth century. At the center of Freud’s theory is the concept of the unconscious – the thoughts, attitudes, impulses, wishes, motivations, and emotions of which we are unaware. Freud believed that childhood’s unacceptable (forbidden or punished) wishes are driven out of conscious awareness and become part of the unconscious, where they continue to influence our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Unconscious thoughts are expressed in dreams, slips of the tongue, and physical mannerisms. During therapy with patients, Freud used the method of free association, in which the patient was instructed to say whatever comes to mind as a way of bringing unconscious wishes into awareness. The analysis of dreams served the same purpose. In classical Freudian theory, the motivations behind unconscious wishes almost always involved sex or aggression. For this reason, Freud’s theory was not widely William James, John B. Watson, and Sigmund Freud were key figures in the early history of psychology. James developed the approach known as functionalism, Watson was the founder of behaviorism, and Freud originated the theory and method of psychoanalysis. ª BETTMANN/CORBIS . ª BETTMANN/CORBIS . ª CORBIS Figure 1.4 A Gestalt Image. When we look at the three angles of an equilateral triangle, we see a single large triangle rather than three small angles. CHAPTER 1 THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk

accepted when it was first proposed. Contemporary psychologists do not accept Freud’s theory in its entirety, but they tend to agree that people’s ideas, goals, and motives can at times operate outside conscious awareness. Later developments in twentieth-century psychology Despite the important contributions of Gestalt psychology and psychoanalysis, until World War II psychology was dominated by behaviorism, particularly in the United States. After the war, interest in psychology increased. Sophisticated instruments and electronic equipment became available, and a wider range of problems could be examined. It became evident that earlier theoretical approaches were too restrictive. This viewpoint was strengthened by the development of computers in the 1950s. Computers were able to perform tasks – such as playing chess and proving mathematical theorems – that previously could be done only by human beings. They offered psychologists a powerful tool for theorizing about psychological processes. In a series of papers published in the late 1950s, Herbert Simon (who was later awarded a Nobel prize) and his colleagues described how psychological phenomena could be simulated with a computer. Many psychological issues were recast in terms of information-processing models, which viewed human beings as processors of information and provided a more dynamic approach to psychology than behaviorism. Similarly, the information-processing approach made it possible to formulate some of the ideas of Gestalt psychology and psychoanalysis more precisely. Earlier ideas about the nature of the mind could be expressed in concrete terms and checked against actual data. For example, we can think of the operation of memory as analogous to the way a computer stores and retrieves information. Just as a computer can transfer information from temporary storage in its internal memory chips (RAM) to more permanent storage on the hard drive, so, too, our working memory can act as a way station to long-term memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1971a; Raaijmakers & Shiffrin, 1992). Another important influence on psychology in the 1950s was the development of modern linguistics. Linguists began to theorize about the mental structures required to comprehend and speak a language. A pioneer in this area was Noam Chomsky, whose book Syntactic Structures, published in 1957, stimulated the first significant psychological analyses of language and the emergence of the field of psycholinguistics. At the same time, important advances were occurring in neuropsychology. Discoveries about the brain and nervous system revealed clear relationships between neurological events and mental processes. In recent decades, advances in biomedical technology have enabled For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF PSYCHOLOGY rapid progress in research on these relationships. In 1981 Roger Sperry was awarded a Nobel prize for demonstrating the links between specific regions of the brain and particular thought and behavioral processes, which we discuss in Chapter 2. The development of information-processing models, psycholinguistics, and neuropsychology has produced an approach to psychology that is highly cognitive in orientation. Although its principal concern is the scientific analysis of mental processes and structures, cognitive psychology is not exclusively concerned with thought and knowledge. As illustrated throughout this book, this approach has been expanded to many other areas of psychology, including perception, motivation, emotion, clinical psychology, personality, and social psychology. In sum, during the twentieth century the focus of psychology came full circle. After rejecting conscious experience as ill-suited to scientific investigation and turning to the study of overt, observable behavior, psychologists are once again theorizing about covert aspects of the mind, this time with new and more powerful tools. INTERIM SUMMARY l The roots of psychology can be traced to the 4th and 5th centuries B.C. One of the earliest debates about human psychology focused on the question of whether human capabilities are inborn or acquired through experience (the nature–nurture debate). l Scientific psychology was born in the late nineteenth century with the idea that mind and behavior could be the subject of scientific analysis. The first experimental laboratory in psychology was established by Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig in 1879. l Among the early ‘schools’ of psychology in the twentieth century were structuralism, functionalism, behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, and psychoanalysis. l Later developments in twentieth-century psychology included information-processing theory, psycholinguistics, and neuropsychology. CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1 What assumptions about human nature underlie the various historical approaches to psychology? 2 Considering these underlying assumptions, which of the historical approaches are compatible with one another? Which are incompatible?

12 CHAPTER 1 THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES What is a psychological perspective? Basically, it is an approach, a way of looking at topics within psychology. Any topic in psychology can be approached from different perspectives. Indeed, this is true of any action a person takes. Suppose that, following an insult, you punch someone in the face. From a biological perspective, we can describe this act as involving certain brain areas and as the firing of nerves that activate the muscles that move your arm. From a behavioral perspective, we can describe the act without reference to anything within your body; rather, the insult is a stimulus to which you respond by punching, a learned response that has been rewarded in the past. A cognitive perspective on this action would focus on the mental processes involved in producing the behavior, and we might explain your punch in terms of your goals and plans: Your goal is to defend your honor, and aggressive behavior is part of your plan for achieving that goal. From a psychoanalytic perspective, your action could be described as an expression of an unconscious aggressive instinct. And finally, from a subjectivist perspective, your aggressive act can be understood as a reaction to interpreting the person’s utterance as a personal insult. Despite the many possible ways to describe any psychological act, these five perspectives represent the major approaches to the contemporary study of psychology (see Figure 1.5). Because these five perspectives are discussed throughout the book, here we provide only a brief description of some main points for each of them. Keep in mind that these approaches need not be mutually Cognitive perspective Behavioral perspective Biological perspective Psychoanalytic perspective PSYCHOLOGY Subjectivist perspective Figure 1.5 Perspectives in Psychology. The analysis of psychological phenomena can be approached from several perspectives. Each offers a somewhat different account of why individuals act as they do, and each can make a contribution to our conception of the total person. The Greek letter psi (c) is sometimes used as an abbreviation for psychology. For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk exclusive; rather, they may focus on different aspects of the same complex phenomenon. In fact, understanding many psychological topics requires an eclectic approach that spans multiple perspectives. The biological perspective The human brain contains well over 10 billion nerve cells and an almost infinite number of interconnections between them. It may be the most complex structure in the universe. In principle, all psychological events can be related to the activity of the brain and nervous system. The biological approach to the study of human beings and other species attempts to relate overt behavior to electrical and chemical events taking place inside the body. Research from the biological perspective seeks to specify the neurobiological processes that underlie behavior and mental processes. The biological approach to depression, for example, tries to understand this disorder in terms of abnormal changes in levels of neurotransmitters, which are chemicals produced in the brain that make communication between nerve cells possible. We can use one of the problems described earlier to illustrate this perspective. The study of face recognition in patients with brain damage indicates that particular regions of the brain are specialized for face recognition. The human brain is divided into right and left hemispheres, and the regions devoted to face recognition seem ª VOLKER STEOER/PETER ARNOLD, INC. By imaging the human brain during psychological tasks, researchers learn which brain structures underlie the targeted phenomena. Here we see a 3-dimensional representation of the human brain while listening to speech obtained through functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). Red indicates the greatest areas of activation, whereas yellow indicates areas of moderate activation. The neural activity is located in Wernicke’s area of the brain. This approach illustrates a biological perspective on psychology.

