Vocab 1 (april 2) Flashcards
Brain
Skins
Behavior
The observable actions of an individual person or animal
Mind
The entire set of an individuals sensations, perceptions, memories, thoughts, dreams, motives, emotional feelings, and other subjective experiences
Dualism
The philosophical theory that two distinct systems–the material body and the immaterial soul–are involved in the control of behavior
Empiricism
The idea that all human knowledge and thought ultimately come from sensory experience; the philosophical approach to understanding the mind that is based on that idea
Behaviorism
A school of psychological thought that holds that the proper subject of study is observable behavior, not the mind, and that behavior should be understood in terms of its relationship to observable events in the environment rather than in terms of hypothetical events within the individual
Natural selection
The selective breeding that results from the obstacles to reproduction that are imposed by the natural environment ; driving that force of evolution
Functionalism
A school of psychological thought, founded by William James and others, that focuses on understanding the functions, or adaptive purposes, of mental processes
Renée Descartes
His version of dualism was that the body was an intricate complex machine that generates its own heat and is capable of moving even without the influence of the soul
Nonhuman animals do not have souls
Thought which he defined as conscious deliberation and judgment
The soul the nonphysical ask on the body at a particular physical location
Thomas Hobbes
Hobbes argued that spirit or soul is a meaningless concept and that nothing exists that matter and energy, a philosophy now known as materialism
Called human behavior can in theory be understood in terms of physical processes in the body
Conscious thought is purely a product of brains machinery and therefore subject to natural law
His ideas helped inspire the school of thought about the mind known as empiricism
John Locke
Page 570
Correlations between changes in self efficacy and changes in performance have likewise been found in such diverse realms of mathematics physical exertion tolerance for pain and exhibition of social skills
Self efficacy is not simply a correlate of good performance but is also a cause of it
Charles Darwin
Naturalist/Natural selection
Book: the origin of species
Fundamental idea: living things evolve
gradually over generation by a process of natural selection
The expression of the emotions in man and animals
Argued that the basic forms of human emotional expressions are inherited as are those of other animals
All species are two very degrees similar to one another because of common ancestry and all species are to some degree unique because natural selection has adopted each species to the unique aspects of the environment in which it lives and produces
Humans automatically communicate moods and behavioral intentions to one another through body postures, movements, and facial expressions
William James
Suggested that bodily reactions preceded the emotions and cause them rather, than the reverse
Looked at own emotions for evidence
Contiguity allows us to think of the properties of any given object and then allows us to think of other objects that have the same properties, leading to associations by similarity
We reason by using our memories of previous experiences to make sense of present experiences or to plan for the future
Ideas on reference group
A persons self esteem is equal to his achievements divided by his pretensions
B.F. Skinner
Behaviorist
Believed that the principles of learning are the most fundamental principles in psychology
Skinner box: is a cage with a lever or another mechanism in it that the animal can operate to produce some effect, such as delivery of a pellet of food or a drop of water
Operant response: to refer to any behavioral act that has some effect on the environment
Operant conditioning: to refer to the process by which the effect of an operant response changes the likelihood of the responses reccurrence
Reinforcer: a replacement for such words as satisfaction and reward, to refer to a stimulus change that occurs after a response and that increases the subsequent frequency of that response
Operant conditioning without awareness
Schedules of partial reinforcement
Distinction between positive and negative reinforcement
Distinction between reinforcement and punishment
Argued that attitudes are simply verbal habits that influence what people say but are largely irrelevant to what they do
Self actualization
In humanistic psychology, the fulfillment of drives that go beyond one’s survival needs and pertain to psychological growth, creativity, and self expression
