Foundations: History Flashcards
Psychology
The study of behavior and the mind
Behavior
Observable actions of a person or an animal
Mind
The sensations, memories, motives, emotions, thoughts, and other subjected phenomena particular to an individual or animal that are not readily observed
Dualism
Divides the world and all things in it into two parts: body and spirt
Brain
Command center of the central nervous system
Empiricism
The acquisition of truth through observing and experiences
Tabula rasa (blank slate)
Humans are born knowing nothing
Materialism
The belief that only things that exist are matter and energy
Natural selection
All creatures have evolved into their present state over long periods of time
Structuralism
Looking for patters in thought, which are illuminated through interviews with a subject describing his or her conscious experience
Functionalism
Seeks to understand how the mind functions
Biological psychology approach
Field of psychology that seeks to understand the interactions between anatomy/physiology and behavior
Behavior genetics approach
The field of psychology that explores how particular behaviors may be attributed to specific, genetically based psychological characteristics
Behavioralist approach
Psychology is the study of behavior
Classical conditioning
Basic form of learning in which a behavior comes to be elicited by a formerly neutral stimulus
Operant conditioning
Subjects learn to associate a behavior with an environmental outcome
Cognitive approach
The idea that to understand people’s behavior, we must first understand how they think
Humanistic approach
The philosophical tradition of studying the roles of consciousness, free will, and awareness of the human condition
Self-actualization
The news for individuals to reach their full potential in a creative way
Psychoanalytic/psychodynamic approach
Our behaviors and mental processes are influenced by our past experiences
Sociocultural approach
The environment a person lives in has a great deal to do with how the person behaves and how other perceive that behavior
Evolutionary approach
Behavior can be explained in terms of how adaptive that behavior is to our survival
Biopsychosocial approach
Emphasizes the need to investigate the interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors in contributing to a behavior or a mental process
