Understanding Psychology: Key Concepts and Common Misconceptions Explained

the focus of today's lecture is going to be what is psychology so let's start by talking about what the definition of

psychology actually is so psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes so let's

break that definition down a little bit more so some of the key components first

psychology is the scientific study so we're going to be focused on actual research there will be Theory there will

be conjecture there will be all sorts of speculation as well but ultimately at the end of the day psychology is about

the scientific study of these things it's looking at empirical work to see what people and other organisms actually

do how they think how they feel how they respond to situations so psychology is also about the study of

behavior is when we're talking about Behavior what we're talking about are outward overt actions things like what

people actually say what they actually do their sorts of facial expressions those sorts of things

psychology is also interested in mental processes as well when we're talking about mental processes what we're

referring to are going to be these internal or covert sorts of actions so for example things like our thoughts our

feelings our memories psychologists spend a lot of their time focused on

humans so for example I'm a social personality psychologist and essentially all of my time and attention is spent on

on trying to understand people how they relate to each other how they behave in social situations but there are also

psychologists that spend a lot of their time if not all of their time focused on non-human species so for example my wife

also is a psychologist she's a comparative psychologist and so what she focuses on are non-human species and

trying to understand the way in which they think so she works with guerrillas the Detroit Zoo she also works with bats

with domestic cats with dogs with a wide array of species and so psychologists study a lot of different living

organisms a lot of what we'll talk about this semester will be focused on humans but we will in some cases talk about

non-human species as well so some of the goals of psychology so the first thing that psychologists are

interested in doing is trying to describe what's happening so an example of description would be if a teacher

notices that one of her students hasn't been turning in her homework and appears to have a negative attitude towards

school so in that case the psychologist would simply be interested in really trying to understand what is actually

going on what is it that's happening after having some sort of description then psychologists could focus on more

of an explanation why is this event happening so for example in the previous case the student may be having some

problems because of a learning disability something like dyslexia for example

after having some ability to explain what's happening prediction is the next thing that psychologists are interested

in when is it likely to happen again so for example in this case the student may be likely to continue having some sort

of trouble unless something is done to help change the situation so something to for example maybe help address her

learning disability and finally psychologists are interested in the idea of control right how can the

situation be changed so for example the student may be given additional instruction using specialized techniques

that have been shown to be effective for individuals with dyslexia one of the things that's important for

us to address the beginning is that sometimes people think that psychology is really just common sense so just to

address this sort of issue and give us some things to think about as we as we're getting started I'd like you to

take a few moments and I'm going to read through a list of 10 different statements and what I want you to do is

to think to yourself whether or not each of these statements is likely to be true or false so for each one I just want you

to think about what your answer would be so for example is it the case that Opposites Attract right and here we're

not talking about uh magnetic fields what we're talking about is do people who are really different from each other

do they tend to be attracted to each other or not next is does absence make the heart grow

fonder right this is an old same and the idea is if you're separated from someone that you care about you'll come to love

them even more next is the idea that the greater the reward the more one will enjoy the task

do you think that's true or is it false next up groups usually make more moderate decisions than a single

individual do you think that's true or is it false do people pull harder in a tug of war

when they're part of a team than when they are by themselves is that true or is it false

next we're less likely to help a person in distress when we are alone than when others are present is that true or is it

false to change their behavior people must first change their attitudes

is that true or is it false if you pick up a baby whenever it cries you will reinforce its cry

is that true or is it false next I'll ask most people would disobey an authority figure if ordered to harm

someone is that true or is it false and finally silver medalists are happier

than bronze medalists right so silver medalists are people who finish second in some sort of competition bronze

medalists are people who finish third in the same competition so are silver medalists happier than bronze medalists

okay so the answer to each of these is actually they're all false right now as you're thinking as we're going through

this list my guess is that there were probably some that you were uncertain uh I could see it being true or false and

this is part of what I want us to focus on is that before we actually dive into the research in a lot of cases you could

create possible explanations why some of these things could either be true or they could be false

let's just take a few of these just to just to chat about them really quickly so for example we'll start with the

first one so Opposites Attract right a very common piece of folklore right the idea is that you should be romantically

attracted or attracted in terms of friendships to people who are very very different than yourself right and I'm

certainly not are arguing that people are never attracted to people who are very different themselves right that's

not the argument but in general right the tendency is for us to actually be attracted to and spend a lot of time

with people who are actually quite similar to ourselves right so rather than Opposites Attract it's actually

more akin to birds of a feather flock together right and so what tends to happen is that people tend to form

romantic relationships with people who are quite similar to themselves in terms of things like personality background

and those sorts of things uh the second one absence makes the heart grow fonder there's another and so

