AP Psychology - Evolution of Science and Biological Bases Vocabulary

A comprehensive vocabulary review set created from the AP Psychology summer assignment transcript, covering historical roots, psychological perspectives, subfields, and module 1.1 on nature, nurture, and epigenetics.

Psychology

The science of behavior and mental processes.

Monism

The belief that the mind (soul) and body are in fact different aspects of the same thing (associated with Aristotle and Locke).

Dualism

The belief that the mind (soul) can exist separately from the body (associated with Socrates, Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas, and René Descartes).

Tabula Rasa

John Locke's concept of the mind as a 'blank slate' to be written upon by experience, echoing an earlier concept from Aristotle.

Gestalt

German for 'whole'; an approach to perception emphasizing that individuals tend to integrate individual pieces of information into meaningful wholes.

Voluntarism

Wilhelm Wundt's approach to psychology that emphasized the willful, voluntary actions of the mind, studied through experimental self-observation.

Völkerpsychologie

Wilhelm Wundt's sociological psychology, which served as a forerunner of modern social or cultural psychology by studying language, customs, and social behavior.

Functionalism

An early American psychological perspective influenced by William James that focused on how consciousness and behavior serve adaptive functions allowing individuals to adjust to changing environments.

Structuralism

Edward B. Titchener's perspective that focused on identifying the basic elements or structure of consciousness using introspection.

Behaviorism

An approach established by John B. Watson that dismissed the importance of consciousness and focused on observable behavior as the essential subject matter of psychology.

Eugenics

The pseudoscientific view that the genetic makeup of the population can be improved by selective breeding and by preventing reproduction by people with various disabilities.

Behavioral Perspective

A psychological perspective emphasizing the centrality of observable behavior and the environmental events (such as stimuli and reinforcers) that influence it.

Behavioral Genetics Perspective

A viewpoint of psychological science focused on studying the combined effects of environment and genes on personal characteristics and individual differences.

Cognitive Perspective

A viewpoint focused on the mental processes that allow organisms to encode, store, and retrieve information.

Evolutionary Perspective

A perspective studying the role of natural selection in the evolution of psychological mechanisms that allow adaptation to recurring behavioral problems relevant to species survival.

Neuroscience

The study of the relation among brain, body, and behavior, including chemical transmission, blood chemistry, and sensory perception.

Psychodynamic Perspective

A perspective that views behavior as the product of unconscious drives and conflicts, and personality traits as outcomes of underlying aggressive or sexual drives.

Humanistic-Existential Perspective

A psychological perspective emphasizing an understanding of the healthy person, human potential, self-concept, meaning of life, and self-actualization.

Sociocultural Perspective

A viewpoint that examines the role of cultural context—including factors like race/ethnicity, gender identity, socioeconomic status, and religion—as an influence on behavior and mental processes.

Nature-Nurture Issue

The longstanding controversy over the relative contributions that genes (nature) and experience (nurture) make to the development of psychological traits and behaviors.

Natural Selection

The principle that the inherited traits enabling an organism to survive and reproduce in a particular environment will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations.

Evolutionary Psychology

The study of the evolution of behavior and the mind, using principles of natural selection.

Behavior Genetics

The study of the relative power and limits of genetic and environmental influences on behavior.

Environment

Every nongenetic influence, from prenatal nutrition to our experiences of the people and things around us.

Heredity

The genetic transfer of characteristics from parents to offspring.

Genes

The biochemical units of heredity that make up small segments of giant DNA molecules.

Genome

The complete instructions for making an organism.

Mutation

A random error in gene replication that leads to a change.

Identical (monozygotic) Twins

Individuals who developed from a single fertilized egg that split in two, creating two genetically identical organisms.

Fraternal (dizygotic) Twins

Individuals who developed from separate fertilized eggs, sharing a prenatal environment but genetically no closer than ordinary siblings.

Interaction

The interplay that occurs when the effect of one factor (such as environment) depends on another factor (such as heredity).

Epigenetics

The study of the molecular mechanisms by which environments can influence genetic expression without a DNA change.