to be located mainly in the right hemisphere. There is considerable hemispheric specialization in humans. In most right-handed people, for example, the left hemisphere is specialized for understanding language, and the right hemisphere is specialized for interpreting spatial relations. The biological perspective has also assisted in the study of memory. It emphasizes the importance of certain brain structures, including the hippocampus, which is involved in consolidating memories. Childhood amnesia may be partly due to an immature hippocampus, a structure that is not fully developed until a year or two after birth. The behavioral perspective As described in our brief review of the history of psychology, the behavioral perspective focuses on observable stimuli and responses and regards nearly all behavior as a result of conditioning and reinforcement. For example, a behavioral analysis of your social life might focus on which people you interact with (the social stimuli), the kinds of responses you make to them (rewarding, punishing, or neutral), the kinds of responses they in turn ª MARY KATE DENNY/PHOTOEDIT If the aggressive child has her way and the other child yields the swing, the aggressive behavior will be rewarded and the child will be more likely to behave aggressively in the future. This exemplifies a behavioral perspective on psychology. For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES make to you (rewarding, punishing, or neutral), and how the responses sustain or disrupt the interaction. We can use our sample problems to further illustrate this approach. With regard to obesity, some people may overeat (a specific response) only in the presence of specific stimuli (such as watching television), and learning to avoid these stimuli is part of many weight-control programs. With regard to aggression, children are more likely to express aggressive responses, such as hitting another child, when such responses are rewarded (the other child withdraws) than when their responses are punished (the other child counterattacks). Historically, the strict behavioral approach did not consider the individual’s mental processes at all, and even contemporary behaviorists usually do not conjecture about the mental processes that intervene between the stimulus and the response. Nevertheless, psychologists other than strict behaviorists often record what people say about their conscious experiences (a verbal selfreport) and draw inferences about their mental activity from these subjective data. Although few psychologists today would define themselves as strict behaviorists, many modern developments in psychology have evolved from the work of the earlier behaviorists (Malone, 2003; Skinner, 1981). The cognitive perspective The contemporary cognitive perspective is in part a return to the cognitive roots of psychology and in part a reaction to the narrowness of behaviorism, which tended to neglect complex human activities like reasoning, planning, decision making, and communication. Like the nineteenth-century version, the contemporary cognitive perspective is concerned with mental processes such as ª MARTIN KUCERA j DREAMSTIME.COM Events that happen early in childhood usually are not remembered. This little boy probably will not remember the events surrounding the birth of his baby brother. An explanation that illustrates the cognitive perspective on psychology emphasizes the important role that language plays in organizing memories.

perceiving, remembering, reasoning, deciding, and problem solving. Unlike the nineteenth-century version, however, the contemporary cognitive approach is not based on introspection. Instead, it assumes that (1) only by studying mental processes can we fully understand what organisms do, and (2) we can study mental processes in an objective fashion by focusing on specific behaviors (just as behaviorists do) but interpreting them in terms of underlying mental processes. In making these interpretations, cognitive psychologists have often relied on an analogy between the mind and a computer. Incoming information is processed in various ways: It is selected, compared, and combined with other information already in memory, transformed, rearranged, and so on. Consider the phenomenon of childhood amnesia described at the beginning of the chapter. Perhaps we cannot remember events from the first few years of life because of a major developmental change in the way we organize our experience in memory. Such changes may be particularly pronounced at about age 3, when our language abilities increase immensely, and language offers us a new way of organizing our memories. The psychoanalytic perspective Sigmund Freud developed the psychoanalytic conception of human behavior in Europe at about the same time that behaviorism was evolving in the United States. In some respects, psychoanalysis was a blend of the nineteenthcentury versions of cognition and physiology. In particular, Freud combined cognitive notions of consciousness, perception, and memory with ideas about biologically based instincts to forge a bold new theory of human behavior. The basic assumption of the psychoanalytic perspective is that behavior stems from unconscious processes, meaning beliefs, fears, and desires that a person is unaware of but that nonetheless influence behavior. Freud believed that many of the impulses that are forbidden or punished by parents and society during ª KACTUS FOTOS/SUPERSTOCK In this painting by M. Morales, a dream conveys unconscious desires. This illustrates the psychoanalytic perspective on psychology. CHAPTER 1 THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk

childhood are derived from innate instincts. Because each of us is born with these impulses, they exert a pervasive influence that must be dealt with in some manner. Forbidding them merely forces them out of awareness into the unconscious. They do not disappear, however. They may manifest themselves as emotional problems and symptoms of mental illness or as socially approved behavior such as artistic and literary activity. For example, if you feel a lot of anger toward your father but you cannot afford to alienate him, your anger may become unconscious, perhaps expressed in a dream about him being hurt in an atrocious accident. Freud believed that we are driven by the same basic instincts as animals (primarily sex and aggression) and that we are continually struggling against a society that stresses the control of these impulses. The psychoanalytic perspective suggests new ways of looking at some of the problems described at the beginning of the chapter. For example, Freud claimed that aggressive behavior stems from an innate instinct. Although this proposal is not widely accepted in human psychology, it is in agreement with the views of some biologists and psychologists who study aggression in animals. The subjectivist perspective The subjectivist perspective contends that human behavior is a function of the perceived world, not the objective world. Like the cognitive approach, the subjectivist perspective drew from the Gestalt tradition and reacted against the narrowness of behaviorism. Although allied with cognitive psychology, subjectivism has been most pervasive within social and personality psychology. To understand human social behavior, this view holds, we must grasp the person’s own ‘definition of the situation’, ª JASMIN KRPAN j DREAMSTIME.COM Is this woman generous? Westerners have a strong tendency to say, ‘Yes, she is’, making a trait attribution for her behavior. An emphasis on how people perceive and interpret their social world characterizes the subjectivist perspective. For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES which is expected to vary by culture, personal history, and current motivational state. This perspective, then, is the most open to cultural and individual differences and to the effects of motivation and emotion. In one sense, the idea that people actively construct their own subjective realities calls for introspective methods. Even so, subjectivists do not rely exclusively on subjective self-reports because they also assume that people fail to see their subjective realities as personal constructions. This naïve realism refers to people’s tendency to take their constructed, subjective realities to be faithful renderings of an objective world. Therefore, a subjectivist approach also involves systematic observation of judgments and behaviors. A subjectivist perspective is illustrated by a classic early study that found that people reliably overestimate the physical size of valuable coins, more so than for coins of lower value. This tendency is exaggerated among poor children (Bruner & Goodman, 1947; note that coins in general probably seemed much more valuable in the 1940s!). Consider again the problem of trait attribution. The study of how people make sense of other people’s actions – in the example mentioned earlier, donating money to charity – emerged from a subjectivist emphasis on how situations are defined by the people in them (Heider, 1958). One contemporary explanation for the pervasive tendency to attribute other people’s actions to their personality traits suggests that, because Western cultures have long emphasized personal agency, Westerners often fail to see the influence of situations (Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001; see Chapter 18). Likewise, a subjectivist view of the link between media violence and aggression suggests that habitual consumption of violent media instills and strengthens aggressive schemas and scripts, which are later used to define subsequent interpersonal encounters (Anderson & Bushman, 2001). Relationships between psychological and biological perspectives The behaviorist, cognitive, psychoanalytic, and subjectivist perspectives all rely on concepts that are purely psychological (such as perception, the unconscious, and attributions). Although these perspectives sometimes offer different explanations for the same phenomenon, those explanations are always psychological in nature. The biological perspective is different. In addition to using psychological concepts, it employs concepts (such as neurotransmitters and hormones) drawn from physiology and other branches of biology. There is a way, though, in which the biological perspective makes direct contact with the psychological perspectives. Biologically oriented researchers attempt to explain psychological concepts and principles in terms of their biological counterparts. For example, researchers might attempt to explain the normal ability to recognize

