Ap Psych - Unit Zero (Vocab)

Psychoanalysis

Freud’s theory that behavior and personality are strongly influenced by unconscious thoughts, desires, and conflicts

ID

Operates on the pleasure principle. Wants immediate satisfaction of desires

Ego

Operates on the reality principle. Tries to realistically balance the ID and superego

Superego

internal sense of morality, what you believe is right and wrong

Desires/Drives

Internal urges that motivate behavior

Oedipus complex

Freud’s concept involving a young boy’s unconscious attraction toward his mother and rivalry with his father

Electra complex

Similar concept applied to a young girl’s feelings toward her father/mother

Free Association

Psychoanalytic technique where someone says whatever thoughts come to mind without censoring them

Rorschach test

Inkblot test intended to reveal unconscious thoughts through interpretations of ambiguous images

Repression

Unconsciously blocking distressing thoughts/memories

Denial

refusing to accept reality

Projection

putting your own unacceptable feelings onto someone else

Regression

returning to behaviors from an earlier developmental stage

Rationalization

creating a reasonable-sounding excuse for something

Curiosity

asking questions and wanting to investigate

Skepticism

questioning claims instead of automatically accepting them

Humility

being willing to admit you could be wrong

Critical thinking

thinking carefully about claims, evidence, assumptions, and conclusions rather than simply accepting information

Hindsight bias

The tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, thats you knew it would happen

Overconfidence

being more confident in your knowledge or abilities than is justified

Perceiving order in random patterns

humans naturally try to find patterns, even when events are actually random

Theory

an organized explanation of observations that predicts behaviors/events

Hypothesis

a specific testable prediction

Operational definition

a precise explanation of how a variable will be measured or manipulated

Replication

repeating a study to determine whether similar results occur again

Case study

an in-depth examination of one individual or a small group

Naturalistic observation

observing behavior in its natural environment without interfering

Survey

Collecting people’s self-reported attitudes or behaviors by asking questions

Wording effect

how a question is worded can influence responses

Social desirability bias

people give answers they think are more socially acceptable

Sampling Bias

Your sample does not accurately represent the population

Population

the entire group researchers want to understand

Random sample

a sample where every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected

Correlation

measures the relationship between two variables

Scatterplot

graph showing the relationship between two variables

Illusory correlation

believing two variables are related when they actually aren’t

Experimental group

receives the treatment/manipulation

Control group

Does not recieve the treatment and provides a comparison

Random assignment

participants are randomly placed into experimental/control groups

Independent variable

the variable the researcher manipulates

Dependent variable

the variable that is measured

confounding variable

an outside factor that could provide an alternative explanation for the results

Placebo

an inactive treatment that looks like the real treatment

Single-bling experiment

participants don’t know which group they’re in

Double-blind experiment

neither the participants nor the researchers interacting with them know who received the real treatment

Validity

how well a study actually measures what it claims to measure

Longitudinal study

studies the same people over a long period of time

Qualitative research

focuses on descriptions, experiences, and non-numerical information

quantitative research

focuses on numbers and measurable data

Informed consent

participants receive enough information to knowingly agree to participate

Confidentiality

researchers protect participants’ private information

debriefing

after the experiment, researchers explain the study, especially deception was involved

Mean

the average

Median

the middle score after putting values in order

Mode

the most frequently occuring score

Range

the highest score minus the lowest

Standar deviation

measures how much scores vary/spread out around the mean

Inferential statistics

methods used to determine whether findings from a sample can reasonably be generalized to a larger population

Normal curve

the classic bell-shaped distribution; most scores are near the average, while fewer scores appear at the extremes