PSY101 General Psychology Final Exam Review

Flashcards for PSY101 General Psychology Final Exam Review

What is Psychology?

The scientific study of behavior and mental processes.

What are Mental Processes?

The thoughts, feelings, and motives that each of us experiences privately but that can’t be observed directly.

What is the Biological Approach to Psychology?

Focuses on the body, especially the brain & nervous system.

What is the Behavioral Approach to Psychology?

Focuses on observable behaviors & their environmental determinants.

What is the Cognitive Approach to Psychology?

Emphasizes the higher mental processes involved in knowing: how we direct our attention, perceive, remember, think, and solve problems.

What is the Humanistic Approach to Psychology?

Emphasizes a person’s positive qualities, the capacity for positive growth, and the freedom to choose one’s destiny; assumes human nature is basically good.

What is the Sociocultural Approach to Psychology?

Examines ways in which social and cultural environments influence behavior; how various cultures differ from one another, and differences that exist within cultures.

What is the Correlation Coefficient?

A statistic that tells us the strength and direction of the relationship between two variables.

What is the Independent Variable?

A manipulated experimental factor; the variable that the experimenter changes to see what its effects are.

What is the Dependent Variable?

The outcome; the factor that can change in an experiment in response to changes in the independent variable.

What is the Control Group?

The group in an experiment that is not subjected to manipulation of the independent variable.

What is the Mode?

The most frequently occurring number in a data set.

What is the Autonomic Nervous System?

Comprised of the Sympathetic Nervous System (fight or flight) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (rest and digest).

How is information transmitted within a neuron?

Dendrite > cell body > axon

What is a Synapse?

A tiny space between neurons; the gaps between neurons are referred to as synaptic gaps.

What are Terminal Buttons?

Where neurotransmitters are stored.

What is the Occipital Lobe?

The area of the brain that’s responsible for processing visual information.

What is the Motor Cortex?

A region in the cerebral cortex that processes information about voluntary movement, located just behind the frontal lobes.

What is the Corpus Callosum?

The large bundle of axons that connects the two halves of the brain.

What is the Absolute Threshold?

The minimum amount of stimulus energy that a person can detect.

What is the Fovea?

Located in the center of the retina, and only contains cones (receptors that are used for color perception).

What is the Optic Chiasm?

The crossover point where the right visual field information goes to the left hemisphere, and the left visual field information goes to the right hemisphere.

What is Metacognition?

Thinking about thinking.

What are Circadian Rhythms?

Daily behavioral or physiological cycles that involve the sleep/wake cycle, body temp, blood pressure, and blood sugar level; occurs on roughly a 24-hour schedule.

What is Rapid Eye Movement Sleep?

An active stage of sleep during which dreaming occurs.

What is Narcolepsy?

Characterized by irresistible urges to fall asleep.

What is Sleep Apnea?

Characterized by the temporary cessation of breathing while asleep.

What is the Manifest Content of Dreams?

The surface level content containing symbols that disguise the dream’s true meaning.

What is the Latent Content of Dreams?

A dream’s hidden content; its unconscious and true meaning.

What is Tolerance?

The need to take increasing amounts of a drug to get the same effect.

In classical conditioning, what happens to the neutral stimulus?

The neutral stimulus becomes the conditioned stimulus after conditioning occurs.

What is Operant Conditioning?

A form of associative learning in which the consequences of a behavior change the probability of the behavior’s occurrence.

What is Positive Reinforcement?

The presentation of a stimulus following a given behavior in order to increase the frequency of that behavior.

What is a Token?

A secondary reinforcer that can be exchanged for a primary reinforcer; money, poker chips, stars on a chart.

What is a Fixed-Interval Schedule?

Reinforces the first behavior after a fixed amount of time has passed (e.g., once a week).

What are the three main memory processes?

• Encoding - Storage - Retrieval

What is Chunking?

Involves grouping or “packing” information that exceeds the 7 +/- 2 span into higher-order units that can be remembered as single units.

What is a Schema?

A preexisting mental concept or framework that helps people organize and interpret information.

What is Flashbulb Memory?

The memory of emotionally significant events that people often recall with more accuracy and vivid imagery than everyday events.

What is Anterograde Amnesia?

A memory disorder that affects the retention of new information and events; you can recall past memories but are not able to make new ones.

What are Algorithms?

Problem-solving strategies that guarantee a solution.

What is Confirmation Bias?

The tendency to search for and use information that supports one’s ideas rather than refutes them.

What is Hindsight Bias?

The tendency to report falsely, after the fact, that one has accurately predicted an outcome; “I knew all along”.

What is Validity?

The extent to which a test measures what it’s intended to measure.

What is Reliability?

The extent to which a test yields a consistent, reproducible measure of performance.

What is Mental Age?

An individual’s level of mental development relative to that of others.

What is a Cross-Sectional Study?

A research method in which people of different ages are tested at the same time.

What is Assimilation?

An individual’s incorporation of new information into existing knowledge.

