psych review p.8
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97 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Primary Reinforcer | Reinforcer that has survival value for an organism; this value does not have to be learned |
| Secondary Reinforcer | Any neutral stimulus that initially has no intrinsic value for an organism but that becomes rewarding when linked with a primary reinforcer |
| Superstitious Behavior | Behavior learned through coincidental association with reinforcement |
| Punishment | Process of presenting an undesirable or noxious stimulus, or removing a desirable stimulus, to decrease the probability that a preceding response will recur |
| Primary Punisher | Any stimulus or event that is naturally painful or unpleasant to an organism |
| Secondary Punisher | Any neutral stimulus that initially has no intrinsic negative value for an organism but acquires punishing qualities when linked with a primary punisher |
| Learned Helplessness | The behavior of giving up or not responding to punishment, exhibited by people or animals exposed to negative consequences or punishment over which they have no control |
| Fixed-interval Schedule | A reinforcement schedule in which a reinforcer (reward) is delivered after a specified interval of time, provided that the required response occurs at least once in the interval |
| Variable-interval Schedule | A reinforcement schedule in which a reinforcer (reward) is delivered after predetermined but varying amounts of time, provided that the required response occurs at least once after each interval |
| Fixed-ratio Schedule | A reinforcement schedule in which a reinforcer(reward) is delivered after a specified number of responses has occurred |
| Variable-ratio Schedule | A reinforcement schedule in which a reinforcer (reward) is delivered after a predetermined but variable number of responses has occurred |
| Extinction (operant conditioning) | The process by which the probability of an organism's emitting a response is reduced when reinforcement no longer follows the response |
| Latent Learning | Learning that occurs in the absence of direct reinforcement and that is not necessarily demonstrated through observable behavior |
| Observational Learning Theory | Theory that suggests that organisms learn new responses by observing the behavior of a model and then imitating it; aka. Social learning theory |
| Social Psychology | The scientific study of how people think about, interact with, influence, and are influenced by the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of other people. |
| Attitudes | Patterns of feelings and beliefs about other people, ideas, or objects that are based on a person's past experiences, shape his or her future behavior, and are evaluative in nature. |
| Elaboration Likelihood Model | Theory suggesting that there are two routes to attitude change: the central route, which focuses on thoughtful consideration of an argument for change, and the peripheral route, which focuses on less careful, more emotional, and even superficial evaluation. |
| Cognitive Dissonance | A state of mental discomfort arising from a discrepancy between two or more of a person's beliefs or between a person's beliefs and overt behavior. |
| Self-perception Theory | Approach to attitude formation that assumes that people infer their attitudes and emotional states from their behavior. |
| Reactance | The negative response evoked when there is an inconsistency between a person's self-image as being free to choose and the person's realization that someone is trying to force him or her to choose a particular occurrence. |
| Social Cognition | The process of analyzing and interpreting events, other people, oneself, and the world in general. |
| Impression Formation | The process by which a person uses behavior and appearance of others to form attitudes about them. |
| Nonverbal Communication | The communication of information by cues or actions that include gestures, tone of voice, vocal inflections, and facial expressions. |
| Body Language | Communication of information through body positions and gestures. |
| Attributions | The process by which a person infers other people's motives or intensions by observing their behavior. |
| Fundamental Attribution Error | The tendency to attribute other people's behavior to dispositional (internal) causes rather than situational (external) causes. |
| Actor-observer Effect | The tendency to attribute the behavior of others to dispositional causes but to attribute one's own behavior to situational causes. |
| Self-serving Bias | People's tendency to ascribe their positive behaviors to their own internal traits, but their failures and shortcomings to external, situational factors. |
| Prejudice | Negative evaluation of an entire group of people, typically based on unfavorable (and often wrong) stereotypes about groups. |
| Stereotypes | Fixed, overly simple and often erroneous ideas about traits, attitudes, and behaviors of groups of people; stereotypes assume that all members of a given group are alike. |
