Psychology: Human Behaviour

Wilhelm Wundt

1832-1920. often called the father of psychology for his pioneering laboratory research in 1879. Contributed to initiating the school of thought known in psychology as 'structuralism'. Hoped to construct a 'periodic table of mental elements' to map mental processes

William James

1842-1910. One of the founders of functionalism. Was interested in explaining, rather than just describing, the contents and functions of the mind. He viewed consciousness as a constantly moving stream of thoughts, feelings and perceptions

John B Watson

1878-1958. Was a pioneer of American behaviourism. Believed that the environment was what ultimately determines behaviour, not genetic characteristics. Conducted the famous 'Little Albert' experiment, where he conditioned a small child to fear white rats and rabbits

B. F. Skinner

1904-1990. Was strongly influenced by the work of John B. Watson. Developed behaviourism as a fully-fledged perspective during the twentieth century. Observed that behaviour can be controlled by environmental consequences that either increase, reinforce, or decrease, punish, the likelihood of these behaviours occurring. Believed that through 'social engineering', society could harness the power of the environment to change behaviour in beneficial ways.

Thomas Hobbes

1588-1679. Advocated the belief that the mind and the body as one entity.

Noam Chomsky

Born 1928. Argued that humans are biologically 'preprogrammed' to acquire language and that children come to understand language as a set of 'mental rules'.

Karl Lashley

1890-1958. Greatly influenced behavioural neuroscience with his research on rats

Straw man argument

Misrepresent an adversary's argument, or states an extreme version of it in order to make that argument easier to refute.

Ad hominem

Attack the person or their character rather than their argument

Collective unconscious

Memories accumulated throughout the entire history of the human race

Archetypes

Inherited tendencies to interpret experiences in certain ways

Defence mechanisms

Unconscious mental operations that deny or distort reality

Preconscious

Memories, feelings, thoughts and images that we are unaware of at the moment but can be recalled

Personality Traits

Relatively stable cognitive, emotional and behavioural characteristics of people that help establish their individual identities and distinguish them from others

Factor analysis

Identify clusters of behaviours that are highly, positively or negatively, correlated with one another, but not with behaviours in other clusters.

Self-verification

Motive to maintain current self-beliefs

Conditions of worth

Dictate the circumstances under which we approve or disapprove of ourselves

Fixed-role therapy

Technique to modify personal constructs

Rep test

Assessment of personal constructs

Self-esteem

How positively or negatively we feel about ourselves

Self-enhancement

Motivation to have a positive self-view

Self-concept

Organised set of beliefs about oneself

Amygdala

Inhibited individuals exhibit elevated reactivity in this area when presented with novel stimuli

Temperament

Individual differences in emotional and behavioral styles that appear so early in life that they are assumed to have a biological basis

Self-monitoring

Attentive to situational cue and adapt their behavior to what they think would be most appropriate

Behaviourism

A school of psychology that emphasises the effects of learning and environmental control on behaviour and maintains that the proper subject matter of psychology is observable behaviour. Rooted in the philosophical school of British empiricism. Ivan Pavlov, John B Watson and B.F. Skinner.

Social-cognitive theory

A cognitive behavioural approach to personality developed by Bandura and Mischel that emphasises the role of social learning, cognitive processes and self-regulation

Reciprocal determinism

Bandura's model of two-way causal relations between the person, behaviour and the environment

Internal-external locus of control

In Rotter's theory, a generalised expectancy that one's outcomes are under personal versus external control. Related to self-esteem and feelings of personal effectiveness.

Self-efficacy

The conviction that we can perform the behaviours necessary to produce a desired outcome. It is determined by 1, performance experiences, 2, observational learning, 3, verbal persuasion and 4, emotional arousal.

Gestalt psychology

Formed by German scientists in the 1920s. Examined how the mind organises elements of experience into a unified or 'whole' perception.

Humanistic perspective / humanism

A psychological view that emphasises personal freedom, choice and self-actualisation. Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, George Kelly.

Cognitive neuroscience

An area of psychology that intersects the subfields of cognitive psychology and physiological psychology and examines brain processes that underlie mental activity

Cognitive behaviourism

A behavioural approach that incorporates cognitive concepts, suggesting that the environment influences our behaviour by affecting our thoughts and giving us information

Evolutionary psychology

A field of study that focuses on the role of evolutionary processes, especially natural selection, in the development of adaptive psychological mechanisms and social behaviour in humans

Health psychology

The study of psychological and behavioural factors in the prevention and treatment of illness and the enhancement of health

Psychodynamic perspective

A psychological perspective that focuses on how personality processes—including unconscious impulses, defences and conflicts—influence behaviour

Modern psychodynamic theories

Downplay the role of hidden sexual and aggressive motives and focus more on how early relationships with family members and caregivers shape the view that people form of themselves and others

Functionalism

An early school of American psychology that focused on the functions of consciousness and behaviour in helping organisms adapt to their environment and satisfy their needs

Phenomenology

A philosophical approach that focuses on immediate subjective experience, instead of the past

Fixation

A state of arrested psychosexual development in which instincts are focused on a particular psychic theme.

Personal constructs

Cognitive categories into which individuals sort the people and events in their lives.

Cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS)

An organised system of 5 personality variables that interact continuously with one another and with the environment, generating the distinct patterns of behaviour that characterise the person. 1, encoding strategies, 2, expectancies and beliefs, 3, goals and values, 4, affects, and 5, competencies and self-regulatory processes.