Psychology Lecture Notes Review

Flashcards based on lecture notes, focusing on vocabulary terms and their definitions from various topics in psychology, philosophy, and statistics.

Wundt

German psychologist who founded experimental psychology and established the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig (1879); prolific writer.

Stimulus error

The tendency to name a stimulus you see rather than describing its properties.

Creative Synthesis

A viewpoint that disagreed with mental chemistry; emphasizes holistic synthesis of mental processes.

DSM

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Galileo

Italian astronomer who observed craters on the Moon and challenged Aristotle’s views; later pressured to recant by the Church.

Hedonistic

Relating to the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain.

Hedonism

The doctrine that pleasure is the highest good; modern usage often linked to excess.

Sigmund Freud

Founder of psychoanalysis and a central figure in psychology.

B. F. Skinner

Prominent behaviorist, described in the notes as the second most important figure in psychology.

Socrates

Ancient philosopher known for the idea 'Know thyself' and the claim that the unexamined life is not worth living.

Golden mean

Aristotle’s principle that virtue lies in moderation and nothing in excess.

Thales

One of the earliest philosophers; often referred to as the first philosopher.

Conflict theory

A perspective that sees society as organized around conflict over resources and power.

Philosophy

The discipline of asking fundamental questions and forming ideas, sometimes with limited empirical evidence.

Voluntarism/Volunteerism

Wundt’s school of thought that the mind actively organizes experiences; emphasizes the will.

Titchener

Wilhelm Wundt’s student; founder of structuralism.

Structuralism

School focusing on the structure of conscious experience through introspection.

Volkerpsychologie

Wundt’s ten-volume work, often translated as 'Culture/Folk Psychology'.

Prolific

Producing a large amount of writing or work.

Tabula rasa

Blank slate; the mind is thought to be a blank state at birth (associated with Locke).

Nature vs. Nurture

Debate about whether genes (nature) or environment (nurture) shape behavior and mental traits.

Locke

English philosopher and empiricist who argued that knowledge comes from experience and observation.

Empiricist

A person who believes knowledge comes from sensory experience and observation.

Syllogism

A form of deductive reasoning with two premises leading to a conclusion; associated with Aristotle.

Lyceum

Aristotle’s school in ancient Athens.

Dogma

A belief established by authority as incontrovertibly true; not open to argument.

Recant

To withdraw or renounce a statement or belief; Galileo did so under Church pressure.

Kraepelin

A famous psychiatrist who studied the effects of drugs on the human brain; known for classifying disorders.

Nosology

The way how you name things (classification of disease).

Longitudinal

A study design involving data collection at intervals (e.g., 5, 10, 15).

Sequential

A study design involving multiple groups (e.g., 5, 10, 15-year-olds) studied at one point in time ('all today').

Cross-sectional

A study design involving multiple groups (e.g., 5, 10, 15-year-olds) studied today, and then again at future intervals (e.g., in 5, 10, 15 years).

Exogenous disorders

Disorders with external causes (implied from 'remember the difference of the two').

Endogenous disorders

Disorders with internal causes (implied from 'remember the difference of the two').

Manic depression

Now known as bipolar disorder.

Dementia Praecox

Now known as schizophrenia.

Lewin

Psychologist who emphasized the intersection of both nature and nurture.

Hegel

Philosopher whose main idea was the dialectic process.

Dialectic process

First you have an idea, then a counter idea, which you put together to make synthesis.

John Locke (revisited)

Said 'there is nothing in the mind that wasn’t first in the senses' and made the 'white paper' concept.

White paper (Locke)

Means you are not born with anything, everything comes from senses as opposed to it being your nature.

Leibniz ops

Corrected Locke's statement by adding 'there is nothing in the mind that wasn’t first in the senses, except the mind itself'.

Saint Paul

Explains that we are born bad.

Rousseau

Explains that we are born good (but society messes us up).

Watson

Famous behaviorist who explains that behavior depends on what happens to you.

British empiricism

A school of philosophy, with John Locke as one of the main figures.

