Modules 7,8,10,11,12,13,14 Flashcards
James-Lange Theory of Emotion
-The theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli
Trait
-A characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports
Normal Curve
- The symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes
- Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes
Role
-A set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave
Chomsky
- Linguist
- Universal grammar: all language has basic elements and building blocks
- Deep vs Surface meaning
Other-race effect
- The tendency to recall faces of one’s own race more accurately than face sof other races
- A;so called the cross-race effect or the own race bias
Altruism
-Unselfish regard for the welfare of others
Unconditional Positive Regard
-A caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance
Anxiety Disorders
-Psychological disorders characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety
Yerkes-Dodson Law
-The principle that performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases
Psychotherapy
- Treatment involving psychological techniques
- Consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth
Post traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
-A disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, social withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, numbness of feeling, and/or insomnia that lingers for four weeks or more after a traumatic experience
Bipolar Disorder
-A mood disorder in which a person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania
Heuristic
- A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently
- Usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms
Predictive Validity
- The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict
- Assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior (criterion-related validity)
Validity
-The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to
Emotional Intelligence
-The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions
Active Listening
- Empathetic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies
- Feature of Rogers’ client-centered therapy
Psychosis
-A psychological disorder in which a person loses contact with reality, experiencing irrational ideas and distorted perceptions
Transference
-In psychoanalysis, the patient’s transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent)
Homeostasis
- A tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state
- The regulation of any aspect of body chemistry, such as blood glucose, around a particular level
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
-A popular integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior)
Grit
-In psychology, grit is passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals
Aggression
-Any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy
Social Anxiety Disorder
-Intense fear of social situations, leading to avoidance of such (social phobia)
Drive-Reduction Theory
-The idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need
Mental Set
-A tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past
Type B
-Friedman and Rosenman’s term for easygoing, relaxed people
Mood Disorders
-Psychological disorders characterized by emotional extremes
Coronary Heart Disease
- The clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle
- Leading cause of death in many developed countries
Standardization
-Defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pre-tested group
Grammar
- In a language, a system of rules that enables us communicate with and understand others
- In a given language, semantics is the set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds
- Syntax: The set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences
Defense mechanisms
-In psychoanalytic theory, the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality
Sensory Memory
-The immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system
Long-term Memory
- The relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system
- Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences
Emotion
- A response of the whole organism, involving
- Physiological arousal
- Expressive behaviors
- Conscious experience
Mood-congruent Memory
The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one’s current good or bad mood
Psychophysiological Illness
- Literally, “mind-body” illness
- Any stress-related physical illness, such as hypertension and some headaches
Id
- A reservoir of unconscious psychic energy, that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives
- Operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification
Terror-Management Theory
- A theory of death-related anxiety
- Explores people’s emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death
Ego
- The largely conscious, “executive” part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality
- Operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desire in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain
Down Syndrome
-A condition of mild to severe intellectual disability and associated physical disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21
Language
-Our spoken, written, or signed words and the way we combine them to communicate meaning
Group Therapy
-Therapy conducted with groups rather than individuals, permitting therapeutic benefits from group interaction
Individualism
-Giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications
Hallucinations
-False sensory experience, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus
Stereotype Threat
-A self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype
Savant Syndrome
-A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing
DSM-5
- The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition
- A widely used system for classifying psychological disorders
Foot-In-The-Door Phenomenon
-The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request
Humanistic Theory
-View personality with a focus on the potential for healthy personal growth
Overconfidence
- The tendency to be more confident than correct
- To overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments
Psychoanalysis
- Freud’s therapeutic technique
- Freud believed the patient’s free associations, resistances, dreams, and transference– and the therapist’s interpretations of them– released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight
Biomedical Therapy
-Prescribed medications or procedures that act directly on the person’s physiology
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
- The theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognition) are inconsistent
- When we become aware that our attitudes and our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes
Positive Psychology
- The scientific study of optimal human functioning
- Aims to discover and promote strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive
Working Memory
