List and describe the four goals of psychology and the questions about behavior each answers
What will be an ideal response?
Answer will include that the goals of psychology are to describe, understand, predict, and control behavior. Answering psychological questions often begins with a careful description of behavior. Description, or naming and classifying, is typically based on making a detailed record of scientific observations. However, descriptions fail to answer the important "why" questions. Therefore, psychology's second goal is to explain an event, or the goal of understanding, which usually means we can state the causes of a behavior. Psychology's third goal, prediction, is the ability to forecast behavior accurately. To a psychologist, psychology's fourth goal of control simply refers to the ability to alter the conditions that affect behavior, such as therapy being used to help a person overcome a phobia. In summary, psychology's goals are a natural outgrowth of our desire to understand behavior and, basically, involve asking the following questions: (1) What is the nature of this behavior? (description); (2) Why does it occur? (understanding and explanation); (3) Can we forecast when it will occur? (prediction); and (4) What conditions affect it? (control).
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The needs to know and to understand, as proposed by Maslow, are:
a. innate and do not have to be taught. b. independent of the original five-need hierarchy. c. acquired and hence need to be groomed through training. d. less essential for complete personality development.
Social-cognitive theory differs from behaviorism in that social-cognitive theory argues that
a. rewards shape behaviors. b. the ego follows the moral principle. c. wants and desires are the result of our environment. d. people influence their environments.
A difference in strategy between novice physics students and experts is that experts
a. create subgoals. c. use a working-forward strategy. b. use means/end analysis. d. use a balance strategy.
Of the following, which is NOT one of Barbara Tversky’s spaces of spatial cognition?
a. space of the body b. space around the body c. space of navigation d. space of projection