Week 1 Flashcards
Social psychology
The scientific study of how individuals think, feel and behave in a social context.
Interactionist perspective
An emphasis on how both an individual’s personality and environmental characteristics influence behaviour.
Study of Social cognition
The study of how people perceive, interpret and remember information about themselves and others.
Behavioural genetics
A subfield of psychology that examines the role of genetic factors in behaviour.
Evolutionary psychology
A subfield of psychology that uses the principles of evolution to understand human social behaviour.
Culture
A system of enduring meanings, beliefs, values, assumptions, institutions and practices shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.
Cross-cultural research
Research designed to compare and contrast people of different cultures.
Multicultural research
Research designed to examine racial and ethnic groups within cultures.
Behavioural economics
An interdisciplinary subfield that focuses on how psychology – particularly social and cognitive psychology – relates to economic decision-making.
Social Neuroscience
The study of the relationship between neural and social processes.
Embodied cognition
An interdisciplinary subfield that examines the close links between our minds and the positioning, experiences and actions of our bodies.
Theory
An organised set of principles used to explain observed phenomena.
Applied research
Research in which the goals are to enlarge the understanding of naturally occurring events and to find solutions to practical problems.
General psychological research
Research in which the goal is to increase the understanding of human behaviour, often by testing a hypothesis based on a theory.
Operational definition
The specific procedures for manipulating or measuring a conceptual variable.
