AP Psychology Semester 2 Review (2024-2025)
Developmental Psychology
Developmental Psychology: Study of physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the lifespan.
Research Methods in Development:
Longitudinal Study: Follows the same individuals over a period of time.
Cross-sectional Study: Compares individuals of different ages at one point in time.
Themes in Development:
Nature vs. Nurture: The debate over the relative contributions of genetic inheritance (nature) and environmental factors (nurture) to development.
Continuity vs. Stages: Whether development is a gradual, continuous process or a sequence of separate stages.
Stability vs. Change: The degree to which our personality traits remain the same throughout our life or change.
Prenatal & Newborn Development
Critical Period: A specific time during prenatal development when certain environmental influences can have an impact on the baby.
Teratogens: Agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm.
Maturation: Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.
Newborn Reflexes:
Rooting: A baby's tendency, when touched on the cheek, to turn toward the touch, open the mouth, and search for the nipple.
Sucking: Newborns’ tendency to suck on objects placed in their mouth.
Babinski: When the sole of the foot is stroked, the infant's toes fan out and the foot twists in.
Moro: Startle reflex in response to a sudden loss of support, involving spreading out the arms, unspreading the arms, and crying.
Newborn Senses: Babies are born with functional senses, but they are not fully developed.
Physical Development
Synaptic Pruning: The process of synapse elimination that occurs between early childhood and the onset of puberty in many mammals.
Development of the Prefrontal Cortex in Adolescence: The prefrontal cortex continues to develop during adolescence, which allows for improvements in reasoning, judgment, and impulse control.
Puberty: The period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing.
Spermarche: First ejaculation.
Menarche: First menstrual period.
Primary Sex Characteristics: The body structures (ovaries, testes, and external genitalia) that make sexual reproduction possible.
Secondary Sex Characteristics: Nonreproductive sexual traits, such as female breasts and hips, male voice quality, and body hair.
Social & Emotional Development
Separation Anxiety: Distress displayed by infants when separated from their primary caregivers.
Temperament: A person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity.
Imprinting: The process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life.
Ecological Systems Theory: Urie Bronfenbrenner's theory that sees the person as developing within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment.
Microsystem: Immediate environment (family, school, peers).
Mesosystem: Interactions between different parts of the microsystem.
Exosystem: External environmental settings that indirectly affect development.
Macrosystem: Broader cultural values, laws, and governmental resources.
Chronosystem: The dimension of time in relation to a person’s development.
The Need for Contact Comfort: Harry Harlow's research demonstrated the importance of tactile and physical comfort in attachment.
Attachment: An emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation.
Patterns of Attachment:
Secure Attachment: Infants use their caregiver as a secure base from which to explore their environment.
Anxious-Ambivalent Attachment: Infants are clingy and dependent, but reject the attachment figure when engaged in interaction.
Anxious-Avoidant Attachment: Infants avoid connection with the caregiver.
Anxious-Disorganized Attachment: Characterized by a lack of consistent strategy in response to separation or reunion.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs): Traumatic events occurring before the age of 18.
Erikson’s Psychosocial Development
Trust vs. Mistrust: (Infancy) If needs are dependably met, infants develop a sense of basic trust.
Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt: (Toddlerhood) Toddlers learn to exercise their will and do things for themselves, or they doubt their abilities.
Initiative vs. Guilt: (Preschool) Preschoolers learn to initiate tasks and carry out plans, or they feel guilty about their efforts to be independent.
Industry vs. Inferiority: (Elementary School) Children learn the pleasure of applying themselves to tasks, or they feel inferior.
Identity vs. Role Confusion: (Adolescence) Teenagers work at refining a sense of self by testing roles and then integrating them to form a single identity, or they become confused about who they are.
Intimacy vs. Isolation: (Young Adulthood) Young adults struggle to form close relationships and to gain the capacity for intimate love, or they feel socially isolated.
Generativity vs. Stagnation: (Middle Adulthood) People discover a sense of contributing to the world, usually through family and work, or they may feel a lack of purpose.
Integrity vs. Despair: (Late Adulthood) When reflecting on his or her life, the older adult may feel a sense of satisfaction or failure.
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Schemas: A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.
Assimilation: Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.
Accommodation: Adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.
Sensorimotor Stage: (From birth to about 2 years of age) Infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities.
Object Permanence: The awareness that things continue to exist even when not seen.
Preoperational Stage: (From about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age) A child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.
Animism: The belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities.
Egocentrism: The preoperational child's difficulty taking another's point of view.
Theory of Mind: People's ideas about their own and others' mental states—about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict.
