PSY 201: Comprehensive Review of Lifespan Development, Motivation, Emotion, Personality, and Social Psychology

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering key definitions, theories, research studies, and developmental milestones across Social Psychology, Personality, Motivation and Emotion, and Lifespan Development.

Situationism

The view, primarily adopted by social psychologists, that our behavior and actions are determined by our immediate environment and surroundings.

Dispositionism

The view, favored in the United States and used by personality psychologists, that our behavior is determined by internal factors such as personality traits and temperament.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overemphasize internal factors as attributions for other people's behavior while underestimating the power of the situation.

Social Role

A pattern of behavior that is expected of an individual in a given setting or group, defined by culturally shared knowledge.

Social Norm

A group's expectation regarding what constitutes appropriate and acceptable behavior, thoughts, and appearances for its members.

Script

A person's knowledge about the specific sequence of events expected in a particular setting, used to guide behavior.

Stanford Prison Experiment

A $1971$ study led by Philip Zimbardo where male college students were randomly assigned as prisoners or guards in a mock prison, demonstrating how social roles, norms, and scripts can rapidly induce authoritarian and abusive behavior, leading to its cancellation after $6$ days.

Attitude

Our favorable or unfavorable evaluation of a person, idea, or object, consisting of an affective component (feelings), a behavioral component (effects on behavior), and a cognitive component (beliefs and knowledge).

Cognitive Dissonance

Leon Festinger's term for the psychological discomfort that arises from holding two or more inconsistent attitudes, behaviors, or cognitions.

Asch Effect

The influence of a group majority on an individual's judgment; demonstrated when $76\%$ of participants conformed at least once to an obviously incorrect line length choice.

Milgram's Obedience Study

An experiment by Stanley Milgram testing obedience to authority, which revealed that $65\%$ of participants complied with demands to administer the maximum $450\text{-volt}$ electric shock to a confederate learner.

Social Facilitation

The tendency for individuals to perform better in the presence of others when performing an easy task or a task for which they are skilled.

Social Loafing

The exertion of less effort by an individual when working in a group compared to working alone, occurring most often when individual performance cannot be evaluated separately on easy tasks.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

An expectation held by an individual that alters their behavior in a way that causes the expectation to come true.

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to search for and favor information that supports existing stereotypes and beliefs while ignoring inconsistent information.

In-Group Bias

The preference for and favoring of one's own identified group over an out-group viewed as fundamentally different.

Scapegoating

The act of blaming an out-group when an in-group experiences frustration or is prevented from achieving a desired goal.

Personality

The long-standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to consistently think, feel, and behave in specific ways.

Four Humors

An ancient physiological perspective by Hippocrates and Galen proposing that human temperament derives from four bodily fluids: choleric (yellow bile), melancholic (black bile), sanguine (red blood), and phlegmatic (white phlegm).

Phrenology

A pseudoscience proposed by Franz Gall in $1780$ asserting that distances between bumps on the skull reveal a person's character, personality traits, and mental abilities.

Freud's Iceberg Model of Consciousness

Sigmund Freud's conceptualization of the mind showing that only a small portion is conscious awareness, while the vast unconscious repository of unacceptable urges and desires remains hidden beneath the surface.

Id

The impulsive, instinctual component of personality containing primitive drives (hunger, thirst, sex) that operates entirely on the pleasure principle seeking immediate gratification.

Superego

The moral conscience developed through social interactions that judges behavior, instills feelings of pride or guilt, and operates on the morality principle.

Ego

The rational, visible self that mediates between the instinctual demands of the id and the moral restrictions of the superego according to the reality principle.

Reciprocal Determinism

Albert Bandura's concept stating that cognitive processes, behavior, and situational context interact continuously to influence one another.

Locus of Control

Julian Rotter's principle describing individual beliefs regarding personal agency: an internal locus views outcomes as the result of personal effort, while an external locus attributes outcomes to luck, fate, or powerful others.

Person-Situation Debate

Walter Mischel's finding that behavior is inconsistent across diverse situations but relatively consistent within equivalent situations across time.

