AP Psychology Unit 1 Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering topics from AP Psychology Unit 1, including heredity, environmental influences, twin and adoption studies, behavior genetics, and epigenetics.

Heredity

Refers to the genetic characteristics that are passed down to us through our biological ancestors.

Environment

Refers to our surroundings-the non-genetic influences such as our families, friends, school environments, societies, cultures, and even nutrition and diet.

Nature versus Nurture

A long-standing question and major theme in psychology focusing on what makes us who we are and influences us to act a certain way. Nature refers to heredity, while nurture refers to our environment.

Behavior Genetics

A discipline that combines the principles of genetics, psychology, and biology to examine the role of genes and environmental roles in human behavior, exploring how upbringing, culture, life experiences, and genetics all work together to make us who we are.

Evolutionary Psychology

A perspective focusing on the principle of natural selection and how it influences our behaviors and thought processes. Evolutionary psychologists believe we have maintained certain behaviors or traits because they helped prior generations and our ancestors survive.

Eugenics Movement

An historical movement emerging from ideas about genetics and natural selection where eugenicists aimed to control the human race by manipulating and controlling reproduction. Their goal was to create future generations with desired physical, mental, behavioral, and social traits while eliminating certain individuals from reproducing.

Forced Sterilizations

Medical procedures used by the Eugenics movement that prevent individuals from reproducing, claiming to eliminate behaviors like promiscuity, criminality, and cognitive deficiencies. Mrs. McCrary highlights that these were legal in the U.S. until the 1970s and disproportionately affected marginalized and vulnerable populations.

Case Study

A research method in which a psychologist studies a group of people or one individual person in depth and does a detailed report on their particular situation, often used when a situation cannot be ethically or practically replicated.

Identical Twins (Monozygotic Twins)

Twins who share identical DNA because they came from the same zygote or the same egg; they are born with the same genetic material.

Fraternal Twins (Dizygotic Twins)

Twins who are born together but come from two separate zygotes (two eggs and two sperm). Their DNA is similar because they have the same biological parents, but they do not share the exact same DNA.

Heritability

The extent to which genetic factors influence different traits or behaviors, which researchers can estimate by examining how identical twins are more similar to one another compared to fraternal twins.

Separated Twin Studies

Case studies where identical twins are separated and raised in different homes, allowing psychologists to observe how genes and environment play a role in personalities, interests, temperaments, and tendencies.

Adoption Studies

Studies that offer insight into biology versus environment by comparing a genetic relatives group (biological parents and siblings) against an environmental relatives group (adoptive parents and siblings) to see who the adopted child more closely resembles.

Epigenetics

The study of how our environment and the things we are exposed to in our surroundings can affect our genes and how they express themselves. It explains how environmental exposures (like diet, stress, trauma, or radiation) impact how cells read their biological instruction codes without changing the actual DNA, in turn affecting behavior, health, and development.