AP Psychology Exam Review

Frances Galton

maintained that personality and ability depend almost entirely on genetic inheritance (human traits are inherited)

Charles Darwin

theory of evolution, survival of the fittest-origin of the species

William Wundt

introspection-psychology became the scientific study of conscious experience (rather than science); father of modern or scientific psychology; structuralism was the approach and introspection was the methodology

John Watson

founder of behaviorism; generalization; applied classical conditioning skills to advertising; most famous for Little Albert experiment, where he first trained Albert to be afraid of rats and then to generalize his fear to all small, white animals

Alfred Adler

Neo-Freudian; believed that childhood social, not sexual, tensions are crucial for personality formation; believed that people are primarily searching or self-esteem and achieving the ideal self

Carl Jung

disciple of Freud who extended his theories; believed in a collective unconscious as well as a personal unconscious that is aware of ancient archetypes which we inherit from our ancestors and we see in myths (young warrior, wise man of the village, loving mother, etc.); coined the terms introversion and extroversion

Gordon Allport

three levels of traits

Cardinal trait

dominant trait that characterizes your life

central trait

common to all people

secondary trait

surfaces in some situations and not in others

Albert Ellis

father of Rational Emotive Therapy,

Rational Emotive Therapy

which focuses on altering client’s patterns of irrational thinking to reduce maladaptive behavior and emotion (like, “if I fail the AP exam my life will come to an end”)

Albert Maslow

\: humanist psychologist who said we have a series of needs which must be met; you can’t achieve the top level, self actualization, unless the previous levels have been achieved; from bottom to top the levels are physiological needs, safety, belonging, self-esteem, self-actualization; lower needs dominate and individual’s motivation as long as they are unsatisfied

Carl Rogers

humanistic psychologist who believed in unconditional positive regard; people will naturally strive for self actualization and high self-esteem, unless society taints them; reflected back clients thoughts so that they developed a self awareness or their feelings; client-centered therapy

B.F. Skinner

operant conditioning-- techniques to manipulate the consequences of an organism’s behavior in order to observe the effects of subsequent behavior; Skinner box; believed psychology was not scientific enough; wanted it to be believed everyone is born tableau rosa (blank slate); NOT concerned with unconscious or cause, only behavior

Ivan Pavlov

father of classical conditioning-- an unconditional stimulus naturally elicits a reflexive behavior called an unconditional response, but with repeated pairings with a neutral stimulus, the neutral stimulus will elicit the response

Noam Chomsky

believed there are an infinite number of sentences in a language and that humans have an inborn native ability to develop language; words and concepts are learned but the brain is hardwired for grammar and language

Jean Piaget

four-state theory of cognitive development-- sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational; two basic processes (assimilation and accommodation) work in tandem to achieve cognitive growth

Erik Erikson

people evolve through 8 states over the lifespan


1. Trust vs. Mistrust (Infancy)
2. Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (Early Childhood)
3. Initiative vs. Guilt (Preschool)
4. Industry vs. Inferiority (School Age)
5. Identity vs. Role Confusion (Adolescence)
6. Intimacy vs. Isolation (Young Adulthood)
7. Generativity vs. Stagnation (Middle Adulthood)
8. Integrity vs. Despair (Late Adulthood)

Lawrence Kohlberg

his theory states that there are 3 levels of moral reasoning (pre-conventional, conventional, post-conventional) and each level can be divided into 2 stages

3 levels of moral reasoning

pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional. In the pre-conventional level, moral decisions are based on self-interest and avoiding punishment. In the conventional level, moral decisions are based on societal norms and expectations. In the post-conventional level, moral decisions are based on personal principles and values.

Carol Gilligan

maintained the Kohlberg’s work was developed only observing boys and overlooked potential differences between the habitual moral judgment of men and women

Hans Eysenck

personality is determined to a large extent by genes; used the terms extroversion and introversion

S. Schacter

believed that to experience emotions one must be physically aroused and must then label the arousal

Mary Cover Jones

systemic desensitization; maintained that fear could be unlearned; Little Peter experiment

systemic desensitization

is a type of therapy used to treat phobias and anxiety disorders. It involves gradually exposing the patient to the feared object or situation while teaching them relaxation techniques to reduce anxiety. The goal is to help the patient overcome their fear and anxiety through repeated exposure and relaxation.

