AP Psychology Unit 1-2 Review

BF Skinner

Skinner Box experiment showed that consequences, whether it be reinforcement or punishment, determines the likeliness of a behavior to occur again

Jean Piaget

cognitive development of children, which suggests children move through four different stages of intellectual development. these stages are sensorimotor (birth - 18/24 months), preoperational (18/24 months - age 7), concrete operational (age 7 - 11), and lastly, formal operational that continues into adulthood

Sigmund Freud

invention of psychoanalysis, which believed that everyone has unconscious thoughts, feelings, memories, and desires. His theory revolves around subconscious, motivation, and mental illnesses. In his theory, personality has three sides to it: id, ego, and superego. He also believed in stages of psychosexual development alongside stages of consciousness

Albert Bandura

Bobo doll experiment; adults abused a clown-faced toy in front of kids, and the kids mimic the adults in the same behavior. This led to the conclusion that behaviors, such as aggression, can be learned through observation

Leon Festinger

theory of social comparison and theory of cognitive dissonance. The theory of social comparison states that people often analyze others attitudes and behaviors by comparing whom they consider of equal status. The theory of cognitive dissonance demonstrates the idea that the inconsistency between action and thoughts would lead to motivation to change thoughts or behaviors as it causes discomfort

Carl Rogers

humanistic psychology that believed all people possess an inherent need to grow and achieve their potential. He believed that one of the primary motives driving behavior is self-actualization, which individuals have within themselves vast resources for self-understanding and for altering their self-concepts, basic attitudes, and self-directed behavior; theory of personality states that it is made of three parts, including self-worth, self-image and ideal self.

Stanley Schachter

when an emotion is felt, a psychological arousal occurs and the individual uses immediate environment to search for emotional cues to label the specific arousal

Neal Miller

best known for his biofeedback and research on how psychosocial drives are the basis to motivation; He combined psychoanalytical theory with behaviorism and showed that fear, through learning, can become attached to cues and then function to reinforce whatever responses escape or avoid these cues

Edward Thorndike

law of effect, in which responses immediately followed by satisfaction will be more than likely to repeat and recur itself, but, behaviors followed by dissatisfaction or discomfort will become less likely to recur

Abraham Maslow

developed a hierarchy of needs to be explained to human motivation. His theory suggests that people have a number of basic needs that need to be met before they can climb up the hierarchy. He states that five categories of human needs dictate an individual’s behavior – physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs

Gordon Allport

focused on personality and came up with functional autonomy. It states that although adult motives develop from infantile drives, they become more independent. In his theory, rather than just having one dominant personality trait, individuals will have multiple smaller traits

Erik Erikson

8 stages of psychosocial development, and in each stage, the person experiences a crisis that leads to either a favorable or unfavorable outcome. His theory is coined as an identity crisis

Hans Eysenck

theory of personality is based on biological reasoning(genes). He believes that individuals inherit traits that affect their ability to learn and adapt. He was the first to use statistical data to reduce the number of personality traits. His theory of personality includes two major factors, extraversion (E) and neuroticism (N)

William James

theory emphasizes how the physiological responses to stimuli can lead to an emotional experience; When an individual sees a danger coming towards them, the immediate response is to run away. This stimulus evokes an emotion in the individual

David McClelland

states that every person has one of three main driving motivators: the needs for achievement, affiliation, or power. These motivations affect the actions of the people

Raymond Cattell

intelligence and personality psychologist who developed the 16 personality factors which developed into the 16PF Personality Questionnaire

John Watson

heavily influenced classical behaviorism. He focused on external and outwards behaviorism. He is known for his famous experiment, the “Little Albert” experiment , where he conditioned a child to fear a mouse. He emphasized that emotions were not natural to humans, but were learned responses to experiences and stimuli

Kurt Lewin

theory states that behavior is influenced by individuals and environment. He is considered the father of social psychology; one of the first psychologists to comprehensively study and test human behavior. This testing contributed much to the fields of experimental psychology, social psychology, and personality psychology

Donald O. Hebb

his research of how neurons help in psychological processes, like learning; was able to combine his study of human behavior with neuroscience, two fields that have failed to be connected correctly

George A. Miller

contributed to the development of psycholinguistics, and is also considered as one of the founders of cognitive psychology/cognitive science; started a new field that would eventually dominate the research basis in psychology, known as cognitive psychology, which used mental processes to explain complex behavior

Clark L. Hull

attempts to quantify psychology through mathematical equations and was known for his approach to studying behaviors; The theory states an association is better made when reinforced

Jerome Kagan

focused his study on whether childhood experiences would affect the personalities and character of individuals when grown up; his study concluded that there is a connection between how a child was and how they ended up as adults with both genes and environment playing a role. However, he also believed that these traits can change as an adult because the factors, especially environment, can always change

Carl Jung

father of analytic psychology, he came up with introverted/extroverted, archetypes, and collective unconscious; Collective unconscious is a psychological inheritance that contains all the knowledge and experience of humans, as a species; Archetypes are a part of the collective unconscious, which he believes are inherited traits from our ancestors and that most people are dominated by a specific one

Ivan Pavlov

best known for his classical conditioning research and experiment, alongside the discovery of these reflexes happening in the cerebral cortex; His experiment trained a hungry to salivate to metronome, a conditioned reflex; Classical conditioning is when two stimuli, one unconditioned and the other conditioned, are linked together by animal or human to produce a conditioned response

Walter Mischel

known for the marshmallow experiment, where children were able to fight back the urge for instant gratification, and instead wait for more rewards in the future. This revealed that through self control, one is able to better reach success

Structuralism

interested in the structure of the mind

Functionalism

interested in the functions of things (nose, brain, etc.)

