PSYC FINAL EXAM Flashcards
Definitions
Audience design
Constructing utterances to suit the audience’s knowledge.
Common ground
Information that is shared by people who engage in a conversation.
Ingroup
Group to which a person belongs.
Lexicon
Words and expressions.
Linguistic intergroup bias
A tendency for people to characterize positive things about their ingroup using more abstract expressions, but negative things about their outgroups using more abstract expressions.
Outgroup
Group to which a person does not belong.
Priming
A stimulus presented to a person reminds him or her about other ideas associated with the stimulus.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
The hypothesis that the language that people use determines their thoughts.
Situation model
A mental representation of an event, object, or situation constructed at the time of comprehending a linguistic description.
Social brain hypothesis
The hypothesis that the human brain has evolved, so that humans can maintain larger ingroups.
Social networks
Networks of social relationships among individuals through which information can travel.
Syntax
Rules by which words are strung together to form sentences.
Automatic empathy
False-belief test
Folk explanations of behavior
People’s natural explanations for why somebody did something, felt something, etc. (differing substantially for unintentional and intentional behaviors).
Intention
An agent’s mental state of committing to perform an action that the agent believes will bring about a desired outcome.
Intentionality
The quality of an agent’s performing a behavior intentionally—that is, with skill and awareness and executing an intention (which is in turn based on a desire and relevant beliefs).
Joint attention
Two people attending to the same object and being aware that they both are attending to it.
Mimicry
Copying others’ behavior, usually without awareness.
Mirror neurons
Neurons identified in monkey brains that fire both when the monkey performs a certain action and when it perceives another agent performing that action.
Projection
A social perceiver’s assumption that the other person wants, knows, or feels the same as the perceiver wants, know, or feels.
Simulation
The process of representing the other person’s mental state.
Synchrony
Two people displaying the same behaviors or having the same internal states (typically because of mutual mimicry).
Theory of mind
The human capacity to understand minds, a capacity that is made up of a collection of concepts (e.g., agent, intentionality) and processes (e.g., goal detection, imitation, empathy, perspective taking).
Visual perspective taking
Can refer to visual perspective taking (perceiving something from another person’s spatial vantage point) or more generally to effortful mental state inference (trying to infer the other person’s thoughts, desires, emotions).
Basic-level category
The neutral, preferred category for a given object, at an intermediate level of specificity.
Category
A set of entities that are equivalent in some way. Usually the items are similar to one another.
Concept
The mental representation of a category.
Exemplar
An example in memory that is labeled as being in a particular category.
Psychological essentialism
The belief that members of a category have an unseen property that causes them to be in the category and to have the properties associated with it.
Typicality
The difference in “goodness” of category members, ranging from the most typical (the prototype) to borderline members.
Authoritative
A parenting style characterized by high (but reasonable) expectations for children’s behavior, good communication, warmth and nurturance, and the use of reasoning (rather than coercion) as preferred responses to children’s misbehavior.
Effortful control
A temperament quality that enables children to be more successful in motivated self-regulation.
Family Stress Model
A description of the negative effects of family financial difficulty on child adjustment through the effects of economic stress on parents’ depressed mood, increased marital problems, and poor parenting.
Conscience
The cognitive, emotional, and social influences that cause young children to create and act consistently with internal standards of conduct.
Gender schemas
Organized beliefs and expectations about maleness and femaleness that guide children’s thinking about gender.
Goodness of fit
The match or synchrony between a child’s temperament and characteristics of parental care that contributes to positive or negative personality development. A good “fit” means that parents have accommodated to the child’s temperamental attributes, and this contributes to positive personality growth and better adjustment.
Security of attachment
An infant’s confidence in the sensitivity and responsiveness of a caregiver, especially when he or she is needed. Infants can be securely attached or insecurely attached.
Social referencing
The process by which one individual consults another’s emotional expressions to determine how to evaluate and respond to circumstances that are ambiguous or uncertain.
Temperament
Early emerging differences in reactivity and self-regulation, which constitutes a foundation for personality development.
Theory of mind
Children’s growing understanding of the mental states that affect people’s behavior.
Chutes and Ladders
A numerical board game that seems to be useful for building numerical knowledge.
Concrete operations stage
Piagetian stage between ages 7 and 12 when children can think logically about concrete situations but not engage in systematic scientific reasoning.
Conservation problems
Problems pioneered by Piaget in which physical transformation of an object or set of objects changes a perceptually salient dimension but not the quantity that is being asked about.
Continuous development
Ways in which development occurs in a gradual incremental manner, rather than through sudden jumps.
Depth perception
The ability to actively perceive the distance from oneself of objects in the environment.
Discontinuous development
Development that does not occur in a gradual incremental manner.
Formal operations stage
Piagetian stage starting at age 12 years and continuing for the rest of life, in which adolescents may gain the reasoning powers of educated adults.
Information processing theories
Theories that focus on describing the cognitive processes that underlie thinking at any one age and cognitive growth over time.
Nature
The genes that children bring with them to life and that influence all aspects of their development.
Numerical magnitudes
The sizes of numbers.
Nurture
The environments, starting with the womb, that influence all aspects of children’s development.
Object permanence task
The Piagetian task in which infants below about 9 months of age fail to search for an object that is removed from their sight and, if not allowed to search immediately for the object, act as if they do not know that it continues to exist.
Phonemic awareness
Awareness of the component sounds within words.
Piaget’s theory
Theory that development occurs through a sequence of discontinuous stages: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages.
