Psychology Honors Final Exam Review

Terms

Biological Perspective

How the brain, neurotransmitters, genetics etc. influence our behaviors, thoughts, and feelings

Cognitive Perspective

How people process, store, and retrieve information…how they reason and solve problems…the way we think

Socio-Cultural Perspective 

How membership in a social or cultural group impacts a person's thinking and behavior

Biopsychosocial Approach 

Seeks to unify and use all the perspectives as interacting and interrelated

Evolutionary Perspective

How our personalities and individual differences evolved over time to promote the survival and reproduction of our species

Psychoanalytic Perspective

How early childhood experiences and the unconscious mind shape adult personality

Recall

Retrieving information that is not currently in our conscious awareness, but was learned at an earlier time.

Recognition

Identifying items previously learned

Relearning

Learning something more quickly when you learn it a second time, or later time

Information-Processing Model

Model of memory, compares our mind to a computer in a series of three stages

Encoding

The process of putting information into the memory system

Storage

The creation of a permanent record of the encoded information

Retrieval

The calling back of stored information on demand when it is needed

Working Memory 

contains the information of which you are immediately aware, “Active State”

Rehearsal

repeating something to yourself over and over again as a way to remember it

Explicit Memory

Information that you have to consciously work to remember

Implicit Memory

Information that you remember unconsciously and effortlessly

Sensory Memory

Storage of events that we receive from our senses 

Short Term Memory (STM) 

How much we can keep in our conscious mind

George Miller

proposed that we can hold 7 +/-2 information bits

Chunking

organizing items into familiar, manageable, meaningful units

Mnemonic 

a memory “trick” that connects information to existing memory strengths such as imagery or structure.

Visual Encoding

process with which we remember visual images

Acoustic Encoding

the encoding of sound; especially the sound of words

Semantic Encoding

providing meaning…can be of a word, applying context, recalling an example that relates to your life etc.

Long Term Memory

All the memories we hold for longer than a few seconds

Hippocampus

Our explicit memories are controlled by the ____

Cerebellum

Our implicit memories are controlled by the _____

Flashbulb Memory

memories that are affected by our emotional state

Amygdala

controls emotion - anger, aggression, and fear - making it responsible for very emotional memories

Context Dependent Memory 

We retrieve a memory more easily when in the same context as when we formed the memory.

State Dependent Memory 

Memories tied to the Physiological or emotional state we were in when we formed the memory.

Mood-Congruent Memory 

refers to the tendency to selectively recall details that are consistent with one’s current mood. 

Serial Position

refers to the tendency, when learning information in a long list, to more likely recall the first items and the last items.

Retrieval Failure

The failure to recall a memory 

Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon

• The feeling that a memory is available but not quite retrievable 

Amnesia

Occurs when a person experiences full or partial loss of memory

Retrograde Amnesia

Cannot remember things that happened before the event that caused their amnesia

Anterograde Amnesia

Condition in which a person is unable to create new memories after an amnesia-inducing event

Encoding Failure 

Occurs when a memory was never formed in the first place

Social Psychology

The scientific study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in a social context

Fritz Heider

Who created the Attribution Theory?

Attribution Theory 

We have a tendency to give causal explanations for someone’s behavior, often by crediting the situation or someone’s disposition

Dispositional Attribution

The assumption that a person’s behavior reflects their internal dispositions like personality, attitude, motivation, beliefs etc. 

Situational Attribution

The assumption that a person’s behavior is influenced by an external influence like environment or culture

Fundamental Attribution Error

Our tendency to underestimate the impact of situational factors and overestimate the impact of dispotional (personal) factors when assessing why other people acted the way they did 

Just World Phenomenon

We believe that people get what they deserve

Self-Serving Bias 

Tendency to blame external forces when bad things happen and to give ourselves credit when good things happen

False Consensus Effect 

Tendency to overestimate how much other people agree with us

Central Route Persuasion 

A person is influenced by the strength of an advertisement’s  arguments and actual content of a message - evidence is often provided in the form a statistics, etc., People who apply this route are more strongly persuaded for a longer period of time

Peripheral Route Persuasion 

A person does not think carefully about a communication and is influenced by superficial cues

Foot-In-The-Door Phenomenon

Tendency for people who have first agreed  to a small request to comply later with a larger request

Door-In-The-Face Technique

Asking for a large commitment and being refused and then asking for a smaller commitment and getting agreement

Reciprocity Norm

is a social convention that compels people to return a favor when someone has helped them.

Conformity

The act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms

Solomon Asch

Study on how people’s beliefs affect the beliefs of others

Obedience

Changing one’s behavior at the direct command of an authority figure (person with social power)

Stanley Milgram

Designed a famous experiment on obedience

65% Baseline

In Milgram’s initial study, involving 40 men, participants administered an average of 27 out of 30 possible shocks