Gen Psych Final (new material)

Social Loafing:

reductions in motivation and effort when individuals work collectively in a group

• ex: group class projects

Deindividuation:

loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity

• ex: food fight

Group Polarization:

tendency of groups to make more extreme decisions than do individuals alone (could be good or bad)

Groupthink:

pattern in group decision-making in which members assume their decision will be correct

Prejudice:

a hostile or negative attitude toward a distinguishable group of people

• ex: holocaust

Stereotyping:

a generalized belief about a group of people

Discrimination:

differential actions toward members based on their group membership

Explicit Prejudice:

prejudice that can be clearly expressed

Implicit Prejudice:

prejudice that the individual may not be aware of and/or cannot clearly express

Implicit Association Test:

measures implicit prejudice

Just-World Phenomenon:

believe that the world is “just” and people get what they deserve

• ex: good people are rewarded, bad people are punished

Realistic Conflict Theory:

idea that competition for limited resources lead to conflict between groups and results in increased prejudice and discrimination

How does social identity theory explain prejudice?

prejudice depends on how much children identify with their social group

In-Group Bias:

positive feelings and behavior toward people in our-group

Minimal Groups:

groups united by not important similarities

• ex: jane elliot’s blue-eyed and brown-eyed experiment

How does categorization explain stereotyping?

our brains automatically classify information into categories

How does the confirmation bias explain stereotyping?

tendency to notice and remember events that are consistent with our existing beliefs

Contact Hypothesis:

a theory that suggest that prejudice and conflict between groups can be reduced if members interact with each other

Cooperative Interdependence:

individuals perceive that they can attain their goals if the other members attain their goals

Drive Theory of Aggression:

aggression results from situations that stimulate the internal motive to hard others

Catharsis: does it reduce aggression

bottling up anger will eventually cause people to explode in an aggressive rage, but expressing the aggression will reduce the drive

Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis:

frustration increases probability of aggressive behavior

How do similarity and proximity predict liking:

proximity gives off a sense of familiarity which increases liking someone and couples tend to have similar interests or outlooks

Bystander Effect: why does this occur

the presence of other people makes it less likely that anyone will help a stranger in distress

Diffusion of Responsibility:

occurs when people who need to make a decision wait for someone else to act instead

Pluralistic Ignorance:

bystanders assume nothing is wrong in an emergency because other bystanders don’t appear concerned

Evaluation Apprehension:

concern about social approval or disapproval

Psychoanalytic Perspective of Personality:

there is a reason for everything an individual does and it is related directly to something that has occurred in that individual’s past

Unconscious:

impulses, wishes, and memories of which people are not consciously aware but affect thoughts and behavior

Id:

most primitive part of personality and is entirely unconscious and includes instinctive and primitive behaviors

Ego:

develops from the id and ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in a manner acceptable in the real world

Superego:

internalized morals and values of society and provides guidelines for making judgements

Oral Stage (freud psychosexual stage):

• birth - 18 months

• explore world through mouth

• dependence, trust

• oral fixation

Anal Stage (freud psychosexual stage):

• 18 months - 3 years

• conflict with parents about compliance and defiance

• attitudes toward order and disorder

• anal fixation

Phallic Stage (freud psychosexual stage):

• 3 - 6 years

• oedipus complex and identification

Oedipus Complex:

boy desired exclusive relationship with mother

Repression (freud defensive mechanism):

subconsciously blocking ideas or impulses that are undesirable

• ex: having no recollection of a traumatic event, even though they were conscious during the event

Projection (freud defensive mechanism):

individual attributing their own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, and motives to another person

• ex: you hate someone but that feeling is unacceptable so you begin to believe that they hate you

Rationalization:

to justify difficult or unacceptable feelings with seemingly logical reasons and explanations

• ex: student who was rejected from her dream school may then explain how she’s happy to be attending a school thats less competitive

Displacement:

transferring one’s emotional burden or emotional reaction from one entity to another

