gre practice test 1 Flashcards
Big Five
factor analyticial distillation of Catell’s 16-PF.
Extroversion Openness to Experience conscientiousness agreeableness neuroticism
Hans Eysneck
Psychoticism/extroversion
Related to Big Five
On Genetics and Personality: “the whole course of development of a child’s intellectual capabilities is largely laid down genetically, and even extreme environmental changes . . . have little power to alter this development”
Sensation Seeking Scale
Ralph Turner & Lewis Killian
crowds begin as collectivities composed of people with mixed interests and motives.
Hall
concept of personal space is a concept of territoriality of protecting one’s personal turf
Prosody
refers to the stress or rhym of speech, not readily captured by orthography
Primacy Effect
refers to one part of the serial position curve and is thought to reflect retrieval of well reheared items from LTM.
Law of Specific Nerve Energies
Johannes Mueller
a receptor’s capability to give only one quality of experience (auditory for example) regardless of hot it is stimulated
Law of Parsimony or Occam’s Razor or Morgan’s Cannont
the scientific principle that things are usually connected or behave in the simplest or most economical way, especially with reference to alternative evolutionary pathways.
Law of Phylogeny
caused by a particular series of evolutionary steps
Law of tropisms
Loeb
idiographic approach to personality
people have unique personality structures; thus some traits (cardinal traits) are more important in understanding the structure of some people than others
Idiographic view emphasizes that each person has a unique psychological structure and that some traits are possessed by only one person; and that there are times when it is impossible to compare one person with others. This viewpoint also emphasizes that traits may differ in importance from person to person (cardinal, central and secondary traits). It tends to use case studies, bibliographical information, diaries etc for information gathering.
Nomothetic approach to personality
people’s unique personalities can be understood as them having relatively greater or lesser amounts of traits that are consistently across people (e.g., the NEO is nomothetic)
The Nomothetic view, on the other hand, emphasizes comparability among individuals but sees people as unique in their combination of traits. This viewpoint sees traits as having the same psychological meaning in everyone. The belief is that people differ only in the amount of each trait. It is this which constitutes their uniqueness. This approach tends to use self-report personality questions, factor analysis etc. People differ in their positions along a continuum in the same set of traits.
Freud’s view of personality is
nomethetic
Adler’s individual psychology approach is
idiographic
Gestalt therapy focuses on
the individual uniqueness
Viktor Frankl
founder of logo therapy, a form of existential analysis, Focuses on Kierkegaard’s will to meaning as opposed to Adler’s Nietzchean doctrine of will to power or Freud’s will to pleasure.
Logo therapy
logotherapy is founded upon the belief that it is the striving to find a meaning in one’s life that is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans
Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones.
Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.
We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we experience, or at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering
Adler’s Individual psychology
His method involved a holistic approach to the study of character. Adler said that one must take into account the patient’s whole environment, including the people the patient associates with. The term Individual is used to mean the patient is an indivisible whole.
Adler shifted the grounds of psychological determinance from sex and libido, the Freudian standpoint, to one based on the individual evaluation of world. He gave special prominence to societal factors. According to him a person has to combat or confront three forces: societal, love-related, and vocational forces. These confrontations determine the final nature of a personality. Adler based his theories on the pre-adulthood development of a person. He laid stress on such areas as hated children, physical deformities at birth, birth order, etc.
Adlerian psychology shows parallels with the humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow, who acknowledged Adler’s influence on his own theories. Both individual psychology and humanistic psychology hold that the individual human being is the best determinant of his or her own needs, desires, interests, and growth.
Environment is immensely important (compensation, resignation, over-compensation).
Alfred Adler’s inferiority complex
Adler emphasized the importance of equality in preventing various forms of psychopathology, and espoused the development of social interest and democratic family structures for raising children.[14] His most famous concept is the inferiority complex which speaks to the problem of self-esteem and its negative effects on human health (e.g. sometimes producing a paradoxical superiority striving). His emphasis on power dynamics is rooted in the philosophy of Nietzsche, whose works were published a few decades before Adler’s. However, Adler’s conceptualization of the “Will to Power” focuses on the individual’s creative power to change for the better.
Tolman’s Latent learning (Stimulus-Stimulus) which would later rival Clark Hull’s reinforcement-driven views (Stimulus-Reinforcement)
he drew on Gestalt psychology to argue that animals could learn the connections between stimuli and did not need any explicit biologically significant event to make learning occur.
Gestalt Psychology opposed Structuralism
The whole is OTHER than the sum of its parts.
is a theory of mind Berlin school of experimental psychology.