Benjamin Whorf

his hypothesis is that language determines the way we think

Robert Sternberg:

triarchic theory of intelligence

triarchic theory of intelligence

\[1\] academic problem-solving intelligence \[2\] practical intelligence \[3\] creative intelligence

Howard Gardner

theory of multiple intelligences

Albert Bandura

observational learning- allows you to profit immediately from the mistakes and successes of others; his experiment had adult models punching BoBo dolls and then observed children whom watched begin to exhibit many of the same behaviors; social learning theory

observational learning

is a type of learning that occurs as a result of observing the behavior of others. It involves acquiring new information, behaviors, or skills by watching and imitating others, rather than by direct instruction or personal experience. This type of learning is also known as social learning or modeling.

E.L. Thorndike

law of effect-the principle that behavior followed by favorable consequences becomes more likely and vice versa

Alfred Binet

general I.Q. tests

Lewis Terman

revised Binet’s I.Q. test and established norms for American children

David Wechsler

established an intelligence test especially for adults (Weschler Intelligence Test for Adults)

Charles Spearman

found that specific mental talents were highly correlated; concluded that all cognitive abilities showed a common core which he labeled “g” for general ability

H. Rorschach

developed one of the first projective tests, the Inkblot Test; subject reads the inkblots and projects to the observer aspects of their personality

Philip Zimbardo

conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment; studied the power of social roles to influence peoples behavior; proved people’s behavior depends to a large extent on the roles they are asked to play; experiment had to be stopped because it got out of control

David Rosenhan

conducted a hospital experiment to test the diagnosis that hospitals make on patients; wanted to see the impact of behavior on being a patient; proved that once you are diagnosed with a disorder, your care would not be very good in a mental hospital setting

S. Asch

study of conformity; experiment had a subject unaware of his situation to test if he would conform if all the members of a group gave an obviously incorrect answer

Stanley Milgram

conducted a study on obedience when he had a subject shock a patient to the extent that they would be seriously injuring the patient

Harry Harlow

studied theory of attachment in infant Rhesus monkeys; also experimented on the effects of social isolation in young monkeys and observed that they become severely emotionally disturbed and never recover fully

William Sheldon

theory that linked personality to physique on the grounds that both are governed by genetic endowment; endomorphic (large), mesomorphic (average), ectomorphic (skinny)

Sigmund Freud

psychoanalytical theory that focuses on the unconscious; id, ego, superego; believed innate drives for sex and aggression are the primary motives for our behavior and personalities

Karen Horney

criticized Freud; said that personality is continually molded by current fears and impulses rather than being determined solely by childhood experiences; saw humans as craving love and social interaction to drive their needs

Martin Seligman

learned helplessness

Learned helplessness

is the giving up reaction that occurs from the experience that whatever you do you cannot change your situation

H. Ebbinghaus

first to conduct scientific studies on memory and forgetting; learning curves;

Hubel/Wisel

did a study of the activities of neurons in the visual cortex

Walter B. Cannon

believed that gastric activity in an empty stomach was the sole reason for hunger; did experiment by inserting balloon in subjects stomach

Ernst Weber

pioneered the first study on JND (just noticeable difference), which become Weber’s Law; the JND between stimuli is a constant fraction of the intensity of the standard stimulus

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

theory proposes that the terminally ill pass through a sequence of 5 stages

5 stages of grief

\[1\]denial, \[2\]anger/resentment, \[3\]bargaining, \[4\]depression, \[5\]acceptance

Robert Zajonc

mere exposure effect; it is possible to have preferences without inferences and to feel without knowing why

Henry Murray

stated that the need to achieve varied in strength in different people and influenced their tendency to approach success and evaluate their own performances; devised the TAT (Thematic Appreciation Test) with Christina D. Morgan

David McClelland

devised a way to measure H. Murray’s theory-“the need to achieve that varied in strength in different people and influenced their tendency to approach success and evaluate their own performances”; credited with developing the scoring system for the TAT’s use in assessing achievement motivation, not for the TAT itself

