Human Growth and Development Flashcards
Define Repression
Repression—to push aside unwanted or painful thoughts, feelings, or experiences involuntarily. Repression operates on a primarily unconscious level.
Example: People who may have experienced trauma may repress memories in order to cope with the horror.
Define Denial
Denial—to ignore, turn away from, or refuse to acknowledge painful realities that others can detect. Denial may occur at preconscious or conscious levels as well.
Example: A doctor has become addicted to alcohol and other drugs. Although she is late for work or absent regularly and she has been performing poorly, she does not see a problem.
Define Sublimation
Sublimation—to channel energy from unwanted or unacceptable impulses into more socially appropriate avenues.
Example: People engage in sports or physical activities to discharge aggressive urges.
Define Projection
Projection—to attribute one’s own unacceptable desires, behaviors, thoughts, feelings, etc. to others and not to oneself.
Example: One may criticize coworkers for being stingy with a lunch bill but then fail to chip in regularly or consistently tip poorly.
Define Reaction Formation
Reaction Formation—to express the opposite impulse in an effort to conceal one’s true stance. This commonly occurs with repression.
Example: People may devote their lives to promoting the sanctity of marriage, but then engage in multiple extramarital affairs.
Define Displacement
Displacement—to redirect one’s feelings or responses from one object toward a safer target when the original object is inaccessible.
Example: Before work, a man has a fight with his partner. When he arrives, he yells at his subordinate.
Define Rationalization
Rationalization—to make excuses for one’s impulses to provide reassurance and offer incorrect explanations.
Example: In order to cope with not getting the desired grade on an assignment, a student starts to believe that the teacher is unfair and that the grade does not matter.
Define introjection
Introjection—to accept the values and standards of others without question, critique, or analysis.
Example: A child may espouse and articulate a caregiver’s exact political beliefs.
Define Compensation
Compensation—to conceal perceived limitations by developing strengths elsewhere.
Example: Individuals who may not possess physical characteristics deemed “ideal” by society may focus on and excel at academics and school.
Define Acting Out
Acting Out—to deal with emotional conflicts with actions rather than by reflecting or being open to feelings.
Example: Children may throw or break things when their caregivers are fighting.
Define Splitting
Splitting—to fail to integrate positive and negative aspects of self or others, resulting in imbalanced vacillation between polar opposites.
Example: People may view others as “all good” or “all bad” but then go back and forth between idealizing others and devaluing them.
Define Dualism (William Perry)
Dualism- refers to polaristic thinking (e.g., good or bad, right or wrong) and the existence of absolute truth.
Dualistic thinkers rely on authorities, such as teachers and religious leaders, to provide this absolute knowledge and truth. Often hold rigid worldviews that are dictated by black-and-white rules.
Define Relativism (William Perry)
Relativism refers to a significant cognitive shift in recognizing that whether something is right or wrong depends on the situation, and truth exists in a specific context.
Individuals also begin to recognize the importance of making personal commitments in an ambiguous world as opposed to following authority.
Define Multiplicity (William Perry)
Multiplicity marks the transition from dualistic to more relativistic thinking. Individuals in this stage realize the legitimacy of multiple viewpoints and no longer believe authorities hold absolute truth.
Define Commitment to Relativism
Commitment to Relativism refers to the process of choosing and adhering to personal commitments; this is Perry’s highest level of development. During this stage, individuals are able to commit to certain worldviews, while maintaining a sense of awareness and respect for divergent viewpoints. Those in this stage also attempt to balance their personal commitments with societal responsibilities.
Define Oedipus & Electra Complex
Girls unconsciously yearn for their fathers (i.e., the Electra complex) and boys unconsciously yearn for their mothers (i.e., the Oedipal complex)
Phallic Stage- Freud
Ethology
is the study of the adaptive and evolutionary basis of animal behavior; it is concerned with studying the behaviors of species that promote their survival.
species have inborn or instinctual responses which are shared by all members of the species.
Attachment
is an emotional connection with important people in one’s life. Attachment leads to a sense of security and gives people pleasure as they interact with other people whom they are attached.
- Freud’s stages are psychosexual while Erik EriKson’s stages are?
Psychosocial
- In Freud’s psychodynamic theory instincts are emphasized. Erik Erikson is an ego psychologist. Ego psychologist?
believe in man’s power’s of reasoning to control behavior
- The only psychoanalyst who created a developmental theory which encompasses the entire life span was
Erik Erikson
- The statement “the ego is dependent on the id” would most likely reflect the work of
Sigmund Freud, who created psychodynamic theory.
Define Imprinting
The process by which a newly hatched duck will bond with the first moving object they seek, even if it is a human instead of another duck.
Critical periods
certain limited periods of time when humans have the maximum opportunity for optimal development given appropriate environmental inputs.