Psychology Capstone Exam 1

Cambrian explosion

½ billion years ago, fossils indicate this is when life became abundant after small animals exhaled enough for large animals to evolve

Lake Toba

Volcanic super eruption in western Africa that began a mass migration due to the Ice Age

Fertile crescent

Run off from ice age formed the Nile River and other rivers in western Africa that gave fertile soil for humans to use for plants and create settlements

Neolithic revolution

Humans began creating settlements instead of running around which resulted in urbanization

Proto-writing

Drawing pictures to represent words

Patronage

One of lindbergs requirements for science development where individuals received food and water for their scientific discoveries

Urbanization

One of Lindbergs requirements for science development where a critical mass of people settled in one place so others could focus on scientific discoveries

Scholastic method

Sit down and shut up method of teaching that did not influence thoughts

Dualism

invented by Descartes where he believed the mind and body were separate identities and that the soul existed without the body, I think therefore I am

Inductive reasoning

Drawing general conclusions from small reasons, small → big

Deductive reasoning

Drawing small conclusions from general reasons, big → small

Natural selection

Fundamental principle of Darwin’s theory of evolution in which only animals with certain traits survived

Survival of the fittest

In a world with limited resources, only the strongest animals would survive

Zeitgist

Idea that if one person didn’t make a discovery, another person eventually would make the discovery

Psychophysics

Studying the relationship of environmental stimuli and the brain detection, Fakner believed that mind and body seem separate but work together

“Error”

Statistical result of the individuals in large samples that differ from the mean average

Protestant reformation

Northern Europe began teaching critical thinking instead of the shcolastic method as a result of Martin Luther’s discovery of the church stealing money

Animism

Animals and inanimate objects are believed to have souls

Anthropomorphism

Applying human-like characteristics or traits to animals or inanimate objects

Plato

Mentored by Socrates and coined the term rationalism, where knowledge is brought about by logical thinking and that we are born with innate knowledge of the world but distracted by our physical surroundings, universal “truths”

Aristotle

Mentored by plato, coined the term empiricism where knowledge is aquired through observation of the outside world

Lindberg

Believed scientific discoveries could only be made with political stability, urbanization, patronage, and writing system

Charlemagne

Ruler that pulled Europe out of the dark ages because he believed everyone should learn to read and write as he did

Galilei

Determined that man was not the center of the universe making it appropriate to study man

Descrates

Coined the term dualism in which the soul and mind are divine and independent of the body, replacing animistic view of the world with a mechanistic one resulting in the interaction problem

Kopernik

Developed heliocentric model in which sun was the center of the universe and not earth

Newton

Obsession with magic and the laws of attraction resulted in the discovery of gravity

Locke

Modern empiricism with inductive reasoning leading to the development of sensation and perception

Malthus

Humans were too obsessed with reproduction and eventually would lead to world hungry/famine, wars, and death

Darwin

Explained the theory of evolution with natural selection and survival of the fittest; inspired by Linnaeus work

Linnaeus

Developed 3000 page book of his study of the taxonomy of plants, inspired Darwin’s most fundamental principle

Quetelet

Mathematician that upon realizing he could not predict Crime, he could predict the number of crimes that would happen in a year and the factors that contributed to crime, developed level of analysis

Level of analysis

predicting aggregate/group behavior is easier than predicting individual