History of Psychology Review

Flashcards covering key vocabulary from the lecture on the history of psychology, levels of analysis, fields of study, the scientific method, and schools of thought.

Psychology

The study of mental activity and behaviour based on brain processes.

Mental activity

All the things that happen in our head/brain.

Behaviour

How we respond to the things that happen in our head.

Biological level of analysis

Deals with how the physical body influences our thoughts and behavior, looking at biological (e.g., cellular, chemical) level processes.

Individual level of analysis

Focuses on individual differences in personality and mental processes that affect perception and understanding.

Social level of analysis

Investigates how groups affect people
interactions and people
influence on each other.

Cultural level of analysis

Examines how people
thoughts, feelings, and actions are similar or different across cultures.

Biological psychology

Studies how biological processes give rise to mental activity.

Neuroscience

Studies how focus on the brain and nervous system impacts behavior and cognitive functions.

Cognitive psychology

Study on attention, perception, memory, problem solving, and language based on brain processes.

Developmental psychology

Study how people change throughout the lifespan.

Personality psychology

Study enduring characteristics that people display over time and across circumstances.

Social psychology

Study how people are affected by and interact with others.

Industrial/organizational psychology

Study issues pertaining to industry and the workplace.

Cultural psychology

Study how people are influenced by the societal rules that dictate behavior in their cultures.

Community psychology

Focuses on the well-being of communities and the factors that influence it.

Clinical psychology

Study of assessment and treatment of mental illness and psychological problems.

Scientific method

A method of procedure consisting of systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.

Idiosyncratic influences

Factors that are responsible for producing variations in human/system response to problems, potentially leading to subjective interpretations.

Hasty- or over-generalization

An idiosyncratic influence where conclusions are made too broadly from limited evidence (e.g., stereotyping).

Selective attention

An idiosyncratic influence involving paying attention only to things that support one's views.

Selective perception

An idiosyncratic influence involving perceiving what one wants while discounting opposing viewpoints.

Selective retention

An idiosyncratic influence involving remembering more things that support one's views, and more accurately.

Falsification

The principle that science aims to disprove hypotheses, rather than confirm or verify them.

Dualism

The philosophical idea that the mind and the body are separate things; the body is physical, while the mind spiritually exists outside the body.

Mind/body problem

A philosophical question about whether the mind and the body are separate or intertwined.

Nature vs. nurture debate

The debate regarding whether genetics or environmental variables are more influential on who an individual becomes.

Structuralism

A school of thought that focuses on the contents of mental processes rather than their function, often using introspection.

Introspection

The process where someone examines their own conscious experience as objectively as possible.

Functionalism

A school of thought focused on the roles or functions that underlie mental processes, and why we do what we do for survival.

Natural selection

The idea that organisms, including their behaviour, are adapted to their environment.

Behaviourism

A school of thought based on the premise that scientific psychology should study only observable behaviours, asserting the environment's role.

Conditioned reflex

An animal or human produces an unconscious response to a stimulus and is, over time, conditioned to produce that response to a different stimulus associated with the original.

Stimulus

Any detectable input from the environment.

Response

An observable behavior.

Reward

A pleasurable consequence intended to increase the probability of a behavior repeating in the future.

Punishment

An unpleasant consequence intended to decrease the chances of a behavior happening again in the future.

Gestalt psychology

A school of thought based on the idea that sensory experience can be broken into individual parts, but how those parts relate to each other is what someone responds to when perceiving something (the 'whole').

Gestalt maxim

The principle that 'the whole is greater than the sum of the parts,' explaining perceptions in terms of universal laws rather than individual constituents.

Psychoanalytic theory

A theory focusing on the role of a person
unconscious and early childhood experiences in driving human beings and their minds.