Empiricism

a view that knowledge comes from experience via senses and science flourishes through observation and experiment

humanistic psychology

significant perspective that emphasized growth potential of a healthy person; used personalized methods to study personality in hopes of fostering personal growth

applied research

scientific study that aims to solve practical problems

counseling psychology

assists people with problems in living and in achieving greater well-being

clinical psychology

dealing with psychological disorders

Gestalt psychology

the whole is greater than the individual parts

Psychoanalysis

idea that childhood and the unconscious drives a person's behavior

Biological Analysis

The body and brain are the dominant influences of behavior and thinking

Evolutionary Analysis

Nature selects traits that allow a species to survive

Psychodynamic Analysis

The unconscious drives peoples’ behavior

Behavioral Analysis

Behavior is due to reinforcement, like rewards and punishment

Cognitive Analysis

Focuses on how we store, process, and use information, like a computer

Humanistic Analysis

Environmental influences, especially love and acceptance, determine if we become all we can in life

Socio-cultural Analysis

Behavior and ideas are different depending on the culture

hindsight bias

looking back in time makes an event seem as though it were inevitable to happen

Overconfidence

when we are more confident that we know something than we are correct

Scientific Attitude

Curiosity – you need to really want to find the truth.
Skepticism – scientists don’t take people merely at their claims, scientists seek factual proof.
Humility – a scientist has to be able to admit when he or she is proven wrong by the facts

Critical thinking

asking questions; analyzing and judging things from different perspectives

theory

explanation that organizes observations and tries to predict outcomes

hypothesis

a prediction that can be tested

operational definition

two parts: (1) a precise statement of the experimenter’s procedures and concepts and (2) something that is measured numerically

replication

repeating the essence of a research study, usually with different participants

Subjectivity

a judgment based on or including a person’s opinion or emotions

Objectivity

a judgment that has had opinion or emotion stripped away from it

case study

a thorough study of one person in hopes of learning about people in general

Survey

asks questions and deals with many more people (cases), but in much less depth

false consensus effect

tendency to overestimate extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors

Wording

results of the survey can be dramatically different depending on the wording of the survey and/or the question order

Random sampling

is where every person in the group has the same chance of being selected for the survey

Population

the whole group you want to study and describe

representative sample

where the small group truly represents the whole group

naturalistic observation

watching a person or animal behave in its normal surroundings

Correlation (positive/negative)

When two things are related or they go together, they are said to correlate

scatterplots

Graphs with the two things on the X and Y axes and dots scattered throughout the graph

Illusory correlations

People often see correlations that are not there

Experimentation

experiments alone show cause-and-effect

Random selection

participants come from a large population and are randomly selected to be involved

Double-blind procedure

technique where the participants and researchers don’t know which group they’re in and/or the hypothesis being tested. Having participants and researchers "blind" is to cut down on any bias

Placebo effect

People are often given a placebo (a fake drug that’s just a sugar pill) in double-blind experiments. Though fake, they think it’s real and have real positive benefits

Independent variable

is what the experimenter manipulates. This is the only thing different between the experimental and control groups

Dependent variable

is what the IV supposedly affects. it is what is measured

Confounding variables

are other factors that might make the experiment go wrong; might affect the dependent variable

Central tendency

refers to the center of a bunch of numbers

Standard deviation

measurement of how much the numbers vary from the mean (average)

Validity

test or bit of research measures what it’s supposed to measure

Reliability

The test yields the same results over and over.

Statistical significance

observed difference between two numbers is not due to chance

culture

the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next

Biological psychologists

study the linkage and interplay between the body and the mind.

biopsychosocial

concept believes we do the things we do because of (1) our bodies, (2) our minds or thinking, and (3) the culture that we live in

Neurons

nerve cells

nerves

axons carry the information that are bundled into electrical cables to the nerves

Sensory neurons (Afferent)

Take messages from the body, up the spinal cord, to the brain

Motor neurons(Efferent)

Take messages from the brain to the body

Interneurons

neurons within the brain that “talk” to one another while thinking or processing information

Cell body of Neuron

nucleus in the middle

Dendrites

feather-like fingers sticking out from the cell body. They bring info in to the cell

Axons

long “arms” that send info away from the cell body to other neurons or body parts (negatively charged ions inside, positively charged ions outside)

myelin sheath (insulates axons)

insulation helps control the impulses and speeds their travel

action potential

Neurons “fire” when stimulated by a sense or other chemicals from another neuron

Excitatory

tell it to fire

Inhibitory

tell it to not fire

threshold

excitatory signals outweigh the inhibitory signals by a certain amount, the neuron fires

synapse

place where the axon of one neuron meets the dendrites of another

synaptic gap

slight gap in between

Neurotransmitters

chemical messengers that take the impulse of one neuron across the synaptic gap to another neuron

endorphins

natural morphine that our bodies produce. They improve our moods and reduce pain. They’re released either in times of pain or heavy exercise

agonist molecules

Drugs that act like neurotransmitters and bridge the synaptic gap

antagonists

block transmission

central nervous system

consists of the brain and spinal cord

peripheral nervous system

consists of our sensory receptors, muscles, and glands

somatic nervous system

can be voluntarily controlled

autonomic nervous system

runs on its own, like your heartbeat