Exam 1: The Science of Psychology

Which psychologist dared to ignore the whole consciousness issue and return to a study of scientific inquiry by focusing on observable behavior?

When you watch dogs play in the park, or watch how your professors conduct their classes, you are engaging in a form of __________.

Independent variable is to dependent variable as __________.

Which noted African American psychologist held a post as president of Shaw University in North Carolina and then president of Virginia State College?

Which early psychologist was the first to try to bring objectivity and measurement to the concept of psychology?

Two groups of graduate students were given rats and instructed to teach the rats how to run mazes. Group 1 was told that they had "very smart" rats that should learn quickly. Group 2 was told that they had "very stupid" rats that should learn slowly. In actuality, neither group was any different, and the rats were randomly assigned. In spite of that, when the experiment concluded, the rats taught by Group 1 had learned the maze much more quickly. How can that be explained?

Pavlov found that dogs would salivate to the sound of a bell before food was presented, demonstrating the process of conditioning.

Sigmund Freud was the father of psychology.

A researcher wants to study the effects of texting on driving. Students in Group A drive a car in a computer game and see how many virtual accidents they have. Students in Group B are asked to drive the same virtual car but they must respond to and send at least three texts. The number of virtual accidents is measured for each group. What is the independent variable?

Evolutionary psychology might suggest that certain cognitive strategies and goals are built into the brain because __________.

A group of randomly selected subjects for a study that matches the population on important characteristics such as age and sex is called __________.

Which of the following types of psychologists is most prepared to help a person who hears voices and believes she is Joan of Arc?

As a project for a psychology course, a student correlated weight and intelligence scores for 250 students. The computed correlation coefficient was .00. What did the scatterplot look like?

Forming a hypothesis is the second step in a scientific investigation. This step is derived from two goals of psychology-description and __________.