psych/soc terms mcat

Subcultures

Groups of people within a culture that distinguish themselves from the primary culture to which they belong.

Identity shift effect

Changes in beliefs or behavior due to peer pressure can be explained

Social loafing

refers to the tendency of individuals to reduce effort when in a group setting.

Stigma

The extreme disapproval or dislike of a person or group based on perceived differences in social characteristics from the rest of society

Social Facilitation

The tendency to perform at a different level based on the fact that others are around.

Social Action

Actions and behaviors that individuals are conscious of and performing because others are around.

Norms

Societal rules that define the boundaries of acceptable behavior

Groupthink

The tendency for groups to make decisions based on ideas and solutions that arise within the group without considering outside ideas and ethics; based on pressure to conform and remain loyal to the group.

Group Polarization

The tendency toward decisions that are more extreme than the individual thoughts of the group members.

Elaboration Likelihood Model

A theory in which attitudes are formed and changed through different routes of informational processing based on the degree of deep thought given to persuasive information.

Deviance

The violation of norms, rules, or expectations within a society.

Deindividuation

The idea that people will lose a sense of selfawareness and can act dramatically differently based on the influence of a group.

Compliance

A change of behavior of an individual at the request of another.

Cognitive Dissonance

The simultaneous presence of two opposing thoughts or opinions.

Social Facilitation

The tendency to perform at a different level based on the fact that others are around

Bystander effect

The observation that, when in a group, individuals are less likely to respond to a person in need.

Attitude

A tendency toward expression of positive or negative feelings or evaluations of a person, place, thing, or situation.

Assimilation

In psychology, the process by which new information is interpreted in terms of existing schemata; in sociology, the process by which the behavior and culture of a group or an individual begins to merge with that of another group.

Bottom up processing

Begins with stimulus. Stimulus influences what we perceive (our perception)

Top-down Processing

Uses background knowledge influences perception.

Theory driven, Deductive Reasoning

gesalt principles

Tries to explain how we perceive things the way we do.

Closure

Object group together or seen as whole. Mind fills in missing information. Example: you fill in the triangle, even though there is none.

Weber's law

Jnd/ initial intensity

Just noticeable difference

The threshold at which you're able to notice a change in any sensation

Thermoception

Somatosensation: receive info abt temperature

Mechanoception

Somatosensation: receive info abt pressure

Nociception

Somatosensation: receive info abt pain

Proprioception

Somatosensation: receive info abt position

Intensity

How quickly neurons fire for us to notice.

Slow-adapting of neurons

Neuron fires in beginning of stimulus and calms down after a while.

Vestibular system

Balance and spatial orientation

Peer pressure

refers to the social influence placed on an individual by one’s peers.

Solomon Asch’s Experiment

experiment showed that individuals will often conform to an opinion held by the group. In this experiment, male college students participated in simple tasks of perception. The study was set up to have one individual who made observations in the presence of confederates, or actors who were pretending to be a part of the experiment.

proactive interference

old information is interfering with new learning

Example: you move to a new address and the memory of the old address makes memorizing the new address harder.

Interference

A retrieval error caused by the existence of the other, similar information

Retroactive interference

New information causes forgetting of old information.

Example: teachers learning new names each school year cause forgetting of the previous years students

Prospective memory

Remembering to perform a task at some point in the future

Reproductive memory

Accurate recall of past events

Reconstructive memory

Theory of memory recall in which cognitive functions affect the act of memory.

How two people can remember the same event differently.

Misinformation effect

The person’s recall of an event is less accurate due to the injection of outside information

Retrograde amnesia

The loss of previously formed memories

Anterograde amnesia

The inability to form new memories

Confabulation

The process of creating vivid but fabricated memories (attempt to fill gaps of missing memories)

Alzheimer’s disease

A degenerative brain disorder (though to be loss of Acetylcholine in neurons that link to hippocampus)

Short-term memory

The information we are exposed to enters it, we have a limited duration and limited amount of items, it is housed in the hippocampus

Long-term memory

With enough rehearsal short-term can become this, essentially limitless warehouse of knowledge. Two categories fall under this; Implicit and Explicit

Implicit memory

Skills, habits, and conditioned responses. Includes procedural memory and priming

Explicit memory

Consists of memories that require conscious recall. Divided into episodic and semantic

Episodic memory

Recollection of life experiences

Semantic memory

Ideas, concepts, or facts we know, not tied to life experiences

Look over the human memory

Encoding

Process of putting new information into memory

Modeling

People learn what behaviors are acceptable by watching others perform them.

Internal locus of control

attributing an outcome to a personal trait

External locus of control

Events in our lives are caused by luck or outside influences

Conflict theory

calls attention to differences across social groups in power and status. The theory focuses on such structural differences among groups to explain how individuals relate to one another (organize to form interest groups)

Social reproduction

the perpetuation of inequalities through social institutions

Structural-Functionalism

Inverse of conflict theory. Compared society to an organism and proposed that each group in society has a role to play in the overall health and operation of society. These roles might be very different, in the same way that different organs or even different cells have very different functions within an organism, but each is important. (Functions can be latent/manifest)

Manifest function

Intended consequence of the actions of a group within a society

Latent functions

When an organization or institution has unintended but beneficial consequences

Anomie

refers to a lack of attachment to social norms, which can result in a breakdown in the connection between individuals and their community.

