AP Psych - 2025

Perception

• Definition: The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information to give meaning to our environment.

Bottom-Up Processing

• Definition: An approach where perception starts with sensory input and works up to the brain's integration of this information. It's data-driven, beginning with the raw sensory data.

Top-Down Processing

• Definition: Information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, drawing on experience and expectations to construct perceptions. This is conceptually driven.

Schema

• Definition: A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information. Schemas help us make sense of the world based on prior experiences.

Perceptual Set

• Definition: A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another. Expectations, context, and emotions all influence perceptual sets.

Gestalt Psychology

• Core Idea: Emphasizes that we often perceive the whole rather than the sum of the parts.
• Principles:
  • Closure: The perceptual tendency to mentally fill in gaps in a visual image to perceive objects as wholes.
  • Figure and Ground: The organization of the visual field into objects (figures) that stand out from their surroundings (ground).
  • Proximity: The perceptual tendency to group together visual and auditory events that are near each other.
  • Similarity: The perceptual tendency to group together elements that seem alike.

Attention

• Definition: The focusing of mental resources on select information.
• Types:
  • Selective Attention: The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.
    • Cocktail Party Effect: The ability to focus auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out other stimuli.
  • Inattentional Blindness: Failing to see visible objects when attention is directed elsewhere.
  • Change Blindness: Failing to notice changes in the environment.

Depth Cues

• Binocular Depth Cues: Depth cues that depend on the use of two eyes.
  • Retinal Disparity: A binocular cue for perceiving depth by comparing images from the retinas in the two eyes. The greater the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object.
  • Convergence: A binocular cue for perceiving depth by the extent to which the eyes converge inward when looking at an object. The more the eyes converge, the closer the object.
• Monocular Depth Cues: Depth cues available to either eye alone.
  • Relative Clarity: A monocular cue for perceiving depth; hazy objects are seen as farther away than sharp, clear objects.
  • Relative Size: A cue that allows determining the closeness of objects to an object of known size. If two objects are known to be the same size, the one that appears smaller is perceived as farther away.
  • Texture Gradient: A gradual change from coarse to fine texture signaling increasing distance. Objects with finer texture are perceived as farther away.
  • Linear Perspective: Parallel lines appear to converge with distance. The more the lines converge, the greater the perceived distance.

Aptitude Tests

• Definition: Tests designed to predict a person's future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.

Mindsets

• Fixed Mindset: The idea that we have a set amount of an ability that cannot change.
• Growth Mindset: The belief that one's skills and qualities can change and improve through effort and dedication.

Explicit Memory

• Definition: Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and 'declare.' Also known as declarative memory.

Episodic Memory

• Definition: The collection of past personal experiences that occurred at a particular time and place. It is autobiographical.

Semantic Memory

• Definition: Memory for factual information. General knowledge about the world.

Implicit Memory

• Definition: Retention independent of conscious recollection. Also known as nondeclarative memory.

Procedural Memory

• Definition: A type of long-term memory of how to perform different actions and skills. Examples include riding a bike or typing.

Prospective Memory

• Definition: Remembering to perform a planned action or recall a planned intention at some future point in time.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)

• Definition: An increase in a cell's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory.

Working Memory Model

• Description: A model that suggests that memory involves a series of active, temporary memory stores that manipulate information.
• Components:
  • Working Memory: A newer understanding of short-term memory that involves conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory.
  • Central Executive: The part of working memory that directs attention and processing.
  • Phonological Loop: The part of working memory that holds and processes verbal and auditory information.
  • Visuospatial Sketchpad: The part of working memory that holds visual and spatial information.

Multi-Store Model

• Description: A model of memory that suggests information passes through three stages: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.
• Stages:
  • Sensory Memory: The immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system.
    • Iconic Memory: A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second.
    • Echoic Memory: A momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds.
  • Short-Term Memory: Activated memory that holds a few items briefly before the information is stored or forgotten.
  • Long-Term Memory: The relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.

Automatic vs. Effortful Processing

• Automatic Processing: Unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information.
• Effortful Processing: Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.

Memory Processes

• Encoding: The processing of information into the memory system—for example, by extracting meaning.
• Storage: The retention of encoded information over time.
• Retrieval: The process of getting information out of memory storage.

