Psychological Terms and Concepts

Flashcards covering key psychological terms and definitions from the lecture notes.

Id

The part of the unconscious mind that contains basic drives and instincts, such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire, operating on the pleasure principle.

Ego

The part of the psyche that mediates between the desires of the Id and the constraints of the external world, operating on the reality principle.

Superego

The part of the psyche that represents internalized societal and parental standards of right and wrong, guiding moral behavior.

Normative Decision Maker

A person who makes decisions based on what is typical, social, or expected, often considering social norms and majority influence.

Biological Preparedness

The idea that organisms are evolutionarily programmed to fear certain stimuli that posed threats to survival, such as snakes or heights.

Learned Helplessness

A mental state in which an individual learns to believe that they are powerless to control their circumstances, often due to repeated exposure to uncontrollable situations.

Encoding

The process of converting sensory input into a form that can be stored in memory.

Storage

The process of maintaining encoded information in memory over time.

Retrieval

The process of accessing stored information from memory when it is needed.

Iconic Memory

A type of sensory memory that briefly holds visual information.

Interference

A phenomenon in memory where other information disrupts the ability to recall or retrieve specific memories.

Serial Position Effects

The tendency for people to remember the first and last items in a list better than the middle items.

Procedural Memory

A type of long-term memory related to skills, tasks, and procedures, such as riding a bike or playing an instrument.

Semantic Memory

A type of long-term memory involving facts, concepts, and general knowledge.

Episodic Memory

A type of long-term memory related to specific events or experiences, including personal experiences and autobiographical details.

Semantic Priming

The phenomenon where exposure to a word or concept makes related words or concepts easier to recognize or recall.

Free Recall

The ability to recall information without any specific cues or prompts.

Cued Recall

The ability to recall information with the aid of specific cues or hints.

Recognition

The ability to identify previously encountered information when presented with it, as opposed to recalling it from memory.

Semantic False Memory

A memory error where individuals recall words or concepts that were never actually encountered, often due to the activation of related semantic associations.

Reconstructive Memory

The process of rebuilding a memory based on available information, which can sometimes lead to inaccuracies or distortions.

The Misinformation Effect

The phenomenon where a person's memory of an event is altered by misleading or incorrect information presented after the event.

Encoding-Retrieval Match

The idea that memory performance is enhanced when the conditions at the time of encoding are similar to the conditions at the time of retrieval.

Attribution

The process of assigning causes to behavior, either to internal factors (dispositional) or external factors (situational).

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overestimate the influence of personal traits (dispositional factors) and underestimate the role of situational factors when explaining others' behaviors.

Actor-Observer Discrepancy

The tendency to attribute our own behaviors to situational factors while attributing others' behaviors to their personality traits.

Beneffectance

The tendency to attribute positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes to external factors.

Egocentricity

The tendency to view the world from one's own perspective, often leading to overestimating one's influence or importance in situations.

Vicarious Beneffectance

The tendency to claim credit for positive outcomes or successes that occur to others, particularly within one’s group or social circle.

Cognitive Conservatism

The tendency to cling to existing beliefs and attitudes, even in the face of new or contradictory information.

Social Loafing

The tendency for individuals to exert less effort when working in a group than when working alone.

Social Facilitation

The tendency for people to perform better on simple or well-practiced tasks when in the presence of others.

Deindividuation

A psychological state in which an individual loses self-awareness and feels less accountable for their actions, often occurring in group settings.

Affiliation

The need or desire to form social bonds and relationships with others.