CH 1 Vocab
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23 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 applied psychology | the branch of psychology concerned with everyday, practical problems |
| behavior | any overt (observable) response or activity by an organism |
| behaviorism | a theoretical orientaion based on the premise that scientific psychology should study only observable behavior |
| clinical psychology | the branch of psychology concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of psychological problems and disorders |
| cognition | the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge |
| critical thinking | the use of cognitive skills and strategies that increase the probability of a desired outcome |
| culture | the widely shared customs, beliefs, values, norms, institutions, and other products of a community that are transmitted socially across generations |
| empiricism | the premise that knowledge should be acquired through observation |
| ethnocentrism | the tendency to view one's own group as superior to others and as the standard for judging the worth of foreign ways |
| evolutionary psychology | theoretical perspective that examines behaioral processes in terms of their adaptive value for a species over the course of many generations |
| functionalism | a school of psychology based on the belief that psychology should investigate the function or purpose of consciousness, rather than its structure |
| humanism | a theoretical orientation that emphasizes the unique qualities of humans, especially their freedom and their potential for personal growth |
| introspection | careful, systematic observation of one's own conscious experience |
| natural selection | principle stating that heritable charcteristics that provide a survival reproductive advantage are more likely that alternative characteristics to be passed on to subsequent generations and come to be "selected" over time |
| positive psychology | approach to psychology that uses theory and research to better understand the positive, adaptive, creative, and fulfilling aspects of human existence |
| psychiatry | a branch of medicine concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of psychological problems and disorders |
| psychoanalytic theory | a theory developed by Freud that attempts to explain personality, motivation, and mental disorders by focusing on unconscious determinants of behavior |
| psychology | the science that studies behavior and the physiological and cognitive processes that underlie it, and the profession that applies the accumulated knowledge of this science to practical problems |
| SQR3 | a study system designed to promote effective reading by means of five steps: survey, question, read, recite, and review |
| structuralism | a school of psychology based on the notion that the task of psychology is to analyze consciousness into its basic elements and to investigate how these elements are related |
| testwiseness | the ability to use the characteristics and format of a cognitive test to maximize one's score |
| theory | a system of interrelated ideas that is used to explain a set of observations |
| unconscious | according to Freud, thoughts, memories, and desires that are well below the surface of conscious awareness but that nonetheless exert great influence on behavior |
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