16 CHAPTER 1 THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY CONCEPT REVIEW TABLE Five perspectives within psychology Biological perspective An orientation toward understanding the neurobiological processes that underlie behavior and mental processes. Behavioral perspective An orientation toward understanding observable behavior in terms of conditioning and reinforcement. Cognitive perspective An orientation toward understanding mental processes such as perceiving, remembering, reasoning, deciding, and problem solving and their relationship to behavior. Psychoanalytic perspective An orientation toward understanding behavior in terms of unconscious motives stemming from sexual and aggressive impulses. Subjectivist perspective An orientation toward understanding behavior and mental processes in terms of the subjective realities people actively construct. faces solely in terms of neurons and their interconnections in a certain region of the brain. Such attempts are termed reductionism because they involve reducing psychological notions to biological ones. Throughout this book, we present examples of successful reductionism – situations in which what was once understood at only the psychological level is now understood at least in part at the biological level. If reductionism can be successful, why bother with psychological explanations at all? Is psychology just something to do until the biologists figure everything out? The answer is clearly no. First, psychological findings, concepts, and principles direct biological researchers in their work. Given that the brain contains billions of brain cells and countless interconnections between these cells, biological researchers cannot hope to find something of interest by arbitrarily selecting some brain cells to study. Rather, they must have a way of directing their efforts to relevant groups of brain cells. Psychological findings can supply this direction. For example, psychological research indicates that our ability to discriminate among spoken words and our ability to discriminate among spatial positions obey different principles. So, biological psychologists might look in different regions of the brain for the neural basis of these two kinds of discrimination capacities (the left hemisphere for word discrimination and the right hemisphere for spatial-position discrimination). As another example, if psychological research indicates that learning a motor For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk skill is a slow process that is hard to undo, biological psychologists can direct their attention to brain processes that are relatively slow but permanently alter connections between neurons (Churchland & Sejnowski, 1988). Second, our biology always acts in concert with our past circumstances and current environment. For example, obesity can be the result of (1) a genetic predisposition to gain weight (a biological factor), (2) learning bad eating habits (a psychological factor), or (3) a reaction to cultural pressures toward extreme thinness (a sociocultural factor). The biologist can seek to understand the first factor, but it is still up to the psychologist to explore and explain the past experiences and current circumstances that influence a person’s eating habits. Nevertheless, the push for reductionism goes on at an ever-increasing rate. For many topics in psychology, we now have both psychological explanations and knowledge about how the relevant psychological concepts are implemented or executed in the brain (for example, what particular parts of the brain are involved and how they are interconnected). This kind of biological knowledge typically falls short of total reductionism, but it is still very important. Memory researchers, for example, have long distinguished between working memory and longterm memory (which are psychological notions), but now they also know something about how these two kinds of memory are actually coded differently in the brain. So, for many of the topics discussed in this book, we review what is known at the biological level as well as at the psychological level. Indeed, a central theme of this book – and of contemporary psychology in general – is that psychological phenomena can be understood at both the psychological and biological levels. The biological analysis shows us how the psychological notions can be implemented in the brain. Both levels of analysis are clearly needed (although for some topics, including many dealing with social interactions, biological analyses have only just begun). Major subfields of psychology So far, we have gained a general understanding of the nature of psychology by looking at its topics and perspectives. We can further our understanding by looking at what different kinds of psychologists do and at emerging fields of emphasis in twenty-first-century psychology (see the Cutting Edge Research feature). About half the people who have advanced degrees in psychology work in colleges and universities. In addition to teaching, they may devote much of their time to research or counseling. Other psychologists work in schools, hospitals or clinics, research institutes, government agencies, or business and industry. Still others are in private practice and offer their services to the public for a fee. We now turn to a brief description of some of the subfields of psychology.

Biological psychology Biological psychologists (also referred to as physiological psychologists) look for the relationship between biological processes and behavior. Cognitive psychology Cognitive psychologists are concerned with people’s internal mental processes, such as problem-solving, memory, and language and thought. Developmental psychology Developmental psychologists are concerned with human development and the factors that shape behavior from birth to old age. They might study a specific ability, such as how language develops in children, or a particular period of life, such as infancy. Social and personality psychology These two subfields overlap. Social psychologists are interested in how people perceive and interpret their social world and how their beliefs, emotions, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of others. They are also concerned with the behavior of groups and with social relationships between and among people. Personality psychologists study the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that define an individual’s personal style of interacting with the world. Accordingly, they are interested in differences between individuals, and they also attempt to synthesize all the psychological processes into an integrated account of the total person (Swann & Seyle, 2005). Clinical and counseling psychology Clinical psychologists are the largest group of psychologists. They apply psychological principles to the diagnosis and treatment of emotional and behavioral problems, including mental illness, drug addiction, and marital and family conflict. Counseling psychologists perform many of the same functions as clinical psychologists, although they often deal with less serious problems. They frequently work with high school or university students. School and educational psychology Because serious emotional problems often make their first appearance in the early grades, many elementary schools employ psychologists whose training combines courses in child development, education, and clinical psychology. These school psychologists work with children to evaluate learning and emotional problems. In contrast, educational psychologists are specialists in learning and teaching. They may work in schools, but more often they work in a university’s school of education, where they do research on teaching methods and help train teachers. For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Organizational and engineering psychology Organizational psychologists (sometimes called industrial psychologists) typically work for a company. They are concerned with selecting people who are most suitable for particular jobs or designing structures that facilitate collaboration and teamwork. Engineering psychologists (sometimes called human factors engineers) try to improve the relationship between people and machines. For instance, they improve human–machine interaction by designing machines with the most efficient placement of gauges and controls, which leads to better performance, safety, and comfort. INTERIM SUMMARY l The study of psychology can be approached from several perspectives. Five contemporary perspectives are the biological perspective, the behavioral perspective, the cognitive perspective, the psychoanalytic perspective, and the subjectivist perspective. l The biological perspective differs from the other perspectives in that its principles are partly drawn from biology. Biological researchers often attempt to explain psychological principles in terms of biological ones; this is known as reductionism. l Among the major subfields of psychology are biological psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, social and personality psychology, clinical and counseling psychology, school and educational psychology, and organizational and engineering psychology. l Many new areas of inquiry, including cognitive neuroscience (as well as affective neuroscience and social cognitive neuroscience), evolutionary psychology, cultural psychology, and positive psychology, span traditional subfields and disciplines. CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1 Consider the question, ‘What are the determinants of an individual’s sexual orientation?’ How would the different perspectives outlined in this chapter approach this question? 2 Many of the new approaches to twenty-first-century psychology (described in the Cutting Edge Research box) integrate divergent perspectives or fill prior gaps in the field. What other new advances might be on the horizon in twenty-first-century psychology? That is, what other opportunities for integrating perspectives and filling gaps do you predict?

18 CHAPTER 1 THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY CUTTING EDGE RESEARCH Twenty-first-century psychology Increasingly, psychologists span multiple subfields in their research and also stretch beyond psychology to forge collaborations with researchers in other disciplines. These cross-area and interdisciplinary approaches have gained considerable momentum at the start of the twenty-first century and promise to be very important in the next few decades. Of particular interest are cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, cultural psychology, and positive psychology. Here we briefly describe each of these approaches, with examples of the kinds of research being done in each field. Cognitive neuroscience Cognitive neuroscience focuses on cognitive processes and relies heavily on the methods and findings of neuroscience (the branch of biology that deals with the brain and nervous system). In essence, cognitive neuroscience attempts to learn how mental activities are executed in the brain. The key idea is that cognitive psychology provides hypotheses about specific cognitive capacities – such as recognizing faces – and neuroscience supplies proposals about how these specific functions might be executed in the brain. What is particularly distinctive about cognitive neuroscience is its reliance on new techniques for studying the brains of normal participants (as opposed to brain-damaged ones) while they are performing a cognitive task. These neuroimaging or brain-scanning techniques create visual images of a brain in action, with an indication of which regions of the brain show the most neural activity during a particular task. An example is the study of how people remember information for brief or long periods. When people are asked to remember information for a few seconds, neuroimaging results show increases in neural activity in regions in the front of the brain. When they are asked to remember information for a long period, there is increased activity in an entirely different region, one closer to the middle of the brain. Thus, different mechanisms seem to be used for the short-term and long-term storage of information (Smith & Jonides, 1994; Squire, Knowlton, & Musen, 1993). HOW PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH IS DONE Now that we have some idea of the topics psychologists study and their perspectives, we can consider the research strategies they use to investigate them. In general, doing research involves two steps: (1) generating a scientific hypothesis and (2) testing that hypothesis. For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk The connection between psychology and neuroscience is not limited to cognitive psychology. Psychologists have also initiated affective neuroscience (Panksepp, 1998) to discover how emotional phenomena are executed in the brain, as well as social neuroscience (Ochsner & Lieberman, 2001) to discover how stereotyping, attitudes, person perception, and selfknowledge are executed in the brain. Evolutionary psychology Evolutionary psychology is concerned with the biological origins of psychological mechanisms. In addition to psychology and biology, the other disciplines involved in this approach include anthropology and psychiatry. The key idea behind evolutionary psychology is that, like biological mechanisms, psychological mechanisms must have evolved over millions of years through a process of natural selection. As such, evolutionary psychology holds that psychological mechanisms have a genetic basis and in the past increased our ancestors’ chances of surviving and reproducing. To illustrate, consider a liking for sweets. Such a preference can be thought of as a psychological mechanism, and it has a genetic basis. Moreover, we have this preference because it increased our ancestors’ chances of survival: The fruit that tasted the sweetest had the highest nutritional value, so by eating it they increased the chances of continued survival of the relevant genes (Symons, 1992). An evolutionary perspective can affect the study of psychological issues in several ways (Ploeger, 2008). Certain topics are of particular importance because of their link to survival or successful reproduction. Such topics include how we select our mates and how we think and behave when experiencing particular emotions (Buss, 1991). An evolutionary perspective can also provide new insights into familiar topics. Concerning obesity, we noted earlier that a history of deprivation can lead to overeating in the future. Evolutionary psychology provides an interpretation of this puzzling phenomenon. Until comparatively recently in human history, people experienced deprivation only when food was scarce. An adaptive Generating hypotheses The first step in any research project is to generate a hypothesis – a statement that can be tested – about the topic of interest. Regarding childhood amnesia, for example, we might generate the hypothesis that people can retrieve more memories of their early life if they are back in the same place where the incidents originally occurred. How does a researcher arrive at such a hypothesis? There is no single answer. An astute observer

