Simplifyed Flashcards
Serial position effect
(Primacy and Recency effect)
People are more likely to remember the first and last information from a memorize list, rather than the info in the middle
 closure (gestalt psychology)
When people tend to perceive, incomplete forms as complete. We will fill in missing parts as to perceive the stimulus is being whole 
Gestalt psychology
We tend to see organized patterns or the hole, rather than bits and pieces that make up those patterns 
Proximity (gestalt psychology)
Occurs when elements are place close to the other, and as a result we tend to perceive them as part of group 
Figure-ground
Depending on what you know you should be focusing on that is what you will notice (optical illusion is it a Vace or two faces)
Prospective memory
Remembering to perform a task at the original time, you intend to do that task.
Social loafing
When an individual puts forth less effort, while working in a group, then when working alone. 
Cocktail party effect
Our ability tune into a single voice from any conversations going on in the noisy room 
Acetylcholine
Stimulate muscle contraction and movement
Dopamine
Seeks out pleasure
Serotonin
Regulates mood, calming
Epinephrine or norepinephrine
Fight or flight response
GABA
Inhibits neurons from firing and helps regulate daily sleep wake cycles
Endorphins
Reduces pain
Glutamate
Used in memory learning and movement 
Display rules
Cultural rules, or norms that distinguish how one should express emotions 
Ex. Burial
Groupthink
With members of a group tend to accept a viewpoint or conclusion that represents the perceived group, consensus, whether or not the group member, believe it to be valid, correct, or optimal. 
Cognitive dissonance
Mental strain that results from holding to conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes. 
Schema
The different categories that we organize info into our brains.
Different classes 
Self-fulfilling prophecy
An explanation of a situation that impacts an individual behaviors in such a way that leads to those expectations becoming a reality. 
Big five personality traits
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neutrotism
OCEAN
Openness in big five personality traits
High in openness is open to experience they like adventures a very curious the very open to new things
Low in openness would resist change
Conscientiousness (big, five personality traits)
High: this person is very self, disciplined, and organized and responsible
Low: not
Agreeableness big five personality traits
High: empathetic, likes to help others, cares about others
Neuroticism big five personality traits
High: sensitive, tends to be nervous, tends to be stressed, worries a lot
Cross-sectional versus longitudinal studies
Longitudinal study: researchers study same group of participants year after year
Cross-sectional study: look at different groups of people all the same time
The development stage theorists
Kohlberg’s moral development
Piget cognitive development
Ericksons psychosocial development
Freud psychosexual stages
Context dependent memories
Tendency to retrieve memories that correspond with the physical setting that we’re in
Mood congruent
The tendency to retrieve memories that correspond to the mood were in
State dependent memories
The tendency to retrieve memories that correspond with the state were in ( sleepy, drunk, high)
Encoding failure: three stage processing model 
Inputs -> sensory memory -> working memory <-> long term memory
(Working memory -> long term memory is encoding, going the other way is retrieval)
There are many senses that are constantly impacting you at one moment, and that’s why we have the sensory memory
The sensory memory, is like a filter, it tells us what senses we should focus on 
Procedural memory 
Long term, memory is either explicit or implicit
Implicit is non declarative, meaning it doesn’t have conscious recall: this is like your muscle memory
Explicit is declarative, meaning, it has conscious recall. These are facts. You need to think about it.
Mass versus distributed practices
Mass practice: cramming
Distributed practice: spacing out, studying for short intervals over a period of time
Schedules of reinforcement (fixed and variable)
When will the reinforcement occur?
Fixed: organism knows when the reinforcement will occur (ex buy 3 coffees get one free)
Variable: don’t know when the reinforcement will occur
You must do the behavior in order to get the reinforcement. (Slot machine)
Or you do not have to the behavior to get the reinforcement (surfer waiting for perfect wave)
Convergent versus divergent thinking
Convergent thinking: finding one best solution (multiple choice test)
Divergent thinking : finding creative or multiple solutions
Somatic versus autonomic nervous system
(peripheral nervous system) Somatic nervous system controls, voluntary movement via the use of our skeletal muscles 
Autonomic nervous system
(peripheral nervous system) Controls are digestive, respiratory, circulatory, reproductive functions 
Sympathetic nervous system
Part of the autonomic nervous system, our bodies alert system, the responser of stressors
Parasympathetic nervous system
Autonomic nervous system, calms the body down after a stressful situation 
Cons versus rods
Cones are for Color rods are for light
Depth perception
Our eyes have two different angles, and when we’re looking at things, and these two images are sent to the occipital lobe and visual cortex where they will join the images together into a single image 
Trichromatic theory of color
The human eye only perceives three colours of light: red, blue, and green. The wave length of the three colours can be combined to create a good colour on the visible light spectrum.
