Section 1: Psychologists at Work

1. Twins share a similar genetic makeup. If they do not share the same environment, questions can be explored about whether or not behavior is nature (heredity) or nurture (behavioral characteristics that are created and maintained by the environment).

2. List those psychologists (i.e., biological, school, developmental, cognitive, behavioral, etc.). that you believe may study issues (poor nutrition, lack of maturity, inability to perceive the written word correctly) related to a 7 year old's inability to read. State the viewpoint/perspective that each would have about a 7 year old's inability to read. Discuss how each would go about identifying and correcting the problem.

Section 2: A Science Evolves: The Past, the Present, and the Future

3. List the basic ideas early researchers had when developing structuralism, functionalism and gestalt psychology. List the five major psychological perspectives in psychology (behavioral, cognitive, psychodynamic, humanistic, biological) and describe the basic tenets of each perspective. Note the similarities in the approaches used.

4. Identify a psychological perspective, ( i.e., the biological perspective, the study of the relationship of the mind and the body). Research questions are then based on this mind-body connection. Are issues like alcoholism, aggression and violence, and shyness determined by things such as genetics, diet and nutrition, amount of sleep, exercise, etc.? Studies to address this might include experiments that manipulate a certain group's daily diet, sleep, or exercise habits. Other studies/ surveys might look at family histories of alcoholism, aggression, etc. Also, studies that look at the use of drugs to manipulate the behaviors that have been mentioned would all be areas that might be pursued by a researcher with a biological perspective.

Section 3: Psychology's Key Issues

6. Psychology basis its work on careful, scientific study of an issue by methods such as survey, interviews, and experimental studies, to name a few. Claims made about a new "virtual reality" are not based on science but on emotion and anecdotal information. The power of suggestion by influential people, and the desire to get the "quick fix" and find happiness and contentment sometimes lead one to believe that others have found the answer. In reality these people have little or no scientific data to support their claims and any good feeling is short lived and cannot be proven to come directly from programs, pills, or the lifestyles that make the claims.

Section 4: Research in Psychology

7. Law enforcement and the criminal justice field both work to identify the causes of criminal behavior. They study people's conscious and unconscious motivations for committing offences. They are also interested in whether or not people are born (nature) with certain personality traits or live in environments (nurture) that support criminal behaviors. Researchers in these fields try to find ways to both understand and change certain behaviors. Each of the five contemporary psychologists would have their own approach .

8. State an operational definition for what you would consider aggression in the workplace. In naturalistic observation, researchers could get jobs at the workplace being studied in order to experience, or not, the aggression. In a case study, a very thorough and detailed history of the situation could be taken from a selected few who had experienced this behavior. Design a survey to gather information from a wide group of people. List the positive features of each and the negative features. Which would you select and why?

Section 5: Research Challenges: Exploring the Process

9. The general population does not use the Internet, only a select portion of citizens fall into this survey group. Information gathered here would have to be presented as "People who use the Internet and filled out an attitude survey on welfare" had the following views on the topic. Your sample must reflect characteristics of the population being studied.