mechanism for dealing with scarcity is overeating when food is available. So, evolution may have favored individuals with a tendency to overeat following deprivation. Cultural psychology Scientific psychology in the West has often assumed that people in all cultures have exactly the same psychological processes. Increasingly, this assumption is being challenged by proponents of cultural psychology, an interdisciplinary movement of psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and other social scientists. Cultural psychology is concerned with how the culture in which an individual lives – its traditions, language, and worldview – influences that person’s mental representations and psychological processes. Here is an example. In the West – North America and much of western and northern Europe – we think of ourselves as separate and autonomous agents with unique abilities and traits. In contrast, many cultures in the East – including those of India, China, and Japan – emphasize the interrelationships among people rather than their individuality. Moreover, Easterners tend to pay more attention to social situations than Westerners do. These differences lead Easterners to explain the behavior of another person differently than do Westerners. Rather than explaining a piece of behavior solely in terms of a person’s traits, Easterners also explain it in terms of the social situation in which it occurred (Nisbett et al., 2001). This has profound implications for trait attribution, one of the sample problems discussed at the beginning of the chapter. These differences between East and West in explaining behavior can also have educational implications. Because of their emphasis on collectivism rather than individualism, Asian students tend to study together more than American students. Such group study may be a useful technique, and it may be part of the reason why Asian students outperform their American counterparts in math. In addition, when an American student is having difficulty in math, both the student and the teacher tend to attribute the difficulty to the student’s individual abilities. When a comparable case arises in a Japanese school, student and teacher are more likely to look to the situation – the student–teacher interaction in the instructional context – for an explanation of the poor performance (Stevenson, Lee, & Graham, 1993). of naturally occurring situations may have an advantage in coming up with hypotheses. For example, you might have noticed that you can remember more about your high school years when you are back home, which could generate such a hypothesis. It also helps to be very familiar with the relevant scientific literature – previously published books and articles about the topic of interest. The most important source for scientific hypotheses, however, is often a scientific theory, an interrelated set of propositions about a particular phenomenon. For For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk HOW PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH IS DONE Positive psychology After World War II, psychology – especially clinical psychology – became a science devoted to healing. It adopted a disease model of human functioning from the medical sciences and aimed to cure pathologies. Although this focus produced tremendous advances in the field’s understanding and treatment of mental illness (see Chapters 15 and 16), it had little to say about what makes life worth living. Positive psychology emerged to balance the field’s sophisticated scientific understanding of mental illness with an equally sophisticated scientific understanding of human flourishing (Seligman, 2002). Although positive psychology shares with the earlier humanistic psychology a concern with people’s development toward their full potential, it departs from humanistic psychology by relying heavily on empirical methods. Positive psychology targets psychological phenomena at levels ranging from the study of positive subjective experiences, such as happiness and optimism, to the study of positive personality traits, such as courage and wisdom, and the study of positive institutions – social structures that might cultivate civility and responsible citizenship (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). An example that combines the first two levels of analysis comes from current research on positive emotions (see Chapter 11). Unlike negative emotions, which narrow people’s ideas about action (e.g., fight or flight), positive emotions have been found to broaden people’s mindsets, encouraging them to discover novel lines of thought or action. Joy, for instance, creates the urge to play, and interest creates the urge to explore. A key incidental outcome of these broadened mindsets is an increase in personal resources: As individuals discover new ideas and actions, they build physical, intellectual, social, and psychological resources. Empirical studies support this new broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, showing that – through their effects on broadened thinking – positive emotions fuel growth-positive personality traits such as resilience and optimism (Fredrickson, 2001). The take-home message for positive psychology is that positive emotions are worth cultivating, not just as end states in themselves but also as a means of triggering upward spirals toward psychological growth and flourishing. example, one theory of sexual motivation (discussed in Chapter 10) proposes a genetic predisposition toward heterosexuality or homosexuality. This leads to the testable scientific hypothesis that pairs of identical twins – who have identical genes – should be more likely to have the same sexual orientation than pairs of fraternal twins, who share only about half their genes. A competing theory emphasizes childhood events as the source of an individual’s sexual orientation and generates a competing set of hypotheses that can also be tested. As we will see

20 CHAPTER 1 THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY throughout this book, testing hypotheses derived from competing theories is one of the most powerful ways of advancing scientific knowledge. The term scientific means that the research methods used to collect the data are (1) unbiased (do not favor one hypothesis over another) and (2) reliable (other qualified people can repeat the observations and obtain the same results). The methods considered in this section have these two characteristics. Although some are better suited to certain perspectives than to others, each method can be used with each perspective. Experiments The most powerful scientific method is the experiment. Experiments provide the strongest tests of hypotheses about cause and effect. The investigator carefully controls conditions – often in a laboratory – and takes measurements in order to discover the causal relationships among variables. A variable is something that can occur with different values (see Concept Review Table: Terminology of experimental research). For example, an experiment might explore whether the amount of sleep causes memory changes (does recall of childhood events decrease with lack of sleep?). If an experiment shows that memory performance changes systematically with hours of sleep, an orderly causal relationship between these two variables has been found. The ability to exercise precise control over a variable distinguishes the experimental method from other methods of scientific observation. For example, if the hypothesis is that individuals will perform better on a math problem if they are offered more money for a good performance, the experimenter might randomly assign participants to one of three conditions: One group is told that they will be paid €10 if they perform well, the second group is promised €5, and the third group is not offered any money. The experimenter then measures and compares the performance of all three groups to see if, in fact, more money (the hypothesized cause) produces better performance (the hypothesized effect). In this experiment, the amount of money offered is the independent variable because it is a variable that is independent of what the participant does. In fact, the independent variable is under the complete control of the experimenter, who creates it and controls its variation. In an experiment, the independent variable represents the hypothesized ‘cause’. The hypothesized ‘effect’ in an experiment is the dependent variable because it is hypothesized to depend on the value of the independent variable. In this experiment, the dependent variable is performance on the math problems. The experimenter manipulates the independent variable and observes the dependent variable to learn the outcome of the experiment. The dependent variable is almost always some measure of the participants’ behavior. The phrase ‘is a For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk function of’ is often used to express the dependence of one variable on another. For this experiment, we could say that the participants’ performance on the math problems is a function of the amount of money offered. The groups that are paid money would be the experimental groups, or groups in which the hypothesized cause is present. The group that was not paid would be the control group, the group in which the hypothesized cause is absent. In general, a control group serves as a baseline against which experimental groups can be compared. One important feature of the experiment just described is random assignment of participants to groups or conditions. Random assignment means that each participant has an equal probability of being placed in any group. Without random assignment, the experimenter cannot be certain that something other than the independent variable might have produced the results. For example, an experimenter should never let participants choose which group they would like to be in. Although most participants might choose to be in the highest-paid group, those who are made nervous by pressure might choose to be in a ‘casual’ group that was not paid. In any case, the problem is that the groups would now contain different kinds of people, and the differences in their personalities, rather than the amount of money offered, might cause one group to do better than another. Or suppose that an experimenter runs all the paid groups first and runs the no-payment control group afterward. This introduces a host of potential problems. Perhaps performance varies as a function of the time of day (morning, afternoon, or evening); maybe those who participate later in the experiment are closer in time to their final exams than earlier participants. In addition to these uncontrolled variables, many others of which the experimenter is unaware might bias the results. All such problems are resolved by randomly assigning participants to conditions. Only with random assignment can we be certain that all extraneous variables – such as participant personality, time of day, or time of semester – are evenly represented across conditions and therefore unlikely to introduce bias. Random assignment is one of the most important ingredients of an experiment. The experimental method can be used outside the laboratory as well. For example, in research on obesity, the effects of different methods of weight control can be investigated by trying these methods on separate but similar groups of obese individuals. The experimental method is a matter of logic, not location. Still, most experiments take place in laboratories, chiefly because a laboratory setting allows measuring behavior more precisely and controlling the variables more completely. And again, it is often random assignment that is at issue: If two obesity clinics use different methods and achieve different results, we cannot conclude with confidence that the different methods are responsible because the clinics

