Psychology Flashcards
The Mere Exposure Effect
Tendency to develop preferences for things because we are familiar with them.
AKA: Familiarity Principal
Mnemonic Device
Using acronyms, chunking, and rhymes to help the brain naturally store/remember data
Schachter Two-Factor Theory
Stimulus –> physiological arousal –> cognitive labelling –> emotion
Locus of Control
Measurement of how much control a person feels they have in their own behaviour.
In Group Bias
Tendency to favour one’s own group over another. This affects our perception of others, giving preferential treatment to the members of our own group while excluding other groups.
Regression
Defense mechanism in which people seem to return to an earlier developmental stage. This tends to occur around periods of stress.
Operant Conditioning
Method of learning that uses rewards and punishment to modify behaviour. Through operant conditioning, reward behaviour is likely to be repeated, while punishment is prone to happen less.
Circadian Rhythm
Physical, mental, and behavioural changes an organism experiences over a 24-hour cycle.
Psychology 5 Basic Goals
- Describe - observe behaviour as objectively as possible.
- Explain - go beyond what is obvious(observable data) and ask “Why did the subject do what he/she did”.
- Predict - Predicting what future behaviour will be from past behaviour.
- Control - Intervene to change negative behaviour/excerpt control over it.
- Improve - Control behaviour positively and improve someone’s life. (Although not always the case, it should be the intention).
Psychoanalysis
Ice Berg Theory of the Unconscious
- Set of psychological theories and methods of therapy.
- Revolves around the belief that everyone has unconscious thoughts, feelings, desires, and memories.
- Used to release repressed emotions and experiences.
Founded by: Sigmund Freud
Humanist
Hierarchy of Needs
- Higher needs in the hierarchy emerge when people feel they have fully satisfied the previous needs.
Founded by: Abraham Maslow
Behaviourist
Skinner Box - Operant Conditioning
- Focuses on the idea that all behaviours are learned through interaction with the environment
- Inherited factors have very little influence on behaviour.
By: B. F. Skinner
Psychology
Modern Definition: The science of behaviour and mental processes
Latin Definition: Study of the soul
Aristotle
- Believed that human consciousness was in the heart not the head
Zakariya al-Rhazes
- Persian doctor from the late 800s
- Rhazes was the first to describe mental illness and even treated patients in an early psych ward in his Baghdad hospital.
Consciousness
Awareness of internal and external existence.
Notion Of Self
How an individual perceives their own identity including their thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and experiences that make them who they are.
Freud
- Freud’s theories helped build our views on childhood, personality, dreams, and sexuality.
- Developed his revolutionary ideas by building in the work of others.
- After the Anna O case study, he told his patients to “free associate”. This provided the basis for his career and an entire branch of psychology.
- He came up with psychoanalysis and believed this “unconsciousness” could be discovered and understood through therapeutic techniques.
- Using dreams, projections, and free association to root out repressed feelings and gain self-insight.
- Freud’s message was that mental disorders could be healed through talk therapy and self-discovery.
- This was a huge breakthrough because people with mental illnesses would be confined and given up on.
Structuralism
- The idea of breaking down the brain into structures. The approach to getting patients to look inwards to understand the structures of consciousness is structuralism.
- Relied too much on introspection - too subjective - very short-lived
Functionalism
- Questions focused on why we think, feel, smell, and lick.
- Focused on the function of behaviour.
Psychoanalysis
The theory that unconscious motives shape our personalities.
Anna O Case Study
- Josef Breuer treated Anna O with a new “talking cure”. He let her talk about her symptoms and the more she pulled up traumatic memories, the more her symptoms were reduced.
- This case study is a breakthrough, and it also changed Freud forever.