Social Sciences NMAT FlashCards
What is Sociology?
The study of human groups, their customs and institutions, and their development at all times and places.
What is Enculturation?
The process of learning to become a responsible adult member of a society as defined by the norms of that society.
What are Proverbs?
A short, well-known saying, stating a general truth or piece of advice.
What is an Open-class Society?
A society where social status is achieved through individual effort, not family background, ethnicity, gender, or religion.
What are Folkways?
Norms for routine or casual interaction, such as appropriate greetings and proper dress.
What are Values?
Culturally defined standards held by individuals or groups about what is desirable, proper, beautiful, good, or bad.
What are Norms?
Patterns of beliefs that serve to guide, control, and regulate conduct.
What are Mores?
Norms that are widely observed and have great moral significance, distinguishing between right and wrong.
What is a Deviant Act?
Actions or behaviors that violate social norms.
What is Diffusion?
The spread of cultural traits from one sociocultural system to another.
What is Innovation?
Human action that is out of the ordinary, unique, or unprecedented.
What is Invention?
A unique or novel device, method, composition, or process.
What is Charismatic Authority according to Max Weber?
Authority found in a leader whose mission and vision inspire others, often seen in leaders of new social movements or religious prophets.
What is Traditional Authority?
Authority where the right to rule is passed down via heredity and does not change over time.
What is Functional Authority?
The right delegated to an individual or department to control specified processes, practices, policies, or other matters.
What is Legal Authority?
Authority that fosters belief in the competence of the individual discharging statutory obligation.
What does Endogenous mean?
Having internal cause or origin.
What is Marxist’s Model?
A socio-economic and political worldview based on a materialist interpretation of historical development and class relations and conflict within society.
What is a Sanction?
A reward for conformity or a punishment for nonconformity that reinforces socially approved forms of behavior.
What is an Institution?
Any structure or mechanism of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of individuals within a given community.
What is Kinship?
The network of social relationships that link individuals through common ancestry, marriage, or adoption.
What is a Subculture?
A group within the broader society that has values, norms, and lifestyle distinct from those of the majority.
What is a Community?
A group of people who share a common sense of identity and interact with one another on a sustained basis.
What did Pepinsky say about social control among Chinese communists?
Effective social control among Chinese communists is by group manipulation of guilt and shame.
What is a Bureaucracy?
A formal organization marked by a clear hierarchy of authority, written rules of procedure, and staffed by full-time salaried officials.
What is the primary function of religion in human societies?
To establish an orderly relationship between man and surroundings.
What are Primary Groups?
Small social groups whose members share close, personal, enduring relationships.
What are Secondary Groups?
Groups that interact on a less personal level than primary groups and have temporary relationships.
What is a Fascist System?
A form of radical authoritarian nationalism aiming to unify a nation through a totalitarian state and promoting mass mobilization.
What is the Caste System?
A form of social stratification characterized by hereditary transmission of lifestyle, occupation, and social status.
What is the Class System?
A system where people are grouped into hierarchical social categories, such as upper, middle, and lower classes.
What are Stereotypes?
A rigid and inflexible image of the characteristics of a group.
What is Discovery?
Initial awareness of existing but unobserved elements of nature.
What is Clairvoyance?
The ability to gain information about an object, person, location, or physical event through means other than the known human senses.
What is Psychokinesis?
The supposed ability to move objects by mental effort alone.
What is Precognition?
Foreknowledge of an event, especially as a form of extrasensory perception.
What is Telepathy?
The supposed communication of thoughts or ideas by means other than the known senses.
What is Fixation in psychology?
A state in which one becomes obsessed with an attachment to another person, being, or object.
What is Identification in psychology?
A process whereby the subject assimilates an aspect of another person and is transformed by it.
What is Repression in psychology?
Repelling one’s own desires and impulses towards pleasurable instincts by excluding them from consciousness.
What is Regression in psychology?
A defense mechanism leading to a reversion to an earlier stage of development rather than handling unacceptable impulses in a more adult way.