Opponent processing theory of color 
One member of the colour pair suppresses the other colour. 
Feature detectors (eye)
Prefrontal cortex
Decision making, and our personality
Midbrain, forebrain, hindbrain
Somatosensory cortex
You’re touch sensations: receives and processes sensory information from the body 
Social facilitation
Social facilitation: the tendency for one to perform easier or well learned task, better in front of the presence of others 
Social inhibition
The tendency for one to perform more difficult or less practice tasks, more poorly in the presence of others 
Yerkes-Dodson law
We perform our best at a moderate level of arousal.
Operant conditioning.
A method of learning, the employees reward and punishment for behavior.
Positive reinforcement
Reward introduced to increase a behavior
Negative reinforcement
The encouragement of a certain behaviour by removing, or avoiding a unpleasant stimulus
Reinforcement
Attempting to get a behavior took occur again
Punishment
Attempting to get a behavior to stop 
Positive punishment
Addition of something unpleasant, in order to stop behavior
Negative punishment
Removal of something pleasant in order to stop a behavior
Fluid intelligence
Availability solve new problems and reason abstractly. Declines with age.
Crystallized intelligence
Crystallized intelligence is the accumulation of facts, knowledge, and skills over a lifetime. Increases with age. 
Deindividuation 
When a group setting causes one to lose their self awareness in abandon, their normal restraints
Self-efficacy
How capable or confident a person feels in their ability to complete a task 
Heuristics
Bias! A rule of thumb strategy for making quick gut decisions, mental shortcuts to arrive at a decision 
Representative heuristics
A rule of thumb strategy used to make quick decisions based off stereotypes of a group 
Availability heuristics
A rule of thumbs strategy used to make quick decisions based on the information that comes to mind easily

Intrinsic motivation
The desire to perform a task that comes with within the individual
Extrinsic motivation
Desire to perform a task comes from external reward (got payed!)
Incentive motivation
People are led to do things based off rewards and discouraged from doing other things based off of punishments 
Over justification effect
A phenomenon in which a person becomes less internally motivated to pursue an activity after they are rewarded (extrinsic motivation) for something they have already love to do (intrinsic motivation)
Conformity
 Where someone changes, their beliefs or behaviors to align with a group 
Normative social influence
With someone conforms, because they want to fit in with a group, even though they may not agree
Informational social influence
When someone conforms because they think the group is actually right 
Proactive versus retroactive interference
(P)roactive
(O)ld info interfering with new
(R)etroactive
(N)ew info interfering with old info
Observational learning, social learning theory, modeling
Where individuals learn how to behave or act by watching others
Case study
Researchers study that you need an individual or a small group of individuals
(Unique case)
Survey
People self report information
Naturalistic observation
When a researcher records behavior in a naturally occurring setting, without trying to get involved or manipulate the setting or the variables 
Correlation
Looks at relationships
Positive correlation: both X, and Y increase together
Negative correlation: when X increases Y decreases and vice versa.
No correlation
 Downsides of case study
Not generalizable
Survey downsides and upsides
Upside: You can collect a lot of data and it’s relatively cheap
Downside: Survey sample isn’t large enough or if there are too many confounding variables, the data reporting might be hard to generalize 
-there is also bias:
-social desirability bias, where people give answers to make themselves look good.
-volunteer bias: the people who volunteer for the survey may not be part of the participant group 
Naturalistic observation downside
Downside: describes behavior, but does not explain it
-Correlations do not imply causation
What should a researcher seek to obtain when selecting participants?
Random sample
What does random sampling allow a researcher to make from the data? 
Generalizations/inferences
Experiments
A research method in which an experimenter can determine the cause and effect through the manipulation of an independent variable 
How to write a hypothesis
If, then statement
Ex. If students drink caffeine before test, then their test scores will improve.
Independent variable
The variable which is manipulated by the researcher
Dependent variable
What’s being measured 
Confounding variables (aka lurking/third variables)
A confounding variable is an extraneous variable, whose present affects the variables being studied, so that the result to get do not reflect the actual relationship between the independent and dependent variable
Operational definitions
A detailed description of the steps, variables, and procedures.
1. Amount
2. Time/duration
3. Change
Reliability versus validity
Reliability is its ability to be replicated
Validity is did the researcher measure what they set out to measure 
Random assignment
Once you have your sample of your participants and you randomly assign them to the experimental or control group and you want to explain how you do that. 
Experimental versus control group
Experimental group receives the treatment
The control group receives a placebo, or a dummy or a look-alike treatment.
Single blind study vs double blind study
Single blind study, only the participants are blinded
In double blind study: both participants and experimenters are blinded
Statistical significance
The result of us that he did not likely occur by chance
Ethical concerns
- researchers cannot coerce participants into their study.
