PSY 101 - keyterms final

Archetypes: emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal
meaning.
Behaviorism: a theoretical orientation based on the premise that scientific
psychology should study only observable behavior.
Collective unconscious: storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from
people’s ancestral past.
Compensation: efforts to overcome imagined or real inferiorities by developing
one’s abilities.
Conscious: whatever one is aware of at a particular point in time.
Defense mechanisms: largely unconscious reactions that protect a person from
unpleasant emotions such as anxiety and guilt.
Displacement: diverting emotional feelings (usually anger) from their original
source to a substitute target. 

Ego: the decision-making component of personality that operates according to the
reality principle.
Factor analysis: when correlations among many variables are analyzed to identify
closely related clusters of variables.
Hierarchy of needs: systematic arrangement of needs, according to priority, in
which basic needs must be met before less basic needs are aroused; developed by
Abraham Maslow.
Hindsight bias: tendency to mold one’s interpretation of the past to fit how events
actually turned out.
Humanism: theoretical orientation that emphasizes the unique qualities of
humans, especially their freedom and potential for personal growth.
Id: the primitive, instinctive, component of personality that operates according to
the pleasure principle.
Identification: bolstering self-esteem by forming an imaginary or real alliance with
some person or group.
Incongruence: the degree of disparity between one’s self-concept and one’s
actual experience.
Model: person whose behavior is observed by another.
Narcissism: personality trait marked by an inflated sense of importance, a need for
attention and admiration, a sense of entitlement, and a tendency to exploit others.
Need for self-actualization: the need to fulfill one’s potential.
Observational learning: when an organism’s responding is influenced by the
observation of others, who are called models.
Personality: an individual’s unique set of consistent behavioral traits.
Personality trait: durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of
situations.
Pleasure principle: when the mind demands immediate gratification of its urges.
Preconscious: mental condition just beneath the surface of awareness from which
material can easily be retrieved.
Projection: attributing one’s thoughts, feelings, or motives to another.

Projective tests: instruments that ask participants to respond to vague,
ambiguous stimuli in ways that can reveal the subject’s needs, feelings, and
personality traits.
Rationalization: creating false but plausible excuses to justify unacceptable
behavior.
Reaction formation: behaving in a way that’s exactly the opposite of one’s true
feelings.
Reality principle: mental condition that seeks to delay gratification of the id’s
urges until appropriate outlets and situations can be found.
Regression: reversion to immature patterns of behavior.
Repression: keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious.
Self-concept: collection of beliefs about one’s own nature, unique qualities, and
typical behavior.
Self-efficacy: an individual’s belief about his or her ability to perform behaviors
that should lead to expected outcomes.
Self-report inventories: personality tests that ask individuals to answer a series
of questions about their characteristic behavior.
Superego: the moral component of personality that incorporates social standards
of right and wrong.
Unconscious: the mental entity that contains thoughts, memories, and desires that
are well below the surface of conscious awareness but nonetheless exert great
influence on behavior.

Attitude: positive or negative evaluation of objects or thoughts.
Attribution: inference that a person draws about the causes of events, others’
behavior, and his or her own behavior.
Bystander effect: when people are less likely to provide needed help when they
are in groups than when they are alone.
Cognitive dissonance: when attitudes or beliefs are related but inconsistent –
that is, when they contradict each other.
Collectivism: putting group goals ahead of individual goals and defining one’s
identity in terms of the groups one belongs to (such as family, tribe, work group,
social class, and caste).
Conformity: when people yield to real or imagined social pressure.
Discrimination: behaving differently, usually unfairly, toward members of a group.
Explicit attitudes: attitudes that one holds consciously and can readily describe.