this one also is false there's another competing bit of folk wisdom which is out of sight out of mind

and it turns out that out of sight out of mind is actually a little closer to how people actually behave in the real

world right so for example the idea that absence makes a heart grow fonder when when uh High School uh seniors for

example who are in a romantic relationship when they graduate and they go to different and two people go to

different colleges right they may have this idea that we're still going to maintain our romantic relationship

despite the separation and if anything being separated from your boyfriend or girlfriend right might actually make you

love them even more and certainly that can happen right no one's arguing that can never be the case

but what tends to happen more often is that when people are separated and stop spending time together it ends up being

more along the lines of kind of out of sight out of mind part of the reason why a lot of those long-distance

relationships don't work is because of the absence element right now of course there are things like technology that

make it a little bit easier for us to make those maintain those sorts of connections but still in general absence

doesn't tend to make the heart grow fonder uh next up uh the greater the reward the

more one will enjoy the task there's some really interesting dynamics that work into the idea of the sorts of

rewards that we receive but one of the Fairly consistent findings is that if you enjoy engaging in some task for the

sheer Joy of doing it let's say for example that you uh let's say that when you were in high school you really

enjoyed playing basketball for example and so you just enjoy it you enjoy the the physical exertion you enjoy the

competition you enjoy being on a team with others and if you're just doing it for the intrinsic Love of the Game

imagine that later in your life you're so good that you become a professional basketball player and now you're earning

a tremendous amount of money for playing a game that you used to play for free you would think that this would be the

the perfect world right now you're doing something that you love and you're getting a large reward for doing so

however what research has shown is that when we start being rewarded right for doing the things that we like to do we

actually start focusing more on the reward that we're getting rather than our enjoyment of the task and what

happens is that for a lot of people in many situations the reward may actually detract from the enjoyment of the task

and so what happens is we start we're still engaging in the same behavior but now we're no longer doing it because we

really enjoy it now we're doing it because we're getting paid to do it or we're getting rewarded in some way and

so what happens is that actually getting large rewards for things actually start to detract from our enjoyment of the

task and instead of going through all of these let's kind of skip them we'll skip

to the the end of the list so the last one is silver medalists being happier than bronze medalists right it makes a

great deal of sense objectively right that silver metal since they uh since they got second place they should be

happier right than bronze medalists however what we find is that it's actually the opposite right and so part

of what research what researchers have done in this area is they've studied people of finishing uh the Olympics for

example and they've done things like for example taking photographs of individuals during the medal ceremonies

and what happens is that if you look at the facial expressions of people during the metal ceremonies silver medalists

tend to look objectively less happy than bronze medalists right and if you think about it it can make sense the reason is

that if you're in second place right while you're on the platform getting your silver medal what you're probably

thinking about is that man I was this close to getting first place right so you're disappointed that you're in

second rather than first in contrast right the bronze medalist who got third place got made it on

barely made it onto the podium at all right so what the bronze medalist might be thinking is man I'm really glad I

just got a medal of ending sort right I could have been in fourth place and not gotten anything right and so what's

happened is that even though the silver medalist objectively did better right they finished higher in the rankings in

the bronze medalist right what they're comparing themselves to often appears to be quite different and that's what leads

to the different types of happiness that we're seeing silver medalists are disappointed that they got second

the bronze medalist in contrast is happy that they just got a medal at all so the reason why I wanted us to walk

through some of those examples is because it illustrates something called the hindsight bias so now for example

since we've talked about the silver medalists and bronze medalist distinction right you may be thinking

well of of course I would have known that silver medalists would be less happy it makes perfect sense I would

have been able to predict that in the beginning because silver medalists are dissatisfied with being in second place

however I would suggest that that's probably you experiencing this hindsight bias right the I knew it all along

phenomenon what happens is that the results of many uh psychological studies right may seem like Common Sense after

we know the result however right before the work is actually done we actually investigate it there may be a lot of

different possible explanations for what's actually going on right and that would certainly have been the case with

the silver medalists being more or less happy than the bronze medalists right ahead of time it would have made a great

deal of sense to assume right that silver medalists would be happier because they objectively did better

however that's not what the research has shown right and that's part of why we want to be aware of the this idea of

hindsight bias because many of the things we'll talk about once we know how things actually

work based on Research what we may think is that well of course of course we knew we would have known that anyway why do

we need psychologists to go to the trouble of understanding our Behavior if we could have known it without doing the

work and the reality is in many cases we wouldn't have known how things actually work unless research had been conducted

so the reason I'm bringing this up is that many of the findings we'll talk about this semester may seem obvious

right but only after we're actually discussing them right and this is going to be playing into this idea of

hindsight bias