| Discrimination | Behavior targeted at individuals or groups and intended to hold them apart and treat them differently. |
| Social Categorization | The process of dividing the world into "in" groups and "out" groups. |
| Social Influence | The ways people alter the attitudes or behaviors of others, either directly or indirectly. |
| Conformity | People's tendency to change attitudes or behaviors so that they are consistent with those of other people or with social norms. |
| Obedience | Compliance with the orders of another person or group of people. |
| Debriefing | Informing participants about the true nature of a experiment after its completion. |
| Group | Two or more individuals who are working with a common purpose or have some common goals, characteristics, or interests. |
| Social Facilitation | Change in behavior that occurs when people believe they are in the presence of other people. |
| Social Loafing | Decrease in effort and productivity that occurs when an individual works in a group instead of alone. |
| Group Polarization | Shifts or exaggeration in group members' attitudes or behavior as a result of group discussion. |
| Groupthink | The tendency of people in a group to seek concurrence with one another when reaching a decision, rather than effectively evaluating options. |
| Deindividuation | The process by which individuals lose their self-awareness and distinctive personality in the context of a group, which may lead them to engage in antinormative behavior. |
| Aggression | Any behavior intended to harm another person or thing. |
| Prosocial Behavior | Behavior that benefits someone else or society but that generally offers no obvious benefit to the person performing it and may even involve some personal risk or sacrifice. |
| Altruism | Behaviors that benefit other people and for which there is no discernable extrinsic reward, recognition, or appreciation. |
| Sociobiology | A discipline based on the premise that even day-to-day behaviors are determined by the process of natural selection - that social behaviors that contribute to the survival of a species are passed on via the genes from one generation to the next. |
| Bystander Effect | Unwillingness to help exhibited by witnesses to an event, which increase when there are more observers. |
| Interpersonal Attraction | The tendency of one person to evaluate another person (or a symbol or image of another person) in a positive way. |
| Equity Theory | Social psychological theory that states that people attempt to maintain stable, consistent interpersonal relationships in which the ratio of member's contributions is balanced. |
| Intimacy | A state of being or feeling in which each person in a relationship is willing to self-disclose and to express important feelings and information to the other person. |
| Ex Post Facto Design | A type of design that contrasts groups of people who differ on some variable of interest to the researcher. |
| Personality | A pattern of relatively permanent traits, dispositions, or characteristics that give some consistency to people's behavior. |
| Consciousness | Freud's level of mental life that consists of those experiences that we are aware of at any given time. |
| Preconscious | Freud's level of the mind that contains those experiences that are not currently conscious but may become so with varying degrees of difficulty. |
| Unconscious | Freud's level of mental life that consists of mental activities beyond people's normal awareness. |
| Id | In Freud's theory, the source of a person's instinctual energy, which works mainly on the pleasure principle. |
| Ego | In Freud's theory, the part of personality that seeks to satisfy instinctual needs in accordance with reality. |
| Superego | In Freud's theory, the moral aspect of mental functioning comprising the ego ideal (what a person would ideally like to be) and the conscience and taught by parents and society. |
| Oral Stage | Freud's first stage of personality development, from birth to about age 2, during which the instincts of infants are focused on the mouth as the primary pleasure center. |
| Anal Stage | Freud's second stage of personality development, from about age 2 to about age 3, during which children learn to control the immediate gratification they obtain through defecation and to become responsive to the demands of society. |
| Phallic Stage | Freud's third stage of personality development, from about age 4 through age 7, during which children obtain gratification primarily from the genitals. |
| Oedipus Complex | Feelings of rivalry with the parent of the same sex and sexual desire for the parent of the other sex, occurring during the phallic stage and ultimately resolved through identification with the parent of the same sex. |
| Latency Stage | Freud's fourth stage of personality development, from about age 7 until puberty, during which sexual urges are inactive. |
| Genital Stage | Freud's last stage of personality development, from the onset of puberty through adulthood, during which the sexual conflicts of childhood resurface (at puberty) and are often resolved during adolescence). |