Paul Ekman

theory that facial expressions are universal

James Marcia

studied adolescent stage of Erikson; divided adolescent into four groups- foreclosed(having parents identity), achieved (your own identity), diffused (not even searching, living day-to-day), moratorium (actively searching for identity)

Social-Learning Theory

we learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded or punished

Gender-Schema Theory

children learn from their cultures a concept of what it means to be male or female and that they adjust their behavior accordingly

Signal Detection Theory

predicts how and when we detect the presences of a faint stimulus amid background stimulation

Young-Helmholtz Trichromatic Theory

the retina contains three different color receptors--one most sensitive to red, one to green, one to blue--which when stimulated in a combination, can produce the perception of any color

Opponent-Process Theory

opposing retinal processes enable color vision (red-green, yellow-blue, white-black)

Frequency Theory

the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone, thus enabling us to sense its pitch

Place Theory

links the pitch we hear with the place where the cochlea’s membrane is stimulated

Gate-Control Theory

the spinal cord contains a neurological “gate” that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain

Drive-Reduction Theory

the idea that psychological need creates an aroused tension state that motivates an organism to satisfy the needs

James-Lange Theory

our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli

Cannon-Bard Theory

an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers physiological responses and the subjective experience of emotion

Two-Factor Theory

Schachter’s theory that to experience emotion one must be physically aroused and cognitively label the arousal

Attribution Theory

we tend to give a casual explanation for someone’s behavior, often by creating either the situation or the person’s disposition

Cognitive-Dissonance Theory

we act to reduce the discomfort we feel when two of our thoughts are inconsistent

Scapegoat Theory

prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame

Social Exchange Theory

our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs

hypothesis

your prediction of how the experiment will come out, based upon a theory

population

all cases in a study; group from which samples are drawn.

random sample

the group you are doing the actual experiment on. They should all have had the same chance of being selected from the population.

random assignment

the way in which you assign members of the random sample to the control or experimental group. Again, each member of the random sample should have an equal chance of being selected to each group.

subject

the person you are doing an experiment on; a member of the random sample who has been randomly assigned.

operational definition

a statement of the procedures used to define research variables. Spell out what you are comparing and how you are going to measure and compare the dependent variable.

independent variable

the experimental fact that is going to be manipulated or changed.

between subjects design

You will compare the results of this fact to a baseline or control group on which the variable was not done

subject design

you may compare the group in a before-and-after scenario, in which their original state or scores act as your baseline or control group

experimental group

the group being experimented on or acted upon by the independent variable.

control group

group compared to the experimental group to see if any change has occurred because of the independent variable.

dependent variable

behavior or mental process that is being tested; the behavior or mental process that changes because of the introduction of the independent variable.

results

the outcome in quantitative or measurable behavioral terms comparing the dependent variable before and after

discussion

your assessment of the experiment based on the results. Did it prove our hypothesis? Did you discover control problems? What further study might be needed?

control of possible confounding variables

steps you take to make sure your random samples are as identical as possible and that the environment in which they are tested are as similar as possible.

confounding variables

uncontrolled variables that affect the control group and experimental group affecting your results. It could be things like time of day being different, using a male voice in one group and a female in another, and other distracting circumstances

double blind experiment

wherein neither the experimenter nor the subject know who is in the control group or experimental group so that they wont’ sway the results.

mean

the sum of a list of numbers, divided by the total number of numbers in the list

median

“middle value” of a list; the smallest number such that at least half the numbers in the list are no greater than it.

mode

for lists, the mode is the most common (frequent) value. A list can have more than one mode. For histograms, a mode is a relative maximum (“bump”).

standard deviation

tells how spread out numbers are from the average; calculated by taking the square root of the arithmetic average of the squares of the deviations from the mean in a frequency distribution.

independent variable vs dependent variable

(what is tested or manipulated) vs. (what is measured or changes)

experimental group vs. control group

(group that is tested) vs. (group compared to the experimental)

left brain vs right brain

(language and logic) vs. (creative and spatial)

corpus callosum vs. cerebral cortex

(divides the brain) vs (covers the brain)