Comprehensive Psychology Review: Development, Emotion, Motivation, and Social Psychology

A comprehensive vocabulary review of core psychological concepts across developmental stages, cognitive progression, emotional pathways, motivation theories, and social psychological dynamics.

Developmental Psychology

The scientific study of changes over the lifespan in physiology, cognition, emotion, and social behavior, spanning from 'womb to tomb'.

Teratogens

Environmental agents—such as drugs, alcohol, viruses, and maternal stress—that impair physical and cognitive development in the womb.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

A developmental disorder resulting from heavy alcohol consumption by the mother during pregnancy, characterized by intellectual disability as well as cognitive and behavioral impairments.

Rooting Reflex

An innate infant motor reflex where touching a baby's cheek causes them to automatically turn their head and open their mouth to locate a food source.

Parentese

A universal style of speech (also known as baby talk) characterized by high-pitched vocal tones and exaggerated facial expressions that helps infants distinguish words, phrases, and sentence boundaries.

Preferential Looking Technique

An experimental research method used to study infant perception and cognition by tracking and measuring the duration of time infants spend looking at different stimuli.

Harlow's Monkey Study

A foundational research study demonstrating that infant monkeys prefer a cloth 'comfort mother' over a wire 'food mother,' confirming that attachment bonds rely primarily on bodily contact comfort rather than mere nourishment.

Strange Situation

A standardized observational assessment method used to evaluate attachment styles in young children by observing their reactions to stress during separations and reunions with a caregiver and stranger.

Secure Attachment

An attachment pattern observed in roughly $60\%$ of infants, in which the child feels confident exploring when the caregiver is present, becomes visibly distressed upon separation, and is readily comforted upon reunion.

Insecure/Avoidant Attachment

An attachment pattern observed in roughly $20\%$ of infants, in which the child avoids contact at the start, displays little to no distress when the caregiver leaves, and actively ignores or avoids the caregiver upon return.

Insecure/Ambivalent Attachment

An attachment pattern observed in roughly $20\%$ of infants, characterized by initial anxiety, extreme and inconsolable distress when the caregiver departs, and alternating between seeking and rejecting comfort upon reunion.

Schema

In Piaget's cognitive theory, a mental model or organized theory about how the physical and social world operates.

Assimilation

In Piaget's cognitive theory, the process by which an individual applies existing schemas to understand and interpret new environmental experiences.

Accommodation

In Piaget's cognitive theory, the process by which an individual revises or restructures an existing schema in response to new information that contradicts it.

Object Permanence

The cognitive realization, typically attained around 9 months of age during the sensorimotor stage, that physical objects continue to exist even when they are hidden from sight.

Conservation

The cognitive understanding that an object's fundamental quantity (such as volume, mass, or number) remains constant despite changes in its superficial appearance or shape.

Concrete Operational Stage

Piaget's third developmental stage (ages 7 to 12), wherein children develop secure logical reasoning, grasp the concept of reversibility, and master conservation, but still struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts.

Formal Operational Stage

Piaget's fourth developmental stage (ages 12 and up), characterized by abstract thinking, hypothetical-deductive reasoning, and systematic problem solving.

Identity versus Role Confusion

Erikson's fifth psychosocial crisis occurring during adolescence (ages 12 to 18), centered on exploring various social roles and boundaries to build a unified adult sense of self.

Intimacy versus Isolation

Erikson's sixth psychosocial crisis occurring during young adulthood (ages 18 to 29), focused on developing the capacity to form deep, committed, and lasting romantic relationships versus experiencing isolation.

Emotion

An immediate, specific, and short-lived positive or negative response to environmental events or internal thoughts, involving physiological activation, expressive behaviors, and cognitive appraisals.

Mood

A long-lasting, diffuse emotional state that lacks an identifiable triggering event and provides a general, vague sense of feeling good or bad.

Primary Emotions

Innate and evolutionarily adaptive emotional states that are universally recognized across human cultures, consisting of anger, happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, and disgust.

