psych full test

Gordon Allport's (1954) definition of social psychology

The scientific attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.

Primary goal of Muzafer Sherif's Robbers Cave study

To bring boys at a summer camp together, manipulate events to create artificial intergroup conflict, and then test methods to resolve and cure that conflict.

Childhood root of an Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al., 1950)

Harsh, punitive, and emotionally distant parenting ("not enough hugs"), causing children to harbor secret ambivalence/anger that they later project onto weaker targets.

What the California F Scale measures

Fascist tendencies and authoritarianism within an individual.

Definition of stereotypes

Mental representations that we hold about individuals based strictly on their group memberships.

Stanley Milgram's view on atrocities like those committed by Eichmann

They are everyday and mundane actions performed by ordinary people who simply did what they were told by authorities.

Why Wilhelm Wundt is historically favored over William James (1879)

Wundt established the world's first research laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, establishing psychology as a formal scientific enterprise.

Structuralism (Wundt) vs. Functionalism (James)

Structuralism breaks sensory experiences into tiny elements using introspection; Functionalism views the brain as having specialized faculties with specific adaptive functions.

Positive Reinforcement vs. Negative Reinforcement

Positive reinforcement adds a pleasant stimulus to increase behavior; Negative reinforcement removes an aversive stimulus to increase behavior.

John Locke's concept of Tabula Rasa

The empiricist idea that humans are born as a "blank slate," and every piece of knowledge is learned entirely from environment and experience.

William Sheldon's three somatotypes (body types) and linked traits

Endomorph (slow-moving, complacent), Mesomorph (competitive, energetic), and Ectomorph (self-conscious, restrained).

Effect of victim proximity on obedience in Milgram's variations

Maximum obedience dropped from 65% (hearing wall pounding) to 30% when the teacher had to physically touch and force the learner's hand onto the shock plate.

Definition of a Quasi-Experiment

A study that looks like an experiment but lacks random assignment because group conditions happen naturally (e.g., breakfast eaters vs. non-breakfast eaters).

Meaning of p < 0.05 in statistics

The relationship is statistically significant, meaning there is less than a 5% chance that the results occurred by random accident.

Cross-cultural differences in emotional emoticon parsing (West vs. Japan)

Westerners judge expressions by looking at the mouth :) vs :(; Japanese individuals prioritize reading expressions from the eyes (^_^) vs (T_T).

Correspondence Bias vs. Self-Serving Bias

Correspondence: Attributing others' actions to internal traits rather than situations. Self-Serving: Attributing own success to internal traits, and failures to external conditions.

Norman Triplett's (1897) Social Facilitation discovery

An individual’s performance is systematically facilitated and enhanced by the mere presence or competitive co-action of others.

Sherif's autokinetic study vs. Asch's line study outcome

Sherif proved people look to others to establish a frame of reference in ambiguous tasks; Asch showed 37% conform to wrong answers even in completely unambiguous visual tasks.

Compliance vs. Conversion in conformity

Compliance (Normative): Publicly going along with a group to be liked while privately disagreeing. Conversion (Informational): Truly changing internal beliefs because you think the group is right.

Independent Resister vs. Anticonformist Resister

Independent: Gives correct answers based on objective reality regardless of the group. Anticonformist: Automatically says the exact opposite of the group purely to clash.

Two main drivers of the Ringelmann Effect

Coordination Loss (not pulling at the exact same moment) and Motivation Loss (Social Loafing because personal output is pooled with others).

Three psychological inhibitors behind the Bystander Effect

Diffusion of Responsibility (assuming others will act), Audience Inhibition (fear of social blunders), and Social Influence (interpreting others' calm as a lack of danger).

Latané and Darley's Bystander Intervention Model chronological steps

Attend to what is happening -> Define the event as an emergency -> Assume personal responsibility -> Decide what can be done -> Give Help.

Zimbardo's Depersonation vs. Deindividuation concepts

Depersonation: Shifting self-identity from an individual to a group role (e.g., "I am a guard"). Deindividuation: Complete loss of individual self-awareness within a crowd.

Leon Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance definition

An uncomfortable state of psychological tension that occurs when a person holds two conflicting thoughts, or when behavior directly contradicts self-image.

Three primary ways humans release cognitive dissonance tension

1. Changing the target behavior. 2. Justifying the behavior by changing the conflicting thought. 3. Justifying the behavior by adding completely new thoughts.

Definition of the Halo Effect

A cognitive bias where liking one specific positive characteristic of a person causes us to automatically assume they possess other positive, unrelated traits.