Gestalt psychology tries to understand the laws of our ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world. The central principle of gestalt psychology is that the mind forms a global whole with self-organizing tendencies. This principle maintains that when the human mind (perceptual system) forms a percept or gestalt, the whole has a reality of its own, independent of the parts. The original famous phrase of Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka, “The whole is other than the sum of the parts” is often incorrectly translated
Max Wertheimer
One of the three FOUNDERS OF GESTALT psychology along with Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Köhler.
Investigated the Phi Phenomenon
Phi Phenomenon
phi phenomenon is apparent movement caused by alternating light positions. Wertheimer illustrated this phenomenon on an apparatus he built that utilized two discrete lights on different locations. Although the lights are stationary, flashing the lights at succeeding time intervals causes the retina to perceive the light as moving.
Wolfgang Köhler
one of the three FOUNDERS OF GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY. Worked with Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka. Collaborated on the new holistic attitude towards psychology.
Köhler’s work on INSIGHT in chimps is seen as a turning point in the psychology of thinking. He CRITICIZED the concepts of INTROSPECTION (structuralism).
Köhler was against BEHAVIORISM
Kurt Koffka
one of the three FOUNDERS of GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY along with Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler.
Fritz Perls
He coined the term Gestalt Therapy to identify the form of psychotherapy that he developed with his wife. The core if enhanced awareness of sensation, perception, bodily feelings, emotion, and behavior in the present moment. Relationship is emphasized along with contact between the self, it’s environment and the other.
Findings on stress and pregnancy
Positive correlations between amount of maternal stress during pregnancy and fetal activity
Analogical mental imagery
the analog side thinks mental images are inner pictures
evidence from mental rotation studies
Moro Reflex
spreading out arms, unspreading arms
babinski reflex
spreading out toes when for is stroked
rooting effect
search for a nipple, is prompted by tactile stimulation of a newborn’s cheek
ochlophobia
extreme of irrational fear of or aversion to crowds
the primary colors of additive mixing are
blue
green
red
the primary colors of substrative color mixing are
blue
YELLOW
red
Timbre and loudness are used to determine the distance of a sound
timbre= sound wave complexity
loudness=sound wave amplitude
Newborn habituation speed may indicate
brightness among those that are fast habituators
The rule of thirds among schizophrenia patients refers to
one third of patients will receive treatment and function normally; one third will be in and out of treatment throughout their lives; one third will never be able to leave treatment
Ethology
a central topic in ethology is the documentation of species-specific instinctual behaviors, functional fixedness, and releasing stimuli
Clark Hull
Organisms suffer deprivation; deprivation creates needs; needs activate drives; drives activate behavior; behavior is goal directed; achieving the goal has survival value.
In his book, Principles of Behavior, he developed the following formula:
SER is excitatory potential (likelihood that the organism would produce response r to stimulus s),
SHR is the habit strength (derived from previous conditioning trials),
D is drive strength (determined by, e.g., the hours of deprivation of food, water, etc.),
V is stimulus intensity dynamism (some stimuli will have greater influences than others, such as the lighting of a situation),
and K is incentive (how appealing the result of the action is)
A political gathering precedes election night by two months. Given a choice of speaking positions on the program a political candidate would be wise to choose to be
1) the first speaker
If the debate preceded the election by a shorter time span, (1 night), then last would be best.
Sleepwalking and sleepwalking occur primarily during
Stage III and IV sleep; during REM Sleep, the sleeper is totally immobile
Alzheimer’s disease indicates a deficiency in the neurotransmitter
acetylcholine
The newborn has a well-developed
immunity to various infections that wears off after 6 months of life
Motor primacy principle
maturation of neuromuscular structures to a given stage precedes the ability to respond
The newborn has the capability
for basic learning
Effector
any muscle, gland, or organ that can respond to stimulation from the nervous system
Function words
of
the
this
Prepositions
locations in time and space:
in, at, on, before, until, throughout, towards, against, without, past
Acromegaly
caused by overproduction of growth hormone by the pituitary glands
Von Restorff Effect
describes the finding that items that are distinctive or in some way stand out from the others are more likely to be remembered
hippocampus is where?
temporal lobe
Ego
reality principle: seeks to please the id’s drive in realistic ways that will benefit in the long term than than bring grief.
super-ego
reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly taught by parents , good and proper
Paivio’s dual coding theory
idea that the formation of mental images aids in learning. 1) verbal associations and visual imagery. both visual and verbal information are used to represent information.
Presented with stimulus word “Dog” person could either retrieve the concept of dog as both the word dog and as the image of dog.
