Psychology Unit 3: Cults, Intelligence, Personality, Emotion, and Sexuality

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering psychological concepts from Unit 3, including cult mechanisms, intelligence theories, personality assessments, the Dark Triad/Tetrad, the HEXACO model, emotional dynamics, and human sexuality.

Cult

A high-control group that uses psychological manipulation to control, influence, and exploit its members.

Mind Control (Brainwashing)

The process of changing someone's thought processes through conditioning and persuasion for the purpose of controlling them, rather than turning them into mindless zombies or placing them in a hypnotic trance.

BITE Model

A framework describing the four ways cults exercise psychological manipulation to control members: Behavioural control, Information control, Thought control, and Emotional control.

Behavioural Control (BITE Model)

The manipulation and regulation of a cult member's everyday actions, routines, relationships, diet, sleep, and financial choices.

Information Control (BITE Model)

The restriction, monitoring, and deliberate deception regarding access to outside news, books, the internet, or contact with outsiders to minimize critical influences.

Thought Control (BITE Model)

The manipulation of members' cognitive patterns—often through strategic language and thought-stopping phrases like 'The leader knows best'—to instill belief that the group is reality and the outside world is wrong.

Emotional Control (BITE Model)

The manipulation of members' feelings by instilling fear, guilt, or shame through public confessions and selectively dispensing praise or affection when they obey.

Love Bombing

A recruitment technique where cult members overwhelm a prospective recruit with intense affection, attention, and acceptance to satisfy their need to belong.

Intelligence

The ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

General Intelligence ($g$)

A single broad factor proposed by Charles Spearman to explain why individuals who perform well in one intellectual domain also tend to perform well in others.

Eugenics

A movement founded by Sir Francis Galton based on the belief that the genetic quality of the human population could be improved by controlling reproduction according to inherited characteristics.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

A standardized measure of mental performance originally formulated by William Stern and adapted by Terman as $\text{IQ} = \frac{\text{Mental Age}}{\text{Chronological Age}} \times 100$.

Flynn Effect

The sustained increase in average performance on standardized intelligence tests observed across successive generations over time.

Three-Stratum Model

John Carroll's hierarchical framework organizing human intelligence into three levels: Stratum III (general intelligence/$g$), Stratum II (broad abilities like fluid intelligence and processing speed), and Stratum I (narrow, specific abilities).

Fluid Intelligence

The ability to think on one's feet, reason abstractly, and solve novel problems independent of acquired knowledge; more strongly associated with youth.

Crystallized Intelligence

The accumulated knowledge, language, facts, and learned skills acquired through education and life experience; tends to increase with age.

Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Howard Gardner's proposal that human intelligence consists of eight relatively independent modalities: logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, musical-rhythmic, verbal-linguistic, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic.

Growth Mindset

Carol Dweck's concept defining the belief that cognitive abilities and intelligence can be cultivated and developed through effort, practice, and persistence.

Fixed Mindset

The belief that intelligence and abilities are unchangeable static traits, leading individuals to avoid challenges and give up easily following failure.

Stereotype Threat

A phenomenon wherein an individual experiences anxiety and diminished performance on a task due to the fear of confirming a negative stereotype regarding their social group.

Personality Traits

Characteristic, relatively enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours defined by consistency across situations, stability over time, and individual differences.

Lexical Hypothesis

The proposition pioneered by Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert stating that the most important individual differences in personality are encoded within natural everyday language.

Factor Analysis

A statistical technique used to identify underlying clusters or dimensions among large numbers of measured personality descriptors or questionnaire items.

Facets

Narrow, specific sub-components or lower-order traits that comprise a broader personality dimension in models such as the Big Five.

Person-Situation Debate

The controversy launched by Walter Mischel questioning whether human behaviour is predominantly driven by stable internal traits or changing external situations.

Objective Personality Test

A standardized assessment that employs predetermined scoring keys and a limited set of structured response options.

Social Desirability Bias

The tendency of respondents to answer questions in a manner that presents a favourable impression to others rather than reflecting their true thoughts or behaviours.

Informant Ratings

Personality assessments completed by individuals who know the target person well (such as peers, spouses, or coworkers) rather than by the target themselves.

Projective Hypothesis

The theory that when confronted with ambiguous, unstructured stimuli, individuals unconsciously reveal their latent needs, motives, feelings, and conflicts.

The Dark Triad

A constellation of three overlapping subclinical personality traits characterized by self-interest and antisocial tendencies: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy.

Narcissism

A trait characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, entitlement, a strong craving for external admiration and praise, and a lack of empathy.

Machiavellianism

A personality trait marked by cynical pragmatism, emotional detachment, manipulation, deceit, and an ends-justify-the-means approach to personal goals.

Psychopathy

A trait characterized by impulsivity, superficial charm, lack of remorse or guilt, shallow emotionality, and disregard for the rights of others.

Sadism

The trait of finding pleasure, amusement, or gratification in inflicting physical, psychological, or emotional suffering on others; the fourth trait in the Dark Tetrad.

HEXACO Model

A six-factor personality taxonomy consisting of Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience.

Honesty-Humility

The sixth factor of the HEXACO model comprising sincerity, fairness, greed avoidance, and modesty; represents the conceptual opposite of the Dark Triad.

Adaptation-Level Phenomenon

The cognitive tendency to judge stimuli, life conditions, or income levels relative to a neutral baseline formed by our prior experiences.

Hedonic Treadmill (Hedonic Adaptation)

The psychological process wherein individuals tend to adapt and return toward a baseline level of happiness following significant positive or negative life changes.

Social Referencing

The process by which infants look to the facial expressions and emotional cues of trusted adults to determine whether an ambiguous situation is safe.

Cultural Display Rules

Culturally learned norms that specify how, when, and to whom individuals should express, suppress, or modify their emotional expressions depending on the social context.

Emotion Coherence

The degree of synchronization among a person's subjective emotional experience, visible behavioural displays, and physiological reactions.

Emotional Suppression

An emotion regulation strategy that involves intentionally inhibiting or hiding the outward physical display of an emotional state.

Mixed Emotions

The simultaneous experience of co-occurring positive and negative affective states (such as feeling happy and sad during a transition).

Gender Identity

An individual's deeply felt, internal psychological sense of their own gender, which may or may not align with their biological sex.

Gender Roles

The cultural expectations, duties, and social norms specifying how individuals should behave, dress, or express themselves based on assigned gender.

Kinsey Scale

A 7-point continuum ranging from 0 (exclusively heterosexual) to 6 (exclusively homosexual) used to measure human sexual orientation.

Sexual Orientation Concordance Rate (SOCR)

The statistical probability that two related individuals (such as identical or fraternal twins) will share the same sexual orientation.

Sexual Consent

Voluntary, conscious, informed, and empathic mutual agreement to engage in specific sexual activity, which can be modified or revoked at any point.