Psych Module 1 & 2

Positive Psychology

the branch of psychology that studies human flourishing and happiness

The G.I. Joe Fallacy

the mistaken idea that "knowing is half the battle"

Subjective Well-Being (SWB)

a person's cognitive and affective evaluations of his/her/their life

Life Satisfaction

one's evaluation of one's life as a whole

Self-Report

an empirical method that involves just asking participants about their feelings, attitudes, beliefs, etc.

Feel-Good-Do-Good Phenomenon

a psychological phenomenon in which people tend to help others when they are in a good mood

Miswanting

the act of being mistaken about what and how much you will like something in the future

Meta Analysis

a statistical method that combines the results of multiple scientific studies to develop a single conclusion that has greater statistical power

Active Social Network Use

activities on social network sites that actively facilitate social interactions (e.g. posting a status update, chatting w/other users, commenting on a post)

Passive Social Network Use

activities on social network sites that involve passively viewing content without social interaction (e.g. lurking, viewing status updates, reading news feed, viewing pics)

Affective Forecasting

our predictions about our own affective state in the future

Impact Bias

the tendency to overestimate the emotional impact of a future event both in terms of its intensity and its duration

Hedonic Adaptation

the process of getting accustomed to a positive/negative stimulus such that the emotional effects of that stimulus are attenuated over time

Psychological Immune System

a set of unconscious psychological mechanisms that help us to recover from bad events

Savoring

the act of stepping outside of an experience to review and appreciate it

Negative Visualization

the act of thinking about the bad counterfactual of a good thing in your life

Reference Point

a salient (but often irrelevant) standard against which subsequent information is compared

Social Comparison

the act of evaluating one's own salary/status/possessions/abilities etc relative to those of other people

Attention

the set of processes that allow us to consciously focus on a particular bit of sensory information at the expense of other information

Bottom-Up Attention

attention that is allocated effortlessly/automatically to salient stimuli in the environment

Top-Down Attention

attention that is allocated effortfully and consciously based on our current goals or prior knowledge

Change Blindness

a phenomenon in which we fail to perceive changes in a stimulus that occur in plain sight

Attentional Hygiene

using a variety of strategies to take control of your attention and minimize distraction