- Subjects must be allowed to quit anytime
3. informed consent, warned about potential risks - Researchers must protect participants from harm and discomfort
- Deception is only OK as long as the participant is debriefed at the end of the study
- Confidential
P values and statistical significance 
The closer the P value is to zero the more statistically significant it is
Reciprocity Norm
Social standard: if someone helps another person, that individual is expected to return the favor 
Group polarization
After discussing a topic, the groups members beliefs become more extreme than prior to discussion 
Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is the tendency for a person to look for information that supports her beliefs, while ignoring or dismissing evidence that doesn’t support their position
Belief perseverance
The tendency for individuals to hold onto a belief even after being presented with information that discredits it
Self-serving bias
The tendency to overstate one’s role when there’s a positive outcome and understate it when there is a negative outcome 
Stereotype threat
The anxiety that members of a group feel if they believe that their performance will conform a negative stereotype.
Foot in the door persuasion
A request is made, the individual agrees, a large request is then made, the individual is more likely to accept the larger request after accepting the smaller request
Door in the face persuasion
A large request is made, individual denies the large request, then a smaller request is made of the individual, the individual is more likely to except the smaller request after denying the larger one 
Hostile aggression
End goal is physical harm
Instrumental aggression
Used to achieve some other means
(robbing someone)
Afferent versus efferent neurons
Afferent are sensory neurons that send info to the brain
Efferent are motor neurons that go out the brain
Long-term potentiation
A process by which synaptic connections between neurons become stronger with frequent activation.
If you do not practice those connections, the connections will physically break apart and biologically speaking that is forgetting is
Arousal
A state of alertness and/or of being awake
When your rows gonna have an increased heart rate, and you’re gonna have a higher blood pressure, increased perspiration, rapid, breathing, pupil, dilation, and more. 
What part of the brain controls arousal?
The reticular formation (a network of nerves. It runs up and down the brain stem)
Arousal theory of motivation
People are motivated to engage in a given behavior to raise or lower their arousal level of 
Common sense theory of emotion
Stimulus -> emotion-> arousal
(Twig snaps) (Fear) (Heart races)
James Lange theory of emotion
Stimulus -> arousal-> emotion
(Twig snaps) (heart races) (fear)
Cannon-bard theory of emotion
Stimulus -> (emotion and arousal at the same time)
Twig snap -> (heart rate rises, fear)
Schachter- singer two factor theory of emotion
Stimulus -> (arousal and cognitive appraisal at the same time) -> emotion
cognitive appraisal: Evaluating the stimulus, which leads to the emotion
Zajonc and Ledoux theory of emotion
You see anything that scary, that information gonna be sent to the thalamus ( traffic control) and it’s going to reroute it to the amygdala (first responder to stress). There is no cognitive thought that goes into perceiving the emotion. 
Lazarus’ cognitive appraisal theory
Stimulus -> cognitive appraisal -> (emotion + arousal)
Cerebellum
Coordination, motor control, balance.
Works with fine-tune movement.
Muscle memory as well
Work in conjunction with the vestibular system in those semicircular canals to keep you upright and keep you balanced.
Which hemisphere of the brain (according to college board) processes language
The left side 
Broca area
Located in the prefrontal cortex of the frontal lobe. Produces speech. 
Wernicke’s area
Language understanding, located on the temporal lobe. 
Angular gyrus
Located on the parietal lobe, takes visual stimuli, like the letters, or words on the page, and turns it into auditory info.
Wernicke‘s area can use this to understand what is written. 
Intentional blindness
Failing to notice a recognizable stimulus, because one’s attention is focused elsewhere 
Cognitive maps
(Tolman) a mental representation of the layout of one’s environment 
Kurt Lewin’s types of conflict
Approach-approach conflict: choice between two desirable outcomes
Avoidance-avoidance conflict: a choice between two options that are not desirable
Approach-avoidance: when one event/goal has attractive and unattractive features
Multiple approach-avoidance conflict: choice between two or more options, and each option has both desirable and undesirable features 
Habituation
The diminish effectiveness of a stimulus in eliciting a response following repeated exposure to the stimulus. 
Algorithm
A step-by-step procedure that guarantees solving a problem
It’s downside is it slow 
Framing
Presenting a problem, question, or situation, in a way that impacts how the issue was perceived. 
Source amnesia/source misattribution
Incorrectly identifying where a memory came from
Chunking
Organizing information into meaningful units to be stored into memory
Memorize :ttubyfl or :butterfly
Functional fixedness
A cognitive bias, that limits a persons ability to use an object in a way other than its intended purpose 
Mental set
When an individual uses a solution that worked in the past on a current problem, which may or may not help solve the current problem
Reciprocal determinism
Bandura
One’s thoughts, behavior, and environment, all influence one another (hates school, acts out, administration dislike student)
Person is your cognition/personality
Julian Rotter’s personal control
External locus of control: one’s perceptions that chance or outside forces control your fate
Internal locus of control: perception that an individual can control their own fate. 