Deductive reasoning (top-down)

Starts from a set of general rules and draws conclusions from the information given.

Like a logic rules

Inductive reasoning

(Bottom-up)

seeks to create a theory via generalizations. This type of reasoning starts with specific instances, and then draws a conclusion from them.

Heuristics

Simplified principles to make decisions; they are colloquially as rule of thumbs

Availability heuristic

heuristic used when we base the likelihood of an event on how easily examples of that event come to mind.

Representativeness heuristic

Involves categorizing items on the basis of whether they fit the stereotypical image of the image

Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences

one of the most all-encompassing definitions, with at least eight defined types of intelligence: linguistic, logical–mathematical, musical, visual–spatial, bodily–kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist.

Spearman’s general intelligence

Evidence comes from the fact people who score well on one test also tend to score well on other types of tests

Alfred-Binet

First to develop an intelligence test, but wasn’t intending to. He developed a test in order to establish a child mental age and measure a child intellectual development and how they do a school layer on period was designed for children.

Classical Conditioning

type of associative learning that takes advantage of biological, instinctual responses to create associations between two unrelated stimuli.

Operant Conditioning

examines the ways in which consequences of voluntary behaviors change the frequency of those behaviors.

Positive Punishment

adds an unpleasant consequence in response to a behavior to reduce that behavior; for example, receiving a ticket and having to pay a fine for parking illegally.

Negative Punishment

is removing a stimulus in order to cause reduction of a behavior. For example, a parent or guardian may forbid a child from watching television as a consequence for bad behavior, with the goal of preventing the behavior from happening again.

Fixed-ratio schedule

Reinforce a behavior after a specific number of performances of that behavior,

Ex. researchers might reward a rat with a food pellet every third time it presses a bar in its cage. Continuous reinforcement

Variable-ratio

reinforce a behavior after a varying number of performances of the behavior, but such that the average number of performances to receive a reward is relatively constant.

Ex. researchers might reward a rat first after two button presses, then eight, then four, then finally six.

Fixed-interval

reinforce the first instance of a behavior after a specified time period has elapsed.

For example, once our rat gets a pellet, it has to wait 60 seconds before it can get another pellet. The first lever press after 60 seconds gets a pellet, but subsequent presses during those 60 seconds accomplish nothing.

Variable-interval

reinforce a behavior the first time that behavior is performed after a varying interval of time.

Ex. Instead of waiting exactly 60 seconds, for example, our rat might have to wait 90 seconds, then 30 seconds, then three minutes. In each case, once the interval elapses, the next press gets the rat a pellet.

Latent learning

which is learning that occurs without a reward but that is spontaneously demonstrated once a reward is introduced.

Mirror neurons

are located in the frontal and parietal lobes of the cerebral cortex and fire both when an individual performs an action and when that individual observes someone else performing that action.

Preconventional

In this Kohlberg’s moral development stage, moral reasoning is determined by what is rewarded and what is punished.

James-Lange theory

Suggests that physiological arousal precedes the experiencing of emotions.

Cannon-Bard theory

holds that physiological arousal and emotions are experienced simultaneously.

Schachter & Singer's two-factor theory

includes cognitive appraisal as a factor in emotional experience.

Ex. I am excited because my heart is racing and everyone else is happy.

Socialization

refers to the process by which individuals learn norms and values,

Ex. popular media is an agent of it

Assimilation

the process through which a group adopts the norms and values of a new culture (most often applied to the social context of immigration)

Differentiation

differential treatment based on social group membership

concept of conservation

The 8-to-9-year-olds are in Piaget's concrete operational period, the criterion for which is the ability to solve ___________

Semi-periphery nation

re relatively weak in economic and political infrastructure, but are developing their economies and governments. They are not necessarily dependent on another country

Periphery nation

less economically developed with weak governments and institutions, and often dependent on the core nations

Gestures and postures

Are socially learned and culturally variable.

I

In Mead’s theory of identity, the spontaneous and autonomous part of our unified self is the

Me

In Mead’s theory of identity, _____ is the part of the self that is formed in interaction with others and with the general social environment.

Id

used by Freud, reflects unconscious instincts and other more innate aspects of personality.

Ego

term used by Freud, and refers to the more conscious aspects of personality.

Spontaneous recovery

is the return of a conditioned response (CR) after it has been extinguished

Stimulus generalization

the extension of a conditioned response (CR) to stimuli that resemble the original CS

Second-order conditioning

Involves pairing a novel neutral stimulus with the CS, which takes the place of the original unconditioned stimulus (UCS). The resulting CR, emitted in response to the new CS, will not be as strong as the original CR

Sympathetic

Which branch of the nervous system is the emotional responses like a pounding heart, increased perspiration, and shortness of breath?

Oxytocin

is secreted by the pituitary gland, enables contractions associated with birthing, milk flow during nursing, and orgasm. It promotes pair bonding, group cohesion, and social trust

Melatonin

In response to the absence of light, the suprachiasmatic nucleus causes the pineal gland to secrete