Levels of Processing Model

• Description: The theory that deeper levels of processing result in longer-lasting memory codes.
  • Shallow Encoding: Processing information based on its surface characteristics.
  • Deep Encoding: Processing information based on its meaning and the significance of the information.

Mnemonic Devices

• Definition: Memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices.
• Types:
  • Method of Loci: A mnemonic device that involves imagining placing items around a room or along a route.
  • Chunking-Grouping: Organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically.
  • Categories-Grouping: Grouping information into categories that share common attributes.
  • Hierarchies-Grouping: Organizing items into a hierarchy, starting with general categories and working down to specific examples.

Spacing Effect

• Definition: The tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice.
• Types of Practice:
  • Massed Practice: Cramming information all at once. It is less effective than spaced practice.
  • Distributed Practice: Spacing the study of material to be remembered by including breaks between study periods.

Serial Position Effect

• Definition: Our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list.
• Components:
  • Primacy Effect: The tendency to remember information at the beginning of a body of information better than the information that follows.
  • Recency Effect: The tendency to remember information that is presented last.

Rehearsal

• Maintenance Rehearsal: Repeating information over and over to keep it active in short-term memory.
• Elaborative Rehearsal: A method of transferring information from short-term to long-term memory by making that information meaningful in some way.

Memory Retention

• Definition: The ability to retain information over time through the storage and retrieval of information.

Autobiographical Memory

• Definition: The memory for events and facts related to one's personal life story.

Amnesia

• Retrograde Amnesia: An inability to retrieve information from one's past.
• Anterograde Amnesia: An inability to form new memories.

Alzheimer's Disease

• Definition: A progressive and irreversible brain disorder characterized by gradual deterioration of memory, reasoning, language, and, finally, physical functioning.

Infantile Amnesia

• Definition: The inability to retrieve memories from much before age 3.

Measures of Memory

• Recall: A measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the-blank test.
• Recognition: A measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned, as on a multiple-choice test.

Retrieval Cues

• Definition: Stimuli that aid the recall or recognition of information stored in memory.
• Types:
  • Context-Dependent Memory: The theory that information learned in a particular situation or place is better remembered when in that same situation or place.
  • Mood-Congruent Memory: The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood.
  • State-Dependent Memory: The theory that information learned in a particular state of mind (e.g., drunk, sober) is more easily recalled when in that same state of mind.

Forgetting

• The Forgetting Curve: A graph showing retention and forgetting over time. Forgetting is rapid at first, then slows down.
• Encoding Failure: The failure to process information into memory.

Interference

• Proactive Interference: The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information.
• Retroactive Interference: The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information.

Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon

• Definition: The temporary inability to remember something you know, accompanied by a feeling that it's just out of reach.

Repression

• Definition: The basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.

Memory Distortion

• Misinformation Effect: Incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event.
• Source Amnesia: Attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined.
• Constructive Memory: The process by which memories are influenced by the meaning we give to events.
• Memory Consolidation: The neural storage of a long-term memory.
• Imagination Inflation: The increased confidence in a false memory of an event following repeated imagination of the event.

Health Psychology

• Definition: A branch of psychology that focuses on how physical activities, psychological traits, and social relationships affect overall health and illness.

Stress

• Definition: The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging.
• Physical Effects:
  • Hypertension: High blood pressure, often associated with stress, which can increase the risk of heart and kidney diseases and stroke.
  • Immune Suppression: Reduction in the effectiveness of the immune system, which can be caused by various forms of stress.

Stressors

• Definition: Events or conditions in your surroundings that may trigger stress.
• Types:
  • Daily Hassles: Everyday minor events that cause stress, such as traffic jams or overwhelming chores.
  • Significant Life Changes: Major life transitions like moving, leaving a job, or divorcing, which can be stressful.
  • Catastrophes: Unpredictable, large-scale events that cause significant stress and alter the lives of many people.
• Types of Stress:
  • Eustress (motivating): Positive stress which results from striving toward a challenging goal.
  • Distress (debilitating): Negative stress that can make a person sick or keep a person from reaching a goal.
  • Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs): Potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood and can have negative, lasting effects on health and well-being.