What is an Illusion?
A distortion of the senses, revealing how the brain normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation.
What is a Hallucination?
Perception in the absence of apparent stimulus which has qualities of real perception.
What is Auditory Imagery?
A form of mental imagery used to organize and analyze sounds when there is no external auditory stimulus present.
What is Eidetic Imagery?
The Eidetic Image is a vision, a source for new thought and feeling, as a material picture in the mind which can be scanned like a real current event in the environment.
What is an Affective Disorder/Mood Disorder?
A psychological disorder characterized by elevation or lowering of a person’s mood, such as depression or bipolar disorder.
What is a Panic Reaction?
An acute overwhelming attack of fear or anxiety producing personality disorganization that may persist.
What is Generalized Anxiety?
An anxiety disorder characterized by chronic free-floating anxiety and symptoms like tension, sweating, trembling, lightheadedness, irritability, etc., lasting for more than six months.
What is Schizophrenia?
A long-term mental disorder involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions, withdrawal from reality, and a sense of mental fragmentation.
What is Dopamine?
A neurotransmitter, a chemical released by nerve cells to send signals to other nerve cells.
What is Enkephalin?
A peptide involved in regulating nociception (pain) in the body.
What is Epinephrine?
A hormone and neurotransmitter with many functions, including regulating heart rate, blood vessel, and air passage diameters. It’s crucial in the fight-or-flight response.
What is Thorazine/Chlorpromazine?
A synthetic drug used as a tranquilizer or sedative.
What is a Percept?
An object of perception; something that is perceived.
What does Subliminal mean?
Below the threshold of sensation or consciousness.
What is a Threshold?
The magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction.
What are Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Growth?
Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Operational, and Formal Operational stages.
What is the Von Restorff Effect?
Also known as the isolation effect; it predicts that an item that ‘stands out like a sore thumb’ is more likely to be remembered than other items.
What is the Zeigarnik Effect?
People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.
What is the Greenspoon Effect?
An experimental effect where the speaker’s use of certain classes of words may increase in frequency when reinforced by the listener making appropriate diffident gestures of assent.
What is the Muller-Lyer Illusion?
An optical illusion consisting of stylized arrows.
What is the Gestalt Principle of Perceptual Organization?
Principles that the brain uses to organize sensory information, including proximity, continuation, closure, common fate, and similarity.
What kind of parent produces a competent and self-reliant child?
A loving parent who is firm and consistent.
What impulses frequently conflict with moral standards of society?
Sex and aggression.
What is Selective Attention?
The ability to focus one’s auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli.
What is Sensory Adaptation?
Change over time in the responsiveness of a sensory system to a constant stimulus.
What is Just Noticeable Difference?
The smallest detectable difference between a starting and secondary level of a particular sensory stimulus.
What is Roger’s Self Theory?
The belief that humans have one basic motive, the tendency to self-actualize, to fulfill one’s potential and achieve the highest level of human-beingness.
What is Negative Transfer?
The obstruction of or interference with new learning because of previous learning.
What is Spontaneous Recovery?
The re-emergence of a previously extinguished conditioned response after a delay.
What is Operant Conditioning?
Conditioning in which an operant response is brought under stimulus control by virtue of presenting reinforcement contingent upon the occurrence of the operant response.
What is Stimulus Generalization?
Transfer of a response learned to one stimulus to a similar stimulus.
What are Phobias?
An extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something.
What is Classical Conditioning?
A learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired; a response initially elicited by the second stimulus is eventually elicited by the first stimulus alone.
What is Desensitization?
The process of reducing sensitivity.
What is Modeling?
A form of learning where individuals ascertain how to act or perform by observing another individual.
What is Diffusion of Responsibility?
A sociopsychological phenomenon whereby a person is less likely to take responsibility for action or inaction when others are present.
What are the problems with experimental research in psychology?
Demand characteristics, Hawthorne effect, and Halo effect.
What are Demand Characteristics?
Experimental artifact where participants form an interpretation of the experiment’s purpose.
