In psychology research, an institutional review board (also known as an IRB) is a group of individuals designated to review and monitor research that involves human subjects. IRB’s help ensure that the rights, welfare, and safety of participants are protected.…
Not all psychologists perform psychotherapy or work in the field of mental health. In fact, many psychologists work in applied psychology careers to solve real-world problems or research different aspects of the human mind and behavior. If this sounds like something…
Diana Baumrind is a developmental psychologist who is perhaps best-known for her research on parenting styles and her writings on ethics in psychological research. Through her work, she identified three primary styles of parenting. Two critical factors that she looked…
How do people grow and change over the course of life? This is one of many questions that developmental psychology seeks to answer. Development is about much more than simply the physical changes that take place over the course of…
Forensic psychologist salaries can vary considerably depending on factors ranging from geographic location to years of experience. What exactly do people who work in this field do? Forensic psychologists specialize in applying psychological knowledge in the area of the law…
Extraneous variables are anything in a psychology experiment other than the independent and dependent variables. The variables can present challenges and introduce errors, so it is important for experiments to control these extraneous factors. How do researchers do this? By…
Cognitive psychology is the area of psychology that focuses on internal mental processes such as thinking, decision-making, problem-solving, language, attention, and memory. As part of the larger field of cognitive science, this branch of psychology is related to other disciplines…
At various points in psychology history, researchers have tried to come up with a comprehensive list of personality traits. Traits are often defined in a variety of ways, but in psychology they are generally thought of as characteristic forms…
The ingroup bias is the tendency that people have to favor their own group above that of others. This bias can have a powerful influence on both individual and group behavior. It may be as simple as favoring your own…
A sensory receptor is a type of specialized cell that responds to a specific type of sense stimulation. Each type of sensory receptor is unique to the organ system it is associated with. For example, visual sensory receptors are different…