GRE Psychology Book Flashcards
Bystander Effect
phenomenon where individuals do not offer help when there are several people present.
Clark Hull’s Theory of Motivation(also call Drive reduction Theory).
The reduction of drives is the primary force behind motivation.
Concurrent Validity
how well a new test compares to a well-established test
Group Cohesion
A force that brings people together
The Hawthorne Effect
developed out of the hawthrone studies which were conducted on factory workers. Researchers went into a factory and manipulated the levels of lighting to see if lighting impacted productivity. They found that productivity improved whether they turned the lights up or down which led them to believe that the workers improved simply because they knew they were being experimentally measured.
Who was the founder of classical conditioning?
John Watson
Vicarious Reinforcement
is our tendency to repeat or duplicate behaviors for which others are being rewarded, This term is associated wit h Albert Bandura
Social Facilitation Theory
also called the audience effect, is the tendency for people to perform differently when in the presence of others than when alone.
Karen Horney
developed a theory of neurosis that resulted from basic anxiety caused by interpersonal relationships.
Within-Subjects Research Design(Repeated Measures )
in which all participants are exposed to every treatment or condition.
Which neurotransmitter plays a role in Anxiety disorders??
GABA
Batson study
examined helping behavior.
Bandora’s Social Learning Theory
We learn from observing others in social contexts.
Solomon Asch
studied how individuals conform to group pressure even when no explicit demand has been made to conform
Wolfgang Kohler
studied insight learning in chimps
Time-Series Design
type of quasi experimental research where a series of periodic measurements is taken from two groups of test units (an experimental group and a control). The experimental group is exposed to a treatment and then another series of periodic measurements is taken from both groups.
The term “split brain” refers to severing the corpus callosum. This procedure is sometimes used for patient s with what disorder?
Epilepsy
Cones
found in the fovea. These are responsible for color vision and perceiving fine detail.
Between Subjects Design
an experiment that has two or more groups of subjects each being tested by a different testing factor simultaneously.
Predictive Validity
type of criterion related validity that is the extent to which a score on a scale or test predicts scores on some criterion measure.
Edward Tolman
was a behaviorist that coined the term “cognitive map”
Procedural Memory
Part of long term memory. Remembering how to perform tasks.
Verplank
his work in social psychology in the 1950s suggested that social approval influences behavior. He showed that the course of a conversation changes dramatically based on the feedback(approval) from others.
Dorothea Dix
advocated for more humane treatment for the mentally ill
What are the Gesalt laws(or principles of form)?
Law of Proximity, Law of Similarity,Law of Pragnanz(figure ground), Law of Symmetry, Law of Closure,
Foot-in-the-door effect
demonstrates a person’s willingness to comply to a large request when first presented with a small request.
James-Lange theory of emotions
A theory that people only become aware of their emotions after they notice their physiological reactions to some event.
Cross-Sectional Study
it compares different population groups at a single point in time. Think of it in terms of taking a snapshot. Findings are drawn from whatever fits into the frame.
Law of Similarity
elements will be grouped perceptually if they are similar to each other
Discriminant Validity
whether concepts or measurements that are not supposed to be related are actually unrelated.
The Garcia effect
Named after researcher John Garcia, it is basically food aversion that occurs when people attribute illness to a particular food.
Matched Subjects Design
upon matching every subject in one group with an equivalent in another. The idea behind this is that it reduces the chances of an influential variable skewing the results by negating it.
Which neurotransmitter is linked to Alzheimer’s disease?
associated with a loss of acetylcholine.
Episodic Memory
refers to memories for particular events, or episodes from personal experience.
Social Loafing
phenomenon that occurs when individuals make less of an effort when working in a group than if they were working alone
Piaget Stages of Development
Mnemonic Device: Some People can Fly! Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, Formal Operational
Fundamental Attribution Error
the tendency for individuals to to attribute other other people’s behavior to internal dispositions(personality traits) rather than to situational explanations.
Lens
lies behind the iris to help control incoming light.
Law of Proximity
posits that when we perceive a collection of objects, we will see objects close to each other as forming a group
John Bowlby
Researched children and attachment but mainly focused on children that were brought up in institutions such as orphanages.
Walter Mischel
Argued against traditional theories of personality(which state that personality is a highly consistent and stable trait regardless of situation). His research showed that an individual’s behavior was largely determined by the situation.