might attract different kinds of people to their programs or have different staff cultures and expectations. The experiments described so far examine the effect of one independent variable on one dependent variable. Limiting an investigation to only one independent variable, however, is too restrictive for some problems. Multivariate experiment – experiments manipulating several independent variables at once – are common in psychological research. In the hypothetical study in which participants were offered different amounts of money for solving math problems, the experimenter might also vary the level of difficulty of the problems. Now there would be six groups of participants, each combining one of three different amounts of money with one of two levels of difficulty (easy versus difficult). Measurement Psychologists using the experimental method often have to make statements about amounts or quantities. Sometimes variables can be measured by physical means, such as hours of sleep deprivation or dosage of a drug. At other times, variables have to be scaled in a manner that places them in some sort of order. In rating a patient’s feelings of aggression, for example, a psychotherapist might use a 5-point scale ranging from never through rarely, sometimes, and often to always. For purposes of precise communication, experiments require some form of measurement, a system for assigning numbers to variables. Experiments usually involve making measurements on many participants, not just one. The results therefore are data in the form of a set of numbers that can be summarized and interpreted. To accomplish this task, the experimenter needs to use statistics, the discipline that deals with sampling data from a population of individuals and then drawing inferences about the population from those data. Statistics plays an important role not only in experimental research but in other methods as well.3 The most common statistic is the mean, which is simply the technical term for an arithmetic average, the sum of a set of scores divided by the number of scores in the set. In studies with one experimental group and one control group, there are two means to be compared: a mean for the scores of the participants in the experimental group and a mean for the scores of the participants in the control group. The difference between these two means is, of course, what interests the experimenters. If the difference between the means is large, it can be accepted at face value. But what if the difference is small? What if the measures used are subject to error? What if a few extreme cases are producing the difference? Statisticians have solved these problems by developing tests for determining the significance of a difference. A psychologist who 3This discussion is designed to introduce the experimental tools of measurement and statistics. A more thorough discussion is provided in the Appendix. For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk HOW PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH IS DONE CONCEPT REVIEW TABLE Terminology of experimental research Hypothesis A statement about cause and effect that can be tested. Experiment A well-controlled test of a hypothesis about cause and effect. Variable Something that can occur with different values and can be measured. Independent variable A variable that represents the hypothesized ‘cause’ that is precisely controlled by the experimenter and independent of what the participant does. Dependent variable A variable that represents the hypothesized ‘effect’ whose values ultimately depend on the value of the independent variable. Experimental group A group in which the hypothesized cause is present. Control group A group in which the hypothesized cause is absent. Random assignment A system for assigning participants to experimental and control groups so that each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to any group. Measurement A system for assigning numbers to different values of variables. Statistics Mathematical techniques for determining the certainty with which a sample of data can be used to draw generalizations or inferences. says that the difference between the experimental group and the control group has statistical significance means that a statistical test has been applied to the data and the observed difference is unlikely to have arisen by chance or because of a few extreme cases. Correlation Not all problems can be easily studied by using the experimental method. In many situations the investigator has no control over which participants go in which conditions. For example, if we want to test the hypothesis that anorexic people are more sensitive to changes in taste than normal-weight people, we cannot select a group of normal-weight participants and require half of them to become anorexic! Rather, we select people who are already anorexic or already of normal weight and see if

they also differ in taste sensitivity. More generally, we can use the correlational method to determine whether some variable that is not under our control is associated – or correlated – with another variable of interest. In the example just given, there were only two values of the weight variable: anorexic and normal. It is more common to have many values of each variable and to determine the degree to which values on one variable are related to values on another. This is done by using a descriptive statistic called the correlation coefficient, an estimate of the degree to which two variables are related. The correlation coefficient, symbolized by r, is expressed as a number between 1.00 and þ1.00. A perfect relationship – which is rare – is indicated by 1.00 (1.00 if the relationship is positive and 1.00 if the relationship is negative). No relationship at all is indicated by a correlation close to zero. As r goes from 0 to 1.00 (or from 0 to 1.00), the strength of the relationship increases. A correlation can be either þ or . The sign of the correlation indicates whether the two variables are positively correlated, meaning that the values of the two variables either increase together or decrease together, or negatively correlated, meaning that as the value of one variable increases, the value of the other decreases. Suppose that the number of times a student is absent from class correlates .40 with the final course grade (the more absences, the lower the grade). On the other hand, the correlation between the number of classes attended and the course grade would be þ.40. The strength of the relationship is the same, but the sign indicates whether we are looking at classes missed or classes attended.4 To get a clearer picture of a correlation coefficient, consider the hypothetical study presented in Figure 1.6. As shown in Figure 1.6a, the study involves patients with brain damage leading to problems in face recognition (prosopagnosia). What is of interest is whether the degree of deficit, or error, in face recognition increases with the amount of brain tissue that is damaged. Each point on the graph in Figure 1.6a represents the percentage of errors made by one patient on a test of face recognition. For example, a patient who had only 10% brain damage The patients are ordered along the horizontal axis with respect to the amount of brain damage, with the patient represented by the leftmost point having the least brain damage (10%) and the patient represented by the rightmost point having the most brain damage (55%). Each point on the graph represents a single patient’s score on a test of face recognition. The correlation is a positive .90. 20 60 100 20 40 60 a) Positive correlation Percent errors in face recognition Percentage of brain damage in critical regions 20 60 100 20 40 60 b) Negative correlation Percent correct in face recognition Percentage of brain damage in critical regions The patients’ performance on the face recognition test is graphed as a function of their height. Now the correlation is 0. The same data are depicted, but we now focus on the percentage of correct responses (rather than errors). Now the correlation is a negative .90. 20 60 100 66 70 c) Zero correlation Percent errors in face recognition Height of patient (inches) Figure 1.6 Scatter Diagrams Illustrating Correlations. These hypothesized data are based on 10 patients, all of whom have some damage in regions of the brain known to be involved in face recognition. 4The numerical method for calculating a correlation coefficient is described in the Appendix. CHAPTER 1 THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk

made 15% errors on the face-recognition test, but a patient who had 55% brain damage made 75% errors. If errors in face recognition always increased along with the amount of brain damage, the points in the graph would consistently increase in moving from left to right; if the points had all fallen on the diagonal line in the figure, the correlation would have been r 1.0 – a perfect correlation. A couple of points fall on either side of the line, though, so the correlation is about .90. Such a high correlation indicates a very strong relationship between amount of the brain damage and errors in face recognition. In Figure 1.6a, the correlation is positive because more errors are associated with more brain damage. If, instead of focusing on errors, we plot the percentage of correct responses on the face recognition test, we end up with the diagram in Figure 1.6b. Now the correlation is negative – about .90 – because fewer correct responses are associated with more brain damage. The diagonal line in Figure 1.6b is simply the inverse of the one in Figure 1.6a. Finally, consider the diagram in Figure 1.6c. Here we have graphed errors on the face recognition test as a function of the patients’ height. Of course, there is no reason to expect a relationship between height and face recognition, and the graph shows that there is none. The points neither consistently increase nor consistently decrease in moving from left to right but rather bounce around a horizontal line. The correlation is 0. In psychological research, a correlation coefficient of .60 or more is considered quite high. Correlations in the range from .20 to .60 are of practical and theoretical value and are useful in making predictions. Correlations between 0 and .20 must be judged with caution and are only minimally useful in making predictions. Tests The familiar use of the correlational method involves tests that measure aptitudes, achievement, or other psychological traits, such as the test of face recognition just discussed. A test presents a uniform situation to a group of people who vary in a particular trait (such as brain damage, math ability, manual dexterity, or aggression). The variation in scores on the test can be correlated with variations on another variable. For example, people’s scores on a test of math ability can be correlated with their subsequent grades in a college math course. If the correlation is high, then the test score may be used to determine which of a new group of students should be placed in advanced sections of the course. Correlation and causation There is an important distinction between experimental and correlational studies. In a typical experimental study, one variable (the independent variable) is systematically manipulated to determine its causal effect on some other For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk HOW PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH IS DONE variable (the dependent variable). Such cause-and-effect relationships cannot be inferred from correlational studies. For instance, studies have shown that the more TV violence a young boy watches, the more aggressive he is. But does watching violent TV cause the aggression, or do more aggressive boys choose to watch more violent TV? If all we have is a correlation, we cannot say which variable is cause and which is effect. (As noted earlier in the chapter, however, other studies do demonstrate a causal relationship between watching violent TV and behaving aggressively. Experimenters had control over the independent variable and used random assignment of participants to conditions.) Two variables can also be correlated when neither is the cause of the other. For example, many years before careful medical experiments demonstrated that cigarette smoking causes cancer, a correlation between smoking and lung cancer was shown. That is, it was already known that people who smoked were more likely to contract cancer. But – as the tobacco companies rushed to point out – this correlation left open the possibility that some third cause was responsible. For example, if people who live in smoggy urban areas are more likely to smoke than people who live in rural areas with cleaner air, then air pollution rather than smoking could cause higher cancer rates in smokers. In short, when two variables are correlated, variation in one of them may possibly be the cause of variation in the other. Indeed, correlation is a prerequisite for causation. But, without further experiments, no such conclusion is justified from correlational studies, because correlation does not necessarily imply causation. Observation Direct observation In the early stages of research, the most efficient way of making progress toward an explanation may be direct observation – to simply observe the phenomenon under study as it occurs naturally. Careful observation of animal and human behavior is the starting point for a great deal of research in psychology. For example, observation of primates in their native environment may tell us things about their social organization that will help in later laboratory investigations. Video recordings of newborn babies reveal details of their activity shortly after birth and the types of stimuli to which they respond. However, investigators observing naturally occurring behavior must be trained to observe and record events accurately so that their own biases do not influence what they report. Observational methods may be used in a laboratory if the problem being studied is partly biological. For example, in their classic study of the physiological aspects of human sexuality, William Masters and Virginia