Conservation: The principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects.
Centration: The tendency to focus on just one aspect of a situation.
Irreversibility: The inability to mentally reverse a sequence of events.
Concrete Operational Stage: (From about 7 to 11 years of age) Children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.
Formal Operational Stage: (Beginning about age 12) People begin to think logically about abstract concepts.
Vygotsky’s Social Theory of Cognitive Development
Zone of Proximal Development: The difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can achieve with guidance and encouragement from a skilled partner.
Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development
Preconventional Stage: Self-interest; obey rules to avoid punishment or gain concrete rewards.
Conventional Stage: Uphold laws and rules to gain social approval or maintain social order.
Postconventional Stage: Actions reflect belief in basic rights and self-defined ethical principles.
Parenting Styles
Authoritarian: Parents impose rules and expect obedience.
Permissive: Parents submit to their children's desires. They make few demands and use little punishment.
Authoritative: Parents are both demanding and responsive. They set rules and explain reasons. They encourage open discussion and allow exceptions.
Social Skills & Gender Differences
Sex vs. Gender: Sex is biological; gender is socially constructed.
Gender Schemas/Roles/Stereotypes: Sets of ideas about what is appropriate behavior for males and females.
Socialization: The process of learning the rules and behaviors of a culture.
Adolescent Identity Development
Marcia’s Identity Statuses:
Identity Achievement: Having explored and committed to an identity.
Identity Foreclosure: Commitment without exploration.
Identity Moratorium: Exploration without commitment.
Identity Diffusion: Lack of both exploration and commitment.
Cognitive Development in Adulthood
Crystallized Intelligence: Accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.
Fluid Intelligence: Ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood.
Dementia: A progressive decline in cognitive function.
Peer Relationships
Parallel Play (in Childhood): Children play adjacent to each other, but do not try to influence one another's behavior.
Imaginary Audience (in Adolescence): The belief that one is the center of attention.
Personal Fable (in Adolescence): The belief that one’s experiences are unique and exceptional.
Social Clock (in Adulthood): The culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement.
Emerging Adulthood: A period from about age 18 to the mid-twenties, when many in Western cultures are no longer adolescents but have not yet achieved full independence as adults.
Personality
Trait Theories: Describe personality using broad, enduring traits.
Five Factor Model (Big 5):
Openness: Imaginative, curious, and open to new experiences.
Conscientiousness: Organized, careful, and disciplined.
Extraversion: Sociable, outgoing, and affectionate.
Agreeableness: Trusting, helpful, and compassionate.
Neuroticism: Anxious, insecure, and self-pitying.
Psychodynamic Theories: Explain personality in terms of unconscious psychological processes.
Freud’s Structure of the Mind:
Id: Unconscious psychic energy that strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives, operating on the pleasure principle.
Pleasure Principle: Demanding immediate gratification.
Ego: Conscious division that mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality, operating on the reality principle.
Reality Principle: Satisfying the id's desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.
Superego: The part of personality that represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations.
Freud’s Defense Mechanisms:
Denial: Refusing to accept reality.
Displacement: Shifting aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person.
Projection: Attributing one's own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or motives to another.
Rationalization: Offering self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one's actions.
Reaction Formation: Switching unacceptable impulses into their opposites.
Regression: Retreating to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated.
Repression: Banishing provoking thoughts and feelings from consciousness.
Sublimation: Transferring unacceptable impulses into socially valued motives.
Social-Cognitive Theories: Emphasize the interaction of traits and social context.
Reciprocal Determinism: The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment.
Self-Concept: All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, “Who am I?”
Self-Esteem: One's feelings of high or low self-worth.
Self-Efficacy: One's sense of competence and effectiveness.
Humanistic (Phenomenological) Theories: Focus on inner capacities for growth and self-fulfillment.
Unconditional Positive Regard: Caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude.
Self-Actualizing Tendencies: The motivation to fulfill one's potential.
Personality Assessments:
Objective Tests: Standardized questionnaires requiring written responses.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): Most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests.
Projective Tests: Provide ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics.
Rorschach Inkblot: A set of 10 inkblots designed to identify people’s feelings.
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.
Theories of Motivation
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: A tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state.
Incentive Theory: A theory stating that behavior is motivated by the pull of incentives.
Instinct Theory: Instincts drive our motivations.
Arousal Theory: People are driven to achieve an optimum state of arousal.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness and love needs, esteem needs, self-actualization needs.
Self-Actualization: The motivation to fulfill one's potential.
