Psych Flashcards
Competing expectations within a single role create tension
Role strain
Competing expectations for two or more roles create tension
i.e. a student who is employed part-time struggles to find enough time to complete homework and work late hours
Role conflict
An individual disengages from a social role, often replaying it with a new social role
Role exit
Defense mechanisms are the largely unconscious means by which reality is altered (ie distorted or ignored) to relieve anxiety or stress
Psychoanalytic theory
Inability or refusal to recognize unacceptable thoughts or behaviors
Denial
Attributing unacceptable thoughts or behaviors to someone else or something else
Projection
Making excuses for unacceptable thoughts or behaviors
Rationalization
Behaving as if much younger to avoid unacceptable thoughts or behaviors
Regression
Blocking unacceptable thoughts or behaviors from consciousness
Repression
Taking out unacceptable thoughts or behaviors on a safe target
Displacement
Transforming unacceptable thoughts or behaviors into acceptable thoughts/behaviors
Sublimation
Behaving in a manner opposite unacceptable thoughts/behaviors
Reaction formation
Membership is based on shared goals and/or values
Normative organization
Membership is driven by compensation
Utilitarian organization
Membership is not freely chosen and/or maintained
Coercive organization
Extreme concern regarding one or more physical symptoms (ie pain, fatigue)
Somatic symptom disorder
Neurological symptoms that are not explainable by a medical condition
Conversion disorder
Preoccupation with having or acquiring a serious disease
Illness anxiety disorder
Symptoms or illness are intentionally fabricated without obvious external gain
Factitious disorder
Variable that is changed or controlled in an experiment
Independent variable
Variable being tested and measured in a scientific experiment
Dependent variable
Guided by information, beliefs, or ideas already stored in our brain
Top-down processing
Guided by incoming data, often sensory information
Bottom-up processing
The intensity value at which an individual is able to detect the stimulus 50% of the time
Absolute threshold
The smallest difference between two stimuli that a person can detect 50% of the time
Difference threshold or just noticeable difference
Holds that specific emotions are elicited by stimuli that produce specific physiological reactions, which are transmitted as sensory information to the brain via spinal cord
James-Lange Theory
Emotion results from physiological arousal followed by cognitive appraisal
Schachter-Singer Theory
Physiological arousal and emotion are independent processes that occur simultaneously
Cannon-Bard Theory
Future undesirable stimulus is prevented
Avoidance learning
Current undesirable stimulus is removed
Escape learning
Desirable stimulus added
Positive reinforcement
Undesirable stimulus removed
Negative reinforcement
Undesirable stimulus added
Positive punishment
Desirable stimulus removed
Negative punishment
Occur when a memory is attributed to the wrong source
Source monitoring errors
The tendency to perceive an event as being likely after it has occurred, even if it was unlikely
Hindsight bias
Refers to the impaired processing that occurs when a stimulus is initially ignored
Negative priming
Tendency to blame others’ behaviors in their internal instead of external factors
Fundamental attribution error
Attempts to change negative thoughts/beliefs and maladaptive behaviors
CBT
Attempts to uncover how unconscious conflicts rooted in childhood shape behaviors
Psychoanalytic therapy
Attempts to empower individual to move toward self-actualization
Humanistic therapy (person centered)
Values and norms do not oppose the dominant culture, although group is characteristically distinct
Subculture
Learned values, beliefs, and behaviors shared by most people in society
Dominant culture
Values and norms oppose the dominant culture
Counterculture
Formed after believers split from an established church, often in pursuit of a more pure traditional form of faith
Sects
Radical groupie of believers organized around a charismatic leader
Cult
Established formal organizations that tend to be well integrated into society
Churches
Society = an organism
Each part of society works to maintain dynamic equilibrium
Functionalism
Society = struggle for limited resources
Inequality based on social class
Conflict
Social factors define what is real
Knowledge about world is based on interactions
Social constructionism
Individual behaviors and interactions attempt to maximize personal gain and minimize personal cost
Rational choice/social exchange
Examines gender equality in society
Feminist
Differ by context and culture
Subjective meanings
Reduced importance of religion as society industrializes
Modernization
Reduced power of religion as religious involvement declines
Secularization
Refers to the renewed adherence to strict, traditional religious beliefs and practices by some individuals
Fundamentalism
Refers to the extent to which a religious doctrine is internalized and incorporated into an individual’s life
Religiosity
Memory for things that cannot be called consciously, such as skills, tasks, emotions, and reflexes
Implicit memory
Memory or facts that can be called intentionally or consciously
Explicit memory
Memory for motor skills
i.e bike riding
Procedural memory
Memory for associations between stimuli
Emotional/reflexive memory
Memory of knowledge about facts
Semantic memory
Occurs when individuals tend to embrace evidence supporting their beliefs, dismiss or ignore evidence refuting them, and interpret evidence as support
Confirmation bias
Occurs when positive stereotypes about social groups cause improved performance
Stereotype boost
Dominant social position
Master status
Attained social position
Achieved status
Assigned social position
Ascribed social status
Suggests that laws are created to serve those in power and maintain their privilege
Conflict theory
Describes when social structures (health care, education) increase efficiency, quantity, standardization, and automation at the expense of individuality, quality, and a skilled workforce.
