Human Development, Diversity, and Behavior in the Environment Flashcards
Wilhelm Wundt: Structuralism
Analyzed the human mind by a process termed Introspection. He believed that there are basic elements, or structures, which constitute the mind
and that consciousness could be broken down into elements of sensations and feelings. He believed that when confronted with an experience an individual’s emotions emerge first and then the individual cognitively understands the experience and reacts behaviorally
William James: Functionalism
Believed function of consciousness was more adaptive than the structure of consciousness. Unlike Wundt, James believed that humans
first experience a situation and then the emotional reaction occurs. He believed that human mental states (thoughts and behaviors) arise because of their functional role in adaptation to the individual’s environment.
Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalytic Theory
Freud believed that psychoanalysis seeks to relieve the person of neuroses (distressing psychological disorders that are not associated with an extreme distortion of reality) via the use of free association and dream analysis to uncover repressed conflicts that are, subsequently, re-lived on an emotional and intellectual level. This process continues until a mature understanding is achieved and integrated in new form into the personality
Conscious
mental activities that we are fully aware of
Preconscious
feelings, thoughts, and ideas of which we are not currently aware, but can bring to our awareness relatively easily.
Unconscious
feelings, thoughts memories, and desires of which we are unaware=
ID
It is the unconscious and includes everything inherited, including instincts. It operates upon the pleasure principle and seeks immediate gratification of instinctual urges with no regard for anything or anyone else. A newborn is seen as “id” and only has a desire to
satisfy its needs
EGO
The development of the ego is intertwined with the psychosexual development of the child. The ego operates on the reality principle and is aware of the individual’s needs, as well as the realities of the real world. The ego seeks to gain gratification of these needs in a socially acceptable manner. The ego has defenses designed to keep the anxiety level of the individual to a manageable level by keeping anxiety-producing impulses out of consciousness. These defenses can be adaptive since they maintain the stability of the personality by keeping the individual from being overwhelmed by anxiety and stress
Superego
child adopts values form his or her environment and a belief about what constitutes good and bad.
Alfred Adler: Individual Psychology
theories include personality development, importance of birth order, self-image, and methods of psychoanalysis.
Alfred Adlers personality Development
Human beings begin in a state of inadequacy or inferiority, human beings have a basic drive toward self-actualization or superiority, an individual must be seen in relation to his environment and is not composed of an id, ego, and superego, an individual’s degree of functioning successfully in groups is the primary indicator of an individual’s wellness, birth order of a child, physical problems, pampering, and neglect all have a significant impact on the development of personality, children develop a self-image or “fiction” about themselves, which influences how children interpret and respond to events in their lives.
Methods of Psychoanalysis
clinicians task is to help an individual identify dysfunctional “fictions” and and to develop a new more positive self-image and life goals.
John Watson: Behaviorism
“little albert” stimulus-response conditioning.
Ivan pavlov- classical conditioning
Pairing conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus to form a conditioned response
Unconditioned Stimulus
stimulus that innately evokes a response in the organism
Unconditioned Response
is an innate response to a stimulus
Conditioned Stimulus
a stimulus that does not innately evoke a response in an organism but that the organism learns to respond to because it has been paired with an unconditioned stimulus in the past
Conditioned Response
the organism’s learned response to a conditioned stimulus
Jean Piaget: Cognitive Development
A child’s cognitive ability develop over time, she divided them into 4 stages. Sensorimotor, Pre-operational, concrete operations, and formal operations
Sensorimotor
Occurs birth- 2years. During this stage, an infant’s knowledge
of the world is limited to his or her sensory perceptions and motor activities. The child
has simple motor responses to sensory stimuli. Children utilize skills and abilities from
infancy (such as looking, sucking, grasping, and listening) to learn more about the
environment. This stage consists of six sub-stages that are the precursors of
intelligence. The sub-stages include reflex actions, primary repetitive actions,
secondary repetitive actions, coordinating secondary schemes, experimentation, and
mental combinations
Pre-operational
2-7 years. In this stage, children use new abilities to
represent objects in a wide variety of activities, but not in an organized, fully logical
fashion. This stage involves children using objects to represent something in a play
and/or pretend manner. For example, a child uses an object to represent something
else, such as pretending a box is a car or a banana is a phone.
Concrete Operations
7-11 years. This may be the highest level of
cognitive development attained. During this stage, children begin thinking logically
and are able to utilize their new cognitive skills of reversibility and de-centration
to think about the steps of a process in any order. They understand that if they pour
water from a wide glass to a tall, thin glass the amount of water stays the same.
Formal Operations
11- adulthood. The
young person now has the ability to reason not only about tangible objects and events,
but also about hypothetical or abstract ones. They utilize rational thinking and abstract
reasoning. This is the highest stage of cognitive development and is rarely achieved.
Lev Yvgotsky: Child Development
Lev Vygotsky proposed ideas of human development (largely focused on child development) with relation to how children learn. He believed that the development of individuals does not occur in stages but proceeds in a more complex and continuous process.
Zone of Proximal Development
the range of tasks that an individual can complete while learning new information
Scaffolding
an experienced adult providing more help to a child who is attempting a difficult task and then less help and support as the task becomes easier for the child
The Learning Process in Children (Lev Yvgotsky)
Culture and social environment provide guidance and support in the learning process.