Yerkes-Dodson: The principle that performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases.
Self-Determination Theory: People are motivated to satisfy needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy.
Intrinsic Motivation: A desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake.
Extrinsic Motivation: A desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment.
Sensation-Seeking Theory: People are motivated to seek out novel and intense experiences.
Experience Seeking: The desire for new sensations and experiences.
Thrill/Adventure Seeking: The desire to engage in risky activities.
Disinhibition: The tendency to engage in impulsive and reckless behavior.
Boredom Susceptibility: An aversion to repetitive or predictable experiences.
Hunger Hormones
Leptin: Signals the brain to decrease hunger.
Ghrelin: Signals the brain to increase hunger.
Emotion
Theories of Emotion:
James-Lange: Our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli.
Cannon-Bard: An emotion-triggering stimulus and the body's arousal take place simultaneously.
Schachter-Singer: To experience emotion one must (1) be physically aroused and (2) cognitively label the arousal.
Broaden and Build: Positive emotions broaden our awareness and build our resources.
Universal Emotions: Emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust are expressed and recognized across cultures.
Display Rules: Culturally determined rules about when and how emotions should be expressed.
Stress
Health Psychology: A subfield of psychology that provides psychology's contribution to behavioral medicine.
Eustress vs. Distress: Eustress is positive stress; distress is negative stress.
Types of Stressors:
Acute Stressors: Short-term events of circumstances.
Chronic Stressors: Long-term, persistent difficulties.
Catastrophes: Sudden, large-scale events.
Conflict: A struggle between opposing forces.
Approach-Approach Conflict: Conflict that results from having to choose between two attractive alternatives
Avoidance-Avoidance Conflict: Conflict that results from having to choose between two distasteful alternatives
Approach-Avoidance Conflict: Conflict that results from having to choose an alternative that has both positive and negative aspects
Fight-or-Flight Response: An emotional and physiological reaction to an emergency that increases readiness for action.
General Adaptation Syndrome: Selye's concept of the body's adaptive response to stress in three phases—alarm, resistance, exhaustion.
Alarm Reaction: The first stage of the GAS, characterized by immediate activation of the nervous system.
Resistance: The body attempts to cope with the stressor.
Exhaustion: Body's resources are depleted.
Appraisal: The way an individual evaluates and interprets a situation.
Type A vs. Type B Personality: Type A personalities are competitive, hard-driving, and impatient; Type B personalities are easygoing and relaxed.
Locus of Control: A belief about the amount of control one has over situations in one's life.
Internal Locus of Control: The belief that one controls their own destiny.
External Locus of Control: The belief that chance or outside forces beyond your control determine your fate.
Fixed vs. Growth Mindset: Fixed mindset is the belief that qualities are carved in stone and growth mindset is the belief that qualities can change.
Problem Focused Coping: Attempting to alleviate stress directly by changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor.
Emotion Focused Coping: Attempting to alleviate stress by avoiding or ignoring a stressor and attending to emotional needs related to one's stress reaction.
Positive Psychology
Positive Psychology: The scientific study of human flourishing, with the goals of discovering and promoting strengths and virtues that help individuals and communities to thrive.
Subjective Well-Being: Self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life.
Resilience: The personal strength that helps most people cope with stress and recover from adversity and even trauma.
Gratitude: A feeling of thankfulness and appreciation.
6 Core Strengths/Virtues:
Wisdom: Cognitive strengths involving the acquisition and use of knowledge.
Courage: Emotional strengths that involve the exercise of will to accomplish goals in the face of opposition.
Humanity: Interpersonal strengths that involve tending and befriending others.
Justice: Civic strengths that underlie healthy community life.
Temperance: Strengths that protect us from excess.
Transcendence: Strengths that forge connections to the larger universe and provide meaning.
Post-Traumatic Growth: Positive psychological changes as a result of struggling with extremely challenging circumstances and life crises.
Disorders (Clinical Psychology)
General Terminology:
Medical Model: The concept that diseases have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and, in most cases, cured, often through treatment in a hospital.
Diagnosis: Identification of the nature of an illness or other problem by examination of the symptoms
Etiology: The cause, set of causes, or manner of causation of a disease or condition.
Diathesis-Stress Model: A diagnostic model that proposes that a disorder may develop when an underlying vulnerability is coupled with a precipitating event
Eclecticism: An approach to treatment that uses techniques from various forms of therapy
Criteria for Abnormality:
Dysfunction: Impairment in daily functioning.
Distress: Causing significant emotional pain or suffering.
Deviation: Statistically rare behaviors.