Learned helplessness experiment (Seligman)
Three groups of dogs that are all harnessed. 
Group one: was harnessed, but not shocked 
Group 2: was shocked, but there was a lever the dogs could hit to stop the shock group 3: dogs were shocked, but the lever did not stop the shock.
Dogs were then taken and put into a contraption where, on one side was an area that was shocked the dogs, and one side that would not
Group ones dogs would jump to the other side, group 2 would jump to the other side of the box, but group 3 would just stay. 
Learned helplessness
When One feels as if they are unable to change the outcome of their situation, after repeated adverse events -> pessimistic outlook 
Positive psychology
Seligmam: focuses on the study of optimal human functioning, and the factors allow individuals to thrive 
Humanistic psychology
Looks at helping people, achieve happiness, a meaningful life, and self-fulfillment. Goalsetting and self improvement.
Who were the two humanistic psychologist
Carl Rogers, and Abraham Maslow
Self-concept
(Maslow and Rogers) ask how do you see yourself, positively or negatively?
“I’m a good friend” “I stink at school”
Incongruence: self-concept
And incongruent between your ideal self, and your real self. This causes stress and anxiety.
Self-esteem
(Rogers) high congruence (ideal self and real self) -> a higher self esteem
Narcissism
Too much self-esteem, an inflated view of oneself that leads to attention seeking an exploitative behavior 
Measure of central tendency and range
Mean: average (add all then divide by total number)
Median: middle number
Mode: most common
Range: largest number minus smallest number
Standard deviation
How close to values in a data set are to the mean
Large deviation means that the data is more spread out. This means that those scores are more varied. 
Circadian rhythm
Biological cycle that occurs approximately every 24 hours
REM sleep
Rapid eye movement.
Your eyes are closed and behind your eyelids your eyeballs are moving around rapidly. This is where most dreams occur.
Theory of the purpose of rem sleep: our brains process and consolidate our experiences and memories from that day
Paradoxical sleep
This happens in REM sleep: your arms and leg muscles are very relaxed, you can’t move them. However, your brain is very active. 
Correlational studies
These studies show relationships.
Correlation coefficient (R-Values)
Strength of relationship. A given number that shows the strength of relationship between two things.
I——————-———I—————————I
-1 Negative 0 Positive 1
No correlation
The further from zero, the stronger the relationship 
Parenting styles
Authoritative: very supportive and strong discipline
Authoritarian: strong discipline, little or lack of support
Permissive: weak discipline, very supportive
Neglectful: week, discipline, little or lack of support
Freud’s defence mechanisms: repression
Blocking or banishing memories from one’s mind
Freud’s defence mechanisms: regression
Behaving in a way that helped relieve anxiety in the past
Freud’s defence mechanisms: displacement
Taking ones anger out on something less threatening
Freud’s defence mechanisms: projection
Attributing’s ones own undesirable feelings onto others 
Freud’s defence mechanisms: denial
Refusing to accept that was currently happening is actually happening
Freud’s defence mechanisms: sublimation
Redirecting ones unacceptable (possibly sexual or aggressive) impulses through more socially acceptable outlets
Freud’s defence mechanisms: rationalization
When individual makes an excuse to justify their behaviour (self deception)
Frued’s defence mechanisms: reaction formation
When one acts in the opposite manner of their true feelings
Kohlberg’s moral development
Stage one: preconventional: obedience and punishment
Stage two: conventional
Stage three: postconventional
Piaget stages of cognitive dev
Erikson psychosocial development 
We have an internal battle at eight stages of our life
Absolute threshold
(Gustav Fechner)
The minimum amount of stimulation required to trigger the sensation of touch, taste, smell, vision, or hearing.
The smallest acceptable level of a stimulus ( that your only able to detect 50% of the time)
Difference threshold ( just noticeable difference)
The minimum change in the intensity of a stimulus needed to detect that a change has taken place
Adrenal glands
Secretes the hormone’s norepinephrine and epinephrine (adrenaline) which provides more oxygen to her muscle, which energizes us to attack her flea (fight or fight)
Hans Selye general adaptation syndrome
(Gas)
1.  Alarm stage: sympathetic, nervous system, adrenaline/fight or flight
2. Resistance stage: body is trying to return to its “normal” via the homeostasis process, parasympathetic nervous system
3. Exhaustion stage: bodies resources depleted; body starts to break down, there’s risk of serious illness.
