Untitled Flashcards Set

Natural Selection

The process by which organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring.

Evolutionary Personality Theory

A theory that suggests personality traits have developed through evolutionary processes.

Temperament

A person's characteristic mood, activity level, and emotional reactivity.

BIS system

Behavioral Inhibition System; a neural system that is thought to regulate avoidance behavior.

BAS System

Behavioral Activation System; a neural system that is thought to regulate approach behavior.

Eugenics

A set of beliefs and practices aimed at improving the genetic quality of a human population.

Nonshared environmental variance

Variation in personality traits due to environmental influences that differ among siblings.

Biological Determinism

The belief that biological factors such as genetics determine human behavior.

Somatotypology

A classification of body types, often associated with different personality traits.

Survival of the Fittest

A phrase that describes the natural selection process, where only the most fit organisms survive.

Social Darwinism

A theory that applies the idea of natural selection to human societies.

Cinderella Effect

The theory that step-parents may show less investment in their stepchildren than in biological children.

Classical Conditioning

A learning process that occurs through associations between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus.

Generalization

The tendency to respond similarly to different but related stimuli in classical conditioning.

Extinction

The gradual weakening and disappearance of a conditioned response.

Discrimination

The ability to distinguish between similar stimuli and respond differently.

Behaviorism

A theoretical perspective that focuses on observable behaviors and the importance of the environment in shaping behavior.

Systematic Desensitization

A therapeutic technique for overcoming phobias by gradually exposing a person to the feared object or context.

Thorndike’s Law of Effect

A principle stating that responses followed by satisfying consequences are more likely to recur.

Operant Conditioning

A method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior.

Shaping

A training method used to teach new behaviors by reinforcing successive approximations to the desired behavior.

Radical Determinism

The view that all behavior is determined by the environment and conditioning.

Social Learning Theory

A theory that emphasizes the importance of observing, modeling, and imitating the behaviors, attitudes, and emotional reactions of others.

Locus of Control

A psychological concept that refers to individuals' beliefs about how much control they have over the events in their lives.

Self-Efficacy

An individual’s belief in their ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task.

Explanatory Style

The manner in which individuals explain the causes of events, affecting their motivation and expectation for future outcomes.

Trait Approach

A psychological framework that focuses on individual differences in personality characteristics.

Big Five

A model of personality that includes five broad domains: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Eysenck’s Big Three

A model categorizing personality into three dimensions: extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism.