Big Ideas of Psychological Science

If you made it this far, you have a whole semester of psychological science under your belt! As you are looking towards the end of the semester (and the final), you might start to feel overwhelmed by the vast amount of information you learned. Your professors feel the same way; it is challenging for us to try to pick concepts and coverage each semester. Psychology is a HUGE discipline– it ranges from studying microscopic brain tissue and electrophysiological measurement to tell us something meaningful about neuroanatomy and physiology, to the examination of an individual’s emotions, stress, and memories, all the way to studying how we work together in groups, communities, and more. I find it useful to use our last class day together to discuss the big picture of psychology from all of the topics we talked about (Hard, 2018; Hudson et. al., 2022). I want to answer the question: What’s the big idea? What will you remember from this course in 20 years? Thinking deeply about our course content in this way will help you study for the final and hopefully help you see and understand human behavior for years to come.

In order to organize our discussion today (a schema is useful for study!), here are the themes we have been working on the entire semester:

• Psychological science relies on empirical evidence and adapts as new data develop.
• Psychology explains general principles that govern behavior while recognizing individual differences.
• Psychological, biological, social and cultural factors influence behavior and mental processes.
• Psychology values diversity, promotes equity, and fosters inclusion in pursuit of a more just society.
• Our perceptions and biases filter experiences of the world through an imperfect personal lens.
• Applying psychological principles can change our lives, organizations, and communities in positive ways.
• Ethical principles guide psychology research and practice.

During each pillar and chapter, we discussed how some of the major topics fit into these themes. I will walk you through just a few more more, although I could select numerous examples from each chapter! I want you to be able to think through our semester and make these connections as well (the generation effect).

Example 1:

Psychological science relies on empirical evidence and adapts as new data develop.

• Historically, psychologists knew there must be a difference between a short-term memory and a longer-term memory. STM and LTM were easy descriptors. However, through more research, we now know that LTM can be described by semantic, episodic and procedural factors! WM has largely replaced STM because the data are clear: a static storage is not as accurate for short-term human cognition as a dynamic process with multiple types of storage, rehearsal, and recoding that is described by WM.

Example 2:

Psychology values diversity, promotes equity, and fosters inclusion in pursuit of a more just society.

• Understanding ourselves and our groups (family, friends, peers, and neighbors) allows us to better understand others. In becoming more educated, you have more experiences in which to rely on! When diverse groups of people work together, we can change the world for the better. One example is accessibility. When your professor uses a microphone in class or shows a video with closed-captioning turned on, this allows everyone to have an environment that they can more easily learn in. This is called equity and inclusion.

Example 3:

Our perceptions and biases filter experiences of the world through an imperfect personal lens.

• “Please do not read or respond to this message while driving. Why? If you look at your cell phone for just four seconds while driving 60mph, you are driving the length of a football field without looking at the road.”
• As you drive around the city, you may notice people texting and driving, despite how dangerous it is to do so. Recall how attention is a limited resource. When engaged in cognitively demanding task like reading a text or tweet, you have less attentional resources for driving. Yet, people believe they can do it all! If you have had experience doing both, you may succumb to this “imperfect” lens. Remember though, it only takes one serious accident to impact your life or another so be careful out there!

Example 4:

Ethical principles guide psychology research and practice.

• How do we investigate the effects of addiction and drug use on developing fetuses? Ethically, we cannot (and should not even think about) giving a pregnant person an illicit drug that could cause harm to themselves or their offspring. Thus, psychological scientists may do case studies on babies who were born to addicted mothers (when social services calls) or research must be done on animals that were bred for this specific purpose. When using animal models, researchers have more control over dosing, nutrition, and overall environment. Many alcohol studies are actually done on mice and rats!

Through exploring these themes all semester, I hope that you are now able to see a “big picture,” not only about how Psychology works as a science and a field, but also what it means to be human (Hard, 2018).  To be human is so very complicated. To be human is to be foolish (make mistakes) and brilliant (learn from them and adapt), to be evil (aggression, obedience findings, dehumanization studies) and kind (altruism), to be flawed (heuristics, biases) and yet utterly and absolutely amazing (our capacity for learning, our cognitive skills, and more!). The most important thing I think psychology can teach you is a deep curiosity, and maybe gratitude for your own humanity.

References

Hard, B. M. (2018, August). Teaching Intro Using Big Ideas. American Psychological Association conference, San Francisco, CA.

Hudson, D. L., Richmond, A. S., Hard, B. M., Dunn, D. S., and Musselman, R. (2022). Navigating the Nuances of Teaching Introductory Psychology: A Roadmap for Implementing Evidence-Based Instructional Methods. In Eds. Gurung. R. A., & Neufeld, G. (2022). Transforming introductory psychology: Expert advice on teacher training, course design, and Student Success (pp. ). American Psychological Association.