External attribution: ascribing the causes of behavior to situational demands and
environmental constraints.
Fundamental attribution error: an observer’s bias in favor of internal
attributions in explaining another’s behavior.
Group: two or more individuals who interact and are interdependent.
Group cohesiveness: the strength of the liking relationships linking group
members to each other and to the group itself.
Group polarization: when group discussion strengthens a group’s dominant point
of view and produces a shift toward a more extreme decision in that direction.
Groupthink: when members of a cohesive group emphasize concurrence at the
expense of critical thinking in arriving at a decision.
Individualism: putting personal goals ahead of group goals and defining one’s
identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group memberships.
Informational influence: when people look to others for guidance about how to
behave in ambiguous situations.
Ingroup: group that one belongs to and identifies with.
Internal attribution: ascribing the causes of behavior to personal dispositions,
traits, abilities, and feelings.
Interpersonal attraction: positive feelings toward another person.
Normative influence: when people conform to social norms for fear of negative
social consequences.
Obedience: a form of compliance that occurs when people follow direct
commands, usually from someone in a position of authority.
Outgroup: group that one does not belong to or identify with.
Prejudice: negative attitude held toward members of a group.
Reciprocity: liking those who show that they like us.
Reciprocity norm: rule that we should pay back in kind what we receive from
others.
Self-serving bias: tendency to attribute one’s successes to personal factors and
one’s failures to situational factors.
Social loafing: reduction in effort by individuals when they work in groups as
compared to working by themselves.
Social psychology: the branch of psychology concerned with the way individuals’
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by others.
Stereotypes: widely held beliefs that people have certain characteristics because
of their membership in a particular group.

Agoraphobia: fear of going out to public places (literal Greek meaning is “fear of
the marketplace or open areas”).
Anhedonia: diminished ability to experience pleasure.

Anorexia nervosa: a disorder involving intense fear of gaining weight, disturbed
body image, refusal to maintain normal weight, and use of dangerous measures to
lose weight.
Antisocial personality disorder: psychological profile marked by impulsive,
callous, manipulative, aggressive, and irresponsible behavior.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD): a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized
by deficits in social interaction and communication and restricted, repetitive
interests and activities.
Availability heuristic: the estimated probability of an event based on the ease
with which relevant instances come to mind.
Binge-eating disorder: distress-induced eating binges that are not accompanied
by the purging, fasting, and excessive exercise seen in bulimia.
Bipolar disorder: psychological condition marked by the experience of both
depressed and manic periods.
Borderline personality disorder: psychological condition marked by instability in
social relationships, self-image, and emotional functioning.
Bulimia nervosa: habitual out-of-control overeating followed by unhealthy
compensatory efforts such as self-induced vomiting, fasting, abuse of laxatives and
diuretics, and excessive exercise.
Delusions: false beliefs that are maintained even though they are clearly out of
touch with reality.
Dissociation: splitting off of mental processes into two separate and simultaneous
streams of awareness.
Dissociative amnesia: sudden loss of memory for important personal information
that is too extensive to be the result of normal forgetting.

Dissociative disorders: class of disorders in which people lose contact with
portions of their consciousness or memory, resulting in disruptions in their sense of
identity. Two dissociative syndromes are dissociative amnesia and dissociative
identity disorder.
Dissociative identity disorder (DID): a disruption of identity marked by the
experience of two or more largely complete, and usually quite different,
personalities. The name for this disorder used to be multiple personality disorder.
Eating disorders: severe disturbances in eating behavior characterized by
preoccupation with weight concerns and unhealthy efforts to control weight.

Etiology: the apparent causation and developmental history of an illness.
Expressed emotion: the degree to which a relative of a schizophrenic patient
displays highly critical or emotionally overinvolved attitudes toward the patient.
Generalized anxiety disorder: conditioned marked by a chronic, high level of
anxiety that is not tied to any specific threat.
Hallucinations: sensory perceptions that occur in the absence of a real, external
stimulus or are gross distortions of perceptual input.
Major depressive disorder: when someone shows persistent feelings of sadness
and despair and a loss of interest in previous sources of pleasure.
Medical model: proposal that it is useful to think of abnormal behavior as a
disease.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): condition marked by persistent,
uncontrollable intrusions of unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and urges to engage in
senseless rituals (compulsions).
Panic disorder: condition characterized by recurrent attacks of overwhelming
anxiety that usually occur suddenly and unexpectedly.
Personality disorders: class of disorders marked by extreme, inflexible
personality traits that cause subjective distress or impaired social and occupational
functioning.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): enduring psychological disturbance
attributed to the experience of a major traumatic event.
Prognosis: forecast about the probable course of an illness.
Representativeness heuristic: the estimated probability that an event will be
similar to the typical prototype of that event.
Schizophrenia: disorder marked by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking
and speech, and deterioration of adaptive behavior.
Specific phobia: a persistent and irrational fear of an object or situation that
presents no realistic danger.