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

• Definition: The three-stage process (alarm, resistance, exhaustion) that describes the physiological changes the body goes through when under stress.
• Stages:
  • Alarm Reaction Phase: The initial reaction to a stressor, activating the body's defense systems.
  • Resistance Phase: The body's response after the initial shock of a stressful event, where the body attempts to return to normal functioning.
    • Flight-Fight-Freeze Response: A physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival.
  • Exhaustion Phase: The third stage of the GAS, during which the body depletes its resources in responding to a prolonged stressor.
• Tend-and-Befriend Theory: A theory that suggests people seek social support and tend to others in times of stress.

Coping Strategies

• Problem-focused Coping: Strategies aimed at tackling the cause of stress in practical ways which directly tackle the problem causing the stress.
• Emotion-focused Coping: Strategies aimed at relieving or managing the emotional distress associated with stress.

Positive Psychology

• Definition: The scientific study of human strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive.
• Subjective Well-being: An individual's own assessment of their happiness and satisfaction with life.
• Resilience: The ability to mentally or emotionally cope with a crisis or to return to pre-crisis status quickly.
• Posttraumatic Growth: Positive psychological change experienced as a result of adversity and other challenges in order to rise to a higher level of functioning.
• Positive Emotions: Feelings that engage us, elevate us, and promote growth and well-being.
• Gratitude: A feeling of thankfulness and appreciation, especially in response to someone doing something kind or helpful.
• Signature Strengths & Virtues: Character strengths and virtues that are personally fulfilling, intrinsic to one's identity, and contribute to the collective well-being.
• Categories of Virtues: Broad categories that encompass character strengths, such as wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.

Abnormal Psychology

• Definition: The study of psychological disorders, including their symptoms, etiology (i.e., their causes), and treatment.
  *Clinical Psychology: A branch of psychology that studies, assesses, and treats people with psychological disorders.

Psychology Student Syndrome

• Definition: A phenomenon where psychology students begin to believe they have the disorders they are studying.

Diagnostic Manuals

• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR): The updated manual that describes and categorizes mental disorders in order to improve diagnoses, treatment, and research.
• International Classification of Mental Disorders (ICD): A standard diagnostic tool for epidemiology, health management, and clinical purposes. It is maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO) and covers a broad range of health conditions, including psychological conditions.

Defining Abnormality

• Deviation: In psychology, typically refers to departing from the norm, which can either be statistical, social, or functional in nature.
• Distress: Negative stress that can lead to anxiety, depression, and potentially to physical problems.
• Dysfunction: Abnormal functioning, as opposed to normal functioning, often used to refer to individual behaviors or the functioning of social systems.

Approaches to Treatment

• Eclectic Approach: An approach to clinical practice that involves selecting the best treatment techniques from various disciplines based on the client's unique problems, strengths, and preferences.

Psychological Perspectives

• Behavioral Perspective: Focuses on how we learn observable responses and how the environment impacts those responses.
• Psychodynamic Perspective: Emphasizes the influence of the unconscious mind on behavior and the importance of childhood experiences.
• Humanistic Perspective: Focuses on the importance of being your true self in order to lead the most fulfilling life.
• Cognitive Perspective: Focuses on how we encode, process, store, and retrieve information.
• Evolutionary Perspective: How the natural selection of traits promotes the perpetuation of one's genes.
• Sociocultural Perspective: Examines how the social environments and cultural upbringing influence an individual's behavior and thoughts.
• Biological Perspective: Explores the links between brain and mind, and how the body and brain enable emotions, memories, and sensory experiences.

Biopsychosocial Model

• Definition: An integrated approach that incorporates biological, psychological, and social-cultural levels of analysis to better understand health and illness.

Diathesis-Stress Model

• Definition: Suggests that a person may be predisposed for a psychological disorder that remains unexpressed until triggered by stress.

Stigma

• Definition: Disapproval or discrimination against a person based on perceivable social characteristics that serve to distinguish them from other members of society.

Anxiety Disorders

• Definition: Mental health disorders characterized by significant feelings of anxiety and fear.
  • Specific Phobia: An anxiety disorder characterized by irrational and persistent fear of a specific object, situation, or activity.
    • Examples: Acrophobia (fear of heights), Arachnophobia (fear of spiders), Agoraphobia (Fear of open or crowded spaces)
  • Panic Disorder: An anxiety disorder that consists of sudden, overwhelming attacks of terror.
    • Ataque de nervios: A cultural syndrome primarily seen in Latin Americans, involving symptoms of intense emotional upset, acute anxiety, fear, or anger.
  • Social Anxiety Disorder: A chronic mental health condition in which social interactions cause irrational anxiety.
    • Taijin Kyofusho: A Japanese culture-specific syndrome characterized by an intense fear that one's body, body parts, or bodily functions give others a negative impression.
  • Generalized Anxiety Disorder: An anxiety disorder in which a person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders

• Definition: Disorders involving intrusive obsessions and compulsions which impede daily life.
  • Obsessions: Persistent ideas, thoughts, or impulses that are unwanted and inappropriate and cause marked distress.
  • Compulsions: Repetitive behaviors or mental acts that an individual feels driven to perform in response to an obsession.
  • Hoarding Disorder: A disorder characterized by the persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value.

Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders

• Definition: Disorders related to the exposure to a traumatic or stressful event.
  • Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A disorder characterized by failure to recover after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event.

Depressive Disorders

• Definition: Disorders that involve the presence of sad, empty, or irritable mood, accompanied by physical and cognitive changes that significantly affect the individual's capacity to function.
  • Major Depressive Disorder: A mood disorder causing a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest.
  • Persistent Depressive Disorder: A form of depression that is less severe than major depressive disorder but more chronic.

Bipolar Disorder

• Definition: A disorder associated with episodes of mood swings ranging from depressive lows to manic highs.
  • Bipolar Cycling: The process of cycling through episodes of mania and depression in bipolar disorder.
  • Bipolar I Disorder: A type of bipolar spectrum disorder characterized by the occurrence of at least one manic episode.
  • Bipolar II Disorder: A type of bipolar disorder marked by milder episodes of hypomania that alternate with periods of severe depression.

Neurodevelopmental Disorders

• Definition: A group of conditions with onset in the developmental period, often before school age, that are characterized by developmental deficits that produce impairments of personal, social, academic, or occupational functioning.
  • Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): A chronic condition including attention difficulty, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness.
  • Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A disorder that affects communication and behavior.

Feeding and Eating Disorders

• Definition: Disorders characterized by abnormal or disturbed eating habits, which negatively affect a person's health.
  • Anorexia Nervosa: An eating disorder characterized by an abnormally low body weight, intense fear of gaining weight, and a distorted perception of body weight.
  • Bulimia Nervosa: An eating disorder characterized by binge eating followed by purging.

Schizophrenic Spectrum Disorders

• Definition: A range of disorders that involve psychosis, including schizophrenia.
  • Delusions: False beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders.
    • Delusions of Persecution: The belief that others are out to get one.
    • Delusions of Grandeur: A false belief that one is more important or influential than they really are.
  • Hallucinations: False sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus.
  • Disorganized Thinking: A symptom of psychosis, manifested as illogical or incoherent thought and speech.
    • Disorganized Speech: A style of talking involving incoherence and a lack of typical logical patterns.
    • Word Salad: A confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases.
  • Disorganized Motor Behavior: Includes a variety of unusual behaviors including problems with goal-directed behavior leading to difficulties performing activities of daily living.
  • Catatonia: A state of unresponsiveness to one's outside environment, usually including muscle rigidity, staring, and inability to communicate.
  • Flat Affect: A lack of emotional responsiveness.
  • Dopamine Hypothesis: The theory that schizophrenia results from an excess of dopamine activity.
  • Positive Symptoms: Symptoms of schizophrenia that are excesses of behavior or occur in addition to normal behavior; hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized speech.
  • Negative Symptoms: Symptoms of schizophrenia that are marked by deficits in functioning, such as apathy, lack of emotion, and slowed speech and movement.

Dissociative Disorders

• Definition: Disorders in which conscious awareness becomes separated (dissociated) from previous memories, thoughts, and feelings.
  • Dissociative Amnesia: A disorder characterized by the sudden and extensive inability to recall important personal information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature.
  • Dissociative Fugue: A rare dissociative disorder in which a person loses awareness of their identity or other important autobiographical information and also engages in some form of unexpected travel.
  • Dissociative Identity Disorder: A disorder characterized by the presence of two or more distinct personality states.

