End of year psych exam Flashcards
Person perception?
Refers to the mental processes we
use to think about and evaluate other people.
Independent variables?
What is changed
Dependent variables?
What is measured
Attribution?
The process by which we explain the
cause of our own or another person’s behaviour.
Internal attribution?
An explanation due to the
characteristics of the person involved, such as their personality and mood.
External attribution?
An explanation of
behaviour due to factors associated with the situation the person is in.
Attitude?
An opinion towards something
Tricomponent model of attitudes?
Proposes that any attitude has three related components — the affective, behavioural and
cognitive components
Ingroup?
A group you are a part of
Outgroup?
A group you are not a part of
Stigma?
Refers to the negative attitudes and beliefs held in the wider community that lead people to fear, exclude, avoid or unfairly discriminate against
people with a disorder
Prejudice?
Judgement before experience
Discrimination?
When a person or a social
group is treated differently than others.
Stereotype?
A generalisation about the personal characteristics of the members of a social group.
Cognitive bias?
Impacts on our judgments and leads to mistaken
attributions.
Halo effect?
The tendency to allow
our overall positive impression of a person, or our positive impression of a specific quality, to influence our beliefs and expectations about the person in other qualities.
Confirmation bias?
The tendency to seek, recall or interpret information in a way that confirms existing beliefs or expectations, while dismissing or failing to seek contradictory evidence
False-consensus bias?
The tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people are like them in terms of sharing beliefs, personal characteristics or behaviours.
Actor-observer bias?
Our tendency to attribute
our own behaviour to external or situational factors, yet
attribute others’ behaviour to internal factors
Self-serving bias?
When judging ourselves we tend to take the credit
for our successes and deny responsibility for failure,
which is blamed on external, situational factors
Dunning-Kruger effect?
A type of cognitive
bias whereby people overestimate their knowledge or ability, particularly in areas with which they have little to no knowledge or experience.
What is a heuristic?
A strategy for solving a problem or making a decision that is based on experience with similar types of problems but cannot guarantee a correct outcome.
Availability heuristic?
Involves making a
judgment based on how easy or difficult it is
to bring specific examples to mind.
Representative heuristic?
Involves categorising a person, object, event or anything else by judging how closely it matches our idea of a typical member of the category.
The affect heuristic?
Involves making a judgment that is
influenced by the emotion being experienced at the time.
Selective attention?
Involves choosing and attending to
a specific stimulus whilst at the same time excluding
other stimuli.
Divided attention?
The ability to distribute
our attention so that two or more activities may
be performed simultaneously
Top-down processing?
Info processing where psychological, social, and contextual info is applied and influences the perception of stimuli
Bottom-up processing?
Info processing where perceptual experiences are created by building larger wholes from minute aspects of sensory data (slower)
Gestalt principles?
Figure-ground
Proximity
Closure
Similarity
Figure ground?
Figure–ground organisation is generally achieved when we separate the figure from the ground using a line or boundary between the figure and ground, which may or may not exist in the scene.
Closure
Closure is the perceptual tendency to mentally ‘close
up’, fill in or ignore gaps in a visual image and to
perceive incomplete objects as complete (‘whole’).
Similarity
The tendency to
perceive parts of a visual stimulus that have similar
features — such as size, shape, texture or colour —
as belonging together in a unit, group or ‘whole’.
Proximity
The tendency to perceive parts of a visual image
which are positioned close together as belonging
together in a group.
Perception
The process by which we interpret and give meaning to sensory information.
Supertaster?
People who inherit an unusually high number
of taste buds and experience taste differently
Agnosia?
Characterised by loss or impairment
of the ability to recognise and identify objects,
persons, sounds or other sensory stimuli using one
or more of the senses despite otherwise normally
functioning senses.
Spatial neglect?
A neurological disorder whereby individuals are unable to notice anything either on their left or right side even though there may be no sensory loss. They tend to behave as if that one side of their world does not exist.
Retinal disparity?
Our eyes are about 6 or 7 centimetres apart,
each retina receives a slightly different image due
to the different angle of view from each eye.
Convergence?
Eyes turning inwards to focus on close objects.
Accommodation?
Involves changing a pre-existing mental idea in order to fit new information.
Linear perspective?
The apparent
convergence of actual or imagined parallel lines as
they go back into the distance
Interposition?
When one object partially blocks or covers another, and the partially blocked object is perceived as further away
Texture gradient?
The gradual reduction of the detail that occurs in an object or surface as it recedes into the distance
Relative size?
The tendency to visually
perceive the object that produces the largest image
on the retina as being closer, and the object that
produces the smallest image on the retina as being further away
Height in visual field?
The closer something is to the horizon, the further away we perceive it as
Perceptual set?
A temporary readiness to perceive something in accordance with what we expect it to be.
Synesthesia?
Experience the perception of flavor differently from other participants as one stimulus could activate sensory systems