The fovea, the middle section of the retina, contains only which type of photoreceptor cell?
Cones
Declarative Memory
A part of long term memory that is responsible for remembering events and facts. Sometimes called fact memory, it is memory for explicit information.
Stanley Milgram
conducted the electric shock study where one ,must administer an electric shock to another participant(already a confederate) whenever that participant provided an incorrect answer to a question. Milgram found that most subjects were willing to obey the request of the researcher, even when it meant harming the other participant.
Martin Seligman
developed the theory of learned helplessness
Who published the first study of social psychology?
Norman Triplett. This study investigated the effect of competition on performance. He found that people perform better on on familiar tasks when in the presence of others than when alone.
Yerkes-Dodson Law
There is a curvilinear relationship between arousal and performance. As arousal increases, performance increases, however, if arousal increases too much performance with decrease. Curvilinear Relationship is a type of relationship between two variables where as one variable increases, so does the other variable, but only up to a certain point, after which, as one variable continues to increase, the other decreases.
Charles Spearman
was in favor of trait theories and pioneered the statistical method of factor analysis.
Jung’s Archetypes
The anima/animus, the shadow, the self, the persona
Longitudinal Study
A experimental method usually used in developmental psychology to compare the same group of individuals repeatedly over time. This type of study repeatedly measures the same participants on a particular variable over a period of time.
Convergent Validity
refers to the degree to which two measures of constructs that theoretically should be related, are in fact related.
Halo Effect
type of cognitive bias in which our overall impression of a person influences how we feel and think about his or her character. Essentially, your overall impression of a person (“He is nice!”) impacts your evaluations of that person’s specific traits (“He is also smart!”).
Margaret Ainsworth
Put children in a room and observed their reactions as the caregiver and/or strangers entered and exited in and our of the room. She found that children were either insecure/avoidant(Type A), securely attached(Type B), or insecure/resistant(Type C)
The “strange situation” was an experiment devised to examine the quality of the parent-child attachment relationship by which researcher?
Margaret Ainsworth
Which neurotransmitter plays a role in Parkinson’s disease?
Dopamine
Melanie Klein
psychoanalyst that worked with children
Case Study
experimental method used to take a very detailed look at development by studying a small number of individuals.
Rods
Located in the periphery of the retina,these are the sensory receptors for vision that work best in reduced light, and allow perception of achromatic colors(white, black and grey), have low sensitivity to detail and are not involved in color vision
Norepinephrine
is involved in controlling alertness and wakefulness and is implicated in mood disorders such as depression and mania.
What are the two components of declarative memory?
Episodic and Semantic Memory
Iconic Memory
Visual sensory memory that fades quickly.
Ganglion Cells
are nerve cells that transmit signals from the cones and are not photoreceptor cells themselves. Ganglion cells eventually group together to form the optic nerve.
Who published the first text books on social psychology?
William McDougall(a psychologist) and E.H. Ross(a sociologist) each independently published the first textbooks on social psychology.
Muzafer Sherif
studied how conformity in the autokinetic experiment where individuals rated an amount of light movement. When the same individuals rated the same movement in a group setting their rating’s changed to conform to the group’s ratings.
Which well-know critic of trait theory argued that behavior is largely determined by characteristics of the situation rather than by those of the person?
Walter Mischel
Who was the founder of operant conditioning?
B.F. Skinner
Semantic Memory
Memory for for facts and knowledge of external world, such as names of capital cities. This is the memory of general knowledge.
Which of the following mental disorders is characterized by the pervasive inability in interpersonal behavior, mood, and self image; frequently intense and unstable interpersonal relationships and often an intense fear of abandonment?
BPD
The Zeigarnik effect refers to increased recall memory in which of the following contexts?
states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.
Diana Baumrind
conducted research on parenting style and discipline
Social Exchange Theory
that social behavior is the result of an exchange process. The purpose of this exchange is to maximize benefits and minimize costs. According to this theory, developed by sociologist George Homans, people weigh the potential benefits and risks of social relationships.
Law of Pragnanz
the idea that in perceiving a visual field, some objects take a prominent role (the figures) while others recede into the background (the ground). The visual field is thus divided into these two basic parts. Pragnanz is the form that captures all other forms
Carol Gilligan
studied gender differences in morality.
Cross-Sectional Study
an experimental method used to compare different groups of individuals at different ages
