Week 09: Chapters 14 and 15 Flashcards
learning
In behaviorism, a change in behavior as a result of experience.
behaviorism (or behaviorist approach)
The theoretical view of personality that focuses on overt behavior and the ways in which it can be affected by rewards and punishments in the environment. A modern variant is the social learning approach, which adds a concern with how behavior is affected by observation, self-evaluation, and social interaction; also called the learning approach.
functional analysis
In behaviorism, a description of how a behavior is a function of the environment of the person or animal
that performs it.
empiricism
The idea that everything a person knows comes from experience.
associationism
The idea that all complex ideas are combinations of two or more sim- ple ideas.
hedonism
The idea that people are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
utilitarianism
The idea that the best society is the one that creates the most happiness for the largest number of people.
habituation
The decrease in response to a stimulus on repeated applications; this is the simplest kind of learning.
classical conditioning
The kind of learning in which an unconditioned response (such as salivating) that is naturally elicited by one stimulus (such as food) becomes elicited also by a new, conditioned stimulus (such as a bell).
learned helplessness
A belief that nothing one does matters, derived from an experi- ence of random or unpredictable reward and punishment, and theorized to be a basis of depression.
operant conditioning
Skinner’s term for the process of learning in which an organism’s behavior is shaped by the effect of the behavior on the environment.
respondent conditioning
Skinner’s term for classical conditioning.
reinforcement
In operant conditioning, a reward that, when applied following a be- havior, increases the frequency of that behavior. In classical conditioning, this refers to the pairing of an unconditioned stimulus (such as food) with a conditioned stimulus (such as a bell).
punishment
An aversive consequence that follows an act in order to stop the act and prevent its repetition.
expectancy value theory
Rotter’s theory of how the value and perceived attainability of a goal combine to affect the probability of a goal-seeking behavior.
expectancy
In Rotter’s social learning theory, the degree to which an individual believes a behavior will probably attain its goal.
efficacy expectation
In Bandura’s social learning theory, one’s belief that one can perform a given goal-directed behavior.
self-efficacy
One’s beliefs about the degree to which one will be able to accomplish a goal if one tries.
self-concept
A person’s knowledge and opinions about herself.
observational learning
Learning a behavior by watching someone else do it.
reciprocal determinism
Bandura’s term for the way people affect their environments even while their environments affect them.
personality processes
The mental activi- ties of personality, including perception, thought, motivation, and emotion.
priming
Activation of a concept or idea by repeatedly perceiving it or thinking about it. The usual result is that this concept or idea comes to mind more quickly and easily in new situations.
chronic accessibility
The tendency of an idea or concept to come easily to mind for a particular individual.
perceptual defense
The process of failing to perceive stimuli that an individual might find disturbing or threatening.
short-term memory (STM)
The stage of information processing in which the person is consciously aware of a small amount of information (about seven chunks) as long as that information continues to be actively processed.
chunk
Any piece of information that can be thought of as a unit. A chunk can vary with learning and experience. The capacity of short-term memory is seven chunks, plus or minus two.
goal
In learning and cognitive approaches to personality, a desired end state that serves to direct perception, thought, and behavior.
strategy
A sequence of activities directed toward a goal.
entity theory
In Dweck’s theory of motivation, an individual’s belief that abilities are fixed and unchangeable.
incremental theory
In Dweck’s theory of motivation, an individual’s belief that abilities can increase with experience and practice.
procedural knowledge
What a person knows but cannot really talk about; sometimes called knowing how.
emotional intelligence
The ability to perceive emotions accurately in oneself and others and to control and use one’s own emotions constructively.
cognitive control
Using rational thinking to regulate one’s emotions and to control how one reacts to emotional feelings.
emotional circumplex
The emotion circumplex is a two-dimensional circular space model of human emotion that expresses emotions as points or vectors. According to the paradigm, all human emotions may be represented by two main dimensions: valence and arousal.
The degree of pleasantness or unpleasantness of emotion, ranging from negative to positive, is valence. Arousal is the degree of activity or energy associated with a feeling, ranging from low to high.
Emotions are arranged in a circular area by the emotion circumplex, with emotions with comparable valence and arousal levels clustered together. For example, feelings like pleasure, enthusiasm, and love are positioned in the high valence and high arousal quadrants. At the same time, melancholy, boredom, and exhaustion are found in the low valence and low arousal quadrants.
The emotion circumplex model has been extensively employed in emotion research to understand better the links between various emotions and the physiological and neurological systems that underpin them.
