Practice Flashcards: Psychology Lecture Highlights

Practice flashcards based on the lecture series covering Freud's stages, defense mechanisms, learning theories (Classical and Operant), and memory 'sins.'

Anal Stage

The second stage of psychosexual development where pleasure is centered on bowel and bladder elimination and the psychological conflict involves control (e.g., toilet training).

Phallic Stage

The stage occurring between ages $3$ to $6$ where children recognize anatomical differences and experience the Oedipus or Electra complexes.

Oedipus Complex

A Freudian concept where a boy experiences incestuous sexual desires for his mother and views his father as a rival.

Repression

A defense mechanism where the mind 'buries' anxious thoughts or memories at the bottom of the brain so they are gone from the conscious mind.

Regression

Retreating to a more infantile or childlike state of development to cope with current distress or anxiety.

Reaction Formation

Acting in a way that is the exact opposite of one's true, uncomfortable desires to mask anxiety.

Projection

Attributing one's own unacceptable feelings or impulses onto another person (e.g., accusing someone else of being angry when you are the one who is angry).

Rationalization

A cognitive defense involving a 'verbal talk-off' to justify unacceptable actions or behaviors, making them seem logical.

Displacement

Redirecting an impulse, usually aggression, from a threatening target to a safer, less threatening one.

Compensation

Attempting to make up for perceived deficiencies in one area by overemphasizing or overachieving in another, often involving an exaggerated display of strength or status.

Freudian Slip

An error in speech, memory, or action believed to reveal an unconscious thought or internal psychological tension.

Inferiority Complex

A concept proposed by Alfred Adler suggesting that behavior is driven by feelings of being 'lesser' and a subsequent drive for power and superiority.

Collective Unconscious

Carl Jung's theory of a universal layer of the unconscious mind shared by all humans, containing archetypes.

Projective Tests

Tests that present individuals with ambiguous stimuli to reveal underlying patterns or conflicts in the unconscious mind.

Rorschach Inkblot Test

A projective test where subjects describe what they see in a series of symmetrical, abstract inkblots.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

A projective test where subjects describe narratives for vague, ambiguous pictures of social scenes.

Reliability

The consistency of a psychological test's results over time or between different raters.

Validity

The accuracy of a psychological test in measuring what it specifically claims to measure.

Five-Factor Model (FFM)

The 'gold standard' personality model measuring Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, and Extroversion.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

A clinical personality inventory that includes validity scales to detect used as a clinical diagnostic tool or for high-stakes job screenings.

Internal Locus of Control

The belief that an individual is the primary driver of their own life and 'makes things happen.'

External Locus of Control

The belief that life events are determined by external forces like chance, fate, luck, or destiny.

Classical Conditioning

A type of learning identified by Ivan Pavlov where an organism learns to associate one stimulus with another.

Unconditioned Stimulus (US)

A stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers a response, such as food causing salivation.

Acquisition

The initial learning stage in classical conditioning where an association is formed between a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus.

Extinction

The decrease and eventual disappearance of a conditioned response when the unconditioned stimulus no longer follows the conditioned stimulus.

Stimulus Generalization

The tendency to respond to stimuli that are similar to the original conditioned stimulus.

Operant Conditioning

A form of learning where behavior is strengthened or weakened based on the resulting consequences (rewards or punishments).

Shaping

An operant conditioning procedure where reinforcers guide behavior toward a desired target through successive approximations.

Continuous Reinforcement

A schedule that reinforces the desired response every single time it occurs.

Variable-Ratio Schedule

A schedule that reinforces a response after an unpredictable number of responses, making the behavior very hard to extinguish.

Latent Learning

Learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it.

Mirror Neurons

Neurons in the brain that are active during observational learning, firing both when an action is performed and when it is observed.

Working Memory

A contemporary understanding of short-term memory involving conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information.

Spacing Effect

The phenomenon where information is retained better when rehearsal is distributed over a long period of time.

Serial Position Effect

The tendency to have better recall for the first items (primacy effect) and last items (recency effect) on a list.

Explicit Memory

Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and declare; processed in the hippocampus.

Implicit Memory

Memory of 'how-to' knowledge or procedures that are processed unconsciously, often in the cerebellum.

Anterograde Amnesia

An inability to form new explicit memories, famously seen in Patient Henry M. (HM).

Transience

A 'sin' of memory referring to the fading or decreasing accessibility of memory over time when it is not used.

Proactive Interference

When previously learned information interferes with the ability to remember newly learned information.

Retroactive Interference

When newly learned information interferes with the ability to remember previously learned information.

Absentmindedness

A failure of prospective memory; forgetting to do things in the future, often due to divided attention.

Blocking

A retrieval failure commonly known as the 'tip-of-the-tongue' phenomenon where information is available but temporarily inaccessible.

Memory Misattribution

Assigning a memory or idea to the wrong source, such as misidentifying an eyewitness.

Suggestibility

The tendency to incorporate misleading information from external sources into one's own personal recollections.

Consistency Bias

A tendency to reconstruct the past to make it more similar to the present than it actually was.

Egocentric Bias

The tendency to exaggerate the differences between the past and present to make one's self-image look better in retrospect.

Flashbulb Memory

A highly clear, detailed, and vivid memory of where and when one was during an emotionally significant event.

Locus of Control

The degree to which people believe they have control over the outcome of events in their lives, categorized as internal or external.