Darwin

Developed the idea of Natural Selection; sailed on the HMS Beagle to the Galápagos Islands as a science officer.

Zeitgeist

Spirit of the times; refers to what was going on.

Great person

Theory that significant ideas come out of nowhere from an individual (e.g., Freud), contrasting with Zeitgeist.

Eugenics

The selective breeding of humans (associated with Darwin's dark side).

Idiocracy

A horrible movie which tells us what happens when smart people have fewer children and less smart people have more kids.

Gregor Mendel

Introduces genetic ideas, taught about dominant and recessive genes and the Punnett square.

Evolutionary psychology

Used to be called sociobiology, which had complaints about posthoc (after the fact) rationalizations of bad behavior.

Sociobiology

Former name for evolutionary psychology, criticized for posthoc rationalizations of bad behavior.

Lamarck

Said you can inherit an acquired characteristic.

Epigenetics

The study of heritable phenotype changes that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence (giving Lamarck some validity).

Trait psychology

A field of psychology focusing on individual characteristics.

State vs trait psychology

The distinction between temporary, current conditions (state) and more long-lasting characteristics (trait).

Gordon Allport

Psychologist associated with trait psychology and describing different trait types.

Cardinal trait

A trait that dominates and shapes a person’s behavior.

Machiavelli

Associated with a desire for control by any means necessary; to be ruthless, where the ends justify the means.

Narcissus

He loved himself more than everything and loved his own reflection, getting stuck staring at it for eternity; only interested in yourself.

State (psychology)

Temporary and current psychological condition.

Trait (psychology)

More long-lasting psychological characteristic.

Central trait

General characteristic found in some degree in every person; basic building blocks that shape most of our behavior.

Secondary trait

A trait seen only in certain circumstances.

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny

Ernst Haeckel’s idea that ontogeny (developmental history of an organism) repeats phylogeny (evolutionary history of species) through embryonic development.

Ernst Haeckel

Proposed the idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

Statistically significant

Unlikely to occur by chance.

H1

A one-tailed increase or decrease or a two-tailed change in a hypothesis.

H0

The null hypothesis, representing everything else opposite to H1.

Independent variable

A variable whose variation does not depend on that of another; the manipulated variable.

Dependent variable

A variable whose value depends on that of another; the measured outcome.

Operational definition

Takes a hypothetical construct and makes it measurable.

Hypothetical construct

An idea or a concept that is not directly observable (e.g., strength).

Extraneous/confounding variable

When you let the experiment get messed up and add an extra variable.

Deviate

To be different from the mean or average.

Standard deviation (SD)

How much on average the scores vary from the mean.

Mean

The average.

Galton

Darwin’s cousin, coined the term of eugenics, and made the median.

Median

The middle number after the numbers have been put in order.

Pearson

Founder of modern statistics; made the mode.

Mode

The most frequently recurring score.

Normal curve

In a _______ the mean, median, and mode are all the same.

Measures of central tendency

Include the mean, median, and mode.

Double-blind study

Corrects an experimental bias by ensuring neither the subjects nor the experimenters know group assignments.

Social contract

When we give up our freedom to the government.

Skew (in distribution)

Is in the direction of the tail.

Fairest measure of central tendency in a skewed distribution

The median.

Positive extreme score

Can make the mean positively skewed.

Negative extreme score

Can make the mean negatively skewed.

Correlation

The relationship between two things.

Inverse correlation

When one thing goes up which leads to one thing going down or vice versa.

Pearson product moment correlation coefficient

Gave a value for the correlation instead of just a picture, ranging from -1 to 1.

Correlation range

Value from -1 to 1, where 0 is no correlation while +1 or -1 is a positive/negative correlation (+,- tells direction, not the strength).

Truncated range

The problem when you cut off the ends of the correlation, you get a little circle on the graph and there’s less of a picture.

Truncate

To cut off.

Single-blind study

When the subject doesn't know if they're in the control group or the experimental group.

Hawthorn effect

Watching changes the results; being watched changes how people act.

Heisenberg uncertainty principle

Compared to the Hawthorne effect, where electrons change due to observation.