| Libido | In Freud's theory, the instinctual (and sexual) life force that, working on the pleasure principle and seeking immediate gratification, energizes the id. |
| Defense Mechanism | An unconscious way of reducing anxiety by distorting perceptions of reality. |
| Repression | Defense mechanism by which anxiety-provoking thoughts and feelings are forced to the unconscious. |
| Rationalization | Defense mechanism by which people reinterpret undesirable feelings or behaviors in terms that make them appear acceptable. |
| Fixation | An excessive attachment to some person or object that was appropriate only at an earlier stage of development |
| Regression | A return to a prior stage after a person has progressed through the various stages of development; caused by anxiety. |
| Projection | Defense mechanism by which people attribute their own undesirable traits to others. |
| Reaction Formation | Defense mechanism by which people behave in a way opposite to what their true but anxiety-provoking feelings would dictate. |
| Displacement | Defense mechanism by which people divert sexual or aggressive feelings for one person onto another person. |
| Denial | Defense mechanism by which people refuse to accept reality. |
| Sublimation | Defense mechanism by which people redirect socially unacceptable impulses toward acceptable goals. |
| Social Interest | In Adler's theory, a feeling of openness with all humanity. |
| Collective Unconscious | In Jung's theory, a shared storehouse of primitive ideas and images that reside in the unconscious and are inherited from one's ancestors. |
| Archetypes | In Jung's theory, the emotionally charged ideas and images that are rich in meaning and symbolism and exist within the collective unconscious. |
| Longitudinal Study | A research approach that follows a group of people over time to determine change or stability in behavior. |
| Trait | Any readily identifiable stable quality that characterizes how an individual differs from other individuals. |
| Types | Personality categories in which broad collections of traits are loosely tied together and interrelated. |
| Self-actualization | The process of growth and the realization of individual potential; in the humanistic view, a final level of psychological development in which a person attempts to minimize ill health, be fully functioning, have a superior perception of reality, and feel a strong sense of self-acceptance. |
| Fulfillment | In Roger's theory of personality, an inborn tendency directing people toward actualizing their essential nature and thus attaining their potential. |
| Self | In Roger's theory of personality, the perception an individual has of himself or herself and of his or her relationships to other people and to various aspects of life. |
| Ideal Self | In Roger's theory of personality, the self a person would ideally like to be. |
| Self-efficacy | A person's belief about whether he or she can successfully engage in and execute a specific behavior. |
| Assessment | Process of evaluating individual differences among human beings by means of tests interviews, observations, and recordings of physiological. |
| Projective Tests | Devices or instruments used to assess personality, in which examinees are shown a standard set of ambiguous stimuli and asked to respond to the stimuli in their own way. |
| Psychotherapy | The treatment of emotional or behavior problems through psychological techniques. |
| Placebo effect | A nonspecific improvement that occurs as a result of a person's expectations of change rather than as a direct result of any specific therapeutic treatment. |
| Double-blind techniques | A research technique in which neither the experimenter nor the participants know who is in the control and experimental groups. |
| Demand characteristics | Elements of an experimental situation that might cause a participant to perceive the situation in a certain way or become aware of the purpose of the study and thus bias the participant to behave in a certain way, and in so doing, distort results. |
| Psychoanalysis | A lengthy insight therapy that was developed by Freud and aims at uncovering conflicts and unconscious impulses through special techniques, including free association, dream analysis, and transference. |
| Psychodynamically | Therapies that use approaches or techniques derived from Freud, but that reject or modify some elements of Freud's theory. |
| Insight therapy | Any therapy that attempts to discover relationships between unconscious motivations and current abnormal behavior. |
| Free association | Psychoanalytic technique in which a person is asked to report to the therapist his or her thoughts and feelings as they occur, regardless of how trivial, illogical, or objectionable their content may appear. |
| Dream analysis | Psychoanalytic technique in which a patient's dreams are described in detail and interpreted so as to provide insight into the individual's unconscious motivations. |
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