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The authority of these experts is maintained through the ways in which they know and investigate their subject matter. Dependent variables are sometimes referred to as outcome variables or criterion variables . A dependent variable is usually the variable that you expect to change when you manipulate the independent variable. In other words, the dependent variable is the variable that the independent variable affects. Therefore, the dependent variable is so called because its value depends on the value of the independent variable (at least in theory). Covariates Psychologists strive to maintain their expertise and knowledge through the use of three forms of knowledge acquisition or ways of knowing: A possible reason for the limited impact on academic psychology perhaps lies with the fact that humanism deliberately adopts a non-scientific approach to studying humans. As would be expected of an approach that is ‘anti-scientific’, humanistic psychology is short on empirical evidence. The approach includes untestable concepts, such as ‘self-actualization’ and ‘congruence’.Client-centered therapy is widely used in health, social work and industry. This therapy has helped many people overcome difficulties they face in life, which is a significant contribution to improving people’s quality of life. Major humanistic psychologists such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow believed that human beings were born with the desire to grow, create and to love, and had the power to direct their own lives. Other people have enormous power in shaping and influencing an individual’s behavior and mental processes. If you’re unsure, consider the detrimental effects that negative social events or experiences, such as physical or sexual abuse, can have on a person. Overlooking the impact of a person’s interaction with family and friends is to neglect reality. Remember We’re all psychologists really. Some of us just happen to be professional psychologists. The difference between a professional psychologist and a non-professional psychologist is really a matter of degree (get it?), separated by focus, time spent, materials consumed, and methods used. Over the years, I have been asked (sometimes respectfully and nicely, sometimes not) these questions: What makes you better at this than me? What do you know that I don’t? Well, I believe it’s really a matter of degree, perspective, and the psychologist tools I use to see and do the psychologist thing. Professionals in any field seem to immerse themselves in it. Again, it's a matter of degree. We all occupy the space of a psychologist to one degree or another. Psychologists just spend more time engaged in conscious and deliberate effort to stay in that space and look at the world from that viewpoint. We spend our time and careers occupying that space and doing the psychologist thing, occasionally coming out of the trance to share what we have seen, think, and found to be objectively true, at least as far as science allows us. But ultimately, psychology is only one way of looking at people and the world they interact with. Rogers’ view of education saw schools as generally rigid, bureaucratic institutions which are resistant to change. Applied to education, his approach becomes ‘student-centered learning’ in which children are trusted to participate in developing and to take charge of their own learning agendas. His attitude to examinations, in particular, would no doubt, find a most receptive audience in many students:

Most everyone has an opinion about the behavior and mental processes of others and ourselves. She left you because you’re emotionally unavailable. If you don’t express yourself, it just stays bottled up inside. We’re full of answers to the why, how, and what questions regarding people. But how do we really know that not talking about feelings leads to bottling them up? I may think that not expressing feelings allows them to drift away like clouds on a windy day. Who’s right? You may be thinking that it doesn’t matter, but we’ve got this whole group of psychologists who claim to be experts on these matters. On what grounds can they make this claim to expertise? Humanism proposes a positive view of human nature, however, it could be argued that this might not be very realistic when considering everyday reality, such as domestic violence and genocides. There may be a day when psychology reaches a pinnacle of knowing and understanding all the determinants of behavior, all the ingredients of the human mind, and all the processes. Maybe the field can figure it all out through that reverse engineering process mentioned earlier. Or, at the very least, maybe psychology will figure out people, and all the information that experts gather can be stored or formulated into an algorithm or recipe for making people that, one day, a super-intelligent robotic life form can utilize to re-create the human species thousands of years after it becomes extinct. I did say that I sometimes think like a mad scientist, right?

Covariates

Sigmund Freud founded psychoanalysis in the early 1900s; since then, hundreds of theorists have added to his work. The later theories are typically labeled psychodynamic because they emphasize the dynamic interplay between various components of mind, the self, personality, others, and reality. Object Relations Theory and Self Psychology are two specific theoretical perspectives that fall within the psychoanalytic/psychodynamic metatheory. (For more on psychoanalysis/psychodynamics, flip to Chapters 9 and 15.) Behaviorism So which is it? Talent or hard work? This question lies at the heart of a long-running debate within psychology; it’s known as the nature versus nurture debate. Talent versus hard work. Inborn ability versus learning and effort. I’m a psychologist. But what’s that? Someone who knows and studies psychology, but is that all there is to it? When I get together with family and friends during the holidays, it seems like they still don’t know exactly what I do for a living. As material beings, humans are made of flesh and bones. Any discussion of thoughts, feelings, and other psychological concepts that doesn’t factor in biological makeup and function, especially the brain and nervous system, ignores the fundamental facts of human existence. Behaviorism emphasizes the role and influence of a person’s environment and previous learning experiences to understanding behavior. Behaviorists don’t traditionally focus on mental processes per se because they believe that mental processes are too difficult to observe and measure objectively. In the framework of behaviorism, the why of behavior can be explained by looking at the circumstances in which it occurs and the consequences surrounding someone’s actions. Classical conditioning and operant conditioning are ways of understanding behavior and they lead to behavior modification, a specific approach to modifying behavior, and helping people change that comes from the metatheory of behaviorism (see Chapter 8 for details on some behavior-modification techniques that are based on classical and operant conditioning). Cognitive

In this section, I describe the most common metatheories psychologists use when they find a behavior or mental process they’re interested in researching. Work typically begins from within one of these theories. Biological Data measured at the ordinal level: The range and interquartile range are appropriate. The interquartile range is usually preferable, as it is more informative than the range. For an example of biology’s impact on behavior, just think about how differently people act when they’re under the influence of alcohol. Holiday office parties are good laboratories for applying the biological perspective. You walk into the party and see Bob, the relatively quiet guy from accounting, burning up the cubicles. Bob’s transformed into a lady’s man. He’s funny. He’s drunk. Do you think Bob will remember? Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic Humanistic psychology is a perspective that emphasizes looking at the the whole person, and the uniqueness of each individual. Humanistic psychology begins with the existential assumptions that people have free will and are motivated to acheive their potential and self-actualize. It is a non-directive therapy in which the client is encouraged to discover their own solutions to their difficulties in an atmosphere that is supportive and non-judgemental and that provides unconditional positive regard.Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select — doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.