The four social combinations of Affiliation and Competence in leaders

Low Aff/Low Comp = Contempt; Low Aff/High Comp = Envy; High Aff/Low Comp = Pity; High Aff/High Comp = Admiration.

What the Rosenthal Effect (Pygmalion Effect) demonstrates

A psychological phenomenon where holding artificially high expectations for someone directly leads to an improvement in their actual performance.

Christine Maslach's historical tie to the Stanford Prison Experiment

She was a pioneer in job burnout research (and Zimbardo's partner) who successfully convinced him to end the dangerous experiment early on day 6.

Galen's Four Humors of personality and their associated fluids

Sanguine (Blood: cheerful), Melancholic (Black Bile: sad), Choleric (Yellow Bile: bad-tempered), and Phlegmatic (Phlegm: calm).

Nomothetic vs. Idiographic trait approaches

Nomothetic: Identifying and measuring common traits to make general comparisons across all individuals. Idiographic: Studying a single person's unique combo of personal traits.

Lewin, Lippitt, and White's (1939) Autocratic vs. Democratic leadership finding

Both styles produced similar productivity outputs, but autocratic groups only worked when the leader was physically in the room supervising.

Transactional vs. Transformational leadership styles

Transactional: Relies on external rewards/exchanges ("do your task for this goodie"). Transformational: Transforms the environment so followers become intrinsically motivated.

Primary vs. Secondary flavors of Psychopathy

Primary: Deep empathic deficits, emotional coldness, and lack of caring. Secondary: Chaotic, disorganized lifestyle driven by impulsive overreactions and unstable relationships.

Walster and Berscheid's "computer-date" study attraction discovery

Physical attractiveness (rated by impartial judges) was the only significant variable that predicted a desire for a second date, overriding personality or background.

Definition of Kaupapa Māori Research (KMR)

A research methodology and philosophy established in New Zealand (1970s) that explicitly centers, prioritizes, and validates Māori topics, knowledge, and worldviews.

Colonisation vs. Colonialism within the KMR paradigm

Colonisation is the historical event of physical displacement and assimilation; Colonialism is the ongoing structural legacy that continues to manifest systemic inequality today.

The KMR pillars: For Māori, With Māori, and By Māori

For: Uplifting Māori livelihoods and self-determination. With: Equal research partnership and co-creation. By: Managed by Māori scientists as a cultural asset.

The WEIRD participant critique

A criticism that mainstream psychological science relies too heavily on samples from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies, skewing universal claims.

Mainstream Western theories vs. KMR theories

Western: Highly linear, box-heavy, and reductionistic. KMR: Holistic, designed to be accessible/legible to communities, prioritizing cultural resonance over universality.

The Meihana Model in KMR health frameworks

A clinical framework structured as a Waka (canoe) metaphor, where the sides of the boat, current, wind, and water represent different dimensions of patient health.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative strengths in KMR

Qualitative dives deep into subjectivity and minority experiences; Quantitative gauges the strength of associations and establishes causal relationships.

Cultural double-shift of Māori scientists (Haar & Martin, 2022)

A structural strain where Māori scientists must act as cultural experts for institutions, slowing their own research advancement.

Pai Tū, Pai Hinga study findings on perfectionism

Perfectionism in young Māori (rangatahi) is heavily driven by societal stereotypes, whānau expectations, and cultural identity elements.

Motivated Reasoning in research context

The psychological tendency to process information in a biased way to reach a desired, pre-existing emotional or cultural conclusion.

Essentialisation of worldviews

The reductionist process of portraying complex individuals or cultural groups as having a fixed, immutable, and simplified essence.

Extreme Relativism risks in KMR

It can completely stifle healthy internal critique, prevent comparison with other global minority groups, and alienate non-Māori allies.

Pluralism in psychopathology

The practice of using multiple complementary frameworks (biological, stress-history, and social labels) to fully understand complex mental disorders.

Four core features of a mental disorder per the DSM-5

Clinically significant symptoms, underlying psychological/biological dysfunction, significant distress or functional disability, and socially non-normative behavior.

Heterogeneity limitation of the DSM

A diagnostic issue where two individuals can receive the exact same disorder label while sharing absolutely zero symptoms in common.

Yerkes-Dodson Law regarding anxiety

The principle that a small amount of anxiety enhances performance on well-practiced tasks, but excessive anxiety completely disrupts functioning.

Transdiagnostic Mechanism definition

A specific psychological or behavioral process (like anxiety sensitivity, hyperventilation, or avoidance) that applies across multiple different diagnoses.