Human behavior is not exclusively regulated by stimulus and response conditions. The child’s learning process consists of parents, teachers, and other significant persons of influence providing support tools through modeling, questioning, prompting, ans suggesting strategies in children so that they are able to accomplish tasks that they may not be able to accomplish on their own.
Child’s use of language
enables the child to more readily form concepts and, therefore, to engage in the thinking process. Language is also vital to the transmission of culture, voluntary self-regulation, and the thinking process.
Kurt Lewin: Social Psychology
both nature (inborn tendencies) and nurture (environmental experiences) interact in the shaping of individuals. His theory was, at the time, contradictory to other theorists who had explained an individual’s current behavior in terms of that individual’s past.
Force Field Analysis
focused on identifying “helping forces” which drive people towards a goals, and hindering forces, which block movement toward a goal
Leadership Climates
Three styles of leadership usually associated with groups or management. Authoritarian, Democratic, Laissez-faire
Anna Freud: Ego Defense Mechanisms
unconscious strategies used by the ego to minimize distress caused by the conflicting demands of the id and superego. A mature ego typically meets these conflicting demands through a process of acknowledging the demands and developing a way of
meeting these challenges as much as possible. An immature ego is more apt to resort to the frequent use of defense mechanisms, which involves self-deception and deception to others
Compensation
is the seeking of success in one area of life as a substitute for success
in another area of life that has been limited because of personal or environmental
barriers
Conversion
the transformation of anxiety into a physical dysfunction which does not have a physiological basis.
Denial
refusal to acknowledge an aspect of reality, including one’s own experience, because to do so would result in overwhelming anxiety.
Displacement
shifting of negative feelings one has about a person or situation onto a different person or situation.
Identification
mechanism by which anxiety is handled through identifying with the person or thing producing the anxiety, such as “identifying with a kidnapper.”
Isolation of Affect
mechanism by which painful feelings are separated from the incident that triggered them initially
Projection
mechanism by which one’s own negative characteristics are denied and instead seen as being characteristics of someone else.
Rationalization
mechanism by which a person substitutes a more socially acceptable, logical reason for an action rather than identifying the real motivation.
Reaction Formation
adopting a behavior that is the antithesis of the instinctual urge
Regression
unconscious pushing of anxiety-producing thoughts and issues out of the conscious and into the unconscious.
SUblimation
mechanism by which intolerable drives or desires are diverted into activities that are acceptable.
Substitution
mechanism by which a person replaces an unacceptable goal with an acceptable one
Undoing
mechanism by which an individual engages in a repetition ritual in an attempt to reverse an unacceptable action previously taken
Acting out
mechanism that allows an individual to deal with emotional conflict or stress by exhibiting observable behavior rather than by merely feeling or reflecting.
Affiliation
mechanism utilized when an individual shares with others his or her emotional conflict or stress to elicit support or help rather than trying to place the responsibility on someone else.
Aim Inhibition
mechanism that is utilized when an individual places a limit on his or her instinctual demands and accepts a modified fulfillment of goals or desires
Altruism
mechanism that is seen when an individual deals with his or her emotional conflict or stress by selflessly dedicating his or her life to meeting the needs of others, thereby receiving vicarious gratification.
Anticipation
mechanism that is utilized when dan individual deals with anxiety by “practicing” his or her emotional reactions to an anticipated future event and by considering the responses or solutions that he or she may utilize to deal with that event.
Autistic Fantasy
mechanism by which an individual daydreams excessively as a substitute for real action.
Avoidance
mechanism that is reflected in an individual’s refusal to participate in activities or encounter situations or objects that represent unconscious, aggressive or sexual impulses and the possibility of punishment for those impulses.
Deflection
refers to a group member who redirects attention away from themself and on to another group member.
Devaluation
mechanism whereby an individual deals with his or her emotional conflict or stress by attributing negative qualities to him or herself or to others
Dissociation
mechanism of compartmentalization, or separating of activities or thoughts from the main portion of one’s consciousness.
Fixation
interruption of normal personality development at a stage short of mature independence.
Help-rejecting complaining
mechanism whereby an individual deals with their emotional conflict or stress by asking for help and then rejecting the help that is given.
Humor
mechanism by which an individual deals with his or her own emotional conflict or stress by pointing out amusing aspects of the stress.
Idealization
process of over-estimating the desirable qualities and underestimating the limitations of something that is important to the individual.
Imitation
unconscious and conscious modeling of another person’s behavior or style, but often in a less intense or complete manner than would be seen in pathological identification.
Incorporation
one of the earliest mechanisms used in the developmental process whereby a child, through the process of observation, assimilates into his or her own ego and superego the values, attitudes, and preferences of the parents.
Introjection
mechanism of unconsciously incorporating ideas, attributes, or mental images into one’s own personality.
Isolation
mechanism whereby and individual is able to split off emotional components from a thought or experience.
Omnipotence
individual dealing with their own emotional stress by feeling or acting in a superior manor
Passive Aggression
mechanism by which an individual expresses aggression towards another person in an indirect and unassertive manner, which, in turn, gives the agitator the opportunity to avoid the emotional stress related to dealing with the other person’s reaction.