-A newer understanding of short-term memory that focuses on conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual -spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory
Antianxiety Drug
-Drugs used to control anxiety and agitation
Just-World Phenomenon
-The tendency for people to believe the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get
Spotlight Effect
-Overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders (as if we presume a spotlight shines on us)
Creativity
-The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas
Medical Model
-The concept that diseases, in this case psychological disorders, have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and in most cases, cured, often through treatment in a hospital
Intuition
-An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit , conscious reasoning
Stress
-The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging
Linguistic Determinism
-Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think
Reliability
-The extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting
Incentive
-A positive or negative environmental stimulus that motivates behavior
Misinformation Effect
-Incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event
Health Psychology
-A subfield of psychology that provides psychology’s contribution to behavioral medicine
Instinct
-A complex, unlearned behavior that is rigidly patterned throughout a species
Reciprocity Norm
-An expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have helped them
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
-A disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts and/or actions
- Unwanted thoughts= obsession
- Unwanted actions= compulsions
Attitude
-Feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events
Exposure Therapies
-Behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization and virtual reality exposure therapy, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or actual situations) to things they fear and avoid
Chunking
- Organizing items into familiar, manageable units
- Often occurs automatically
Collectivism
-Giving priority the goals of one’s group (often one’s extended family or work group) and defining one’s identity accordingly
Insight Therapies
-A variety of therapies that aim to improve psychological functioning by increasing a person’s awareness of underlying motives and defenses
Priming
-The activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory
Psychoanalysis
- Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts
- The techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions
Recognition
-A measure of memory in which the person need only identify item previously learned, as on a multiple-choice test
Conversion Disorder
-A disorder in which a person experiences very specific genuine physical symptoms for which no physical basis can be found (functional neurological symptom disorder)
Echoic Memory
- A momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli
- If attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3-4 seconds
Ingroup
- Us
- People with whom we share a common identity
Antipsychotic Drug
-Drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other forms of severe thought disorders
Estrogens
- Sex hormones, such as estradiol, secreted in greater amounts by females than by males and contributing to female sex characteristics
- In nonhuman female mammals, estrogen peaks during ovulation, promoting sexual receptivity
Insight
- A sudden realization of a problem’s solution
- Contrasts with strategy-based solutions
Empirically Derived Test
-A test (such as the MMPI) developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups
Therapeutic Alliance
-A bond of trust and mutual understanding between a therapist and client, who work together constructively to overcome the client’s problem
Hippocampus
- A neural center located in the limbic system
- Helps process explicit memories for storage
General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)
-Selye’s concept of the body’s adaptive response to stress in three phases- alarm, resistance, exhaustion
Testing Effect
- Enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information
- Retrieval practice effect or test-enhanced learning
Content Validity
-The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest
Wernicke’s Area
- Controls language reception– a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression
- Usually in the left temporal lobe
Facial Feedback Effect
-The tendency of facial muscle states to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness
Deja Vu
- That eerie sense that “I’ve experienced this before”
- Cues from current situation may unconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience
Equity
-A condition in which people receive from a relationship to proportion to what they give to it
Groupthink
-The mode of thinking that occurs when the dirtier for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives
Social Loafing
-The tendency or people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable
Sexual Dysfunction
-A problem that consistently impairs sexual arousal or functioning
Ingroup bias
-Tendency to favor our own group
Cohort
-A group of people from a given time period
Repression
-In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories
ReLearning
-A measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material again
Concept
-A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people
Johnson and Masters
- Monitored more than 1,000 sexual cycles
- Sexual response cycle
Encoding
-The processing of information into the memory system–for example, by extracting meaning
Set Point
- The point at which an individual’s “weight thermostat” is supposedly set
- When the body falls below this weight, an increase in hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may act to restore the lost weight
Psychosurgery
-Surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior
Convergent Thinking
-Narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution
Fundamental Attribution Error
-the tendency for observers, when analyzing others’ behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition
Telegraphic Speech
- Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram
- “Go car” (nouns and verbs)
Phobia
-An anxiety disorder marked by a persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object, activity, or situation
Mnemonics
-Memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices
Self-disclosure
-Revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others
Anorexia Nervosa
-An eating disorder in which a person (usually adolescent female) maintains a starvation diet despite being significantly (15% or more) underweight
General Anxiety Disorder
-An anxiety disorder in which a person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal
Divergent Thinking
- Expands the number of possible problem solutions
- Creative thinking that diverges in different directions
