What is Psychology? Flashcards
Applied practice:
The actual application of discovered techniques to solve specific practical problems.
Applied psychology:
The use of psychological principles to solve practical problems, typically by influencing behavior or changing the environment to match existing behavior.
Applied research
Research done in an effort to discover a new or more effective way to solve a specific practical problem
Basic research:
Work done by psychologists to understand the fundamental principles of behavior and mind.
Behavior :
Any observable action, including words, gestures, responses, and more that can be repeated, measured, and are affected by a situation to produce or remove some outcome. Behavior can also refer to biological activity, including actions on the cellular level.
Behaviorism:
An approach to psychology that suggests observable behavior should be the only topic of study, ignoring conscious experience.
Biological determinism:
The view that all human behavior is controlled by genetic and biological influences.
Clinical psychology:
A form of applied psychology that focuses on identifying, preventing, and relieving distress or dysfunction that is psychological in origin.
Counseling psychologists:
Psychologists who focus on helping people deal with ongoing situations, or on the adjustment from one situation to another.
Culture :
A shared set of beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and customs belonging to a specific group or community.
Dualism:
The philosophical position that the mind and the body are entirely separate from one another.
Eclectic approach:
An approach to clinical psychology that uses different therapeutic techniques based on their effectiveness for the current situation.
Empiricism:
The view that knowledge arises directly from experience.
Evolutionary psychology:
The study of psychology from an evolutionary perspective, it proposes that many mental processes have developed in response to natural selection to solve adaptive problems.
Feminist psychology:
An approach to psychology that is critical of cultural influences on gender and gender differences in behavior.
Functional explanations:
A kind of proximate explanation that seeks to identify a specific problem as the cause of a trait, behavior, or mental process.
Functionalism:
An early movement in psychology whose proponents believed that an understanding of a behavior or process’ function was critical to understanding its operation.
Humanistic psychology:
An approach to psychology that emphasizes the ability of humans to make their own choices and realize their own potential.
Intersectional approach:
An approach to studying cultural influences that emphasizes examining how multiple social identities intersect at the level of the individual person to alter their experiences.
Levels of explanation:
The acknowledgment that different explanations for a phenomenon can complement one another.
Mind:
The contents of conscious experience, including sensations, perceptions, thoughts, and emotions.
Nativism:
The view that some forms of knowledge are inborn, or innate.
Natural selection:
The principle that traits which contribute to improvements in survival and reproduction are more likely to be passed down to later generations.
Phrenology:
The pseudoscientific study of the shape of the human skull in an attempt to associate brain areas with specific characteristics, thoughts, or abilities.
Positive psychology:
An outgrowth of humanistic psychology, positive psychology studies specific virtues of the human experience, including topics such as happiness, trust, charity, and gratitude.
Process-oriented explanations:
A kind of proximate explanation that focuses on how a specific mental or physical process directly explains a trait or behavior.
Proximate explanations:
Explanations that seek to describe an immediate cause of a trait, behavior, or mental process.
Psychiatrist:
A medical doctor who is trained to assess and treat psychological disorders. Psychiatrists often prescribe and manage psychiatric medications.
Psychoanalysis:
A form of psychotherapy coined by Sigmund Freud that seeks to help clients gain more insight into their unconscious thoughts, behaviors, and motivations.
Psychology:
The scientific study of both behavior and mind.
Structuralism :
The first movement in the history of psychology, which focused on breaking down immediate conscious experience (such as sensations and feelings) into their constituent parts.
Systematic introspection:
One of the first strategies to make inferences about the contents of the mind, it was an effort to standardize the way that people reported their own experiences.
Translational research:
Research that attempts to take basic findings and turn them into solutions for practical problems.
Ultimate explanations:
Explanations that seek to describe the reasons why a trait, behavior, or mental process exists by appealing to its role in the process of evolution.