Secondary Emotions

Complex, cognitively mediated blends of or reactions to primary emotions, including feelings such as remorse, love, bitterness, and jealousy.

Valence

A core dimension of emotion indicating whether an affective experience is subjectively positive (pleasant) or negative (unpleasant).

Fast Pathway (Emotion)

A subcortical neural circuit where sensory information passes directly and instantaneously from the thalamus to the amygdala to initiate an immediate survival response.

Slow Pathway (Emotion)

A cortical neural circuit where sensory information travels from the thalamus to the sensory cortex (visual or auditory) for detailed cognitive evaluation before being relayed to the amygdala.

James-Lange Theory

A theory of emotion stating that physiological responses occur first in response to a stimulus, and our perception of those specific bodily changes produces the conscious experience of emotion.

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

The hypothesis supporting the James-Lange model which posits that deliberate changes in facial musculature can directly trigger or modulate corresponding emotional experiences.

Cannon-Bard Theory

A theory of emotion asserting that physiological arousal and subjective emotional experience occur simultaneously and independently when processing a stimulus.

Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory

A cognitive theory of emotion stating that a stimulus triggers a cognitive label and a physiological response based on situational context that both work together to produce a specific emotion.

Misattribution of Arousal

A psychological phenomenon in which individuals misidentify the true environmental or physiological source of their physiological arousal, such as confusing fear from a suspension bridge with romantic attraction.

Yerkes-Dodson Law

An empirical principle stating that task performance improves with arousal up to an optimal moderate level, where simple tasks benefit from relatively higher arousal and complex tasks benefit from lower arousal.

Intrinsic Motivation

Motivation to engage in an action or task because of the internal pleasure, satisfaction, or inherent value derived from the activity itself, without any external reward.

Extrinsic Motivation

Motivation to perform a behavior driven by the anticipation of external rewards, financial incentives, or the desire to avoid negative consequences.

Group Polarization

The tendency of group discussion and interaction to strengthen and intensify the initial average inclination of its members toward a more extreme viewpoint.

Groupthink

An irrational or dysfunctional decision-making process in cohesive groups driven by an excessive desire for harmony, agreement, and conformity, leading to the suppression of dissenting opinions.

Social Facilitation

The phenomenon whereby the presence of others enhances performance on well-learned, simple tasks, but impairs performance on unfamiliar, complex tasks.

Social Loafing

The tendency for people to exert less effort when working collectively in a group where contributions are pooled and individual accountability is minimized.

Bystander Effect

The psychological phenomenon where an individual is significantly less likely to provide help during an emergency when other passive onlookers are present.

Diffusion of Responsibility

A primary psychological cause of the bystander effect wherein each individual assumes that someone else will intervene, reducing their personal sense of obligation.

Mere Exposure Effect

The psychological principle stating that repeated exposure to a novel stimulus increases an individual's familiarity and leads to a more favorable attitude toward it.

Explicit Attitudes

Conscious, deliberate opinions, beliefs, and feelings that an individual is fully aware of and can explicitly report to others.

Implicit Attitudes

Unconscious evaluations and affective associations that automatically influence an individual's feelings, decisions, and actions without deliberate awareness.

Cognitive Dissonance

An uncomfortable state of psychological tension resulting from a contradiction between a person's attitudes and their behaviors, motivating them to alter attitudes or rationalize actions.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overestimate internal dispositional factors (such as personality or laziness) and underestimate external situational factors when explaining other people's behaviors.

Self-Serving Bias

The cognitive distortion where individuals attribute their successes to internal personal qualities while blaming their failures on external situational circumstances.

Actor/Observer Discrepancy

The tendency to explain one's own behaviors using situational external causes while explaining the identical behaviors of others using internal dispositional causes.

Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love

A theoretical model proposing that love is composed of three core dimensions: passion (physical desire), intimacy (emotional closeness), and commitment (dedication to remain together).

Romantic Love

In Sternberg's triangular theory, a state of intense longing and sexual desire characterized by high passion and intimacy, typically seen in early stages of relationships without commitment.