• ex: had a bad day at work and then letting the anger out on the family

Denial:

ignoring the reality of a situation to avoid anxiety

Psychological Determinism:

all thoughts, emotions, and behaviors have causes

Projective Tests:

a personality test in which it intends to uncover unconscious desires that are hidden from conscious awareness

Empathy (rogers):

capacity to understand another person’s experience cognitively and emotionally

Unconditional Positive Regard (rogers):

being given the sense that an individual is values by parents and others

Big Five Traits:

• Openness to experience - imaginative

• Conscientiousness - cautious, dependable

• Extraversion - enthusiastic, sociable

• Agreeableness - friendly, cooperative

• Neuroticism - nervous, worrying

Labeling Theory:

a way of labeling individuals a society considers deviant

Rosenhan’s Study:

labeling people as mentally ill then influences how the clinicians interpret the behavior of the patients

Anxiety Disorders:

characterized by intense, frequent, or continuous anxiety

Generalized Anxiety Disorder:

excessive, exaggerated anxiety/worry over ordinary life activities that are difficult to control and interfere with day-to-day activities

Panic Disorder:

attacks of extreme fear that are out of proportion to what the situation calls for

Phobias:

irrational fear of a specific object or situation

Social Anxiety Disorder:

intense fear of being in social or performance situation

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:

seemingly endless cycle of repetitive thoughts and feeling that certain actions need to be repeated over and over again

Obsessions and Compulsions:

• obsessions - persistent thoughts

• compulsions - behaviors that must be performed

Major Depressive Disorder:

feelings of extreme sadness, emptiness, thoughts of hopelessness

Bipolar Disorder:

extreme mood swings - alternating between depression and mania

Mania:

period of abnormally euphoric mood, increased energy

Schizophrenia:

severe disorder of thought, emotion, and perception associated with psychotic symptoms

What does it mean to have psychotic symptoms?

to be out of touch with reality

Delusions:

strongly help, fixed beliefs that have no basis in reality

Hallucinations:

sensory perceptions that distort or are experienced in the absence of an external stimulus

Disorganized Speech:

skips from topic to topic

Word Salad:

confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases

Catatonic Symptoms:

motor problems

Positive Catatonic Symptoms:

presence of something not usually there

• delusions, hallucinations

Negative Catatonic Symptoms:

absence of something

• flat affect, expressionless faces

Dissociative Identity Disorder:

at least 2 separate and distinct personalities within the same person

Borderline Personality Disorder:

mental illness that severely impacts a person’s ability to manage their emotions and is afraid of being abandoned

Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

encompasses a pattern of grandiose, need for admiration, and lack of empathy

Psychoanalytic Therapy:

a form of in-depth talk therapy that aims to bring unconscious or deeply buried thoughts and feelings to the conscious mind

What are the important qualities of Rogers’s person-centered therapy?

empathy, unconditional positive regard, reflection

Behavioral Therapy:

addresses maladaptive behavior with learning and conditioning principles

Classical Conditioning Method:

exposure therapy, flooding, systematic desensitization, counterconditioning

Operant Conditioning Method:

uses reinforcement and punishment, token economy

Exposure Therapy:

confronts clients with that they fear

Flooding:

client confronts the feared stimulus all at once

Systematic Desensitization:

client taught to relax as they gradually exposed to what they fear

Token Economy:

desirable behaviors are rewarded with tokens that patients can exchange for rewards

Cognitive Therapy:

focuses on thought processes that are the basis of psychological symptoms

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy:

identifies automatic irrational thoughts, focuses on changing thought and behavior

Drug used to treat schizophrenia:

antipsychotic medications (dopamine antagonists)

Drug used to treat anxiety:

anti-anxiety medications (GABA agonists)

Drug used to treat depression:

antidepressant medication (most common - SSRI)

Drug used to treat bipolar disorder:

mood stabilizers (atypical antipsychotics)

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT):

brief burst of electric current to induce seizure in brain