Preoperational reasoning stage
Period within Piagetian theory from age 2 to 7 years, in which children can represent objects through drawing and language but cannot solve logical reasoning problems, such as the conservation problems.
Qualitative changes
Large, fundamental change, as when a caterpillar changes into a butterfly; stage theories such as Piaget’s posit that each stage reflects qualitative change relative to previous stages.
Quantitative changes
Gradual, incremental change, as in the growth of a pine tree’s girth.
Sensorimotor stage
Period within Piagetian theory from birth to age 2 years, during which children come to represent the enduring reality of objects.
Sociocultural theories
Theory founded in large part by Lev Vygotsky that emphasizes how other people and the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the surrounding culture influence children’s development.
Endophenotypes
A characteristic that reflects a genetic liability for disease and a more basic component of a complex clinical presentation.
Endophenotypes are less developmentally malleable than overt behavior.
Event-related potentials (ERP)
ERP measures neuronal activity in the cortex, providing insights into processing timing and millisecond pace, enabling accurate tracking of brain activity.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
fMRI uses magnets to measure brain oxygen levels, indicating brain regions with increased blood flow. It provides spatial information by detecting brain regions critical for social processes, allowing for precise pinpointing of brain regions with millimeter accuracy.
Social brain
The set of neuroanatomical structures that allows us to understand the actions and intentions of other people.
What is the “I” ?
The self as knower, the sense of the self as a subject who encounters (knows, works on) itself (the Me).
What is the self as actor?
An embodied actor, who plays different roles, and has different traits
What is the “Me”?
The self as known, the sense of the self as the object or target of the I’s knowledge and work.
What is the self agent?
The sense of the self as an intentional force that strives to achieve goals, plans, values, projects, and the like.
What are Gender Roles?
Social constructions what traits ppl have & how ppl
should/will behave, in reference to their gender
What is the self author?
The self is seen as a storyteller, reconstructing the past and envisioning the future to create an integrative narrative that provides life with continuity and purpose.
What is Gender Identity?
Sense of self in terms of masculinity femininity
What is OCEAN/ Big Five?
A comprehensive taxonomy of personality trait domains, derived from adulthood trait ratings, includes various categories.
What is “O” in Ocean?
What is the opposite?
openness to experience
vs.
conventionality
What is “C” in Ocean?
What is the opposite?
conscientiousness
vs.
nonconscientiousness
What is “E” in Ocean?
What is the opposite?
extraversion
vs.
introversion
What is “A” in Ocean?
What is the opposite?
agreeable
vs.
disagreeableness
What is “N” in Ocean?
What is the opposite?
neuroticism
vs.
emotional stability
What is Freud view of ego?
What is “N” in Ocean?
What is the opposite?
What is Freud view of ego?
the ego as observing outside reality, engaging in rational though, and coping with the competing demands of inner desires and moral standards.
What is Erikson’s view of Identity?
Identity formation is a developmental task in late adolescence and young adulthood, involving exploring roles, values, goals, relationships, and committing to a realistic agenda. It involves reevaluating old traits and creating an integrative life story.
What is Narrative identity?
Self-defining stories, starting in late adolescence, provide life purpose and unity by reconstructing past experiences and envisioning future growth.
What is Redemptive narratives?
Redemptive life stories in American culture are highly valued as models for the good self, showcasing atonement, upward mobility, liberation, and recovery.
What is Reflexivity?
Reflexivity is a fundamental aspect of human selfhood, involving the self reflecting back upon itself, where the knower encounters the known.
What is Dimensions of Culture
Individualistic and Vertical?
People are unique
Some people have
higher/lower status
i.e USA, Canada, France
What is Dimensions of Culture
Individualistic and Horizontal?
People are unique
Most people have the
same status
i.e Denmark, Sweden,
Australia
What is Dimensions of Culture
Collectivistic and Vertical?
People emphasize
connectedness
Some people have higher/lower
status
i.e Japan, China, South Korea
What is Dimensions of Culture
People emphasize
connectedness
Most people have the same
status
i.e Israeli Kibbutz, Brazil, Portugal
What is Self construal?
How we understand ourselves in relation to others
What is Independent Self?
Uniqueness & personality traits
Personality drives behaviour
Individualistic cultures
What is Interdependent Self?
Defined differently in distinct social contexts
Social context drives behaviour
Collectivistic cultures
What are the Features in Culture?
1 .Versatility change & adaptation
2. Sharing how culture spreads
3. Accumulation collected knowledge over
generations
4. Patterns predictable and systematic behaviours
& thinking
Machiavellianism
Being cunning, strategic, or exploitative in one’s relationships. Named after Machiavelli, who outlined this way of relating in his book, The Prince.
Narcissism
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), a need for admiration, and lack of empathy.
What is Objective social variables?
Targets of research interest that are factual and not subject to personal opinions or feelings.
Shunning
The act of avoiding or ignoring a person, and withholding all social interaction for a period of time. Shunning generally occurs as a punishment and is temporary.
Ostracism
Being excluded and ignored by others.
What is Operationalization?
The process of defining a concept so that it can be measured. In psychology, this often happens by identifying related concepts or behaviors that can be more easily measured.
Social integration
Active engagement and participation in a broad range of social relationships.
Social support
A social network’s provision of psychological and material resources that benefit an individual.
What is Subjective social variables?
Targets of research interest that are not necessarily factual but are related to personal opinions or feelings
Subjective well-being
The scientific term used to describe how people experience the quality of their lives in terms of life satisfaction and emotional judgments of positive and negative affect.