Sheldon's Somatotypes

William H. Sheldon's typology linking body structure to personality: endomorphs (relaxed, sociable), mesomorphs (assertive, competitive), and ectomorphs (anxious, artistic, quiet).

Five Factor Model (Big Five)

A trait perspective defining personality along five broad dimensions scored on continuous scales: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (OCEAN).

Intrinsic Motivation

Motivation that stems from internal factors, driving behaviors that are performed purely for personal satisfaction and enjoyment.

Extrinsic Motivation

Motivation originating from external factors, driving behaviors carried out to earn external rewards or avoid punishments.

Overjustification Effect

The reduction in intrinsic motivation that occurs when an extrinsic tangible reward is expected and provided for performing an already enjoyable activity.

Drive Theory of Motivation

The theory that physiological deviations from homeostasis create needs, which produce psychological drive states directing behavior to return the body to balance.

Yerkes-Dodson Law

The law stating that task performance is optimal at moderate arousal levels, with difficult tasks requiring lower arousal and simple tasks requiring higher arousal.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow's pyramid of human motives requiring foundational physiological and security needs to be satisfied before fulfilling social, esteem, and self-actualization needs.

Emotion vs. Mood

An emotion is an intense, intentional, consciously experienced subjective state occurring in response to an event, whereas a mood is a less intense, prolonged affective state not tied to an identifiable experience.

The Limbic System (Emotion)

The primary neural network involved in emotion and memory processing, encompassing the hypothalamus (sympathetic activation), amygdala (fear and anger), and hippocampus (emotional memory integration).

Cultural Display Rule

Culturally specific standards and expectations governing the appropriate types, frequencies, and settings for displaying emotions.

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

The hypothesis proposing that facial muscle movement and expressions are capable of directly influencing and eliciting emotional experiences.

Continuous vs. Discontinuous Development

A major debate comparing development as a smooth, cumulative improvement of existing skills (continuous) against development through discrete, age-specific stages (discontinuous).

Psychosocial Theory of Development

Erik Erikson's eight-stage model positing that social interactions and mastery of stage-specific psychosocial crises across the entire lifespan shape ego identity and personality.

Assimilation vs. Accommodation

Jean Piaget's processes of cognitive adaptation: assimilation fits new information into existing schemata, while accommodation modifies existing schemata based on new information.

Object Permanence

The understanding developed during Piaget's sensorimotor stage (around $8\text{ months}$ of age) that objects continue to exist even when they are hidden from view.

Teratogen

Any environmental biological, chemical, or physical agent (such as alcohol, nicotine, radiation, or viruses) that causes harm to a developing embryo or fetus.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

A cluster of congenital physical deformities (small head, thin upper lip, smooth philtrum) and severe cognitive impairments caused by heavy maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy.

Contact Comfort

Harry Harlow's finding in rhesus monkeys demonstrating that warmth, comfort, and security—rather than the simple provision of nourishment—form the essential foundation of infant-mother attachment.

Secure Base

John Bowlby's term for a responsive primary caregiver whose presence provides a child with a sense of safety and security to explore their environment.

Strange Situation

Mary Ainsworth's experimental procedure assessing infant-caregiver attachment styles (secure, avoidant, resistant, disorganized) by observing reactions to maternal separations and reunions.

Authoritative Parenting Style

Diana Baumrind's parenting approach characterized by reasonable demands, consistent limits, warmth, responsive listening, and open communication, yielding high self-esteem and strong social skills in children.

Adolescent Egocentrism

David Elkind's concept describing cognitive phenomena in adolescence: the imaginary audience (believing everyone is watching and judging) and the personal fable (feelings of invulnerability and uniqueness).

Crystallized vs. Fluid Intelligence

In adult cognitive development, crystallized intelligence (accumulated knowledge and experiential skills) remains stable or improves, whereas fluid intelligence (information processing speed, reasoning, and memory) gradually declines.

Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

The lifespan developmental theory stating that as people grow older, their social networks decrease in quantity but become increasingly close and emotionally meaningful.

Five Stages of Grief

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's model outlining the emotional reactions experienced when confronting death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.