What is Accommodation?

An individual’s adjustment of their schemas to new information.

What is Object Permanence?

Piaget’s term for the crucial accomplishment of understanding that objects and events continue to exist even when they can’t be directly seen, heard, or touched; out of sight, out of mind.

What is Conservation?

A belief in the permanence of certain attributes of objects despite superficial changes; you can change the way something looks without changing its fundamental properties.

What is Authoritarian Parenting?

A restrictive, punitive style in which the parent exhorts the child to follow the parent’s directions.

What is Authoritative Parenting?

Encourages the child to be independent but that still places limits and controls on behavior.

What is the Preconventional Stage of Moral Development?

Moral reasoning is based primarily on the consequences of behavior and punishments and rewards from the external world.

What is the Conventional Stage of Moral Development?

The individual abides by standards learned from parents or society’s laws.

What is the Postconventional Stage of Moral Development?

The individual recognizes alternative moral courses, explores the options, and then develops an increasingly personal moral code.

What is the Yerkes-Dodson Law?

The psychological principle stating that performance is best under conditions of moderate arousal rather than either low or high arousal.

What is Bulimia Nervosa?

An eating disorder in which the individual consistently follows a binge-and-purge eating pattern; common usage of diuretics and laxatives.

What is the Cannon-Bard Theory?

Emotion and physiological reactions occur simultaneously.

What is Gender?

The social and psychological aspects of being male or female; it goes beyond biological sex to include an individual’s personal understanding of the meaning of being male, female, or one of a range of other identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female.

What is the SRY Gene?

Causes the development of embryonic testes; it’s the gene responsible for one becoming a male.

What is Overt Aggression?

Physically or verbally harming another person directly.

What is Relational Aggression?

Behavior that is meant to harm the social standing of another person, such as gossiping and spreading rumors.

What is a Fetish?

An object or activity that arouses sexual interest and desire.

What is Frotteuristic Disorder?

A paraphilia that involves touching or rubbing against a person who has not given consent.

What is the Id?

The Freudian structure of personality consisting of unconscious drives; the individual’s reservoir of sexual energy.

What is Repression?

A defense mechanism in which the ego pushes unacceptable impulses or traumatic events out of awareness, back into the unconscious mind.

What is Sublimation?

A defense mechanism in which the ego replaces an unacceptable impulse with a socially acceptable one.

What is Projection?

A defense mechanism in which the ego attributes personal shortcomings, problems, and faults to others.

What is the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)?

A projective test that’s designed to elicit stories that reveal something about an individual’s personality.

What is a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?

When an individual’s expectations cause them to act in ways that serve to make the expectation come true.

What is the False Consensus Effect?

People’s overestimation of the degree to which everybody else thinks or acts the way they themselves do.

What is the Door-In-The-Face Technique?

A persuasion strategy that involves making the biggest pitch first at the beginning, which the customer will probably reject, and then making a smaller, “concessionary” demand.

What is the Bystander Effect?

Occurs because we tend to look to the behavior of others for cues about what to do; if no one else is helping, we assume help isn’t needed; and responsibility is diffused among witnesses.

What is Consensual Validation?

Explains why people are attracted to other who are similar to them; our own attitudes and behaviors are supported when someone else’s attitudes and behaviors are familiar.

What is the Hawthorne Effect?

The tendency of individuals to perform better simply because of being singled out and made to feel important.

What are Theory X Managers?

Assume that work is innately unpleasant and that people have a strong desire to avoid it; such managers believe that employees need direction, dislike responsibility, and must be kept in line.

What is viewing your occupation as a calling?

Individuals who view their occupation as a calling perceive that occupation as requiring a great deal of training and as involving personal control and freedom; work is not a means to financial ends but rather a valuable endeavor in and of itself; their “mission in life”.

What is the DSM-5?

The manual that psychologists use to classify mental disorders.

What is Panic Disorder?

Anxiety disorder in which the individual experiences recurrent, sudden onsets of intense terror, often without warning or a specific cause.

What is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

Involves anxiety-provoking thoughts that will not go away and/or urges to perform repetitive, ritualistic behaviors to prevent or produce some future situation.

What is Schizophrenia?

Characterized by highly disordered thought processes; delusions and/or hallucinations, disordered movement, catatonia, and flat affect.

What is Bipolar Disorder?

Characterized by extreme mood swings that include one or more episodes of mania, preceded and/or followed by a depressive episode.

What is Electroconvulsive Therapy (Shock Therapy)?

Primarily used to treat severe depression when the person does not respond to psychotherapy and drugs.

What is the Precontemplation stage of change?

The person is not ready to think about changing and may not be aware that there’s a problem to be changed.

What is the Contemplation stage of change?

The person acknowledges there’s a problem but isn’t ready to change.

What is the Preparation/Determination stage of change?

The person starts preparing to take action.

What is the Action/Willpower stage of change?

The person commits to making a change.

What is the Maintenance stage of change?

The person is successful in continuing the new behavior over time.