Personality Disorders

• Definition: Psychological disorders characterized by inflexible and enduring behavior patterns that impair social functioning.
  • Cluster A Personality Disorders: Odd, eccentric thinking or behavior (including paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal personality disorders).
    • Paranoid Personality Disorder: Type of personality disorder characterized by extreme distrust and suspicion of others.
    • Schizoid Personality Disorder: A personality disorder characterized by persistent avoidance of social relationships and little expression of emotion.
    • Schizotypal Personality Disorder: A personality disorder characterized by severe social anxiety, thought disorder, paranoid ideation, derealization, transient psychosis, and often unconventional beliefs.
  • Cluster B Personality Disorders: Dramatic, overly emotional or unpredictable thinking or behavior (including antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic personality disorders).
    • Antisocial Personality Disorder: A personality disorder characterized by a lack of conscience for wrongdoing, even toward friends and family.
    • Histrionic Personality Disorder: A personality disorder characterized by excessive emotionality and attention seeking.
    • Narcissistic Personality Disorder: A disorder in which a person has an inflated sense of self-importance.
    • Borderline Personality Disorder: A personality disorder characterized by severe instability in emotions and self-image, along with impulsive and reckless behavior.
  • Cluster C Personality Disorders: Anxious, fearful thinking or behavior, including avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders.
    • Avoidant Personality Disorder: A personality disorder characterized by social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, and hypersensitivity to negative evaluation.
    • Dependent Personality Disorder: A personality disorder characterized by psychological dependence on other people.
    • Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder: A personality disorder characterized by preoccupation with orderliness, perfection, and control.

Deinstitutionalization

• Definition: The release of institutionalized individuals from institutional care to community-based care.

Evidence-Based Interventions

• Definition: Treatments based on scientific evidence.

Cultural Humility

• Definition: An approach to engagement across cultures emphasizing openness and self-awareness of one's own cultural identities.

Therapeutic Alliance

• Definition: The relationship between a healthcare professional and a client.

Conformity

• Definition: Adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard.
  • Normative Social Influence: Influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval.
  • Social Norms: Expected standards of conduct, which influence behavior.
  • Social Comparison: Evaluating one's abilities and opinions by comparing oneself to others.
    • Relative Deprivation: The perception that one is worse off relative to those with whom one compares oneself.
    • Upward Social Comparison: Comparing oneself with others who are better off.
    • Downward Social Comparison: Comparing oneself with others who are worse off.
  • Informational Social Influence: Influence resulting from one's willingness to accept others' opinions about reality.

Obedience

• Definition: Following the directives of authority.

Social Facilitation

• Definition: Improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others.

Group Dynamics

• Group Polarization: The enhancement of a group's prevailing inclinations through discussion within the group.
• Groupthink: The mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives.
• Bystander Effect: The tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present.
  * Diffusion of Responsibility: Diminished sense of responsibility among group members to act because others are seen as equally responsible.
• Social Loafing: The tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable.
• Deindividuation: The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.

Attribution Theory

*Definition: The theory that we explain someone's behavior by crediting either the situation or the person's disposition.

• Dispositional Attributions: Attributing behavior to the person's disposition and traits.
• Situational Attributions: Attributing behavior to the environment.
• Explanatory Style: A person's habitual way of explaining events, typically assessed along three dimensions: internal/external, stable/unstable, and global/specific.
  • Optimistic Explanatory Style: Explaining bad events as results of temporary, external causes.
  • Pessimistic Explanatory Style: Explaining bad events as results of stable, internal causes.
• Fundamental Attribution Error: The tendency for observers, when analyzing others' behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition.
• Actor-Observer Bias: The tendency to attribute one's own actions to external causes while attributing other people's behaviors to internal causes.
• Self-Serving Bias: A readiness to perceive oneself favorably.
• Locus of Control:
  • Internal Locus of Control: The perception that one controls one's own fate.
  • External Locus of Control: The perception that chance or outside forces beyond one's personal control determine one's fate.

Altruism

• Definition: Unselfish regard for the welfare of others.
• Social Responsibility Norm: An expectation that people will help those needing their help.

Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

• Stereotype: A generalized belief about a group of people.
• Confirmation Bias: The tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories.
• Belief Perseverance: Clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: A belief that leads to its own fulfillment.
• Prejudice: An unjustifiable and usually negative attitude toward a group and its members.
• Discrimination: Unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its members.
• Implicit Attitudes: Attitudes that influence a person's feelings and behavior at an unconscious level.
• Just-World Phenomenon: The tendency for people to believe the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve.
• Out-Group Homogeneity Bias: Perception of out-group members as more similar to one another than are in-group members.
• In-Group Bias: The tendency to favor one's own group.
• Mere Exposure Effect: The phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of them.
• Ethnocentrism: Evaluating other cultures according to the standards and customs of one's own culture.
• Collectivism: Giving priority to the goals of one's group and defining one's identity accordingly.
• Multiculturalism: The practice of valuing and respecting differences in culture.
• Superordinate Goals: Shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation.
• Social Traps: A situation in which conflicting parties, by each rationally pursuing their self-interest, become caught in mutually destructive behavior.