McDonaldization of society
Suggests that human populations increase exponentially but the resources needed to sustain those populations (food) increase more slowly, resulting in preventative checks that voluntarily decreased the birth rate and positive checks that involuntarily increase the death rate in society
Malthusian theory of population
of offspring an organism produces
Direct fitness
of relatives an organism aids through altruistic behavior
Indirect fitness
of genes passed on to the next generation
Overall fitness
Occurs when the message sender is also the receiver
Auto communication
[ ] can be explained by the theory of [ ]
Altruism, inclusive Fitness
Occurs when the likelihood of a repeating behavior is influenced by the outcome of that behavior
Operant conditioning
Occurs when a stimulus that did not previously elicit a meaningful response takes on the properties of a biologically arousing stimulus after being paired
Classical conditioning
Mental shortcuts that allow for fast problem solving and decision making but sometimes lead to inaccurate conclusions
Heuristics
How easily something comes to memory
Availability heuristic
How well something matches a mental prototype
Representative heuristic
Uncontrolled variables that have an effect on the independent and/or dependent variables
Confounding variable
An attributional error that occurs when an individual with a positive quality is assumed to have other positive qualities
The halo effect
Explains the perception of sound pitch (frequency)
States that specific wavelength frequencies generate vibrations at specific loci on the basilar membrane of the cochlea
Place theory
Economic theory of globalization that views the world as a global economy where some countries benefit at the expense of others
World systems theory
Wealthy with strong, diversified economies and centralized governments that take resources from poorer countries and lead the global economic market through the export of goods around the world
eg United States, Western Europe
Core nation
Poor and have weak governments and economies and rely on the export (coffee, oil, labor) of their resources to wealthier countries
Periphery nations
The process by which tangibles and intangibles spread across the world, primarily as a result of advances in technology and communication
Globalization
There are no right or wrong cultural practices, most inclusive of cultural differences
Cultural relativism
Psychometric technique designed to measure unconscious attitudes
Implicit association test
Dementia that is caused by a thiamin deficiency that often results from chronic alcohol consumption
Korsakoff Syndrome
Risk factors include a mutation causing greater amyloid plaque accumulation and many lifestyle factors
Alzheimer’s Disease
The specialization of each brain hemisphere for certain cognitive functions
Hemispheric lateralization
Specialized for visuospatial, emotional, and artistic/musical processing
Right hemisphere
Specialized for linguistic and analytical processing
Left hemisphere
Specialized neurons in the brain that fire both while observing and while performing a behavior
Mirror neurons
Occurs when previously learning information interferes with the learning of new information
Proactive interference
Occurs when more recent information interferes with the recall of previously learned information
Retroactive learning
Graphically convey the uncertainty of statistics (eg mean)
Confidence interval
If confidence intervals DO NOT overlap, the two means are statistically significantly different
However the opposite is not always true
Cognitive biases (common errors in thinking) That tend to occur when people attempt to explain a behavior (their own or someone else’s) or attribute it to something
Attributional errors
Type of attributional error in which an individual attributes success to internal factors but blames failure on external factors
Example: failure on an exam is attributed to the test being unfair, but success in an exam is attributed to ones intelligence
Serves to protect self-esteem
Self-serving bias
Common cognitive bias that occurs when we tend to favor information confirming beliefs and ignore, disregard, or refute information contradicting those beliefs
Confirmation bias
I’m scientific research, to operationalize a variable means that a variable….
Is not directly measurable (eg fatigue, depression) is defined in such a way that it CAN be measured for the purposes of testing
Problem-solving shortcuts that are efficient but not always accurate
Heuristics
A-ha moment
Insight
Scientifically studies individuals in their own communities to learn about culture, norms, and values in an area
Ethnography
Occurs when the presence of others enhances performance
Social facilitation
Occurs when the presence of others hinders on difficult unfamiliar tasks
Social impairment
Loss of individual self-awareness when one is part of a large group engaged in an emotionally arousing activity
Deindividuation
Behavior in social situations
Front-stage sels
Behavior in private
Back-stage self
Behavior caused by internal factors
Dispositional attribution
Behavior caused by external factors
Situational attribution
Observational studies that assess data from a large section of the population at a given point and can determine the prevalence of a disease
Cross-sectional studies
Observational studies that assess data over time
Longitudinal studies
