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Fundamental Attribution Error
The tendency to overemphasize personal characteristics and underestimate situational factors when explaining someone else's behavior.
Internal Locus of Control
The belief that one can control their own life outcomes through their actions.
External Locus of Control
The belief that external forces, such as fate or luck, dictate life outcomes.
Attribution
The process of explaining the causes of behavior and events.
Self-Serving Bias
The tendency to attribute positive events to one's own character but attribute negative events to external factors.
Confirmation Bias
The tendency to search for, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs.
Stereotype
A widely held but oversimplified and generalized belief about a particular group of people.
Altruism
Selfless concern for the well-being of others; for example, helping a stranger in need without expecting anything in return.
Mere Exposure Effect
The phenomenon where people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them.
Cognitive Dissonance
The mental discomfort experienced when holding two or more contradictory beliefs, values, or attitudes.
Bystander Effect
The social phenomenon where individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present.
Groupthink
A psychological phenomenon where the desire for harmony in a group results in irrational or dysfunctional decision-making.
Big 5 Personality Traits
The five broad dimensions of personality: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism.
Self-Efficacy
The belief in one's ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task.
Drive Reduction Theory
A theory of motivation that suggests that physiological needs create an aroused state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy that need.
Approach-Avoidance Theory
A motivational conflict that occurs when a person is faced with a single goal that has both positive and negative aspects.
Approach-Approach Theory
A conflict that occurs when a person must choose between two attractive options.
Instinct Theory
The idea that certain behaviors are driven by innate biological instincts.
Harry Harlow's Research on Contact Comfort
Harlow discovered that infant monkeys preferred a soft, comforting surrogate mother over a wire mother that provided food, highlighting the importance of comfort in attachment.
Homeostasis
The tendency of the body to maintain a stable internal environment.
Display Rules
Social norms that dictate the appropriate expressions of emotions in various situations.
Facial Feedback Hypothesis
The theory that facial expressions can influence emotional experiences.
Broaden and Build Theory
A theory suggesting that positive emotions broaden one's awareness and encourage novel, varied, and exploratory thoughts and actions.
Yerkes-Dodson Law
A principle that suggests there is an optimal level of arousal for performance, which varies with the complexity of the task.
Cognitive Processes and Learning
The study of how people think, learn, and remember.
Metacognition
Awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes, often referred to as 'thinking about thinking.'
Object Permanence
The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, a key concept in cognitive development.
Circadian Rhythm
The physical, mental, and behavioral changes that follow a daily cycle, responding primarily to light and darkness.
Levels of Processing
A theory that suggests the depth of processing affects how well information is remembered.
Displacement
Redirecting emotions to a substitute target; e.g., taking out frustration on a family member instead of a boss.
Projection
Attributing one's own unacceptable thoughts or feelings to someone else; e.g., accusing others of being angry when one is actually angry.
critical period
a specific time in development when certain skills or abilities are most easily learned
Object Permanence (Piaget)
the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived
Metacognition
thinking about thinking
serial positioning effect
our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list
levels of processing
a continuum of memory processing from shallow to intermediate to deep, with deeper processing producing better memory
divergent thinking
expands the number of possible problem solutions (creative thinking that diverges in different directions)
Transduction
conversion of one form of energy into another. In sensation, the transforming of stimulus energies, such as sights, sounds, and smells, into neural impulses our brains can interpret.
occipital lobe
A region of the cerebral cortex that processes visual information
random assignment
assigning participants to experimental and control conditions by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groups
difference threshold
the minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50 percent of the time
circadian rhythm
the biological clock; regular bodily rhythms (for example, of temperature and wakefulness) that occur on a 24-hour cycle
correlational study
a research project designed to discover the degree to which two variables are related to each other
longitudinal study
research in which the same people are restudied and retested over a long period
display rules
cross-cultural guidelines for how and when to express emotions
