After completeing this chapter you should be able to:
- Define psychology.
- Distinguish between psychology, pseudoscience, and common sense.
- Compare and contrast five major theoretical perspectives in psychology today.
- Identify and discuss the three broad categories of professional activities of psychologists.
- Distinguish between the five different types of psychotherapists.
- Define critical thinking and list eight critical-thinking guidelines.
- Identify and examine the use of descriptive methods in psychological research.
- Explain why a psychologist would use a correlational study and define the elements of a correlational study.
- Outline the basic model of an experiment.
- List the advantages and disadvantages of the various research methods used in psychological research.
- Examine the use of descriptive and inferential statistics in psychology.
