Psychology's Big Issues and Approaches

Vocabulary flashcards covering the major levels of analysis, psychological perspectives, and structural models from the lecture notes.

Biopsychosocial Approach

An integrated approach that incorporates biological, psychological, and social-cultural levels of analysis to view behavior from multiple valuable vantage points.

Biological Influences

Influences on behavior or mental processes that include natural selection of adaptive traits, genetic predispositions responding to the environment, brain mechanisms, and hormonal influences.

Psychological Influences

Influences on behavior or mental processes that include learned fears and other learned expectations, emotional responses, and cognitive processing and perceptual interpretations.

Social-Cultural Influences

Influences on behavior or mental processes that include the presence of others, cultural, societal, and family expectations, peer and other group influences, and compelling models in media.

Biopsychosocial Model Diagram

A diagram showing how biological, psychological, and social-cultural influences interact to form a behavior or mental process.

Psychodynamic Perspective

A perspective emphasizing that behavior springs from unconscious drives, conflicts, and unresolved repressed issues from the past, championed by Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Carl Jung.

Id

The biological component of personality operating on the pleasure principle and primary process thinking (wish fulfillment), associated with the unconscious mind and the Eros & Thanatos instincts.

Ego

The psychological component of personality operating on the reality principle and secondary process thinking (reality testing).

Superego

The social component of personality operating on moral imperatives, containing the conscience and the ego-ideal.

Conscious Level

The level of the mind in direct contact with the outside world.

Preconscious Level

Material located just beneath the surface of awareness.

Unconscious Level

Material well below the surface of awareness that is difficult to retrieve, where all psychic energy originates.

Freud's Iceberg Model Diagram

An illustration mapping the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious mind levels against the structural components of Ego, Superego, and Id.

Behaviorism

A psychological perspective holding that behavior is the result of reinforcements, punishments, and observation, associated with B.F. Skinner, John Watson, Thorndike, Ivan Pavlov, and Albert Bandura.

Humanism

A psychological perspective focusing on uniquely human issues such as the self, hope, love, creativity, nature, being, becoming, and individuality, championed by Abraham Maslow and Carl Rodgers.

Cognitive Perspective

A psychological perspective focused on how people encode, process, store, retrieve, perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems, associated with Jean Piaget, Noam Chomsky, Alan Baddeley, and Abert Ellis.

Evolutionary Perspective

A psychological perspective stating that human behavior and mental processes are the result of thousands of years of adaptation and natural selection promoting the survival of genes, associated with Charles Darwin.

Biomedical Perspective

A perspective focusing on biological and medical influences, attributing disorders to neurotransmitter imbalances, genetics, hormones, and brain structure, associated with Paul Broca, Wernike, and Phineas Gage.

Social-Cultural Perspective

A perspective focusing on how behavior and thinking vary across situations and cultures, shaped by social and cultural contexts, associated with Stanley Milgrim, Solomon Asch, Harry Harlow, and Albert Bandura.

Psychology's Approaches Overview

A summary table outlining the core focus and sample research questions for the major psychological perspectives.