24 CHAPTER 1 THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY Field studies can often tell us more about social behavior than experimental studies can. Professor Shirley Strum has been observing the same troop of baboons in Kenya for more than 20 years, identifying individual animals, and making daily recordings of their behaviors and social interactions. Her data have provided remarkable information about the mental abilities of baboons and the role of friendships in their social system. Johnson (1966) developed techniques for directly observing sexual responses in the laboratory. The data included (1) observations of behavior, (2) recordings of physiological changes, and (3) responses to questions about the participants’ sensations before, during, and after sexual stimulation. Although the researchers agreed that human sexuality has many dimensions besides the biological one, their observations of the anatomical and physiological aspects of sexual response have been very helpful in understanding the nature of human sexuality, as well as in solving sexual problems. The survey method Some problems that are difficult to study by direct observation may be studied by indirect observation through the use of questionnaires or interviews. Rather than observe people engaging in a particular behavior, such as exercising regularly, researchers using the survey method simply ask people if they engage in the behavior of interest. The survey method is more open to bias than direct observation, however. Of particular concern are social desirability effects, which occur when some people try to present themselves in a favorable light (for example, by saying that they exercise more than they actually do). Still, the survey method has produced many important results. For example, before Masters and Johnson conducted their research on the human sexual response, most of the available information on how people behave sexually (as opposed to how laws, religion, or society said they should behave) came from extensive surveys For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk conducted by Alfred Kinsey and his associates twenty years earlier. Information from thousands of interviews was analyzed, resulting in the publication of two pioneering works: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard, 1953). Surveys have also been used to discover people’s political opinions, product preferences, health care needs, and so on. The Gallup poll and the U.S. census are probably the most familiar surveys. An adequate survey requires presenting a carefully pretested questionnaire to a sample of people who have been selected by methods designed to ensure that they are representative of the larger population being studied. Case histories Still another form of indirect observation is to obtain a case history, which is a partial biography of a particular individual. This involves asking people to recall relevant experiences from their past. For example, if the research is concerned with the childhood antecedents of adult depression, the researcher might begin by asking questions about earlier life events. These case histories are biographies designed for scientific use, and they are important sources of data for psychologists who are studying individuals. A major limitation of case histories is that they rely on a person’s memories and reconstructions of earlier events, which are frequently distorted or incomplete. Sometimes other data can be used to corroborate information obtained in a case history. For example, written records, such as death certificates, can be used to check on specific dates, or relatives of the person being interviewed can be asked to report their own memories of the relevant events. Even so, their limitations make case histories less useful for testing a theory or hypothesis than for suggesting hypotheses that can then be tested in more rigorous ways or checked with a larger sample of participants. In this way, scientists use the case history in much the same way that a therapist or physician might when trying to formulate a diagnosis and treatment for a particular individual. Literature reviews One final way in which psychological research is done is by conducting literature reviews. A literature review is a scholarly summary of the existing body of research on a given topic. Because the field of psychology grows at a fast pace, an up-to-date literature review is an indispensable tool for assessing patterns within the accumulating scientific evidence for a particular psychological hypothesis or theory. Literature reviews come in two forms. One form is a narrative review, in which authors use words to describe

studies previously conducted and discuss the strength of the available psychological evidence. College students enrolled in upper-level psychology courses often write narrative reviews of a chosen topic for term papers. Another type of review, which has become increasingly popular, is a meta-analysis, in which authors use statistical techniques to combine and draw conclusions about studies previously conducted. In any given experiment, as we have seen, participants are treated as ‘cases’, with each participant contributing his or her own unique data, which are then summarized statistically. In a metaanalysis, by contrast, individual studies are treated as ‘cases’, with each study contributing its own unique summary data, which are then further summarized at a higher – or meta – level of analysis. As you might imagine, meta-analyses have the potential to be more systematic and evenhanded than narrative reviews. Throughout this book, we often rely on meta-analyses to describe the state of the evidence for psychological theories and hypotheses. Ethics of psychological research Because psychologists study living beings, they need to be sensitive to ethical issues that can arise in the conduct of research. Accordingly, the American Psychological Association (APA) and its counterparts in Canada and Great Britain have established guidelines for the treatment of both human participants and animal subjects (American Psychological Association, 1990). In the United States, federal regulations require any institution that conducts federally funded research to establish an internal review board, which reviews proposed studies to ensure that participants will be treated properly. Research with humans The first principle governing the ethical treatment of human participants is minimal risk. In most cases, the risks anticipated in the research should be no greater than those ordinarily encountered in daily life. Obviously, a person should not be exposed to physical harm or injury, but deciding how much psychological stress is ethically justified in a research project is not always so clear-cut. In everyday life, of course, people may be impolite, lie, or make other people anxious. Under what circumstances is it ethically justifiable for a researcher to treat a participant in such ways to meet the goals of a research project? These are the kinds of questions that review boards consider on a case-by-case basis. The second principle governing the ethical treatment of human participants is informed consent. Participants must be told ahead of time about any aspects of the study that could influence their willingness to cooperate and, after this disclosure, they must enter the study voluntarily and be permitted to withdraw from it at any time they desire without penalty. Like the principle of minimal risk, For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk HOW PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH IS DONE ª MICHAEL NEWMAN/PHOTOEDIT/PICTUREQUEST Survey researchers ask individuals or, as in this case, a mother and son about their attitudes and behavior. For survey results to be valid, the respondents must be representative of the larger population being studied. informed consent is not always easy to implement. In particular, informed consent is sometimes at odds with another common requirement of research: that participants be unaware of the hypotheses being tested in a study. If a researcher plans to compare participants who learn lists of familiar words with participants who learn lists of unfamiliar words, no ethical problem arises by simply telling participants ahead of time that they will be learning lists of words: They do not need to know how the words vary from one participant to another. Nor are any serious ethical issues raised if participants are given a surprise quiz they did not expect. But what if the researcher wants to compare participants who learn words while in a neutral mood with participants who learn words while they are angry or embarrassed? Clearly the research would not yield valid conclusions if participants had to be told ahead of time that they would be intentionally angered (by being treated rudely) or embarrassed (by being led to believe that they had accidentally broken a piece of equipment). Accordingly, the guidelines specify that if such a study is permitted to proceed at all, participants must be debriefed about it as soon as possible afterwards. During debriefing, the reasons for keeping them in ignorance – or deceiving them – about the procedures must be explained, and any residual emotional reactions must be dealt with so that participants leave with their dignity intact and their appreciation for the research enhanced. The review board must be convinced that the debriefing procedures are adequate to this task. A third principle of ethical research is the right to privacy. Information about a person acquired during a study must be kept confidential and not made available to others without the research participant’s consent. A common practice is to separate the names and other information used to identify participants from the data collected in the study. The data are then identified only by