Scapegoat Theory
-The theory that prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame
Mere Exposure Effect
-The phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases the liking of them
Stanford-Binet
-The widely used American revision (By Terman at Sanford University) of Binet’s inteligence test
Eclectic Approach
-An approach to psychotherapy that, depending on the client’s problems, uses techniques from various forms of therapy
Retrieval
-The process of getting information out of memory storage
Automatic Processing
-Unconcious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings
Bulimia Nervosa
-An eating disorder in which a person alternates binge eating (usually high-calorie foods) with purging (by vomiting or laxative use), excessive exercise, or fasting
Reciprocal Determinism
-The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment
Sexual Response Cycle
- The four stages of sexual responding described by Masters and Johnson
- excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution
Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy
-An anxiety treatment that progressively exposes people to electronic simulations of their greatest fears, such as airplane flying, spiders, or public speaking
Crystalized Intelligence
- Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills
- Tends to increase with age
Passionate Love
-An aroused state of intense positive absorption in another, usually present at the beginning of a love relationship
Token Economy
-An operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token of some sort for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange the tokens for various privileges or treats
Dissociative Disorders
-Disorders in which conscious awareness becomes separated (dissociated) from previous memories, thoughts, and feelings
General Intelligence
-A general intelligence factor that, according to Spearing and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test
Intelligence Test
-A method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores
Babbling Stage
- Beginning at 4 months
- The stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language
Group Polarization
-The enhancement of a group’s prevailing inclinations through discussion within the group
Counterconditioning
- Behavior therapy procedures that use classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors
- Include exposure therapies and aversive conditioning
Interpretation
-In psychoanalysis, the analyst’s noting supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events in order to promote insight
Agoraphobia
-Fear or avoidance of situations, such as crowds or wide open places, where one has felt loss of control and panic
Intelligence
-Mental quality consisting of ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations
Illness Anxiety Disorder
-A disorder in which a person interprets normal physical sensations as symptoms of a disease (hyperchondriasis)
Frustration-Aggression Principle
-The principle that frustration- the blocking of an attempt to achieve some goal- creates anger, which can generate aggression
Superego
-The part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations
Stereotype
- A belief generalized to a group of people
- Sometimes accurate but overgeneralized
Social Facilitation
-Improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others
Mental Age
- A measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet
- The chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance
- Thus, a child who does as well as the average 8-year-old is said to have a mental age of 8
Outgroup
- Them
- Those perceived as different or apart from our Ingroup
Psychopharmacology
-The study of the effects of drugs on mind and behavior
Two-Word Stage
- Beginning at 2
- Stage of speech development in which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements
Psychodynamic Therapy
-Therapy deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition that views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences, and that seeks to enhance self-insight
Whorf
- Linguistic Determinism
- Language determines the way we think: too extreme
Prejudice
- An unjustifiable and usually negative attitude toward a group and the members
- Generally involves stereotyped beliefs, negative feelings, and a predisposition to discriminatory action
Algorithm
- A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem
- Contrasts with the usually speedier– but also more error-prone– use of heuristics
Polygraph
-A machine, commonly used in attempts to detect lies, that measures several of the physiological responses (such as perspiration and cardiovascular and breathing changes) accompanying emotion
Self-esteem
-One’s feeling of high or low self-worth
Superordinate goals
-Shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation
Intellectual Disability
-A condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life
GRIT
-Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction– a strategy designed to decrease international tensions
Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy
-A confrontational cognitive therapy, developed by Albert Ellis, that vigorously challenges people’s illogical, self-defeating attitudes and assumptions
Morpheme
- In language, the smallest units that carry meaning in a given language
- Prefixes and full words
Personality Disorders
-Psychological disorders characterized by inflexible and enduring behavior patterns that impair social functioning
Antisocial Personality Disorder
- A personality disorder in which a person (usually a man) exhibits a lack of conscience for wrongdoing, even towards family and friends
- May be aggressive and ruthless or a clever con artist
Social Script
-Culturally modeled guide for how to act in various situations
Conflict
-A perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas
Major Depressive Disorder
-A mood disorder in which a person experiences, in the absence of drugs or another medical condition, two or more weeks with five or more symptoms,at least one of which must be either (1) depressed mood or (2) loss of interest or pleasure
Delusions
-False beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders
Compassionate love
-The deep attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined
Norm
- an understood role for accepted and expected behavior
- provide proper behavior
Proactive Interference
-The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information
Social Trap
-A situation in which the conflicting parties, by each rationally pursuing their self-interests rather than the good of the group, become caught in mutually destructive behavior
Panic Disorder
- An anxiety disorder marked by unpredictable, minutes-long episodes of intense dread in which a person experiences terror and accompanying chest pain, choking, or other frightening sensations
- Often followed by worry over a possible next attack
Lymphocytes
