Psych chapter 1
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18 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 psychology | the scientific study of mind and behavior |
| data | any information collected by formal observation or measurement |
| hindsight bias | tendency to think that something that has already occurred (normally unpredictable) would be predictable |
| scientific method | set of assumptions, rules, and procedures that scientists use to conduct empirical research |
| levels of explanation | perspectives used to understand behavior. lower levels = biological influences (genes, neurons, neurotransmitters); middle levels = abilities and characteristics of individuals; highest levels = social groups, organizations, and cultures |
| individual differences | variations among people on physical or psychological dimensions |
| structuralism | uses introspection to identify basic "structures" of psychological experience (Wilhelm Wundt, Edward B. Titchener) |
| functionalism | attempts to understand why humans and animals have developed the particular psychological aspects that they currently possess (William James) |
| psychodynamic | focuses on the role of unconscious thoughts, feelings, memories, early childhood experiences in determining behavior (Freud, Jung, Adler, Erikson) |
| behaviorism | based on the premise that it is impossible to objectively study the mind and therefore psychologists should only study the behavior itself (John B. Watson, B.F. Skinner) |
| cognitive | the study of mental processes, including perception, thinking, memory, and judgments (Herman Ebbinghaus, Piaget) |
| social-cultural | the study of how the social situations and cultures people find themselves in influence thinking and behavior (Fritz Heider, Leon Festinger, Stanly Schachter) |
| nature vs. nurture | whether genes or environment play a bigger role in human psychological development |
| heritability | proportion of the observed differences on characteristics among people (ex: height, intelligence, optimism) that is due to genetics |
| free will vs. determinism | how much control people have over their actions--product of environment or able to choose? |
| accuracy vs. inaccuracy | human judgment can be compromised by inaccuracies in thinking styles and by motivations and emotions |
| conscious vs. unconscious processing | lots of psychological theory based on the idea that we are unaware of the motivations for our behavior |
| differences vs. similarities | are our basic personalities mostly different, or mostly similar? influenced by backgrounds and environments in different ways? |
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