26 CHAPTER 1 THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY SEEING BOTH SIDES ARE WE NATURALLY SELFISH? We are naturally selfish George C. Williams, State University of New York, Stony Brook Yes we are selfish, in a special biological sense, but an important one that should be borne in mind in discussing human affairs, ethical philosophy, and related topics (Williams, 1996: Chs. 3 & 9). We are selfish in the special way that our genes demand. They are maximally selfish because, if they were not, they would not exist. The genes that get passed on through many generations are those that are best at getting themselves passed on. To do this they must be better than any alternatives at making bodies, human or otherwise, that transmit genes more profusely than other members of their population. Individuals can win this genetic contest mainly by surviving to maturity and then competing successfully for the resources (food, nest sites, mates, etc.) needed for their own reproduction. In this sense we are necessarily selfish, but this need not imply that we are never expected to be unselfish in the sense in which this term is normally understood. Individuals can and often do assist others in gaining resources and avoiding losses or dangers. For a biological understanding of such behavior, the important observations lie in the circumstances in which the apparent benevolence occurs. The most obvious example of helpful behavior is that performed by parents for their own offspring. Its obvious explanation is that parents would not successfully transmit their genes if they did not help their own young in special ways: mammalian mothers must nurse their babies; birds must bring food to their nestlings; a plant must pack an optimum quantity of nutrients into each of its seeds. Yet this kind of provisioning is never a generalized helpfulness of adults toward young. There are always mechanisms at work by which parents can usually identify their own offspring and confine their helpfulness to them alone. If all reproduction is sexual and mates are seldom closely related to each other, each offspring has half of each parent’s genes. From a parent’s perspective, a son or daughter is genetically half as important as itself, and an offspring’s reproduction is half as important as its own, for getting genes transmitted. Yet the same kind of partial genetic identity is true of all For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk relatives, not just offspring. It may serve the genetic selfishness of an individual to behave helpfully toward relatives in general, not merely offspring. Such behavior arises from what is termed kin selection, natural selection for the adaptive use of cues that indicate degrees and probabilities of relationship. To whatever extent there is evidence of genealogical connections, an individual is expected to favor relatives over nonrelatives and close relatives (parents, offspring, siblings) over more distant ones. A male bird whose mate laid eggs in his nest can be favored in evolution if he incubates the eggs and feeds the later hatchlings. But what about possible cuckoldry? Can he really be sure that his mate was not inseminated by a neighboring male so that one or more of those eggs are not actually his own offspring? Extra-pair mating by female birds, with or without consent, does happen in many species. Males in such species are especially watchful of their mates’ behavior and diligent in chasing rival males from their territories. It is expected that males, in species in which an average of 10 percent of the eggs are fertilized by rivals, will be less conscientious toward their nestlings than in species in which cuckoldry never happens. Kin selection is one factor that causes what looks like unselfish behavior. Reciprocation between unrelated individuals, with immediate or likely future profit to each participant, is another. So is that which is caused by the selfish deception or manipulation of another’s kin-selected or other altruistic or cooperative instincts. Female birds, like males, cannot be certain that nestlings are their own, because egg dumping (Sayler, 1992), the laying of an egg in another bird’s nest while its owner is briefly away feeding, happens in many species. One female gains genetically by exploiting the parental instincts of another. The species in which deception and manipulation are most extensively developed is our own, by virtue of our language capability. Henry V, according to Shakespeare, addressed his army as ‘We band of brothers’. Feminist leaders speak of the ‘sisterhood’. Deception and manipulation of others’ emotions can, of course, be for either a worthy or an unworthy cause. George C. Williams

We are not naturally selfish Frans B. M. de Waal, Emory University ‘How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.’ Adam Smith, 1759 When Lenny Skutnik dove into the icy Potomac in Washington, DC, in 1982, to rescue a plane-crash victim, or when Dutch civilians sheltered Jewish families during World War II, lifethreatening risks were taken on behalf of complete strangers. Similarly, Binti Jua, a lowland gorilla at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo, rescued an unconscious boy who had fallen into her enclosure, following a chain of actions no one had taught her. Such examples make a deep impression mainly because they benefit members of our own species. But in my work on the evolution of empathy and morality, I have found evidence so rich of animals caring for one another and responding to each other’s distress that I am convinced that survival depends not only on strength in combat but also at times on cooperation and kindness (de Waal, 1996). For example, it is common among chimpanzees that a bystander approaches the victim of an attack to gently wrap an arm around his or her shoulder. Despite these caring tendencies, humans and other animals are routinely depicted by biologists as complete egoists. The reason is theoretical: all behavior is supposed to have evolved to serve the actor’s own interests. It is logical to assume that genes that fail to benefit their carrier are at a disadvantage in the process of natural selection. But is it correct to call an animal selfish simply because its behavior evolved for its own good? The process by which a behavior came to exist over millions of years of evolution is irrelevant when considering why an animal here and now acts in a particular way. Animals only see the immediate consequences of their actions, and even those are not always clear to them. We may think that a spider builds a web to catch flies, but this is true only at the functional level. There is no evidence that spiders have any idea what webs are for. In other words, a behavior’s purpose says nothing about its underlying motives. Only recently has the concept of ‘selfishness’ been robbed of its vernacular meaning and applied outside the psychological For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk HOW PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH IS DONE SEEING BOTH SIDES ARE WE NATURALLY SELFISH? domain. Even though the term is now seen by some as synonymous with self-serving, selfishness implies the intention to serve oneself, hence knowledge of what one stands to gain from a particular behavior. A vine may serve its own interests by overgrowing a tree, but since plants lack intentions and knowledge, they cannot be selfish except in a meaningless, metaphorical sense. For the same reason, it is impossible for genes to be selfish. Charles Darwin never confused adaptation with individual goals, and endorsed altruistic motives. In this he was inspired by Adam Smith, the moral philosopher and father of economics. It says a great deal about the distinction between selfserving actions and selfish motives that Smith, known for his emphasis on self-interest as the guiding principle of economics, also wrote about the universal human capacity of sympathy. The origins of this inclination are no mystery. All species that rely on cooperation show group loyalty and helping tendencies. These tendencies evolved in the context of a close-knit social life in which they benefited relatives and companions able to repay the favor. The impulse to help was, therefore, never totally without survival value to the ones showing the impulse. But the impulse became divorced from the consequences that shaped its evolution, permitting its expression even when payoffs were unlikely, such as when strangers were the beneficiaries. To call all behavior selfish is like describing all life on earth as converted sun energy. Both statements have some general value but offer little help in explaining the diversity we see around us. Some animals survive through ruthless competition, others through mutual aid. A framework that fails to distinguish the contrasting mind-sets involved may be of use to the evolutionary biologist: It has no place in psychology. An adult male chimpanzee, defeated in a fight with a rival, screams while being comforted by a juvenile with an embrace. Such ‘consolations’ have as yet not been reported for other animals. The behavior seems a form of empathy without tangible benefit to the performer.