What has been found within decentralized work forces?
increased worker productivity
Proxemics
study of personal, territorial space.
two types of errors important in SIGNAL DETECTION THEORY:
1) misses (not detecting something that is present)
2) false alarms (reporting the detection of something that is not actually present)
active outgoing socially assertive child is most likely to have come from a family background that has been
warm and permissive or warm and authoritative
A three year old is proficient in distinguishing letters that are
close to each other (O vs. C)
Weber-Fechner Law
Law quantifying the perception of change in a given stimulus. The law states that the change in a stimulus that will be just noticeable is a constant ratio of the original stimulus.
engram
is a memory trace, often used in reference to neural representation of learned information. Karl Lashley concluded that there were no localizable memory traces in the cortex
Zeigarnik Effect
described heightened memory for interrupted events. Waiters have memory for unpaid bills for example.
Alpha Value vs. P-Value
Alpha sets the standard for how extreme the data must be before we can reject the null hypothesis. The p-value indicates how extreme the data are. We compare the p-value with the alpha to determine whether the observed data are statistically significantly different from the null hypothesis:
Type I Error
reject the null hypothesis when it is actually true
Type II Error
accept the null hypothesis when it is actually false
George Sperling used the ____________ to demonstrate that larger amount of visual information can be stored for only a fraction of a second in a __________.
partial-report procedure; sensory register
“iconic memory”
Temporal conditioning
a process in Pavlovian conditioning wherein the unconditioned stimulant is shown at regular intervals, but not being joined by any conditioned stimulant.
Simultaneous conditioning: Bell rings at same time as food is presented.
Backward conditioning: food is presented then bell rings (works somewhat for inhibitory conditioning–removal of a response)
Ventricular system
provides brain and spinal cord with cerebrospinal fluid
Sir Frederic Bartlett
schema-consistent distortion
Breast Feeding is most prevalent among
middle class well-educated mothers
Name Kohlberg’s stages of moral development
Level 1 (Pre-Conventional) 1. Obedience and punishment orientation (How can I avoid punishment?) 2. Self-interest orientation (What's in it for me?) (Paying for a benefit);
Level 2 (Conventional) 3. Interpersonal accord and conformity (Social norms) (The good boy/girl attitude) 4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation (Law and order morality)
Level 3 (Post-Conventional)
5. Social contract orientation
6. Universal ethical principles
(Principled conscience)
Walter Mischel criticizes personality tests as having low predictive validity because
he claims that a given situation’s demands are greater determinants of a person’s behavior than his or her personality
Functional distance
the degree to which an arrangement of residential faculties will influence the probability of any unplanned social interactions by the residents.
Guttman Scale
is associated with unidimensionality. he did not believe it was being attained in other scales
Bogardus Scale
is always social distance in the context of admitting specific groups’ to one’s country, place of work, neighborhood, and family for example
osgood Scale
semantic differential scale always used bipolar adjectives.
milieu therapy
family close associated, natural setting become parts of the therapeutic process
the term one-way design means that
one variable is being manipulated
conducting multiple t-tests instead of ANOVA risks
a major increase in alpha level (.05 to .40) increases chance of spurious significant findings
Winch’s complementarity model
complementarity hypothesis The literature on small-group formation contains two major hypotheses about the determinants of attraction between individuals. The first of these—the similarity thesis—suggests that people are drawn together because of similarities in their personal characteristics (attitudes, ages, interests and so forth). Theodore M. Newcomb’s study of friendship formation at college (The Acquaintance Process, 1961) supports this view. The second hypothesis maintains that interpersonal attraction takes place on the grounds of complementarity of characteristics between individuals. For example, Robert Francis Winch’s investigation of married couples (Mate-Selection: A Study of Complementary Needs, 1958) suggested that ‘social needs’ (such as deference, aggressiveness, and exhibitionism) should be complementary rather than similar, if marriages were to work. If one partner was low in a particular attribute then the other should be high. Furthermore, certain combinations of attributes were favoured, such as high deference and high dominance. Later modifications of this thesis took into account additional variables (such as mutual gratification of social needs and the social context of relationships).
Festinger’s social comparison group
centers on the belief that there is a drive within individuals to gain accurate self-evaluations. How individuals evaluate their own opinion and abilities by comparing themselves to others in order to reduce uncertainty in these domains and learn how to define the self.
Aronson’s gain-loss model
It refers to a theory which states that people are attracted to those who will provide them with the greater gain and not to those who will provide them with the greater loss. T-
Gergen’s behavior exchange model
sees interactions in the context of reward/cost. when cost outruns reward a given dyadic relationship will likely weaken or end.
Type v. phenomenological theories of personality
Type: hippocrates humors and sheldon’s body type
phenomenological: carl roger’s focus on the subjective experience of existence
Eysneck
Hans Eysenck claimed that personality could be described based on three fundamental factors:
psychoticism (such antisocial traits as cruelty and rejection of social customs),
introversion-extroversion, and
emotionality-stability (also called neuroticism).
