AP Psychology Unit 0: Foundations and Research Methods

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering foundational psychological perspectives, subfields, research designs, and statistical concepts from AP Psychology Unit 0.

Psychodynamic Perspective

A school of thought focused on how behavior and mental processes are influenced by unconscious social conflict and family childhood conflict.

Behavioral Perspective

A school of thought focused on how behavior and mental processes are influenced by our environment through reinforcement (reward), punishment, and watching others then imitating.

Humanist Perspective

A school of thought focused on how behavior and mental processes are influenced by the need to be the best person you can be, emphasizing goodness, freewill, choice, and basic needs (physiological, safety, love and belonging, self-esteem, self-actualization).

Cognitive Perspective

A school of thought focused on how behavior and mental processes are influenced by mental processes, including thoughts (rational vs. irrational), memories, and perceptions.

Socio-cultural Perspective

A school of thought focused on how behavior and mental processes are influenced by the norm of the group, including gender, ethnicity/race, language, age, SES, and individualist or collectivist cultures.

Biological (Neuroscience) Perspective

A school of thought focused on how behavior and mental processes are influenced by the physiology of the brain, chemicals being released (hormones/neurotransmitters) or imbalanced, and genes/heredity from parents.

Evolutionary Perspective

A school of thought focused on how behavior and mental processes are influenced by survival or reproductive advantage, natural selection, and survival of the fittest that allowed ancestors to survive.

Clinical Psychology

A specialty practitioner that works with the diagnosis, causes, and treatment of mental disorders.

Counseling Psychology

A practitioner that works with people coping with everyday problems, including making career decisions, marriage counseling, and social skills training.

School Psychology

A psychologist that works directly with students exhibiting emotional or learning problems to overcome educational difficulties in a K-12 setting, including the creation and implementation of plans to meet individualized student needs.

Educational Psychology

A specialty that studies theoretical issues related to how people learn and effective teaching practices.

Industrial/Organizational Psychology

A subfield concerned with psychological issues related to the work environment, including employee motivation and selection.

Human Factors Psychology

A specialty that uses psychological knowledge to increase efficiency between humans and machines.

Biological/Neuroscience Psychology

A specialty that investigates the relationship between the body and behavior, the nervous system and behavior, and mental processes, centering on the brain.

Cognitive Psychology

A specialty that examines how mental processes, such as thinking, knowing, feeling, and memory, operate and affect behavior.

Social Psychology

A specialty that studies the impact of society on individuals and how a person's life and behavior is shaped by interactions with others.

Developmental Psychology

A specialty that studies how people change over time and the developmental stages across the human lifespan (womb to tomb).

Personality Psychology

A specialty that examines our stable traits and develops methods of personality assessment.

Psychometrics

A specialty concerned with numerical methods of measuring psychological variables by creating valid and reliable tests.

Health Psychology

A subfield interested in the promotion and maintenance of good health, as well as the prevention of illness.

Community Psychology

A specialty that develops and presents programs to help prevent issues between individuals and their community.

Environmental Psychology

A specialty interested in the relationship between human behavior and physical environments.

Positive Psychology

A specialty that researches human strengths and virtues and focuses on positive emotions.

Sports Psychology

A specialty that helps athletes refine their focus and motivation that accompany competition.

Forensic Psychology

A specialty that applies psychological principles to legal issues.

Case Study

A non-experimental methodology that involves studying one individual (or group) in great depth.

Naturalistic Observation

A non-experimental methodology that studies human and animal behavior by watching them in their real environment without interfering.

Meta-analysis

A quantitative technique for synthesizing the results of multiple studies of a phenomenon into a single result by combining the effect size estimates from each study to generate a hypothesis based on a large sample.

Survey

A research technique that asks people to self-report their behavior, opinions, or beliefs.

Operational Definition

A statement specifying the precise manner in which a variable is measured or quantified (e.g., the specific response score on a survey rather than merely stating that a survey was administered).

Experimental Methodology

A research approach that involves the manipulation of independent variable(s) and random assignment of participants to groups to establish causal relationships.

Directionality Problem

A problem in correlational research where it is uncertain whether variable A caused changes in variable B or vice versa, demonstrating that correlation does not establish causation.

Frequency Distribution

An organized list of scores in ascending or descending order that reveals patterns and groupings of identical scores that would be less obvious in an unorganized list.

Measures of Variation

Statistical calculations that describe how spread out numbers are in a data set, with common examples being range and standard deviation.

Range

A measure of variation calculated as the highest score minus the lowest score in a data set.

Standard Deviation

A measure of variation that measures how far numbers usually are from the mean (average).

Skewed Distribution

A set of scores or numbers that is not equal on both sides of the mean (the distribution is not normal), resulting from scores falling more on one end or the other.

Effect Size

Any of various measures of the magnitude or meaningfulness of a relationship between two variables (e.g., Cohen's d), indicating practical significance and enabling the computation of summary statistics in meta-analyses.