Persuasion

• Definition: The process of creating, reinforcing, or changing people's beliefs or actions.
• Elaboration Likelihood Model: A theory of how persuasive messages lead to attitude changes.
  • Central Route of Persuasion: Attitude change path in which interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts.
  • Peripheral Route of Persuasion: Attitude change path in which people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker's attractiveness.
  • Halo Effect: The tendency to draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single characteristic.
• Techniques:
  • Foot-in-the-Door Technique: The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request.
  • Door-in-the-Face Technique: The strategy of getting someone to agree to a modest request by first asking them to agree to a much larger request that they will likely turn down.
• False Consensus Effect: The tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors.
• Cognitive Dissonance: The theory that we act to reduce the discomfort we feel when two of our thoughts are inconsistent.

Industrial-Organizational (I/O) Psychology

*Definition: Psychologists who apply psychology's principles to the workplace.

• Instincts: A complex behavior that is rigidly patterned throughout a species and is unlearned.
  Driving Force
• Drive-Reduction Theory: The idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need.
• Homeostasis: The tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state; the regulation of any aspect of body chemistry, such as blood glucose, around a particular level.
• Ghrelin: Hormone secreted by an empty stomach; sends 'I'm hungry' signals to the brain.
• Leptin: Hormone secreted by fat cells; when abundant, causes the brain to increase metabolism and decrease hunger.
• Belongingness: The human emotional need to be an accepted member of a group.
  Arousal
• Arousal Theory: The theory that people are motivated to maintain an optimal level of alertness and physical and mental activation.
• Yerkes-Dodson Law: The principle that performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases.
• Sensation-Seeking Theory: The search for experiences and feelings that are varied, novel, complex, and intense.
  • Thrill Seeking: Pursuing activities that provide a rush of adrenaline.
  • Adventure Seeking: Engaging in unusual and exciting activities.
  • Disinhibition: Acting impulsively, without considering the consequences.
  • Boredom Susceptibility: Tendency to experience boredom and frustration when not engaged in stimulating activities.
  • Incentive Theory: A theory that states that behavior is motivated by a desire for reinforcement or incentives.

Motivation types

• Extrinsic Motivation: A desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment.
• Self-Determination Theory: A theory of motivation that is concerned with the beneficial effects of intrinsic motivation and the harmful effects of extrinsic motivation.
• Intrinsic Motivation: A desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake.
• Lewin's Motivational Conflicts Theory: A theory that describes situations in which conflicting motivations produce indecision and difficulty.
  • Approach-Approach Conflicts: Conflict that results from having to choose between two attractive alternatives.
  • Avoidance-Avoidance Conflicts: Conflict that results from having to choose between two distasteful alternatives.
  • Approach-Avoidance Conflicts: Conflict that results when a single action or event has both attractive and unattractive features.

Emotion

*Definition: A response of the whole organism, involving (1) physiological arousal, (2) expressive behaviors, and (3) conscious experience.

• Affect: A broad range of feelings that people experience.
• Facial-Feedback Hypothesis: The idea that facial expressions can influence emotions as well as reflect them.
• Display Rules: Culturally determined rules about which nonverbal behaviors are appropriate to display.
• Elicitors: Stimuli that trigger emotional responses.
• Broaden-and-Build Theory of Emotion: Theory proposing that happiness predisposes us to think more openly.
• Universal Emotions: Basic emotions that are expressed by all cultures around the world such as happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, and surprise.

Psychodynamic Theory

• Definition: A view that explains personality in terms of conscious and unconscious forces, such as unconscious desires and beliefs.
• Preconscious Mind: The level of consciousness that is not currently in focal awareness.
• Unconscious Mind: A reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. *Defense Mechanisms:
  • Denial: Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people refuse to believe or even to perceive painful realities.
  • Displacement: Defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person.
  • Projection: Defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by