Clinical Formulation vs. Diagnosis

A diagnosis provides a categorical label for a disorder; a formulation is a tailored, individualized explanation of a patient's specific presenting problems.

General Personality Disorder umbrella criteria

An enduring, inflexible, and pervasive pattern of inner experience and behavior that markedly deviates from cultural expectations and begins by early adulthood.

The three DSM-5 Personality Disorder clusters

Cluster A (Odd or Eccentric), Cluster B (Dramatic, Emotional, or Erratic), and Cluster C (Anxious or Fearful).

AMPD Criterion A vs. Criterion B

Criterion A evaluates the severity of personality impairment (Self/Interpersonal functioning); Criterion B continuously rates the explicit problematic traits.

The 5 pathological trait domains of the AMPD matrix

Negative Affectivity, Detachment, Antagonism, Disinhibition, and Psychoticism.

Emotion Regulation profiles in Borderline Personality Disorder

BPD distress is driven by negative attentional/interpretive biases and poor downregulation (calming) strategies, rather than baseline physiological hyper-reactivity.

Mentalising differences in Borderline Personality Disorder

Sufferers exhibit low confidence in tracking internal states and tend to overthink or jump to complex, suspicious conclusions about others' motives.

Parten’s Six Stages of Play (Chronological Order)

Unoccupied (sensory exploration) -> Solitary -> Onlooker -> Parallel (side-by-side separate toys) -> Associative (unstructured interaction) -> Cooperative (roles and rules).

Piaget's Functional vs. Symbolic play distinction

Functional play uses repetitive gross motor actions to explore objects (0-2 yrs); Symbolic play uses imagination to manipulate object properties (19+ months).

Vygotsky's view on sociodramatic make-believe play

A safe behavioral space where a child acts "a head taller than themselves," practicing condensed developmental tendencies and potential social roles.

The four scoring dimensions of the Alternative Uses Task (AUT)

Fluency (number of ideas), Originality (uniqueness), Flexibility (range of categories), and Elaboration (level of detail).

The four positions on the Play and Education continuum

Free Play (child-led), Guided Play, Playful Learning, and Direct Instruction (fully adult-led with rigid learning goals).

Cross-cultural variations in children's play dynamics

Higher socioeconomic status links to more pretend play; Western children exhibit more self-assertive imagination, while Korean children show more attentive behaviors.

Pretend Play as an evolutionary platform

A positive-feedback behavioral setting powered by pleasure from which distinct human learning and teaching roles originally co-evolved.

Torrance Test of Creative Thinking drawing task metric

An assessment tracking a child's creative capacity and elaboration based on how they choose to finish abstract, incomplete line drawings.

Habituation vs. Violation of Expectation (VoE)

Habituation tracks decreased attention to a repeated stimulus; VoE measures prolonged staring at impossible events to capture structural surprise.

Minimal Group Paradigm utility in developmental psychology

An experimental method assigning arbitrary, artificial group memberships to study child group bias without using natural markers like ethnicity or language.

Vygotsky’s General Law of Cultural Development

Every higher cognitive function appears twice: first on the social level between people, and later internalized on the individual level.

Kline's Five Teaching Types

Teaching by Social Tolerance, Opportunity Provision, Stimulus/Local Enhancement, Evaluative Feedback, and Direct Active Teaching.

Normative Protest Paradigm mechanics

Children are taught a "right way" to use a toy, and their spontaneous verbal/behavioral corrections are tracked when a puppet violates that rule.

Over-Imitation in humans vs. chimpanzees

Humans faithfully replicate causally unnecessary and redundant elements shown by a model; chimpanzees discard unnecessary steps when box mechanics are transparent.

Harlow’s Monkey Studies discovery

Infant monkeys prioritize contact comfort (the soft terry-cloth surrogate) over nourishment (the wire feeding surrogate) to establish a secure base.

Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Patterns (A, B, and C)

Type A (Insecure-Avoidant: no fuss on separation/reunion), Type B (Secure: distressed by separation, easily comforted), and Type C (Insecure-Anxious: highly distressed, angry at reunion).

Still Face Paradigm (Tronick, 1978) outcome

When a parent displays a neutral, unmoving face for 1 minute, the infant's smiling stops entirely and visual gazing drops by 50%.

Developmental trajectory of children's emotion labeling

Two-year-olds identify "happy" faces accurately but label almost all negative expressions as "angry"; specific negative categories differentiate between 30 and 70 months.