- The two types of white blood cells that are part of the body’s immune system
- B lymphocytes: Bone marrow, release antibodies that fight bacterial infections
- T lymphocytes: Thymus and other lymphatic tissue, attack cancer cells, viruses, and foreign substances
Mirror-Image Perceptions
-Mutual views often held by conflicting people,as when each side sees itself as ethical and peaceful and views the other side as evil and aggressive
Post traumatic growth
-Positive psychological changes as a result of struggling with extremely challenging circumstances and life crises
Parallel Processing
- The processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously
- The brain’s natural mode of information processing for many functions
- Contrasts with the step-by-step (serial) processing of most computers and of conscious problem solving
Oedipus Complex
-According to Freud, a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father
Broca’s Area
-Controls language expression– an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscles movements involved in speech
Bystander Effect
-The tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present
Schizophrenia
-A psychological disorder characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and/or diminished or inappropriate emotional expression
Repression
-In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories
Motivation
-A need or desire that energizes and directs behavior
Storage
-The process of retaining encoded information over time
Behavior Therapy
-Therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors
Resilience
-The personal strength that helps most people cope with stress and recover from adversity and even trauma
Social-Responsibility Norm
-An expectation that people will help those needing their help
Source Amnesia
- Attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined
- Also called source misattribution
- Along w/ the misinformation effect, is at the heart of many false memories
Identification
-The process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos
One-Word Stage
- The stage in speech development from 1-2 years
- Child speaks mostly in single words
Implicit Memory
- Retention independent of conscious recollection
- Nondeclarative memory
False consensus
-The tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors
Resistance
-In psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material
Flashbulb Memory
-A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event
Rumination
- Compulsive fretting
- Overthinking about our problems and their causes
Heritability
- The proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes
- Heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied
Serial Position Effect
-Our tendency to recall best the last (recency effect) and first items (primacy effect) in a list
Informational Social Influence
-Influence resulting from one’s willingness to accept others’ opinions about reality
Central Route Persuasion
-Occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and person’s with favorable thoughts
Self-Efficacy
-One’s sense of competence and effectiveness
Psychoneuroimmunology
-The study of how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes together affect the immune system and resulting health
Retrograde Amnesia
-An inability to retrieve information from one’s past
Unconscious
- According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories
- According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware
Somatic Symptom Disorder
-A psychological disorder in which the symptoms take a somatic (bodily) form without apparent physical cause
Tend-and-Befriend Response
-Under stress, people (especially women) often provide support to others (tend) and bond with and seek support from others (befriend)
Free association
-In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing
Systematic Desensitization
- A type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant, relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli
- Commonly used to treat phobias
Shallow Processing
-Encoding on a basic level based on the structure or appearance of words
Cannon-Bard Theory
-The theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers 1) physiological responses and 2)The subjective experience of emotion
Effortful Processing
-Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort
Evidence-Based Practice
-Clinical decision making that integrates the best available research with clinical expertise and patient characteristics and preferences
Explicit Memory
- Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and declare
- Declarative memory
Lobotomy
- A psycho surgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients
- Cut the nerves connecting the front lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain
Basal Metabolic Rate
-The body’s resting rate of energy expenditure
Unconditional Positive Regard
-According to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
-A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up and ambiguous scenes
Projective Test
-A personality test, such as the Rorschach, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics
Dissociative Identity Disorder
-A rare dissociative disorder in which a person exhibits two or more distinct and alternating personalities (multiple personality disorder)
Pinker
- The stuff of thought
- Cognitive psychologist
- All sounds contain information
Recall
- A measure of memory in which a person must retrieve information learned earlier
- Ex: fill-in-the-blank test
Refractory Period
-A resting period after orgasm, during which a man cannot achieve another orgasm
Conformity
-Adjusting our behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard
Psychosexual Stages
- The childhood stages of development
- Oral
- Anal
- Phallic
- Latency
- Genital
- During which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
Regression Toward the Mean
-The tendency for extreme or unusual scores to fall back (regress) toward their average
Iconic Memory
- A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli
- A photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second
Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)
-A biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient
Hierarchy of Needs
- Maslow
- Pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with physiological needs that must first be satisfied before higher-level safety needs and then psychological needs become active
Rorschach Inkblot Test
- The most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach
- Seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the inkblots
Anterograde Amnesia
-An inability to form new memories
Self-concept
-All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves in answer to the question, “who am I”
Retroactive Interference
-The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
- The most widely used intelligence test
- Contains verbal and performance scales
Deep processing
-Encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words, tends to yield the best retention
Collective Unconscious
-Carl Jung’s concept of shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history
Self-fulfilling prophecy
-A belief that leads to its own fulfillment
Representativeness Heuristic
- Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes
- May lead us to ignore other relevant information
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
-A psychological disorder marked by the appearance by age 7 of one or more of three key symptoms: extreme inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity
Availability Heuristic
- Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory
- If instances come readily to mind (Perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common
Deindividuation
-the loss of self–awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity
Confirmation Bias
-A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence
Cognition
-All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
Short-Term Memory
-Activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as 7 digits of a phone number while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten
Glucose
- A form of sugar that circulates in the blood and provides the major source of energy for body tissues
- When level is low, we feel hungry
Spacing Effect
-The tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice
Testosterone
- The most important of the male sex hormones
- Both males and females have it, but additional testosterone in males stimulates the growth of the male sex organs in the fetus and the development of the male sex characteristics during puberty
Long-term potentiation (LTP)
- An increase in a cell’s firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation
- Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memoru
Prototype
- A mental image or best example of a category
- Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories (as well as comparing feathered creatures to a prototype bird, such as a robin)
Narcissism
-Excessive self-love and self-aborption
Family Therapy
- Therapy that treats the family as a system
- Views an individual’s unwanted behaviors as influenced by, or directed at, other family members
Aversive Conditioning
-A type of Counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol)
Memory
-The persistence of learning over time through the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information
Self
-In contemporary psychology, assumed to be the center of personality, the organizer of our thoughts, feelings, actions
Attribution Theory
-The theory that we explain someone’s behavior by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition
Factor Analysis
- A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test
- Used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person’s total score
Aptitude Test
- A test designed to predict a person’s future performance
- Aptitude= capacity to learn
Two-Factor Theory
-The Schachter-Singer theory that to experience emotion one must 1) be physically aroused and 2)cognitively label the arousal
Personality Inventory
-A questionnaire (Often with true-false or agree-disagree items) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors used to assess selected personality traits
Fluid Intelligence
- Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly
- Tends to decrease during late adulthood
Self-actualization
- According to Maslow, one of the ultimate psychological needs that arise after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved
- The motivation to fulfill one’s potential
Personality
-An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting
Antidepressant Drugs
- Drugs used to treat depression, anxiety, disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and PTSD
- Widely used: SSRIs or selective reuptake inhibitors
Self-serving bias
-A readiness perceive oneself favorably
Normative Social Influence
-Influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval
Social Exchange Theory
-The theory that our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs
Cognitive Therapy
- Therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking
- Based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions
Psychological Disorder
-A syndrome marked by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior
Discrimination
-Unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its members
Phoneme
-In language, the smallest distinctive sound unit
Psychodynamic Theories
-Modern-day approaches that view personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences
Social-Cognitive Perspective
-Views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits (including their thinking) and their social context
Meta-analysis
-A procedure for statistically combining the results of many different research studies
Client-centered therapy
- A humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within a genuine, accepting, and emphatic environment to facilitate client’s growth
- Person-centered therapy
Aphasia
-Impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area (impairing speech) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding)
Framing
- The way an issue has been posed
- How an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments
Behavioral Approach
-In personality theory, this perspective focuses on the effects of learning on our personality development
Belief Perseverance
-Clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited
Social Psychology
-The scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another
Type A
-Friedman and Rosenman’s term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people
Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
- Defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100
- IQ= ma/ca x 100
- On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100, with scores assigned to relative performance above or below average
Achievement Test
-A test designed to assess what a person has learned
Seligman
- Optimism vs Pessimism
- Optimism leads to success
- Positive psych
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
- The most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests
- Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use), this test is now used for many other screening purposes
Fixation
-According to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved
Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS)
- The application of repeated pulses of magnetic energy to the brain
- Used to stimulate or suppress brain activity
Binge-eating disorder
-Significant binge-eating episodes, followed by distress, disgust, or guilt, but without the compensatory purging or fasting that marks bulimia nervosa
Peripheral Route Persuasion
-Occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker’s attractiveness
Mania
-A mood disorder marked by a hyperactive, widely optimistic state