28 CHAPTER 1 THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY code or case numbers. In that way, no one other than the experimenter has access to how any particular participant responded. Another common practice is to report only aggregated data – for example, data averaged across all participants in the same group or condition. This further protects the privacy of individual research participants. Even if all of these ethical conditions are met, the researcher must still weigh the costs of the study – not the economic costs but the costs in human terms – against the potential benefits. Is it really necessary to conduct a study in which participants will be deceived or embarrassed? Only if the researcher and the review board are reasonably certain that the study can uncover worthwhile information – either practical or theoretical – can the research proceed. Research with animals Another area in which ethical standards must be observed is research with animals. About 7 percent of psychological studies employ animals, 95 percent of which are rats, mice, and birds. Psychologists conduct research with animals for two main reasons. One is that animal behavior can itself be interesting and worthy of study. A second is that animal systems can provide models for human systems, and so research on animals can produce knowledge that might be impossible or unethical to obtain from humans. Animal research has in fact played a pivotal role in understanding and treating psychological problems such as anxiety, stress, aggression, depression, drug abuse, eating disorders, hypertension, and Alzheimer’s disease (Carroll & Overmier, 2001). Although debate continues about whether and what kind of research with animals is ethical, in the United States most psychologists (80%) and most psychology majors (72%) support the use of animals in research (Plous, 1996a, 1996b). Amid this wide support, concerns remain about the small subset of animal studies that involve painful or harmful procedures. To address these concerns, both federal and APA guidelines require that any painful or harmful procedures imposed on animals must be thoroughly justified in terms of the knowledge to be gained from the study. APA guidelines also underscore that researchers have a moral obligation to treat animals humanely and to minimize their pain and suffering. Specific rules about the living conditions and maintenance of laboratory animals govern how this moral obligation is to be met. Aside from these specific guidelines, a central principle of research ethics is that those who participate in psychology studies should be considered full partners in the research enterprise. Some of the research discussed in this text was conducted before the ethical guidelines just described were formulated and would not be permitted by most review boards today. For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk INTERIM SUMMARY l Doing psychological research involves generating a hypothesis and then testing it by using a scientific method. Core concepts necessary for understanding psychology experiments include independent and dependent variables, experimental and control groups, random assignment, and measurement and statistics. l When experiments are not feasible, the correlational method may be used to determine whether one naturally occurring variable is associated with another. The degree of association between two variables is measured by the correlation coefficient, r, which can be positive (up to +1.00) or negative (down to 1.00), depending on whether one variable increases with another (+) or one variable decreases as the other increases (). l Another way of conducting research is to use the observational method, either through direct observation, indirect survey methods, or case histories. l A final way of conducting research is by literature review, either narrative reviews or statistical meta-analyses. l The basic ethical principles governing the ethical treatment of human participants are minimal risk, informed consent, and the right to privacy. Any painful or harmful procedures imposed upon animals must be thoroughly justified in terms of the knowledge to be gained from the study. CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS 1 Figure 1.3 displays the results of a classic study showing that preference for viewing violent TV programs by boys at age 9 is related to aggressive behavior at age 19. Why does this study fail to demonstrate that watching violence on TV makes boys more aggressive? What kind of evidence would be needed to make such an argument? 2 Suppose a researcher finds a correlation of .50 between symptoms of disordered eating and a preoccupation with physical appearance. What can the researcher conclude? What might explain the observed relationship? Can you formulate a hypothesis about cause and effect? How could you test that hypothesis?

CHAPTER SUMMARY Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. The roots of psychology can be traced to the 4th and 5th centuries B.C. The Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle posed fundamental questions about the mind, and Hippocrates, the ‘father of medicine’, made many important observations about how the brain controlled other organs. One of the earliest debates about human psychology focused on the question of whether human capabilities are inborn (the nature view) or acquired through experience (the nurture view). Scientific psychology was born in the late nineteenth century with the idea that mind and behavior could be the subject of scientific analysis. The first experimental laboratory in psychology was established by Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig in 1879. Among the early ‘schools’ of psychology in the twentieth century were structuralism (the analysis of mental structures), functionalism (studying how the mind works so that an organism can adapt to and function in its environment), behaviorism (the study of behavior without reference to consciousness), Gestalt psychology (which focuses on the patterns formed by stimuli and on the organization of experience), and psychoanalysis (which emphasizes the role of unconscious processes in personality development and motivation). Later developments in twentieth-century psychology included information-processing theory, psycholinguistics, and neuropsychology. The study of psychology can be approached from several perspectives. The biological perspective relates actions to events taking place inside the body, particularly the brain and nervous system. The behavioral perspective considers only external activities that can be observed and measured. The cognitive perspective is concerned with mental processes, such as perceiving, remembering, reasoning, deciding, and problem solving, and with relating these processes to behavior. The psychoanalytic perspective emphasizes unconscious motives stemming from sexual and aggressive impulses. The subjectivist perspective focuses on how people actively construct and interpret their social worlds, which is expected to vary by culture, personal history, and current motivational state. A particular topic often can be analyzed from more than one of these perspectives. For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk CHAPTER SUMMARY 7 The biological perspective differs from the other viewpoints in that its principles are partly drawn from biology. Often, biological researchers attempt to explain psychological principles in terms of biological ones; this is known as reductionism. Behavioral phenomena are increasingly being understood at both the biological and psychological levels. Among the major subfields of psychology are biological psychology, experimental psychology, developmental psychology, social and personality psychology, clinical and counseling psychology, school and educational psychology, and industrial and engineering psychology. Many new areas of inquiry gaining momentum in twenty-first-century psychology span traditional subfields and disciplines. These new areas include cognitive neuroscience (as well as affective and social cognitive neuroscience), evolutionary psychology, cultural psychology, and positive psychology. Doing psychological research involves generating a hypothesis and then testing it by using a scientific method. When applicable, the experimental method is preferred because it seeks to control all variables except the ones being studied and can thus test hypotheses about cause and effect. The independent variable is the one that is manipulated by the experimenter; the dependent variable (usually some measure of the participant’s behavior) is the one being studied to determine whether it is affected by changes in the independent variable. In a simple experimental design, the experimenter manipulates one independent variable and observes its effect on one dependent variable. An essential element of experimental design is the random assignment of participants to experimental and control groups. In many experiments the independent variable is something that is either present or absent. The simplest experimental design includes an experimental group (with the hypothesized cause present for one group of participants) and a control group (with the hypothesized cause absent for another group of participants). If the manipulation of the independent variable results in a statistically significant difference in the dependent variable between the experimental and control groups, we know that the experimental condition had a reliable effect, and the difference is not due to chance factors or a few extreme cases.

30 CHAPTER 1 THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGY In situations in which experiments are not feasible, the correlational method may be used. This method determines whether a naturally occurring difference is associated with another difference of interest. The degree of correlation between two variables is measured by the correlation coefficient, r, a number between þ1.00 and 1.00. The absence of any relationship is indicated by 0; a perfect relationship is indicated by 1. As r goes from 0 to 1, the strength of the relationship increases. The correlation coefficient can be positive or negative, depending on whether one variable increases with another (þ) or one variable decreases as the other increases (). CORE CONCEPTS cognitive perspective psychoanalytic perspective subjectivist perspective naïve realism reductionism biological psychologists cognitive psychologists developmental psychologists social psychologists personality psychologists clinical psychologists counseling psychologists school psychologists educational psychologists organizational psychologists engineering psychologists cognitive neuroscience affective neuroscience social neuroscience evolutionary psychology cultural psychology positive psychology hypothesis theory scientific experiments variable law of effect overjustification effect psychology prosopagnosia fundamental attribution error childhood amnesia obese cathartic effect physiology nature–nurture debate nature view nurture view tabula rasa associationist psychology introspection structuralism functionalism behaviorism gestalt psychoanalysis unconscious free association information-processing models psychological perspective eclectic approach biological perspective behavioral perspective For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk Another way of conducting research is to use the observational method, in which one observes the phenomenon of interest. Researchers must be trained to observe and record behavior accurately. Phenomena that are difficult to observe directly may be observed indirectly by means of surveys (questionnaires and interviews) or by reconstructing a case history. The basic ethical principles governing the ethical treatment of human participants are minimal risk, informed consent, and the right to privacy. Any painful or harmful procedures imposed upon animals must be thoroughly justified in terms of the knowledge to be gained from the study. independent variable dependent variable experimental groups control group random assignment multivariate experiment measurement statistics mean statistical significance correlation coefficient positively correlated negatively correlated test direct observation survey method social desirability effects case history literature review narrative review meta-analysis minimal risk informed consent debriefing right to privacy

WEB RESOURCES http://www.atkinsonhilgard.com/ Take a quiz, try the activities and exercises, and explore web links. http://academic.udayton.edu/gregelvers/hop/welcome.asp This History of Psychology website gives you access to information about important psychologists throughout history, provides a host of web links, and even has a trivia section. Do you know who left human bone dust in the drill presses in the mechanical workshops of the Hungarian Post Office while doing research on the inner ear? Find out here! http://www.apa.org/science/infostu.html This site – provided by the American Psychological Association – offers you access to the wide variety of opportunities available for psychology students. http://www.apa.org/ethics/code.html http://www.bps.org.uk/the-society/code-of-conduct/code-of-conduct_home.cfm If you are concerned about the ethics of psychology, search through these detailed sites to learn more about the principles of psychologists and their code of conduct, from US and UK perspectives. CD-ROM LINKS Psyk.Trek 3.0 Check out CD Unit 1, History and Methods 1a Psychology’s timeline 1b The experimental method 1d Statistics: Correlation 1e Searching for research articles in psychology CD-ROM LINKS For more Cengage Learning textbooks, visit www.cengagebrain.co.uk