DSM-5: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Etiology & Treatment Perspectives
Etiology & Treatment Perspectives:
Behavioral: Emphasizes the role of learning in the development of disorders, focusing on observable behaviors.
Cognitive: Focuses on maladaptive thought patterns and beliefs that contribute to disorders.
Humanistic: Stresses the importance of self-awareness and self-acceptance in overcoming psychological problems.
Psychoanalytic/psychodynamic: Explores unconscious conflicts and past experiences to understand current behavior.
Sociocultural: Examines the influence of social and cultural factors on mental health.
Biological/Neuroscience: Focuses on genetic, neurological, and biochemical factors that may contribute to disorders.
Evolutionary: Considers how evolutionary principles may contribute to the development and persistence of certain disorders.
Biopsychosocial: Integrates biological, psychological, and social factors in understanding and treating disorders.
Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety Disorders:
Specific Phobia/Phobic Disorder: Fear of specific objects or situations.
Social Anxiety Disorder (Social Phobia): Fear of social situations.
Taijin Kyofusho: A form of social anxiety common in Japan involving fear of offending others.
Panic Disorder: Recurrent unexpected panic attacks.
Ataque de Nervios: A cultural-bound syndrome common in Latin America involving symptoms of intense emotional upset.
Agoraphobia: Fear of open spaces or situations where escape might be difficult.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Persistent and excessive worry.
Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders
Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders:
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts (obsessions) and/or actions (compulsions).
Obsession: Recurrent and persistent thoughts, urges, or images that are experienced as intrusive and unwanted.
Compulsion: Repetitive behaviors or mental acts that an individual feels driven to perform in response to an obsession.
Hoarding: Persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value.
Trauma and Stressor Related Disorders
Trauma and Stressor Related Disorders:
PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder): Characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, social withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, and/or insomnia that lingers for four weeks or more after a traumatic experience.
Personality Disorders
Personality Disorders Cluster A: Characterized by odd or eccentric thinking or behavior.
Paranoid Personality Disorder: A pattern of distrust and suspiciousness such that others' motives are interpreted as malevolent.
Schizoid Personality Disorder: A pattern of detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of emotional expression.
Schizotypal Personality Disorder: A pattern of acute discomfort in close relationships, cognitive or perceptual distortions, and eccentricities of behavior.
Personality Disorders Cluster B: Characterized by dramatic, emotional, or erratic behavior.
Antisocial Personality Disorder: A pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others.
Borderline Personality Disorder: A pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affect, and marked impulsivity.
Histrionic Personality Disorder: A pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder: A pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy.
Personality Disorders Cluster C: Characterized by anxious or fearful thinking or behavior.
Avoidant Personality Disorder: A pattern of social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, and hypersensitivity to negative evaluation.
Dependent Personality Disorder: A pattern of submissive and clinging behavior related to an excessive need to be taken care of.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and control.
Dissociative Disorders
Dissociative Disorders:
Dissociative Amnesia: Inability to recall important personal information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature, that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness.
Dissociative Fugue: Apparently purposeful travel or bewildered wandering that is associated with amnesia for identity or other important autobiographical information.
Dissociative Identity Disorder: Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states.
Somatic Symptom & Related Disorders
Somatic Symptom & Related Disorders:
Somatic Symptom Disorder: Condition marked by excessive anxiety about physical symptoms with a medical or purely psychological origin.
Conversion Disorder: A disorder in which a person experiences very specific genuine physical symptoms for which no physiological basis can be found
Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders
Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders:
Schizophrenia: A group of severe disorders characterized by disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions and actions.
Positive Symptoms: Include hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized speech.
Negative Symptoms: Include flat affect, social withdrawal, and lack of motivation.
Hallucinations: False sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus.
Delusions: False beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders.
Delusions of Persecution: The belief that people are out to get you.
Delusions of Grandeur: Belief that one is especially powerful or important.
Word Salad: Incoherent mixture of words, phrases, and sentences.
Catatonia: A state of immobility and unresponsiveness lasting for long periods of time.
Depressive Disorders
Depressive Disorders:
Major Depressive Disorder: A mood disorder in which a person experiences, in the absence of drugs or a medical condition, two or more weeks of significantly depressed moods, feelings of worthlessness, and diminished interest or pleasure in most activities.
Persistent Depressive Disorder: Experiencing a mildly depressed mood more often than not for at least two years.
Bipolar and Related Disorders
Bipolar and Related Disorders:
Mania: A mood disorder marked by a hyperactive, wildly optimistic state.
Bipolar Disorder: A mood disorder in which the person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state.
Bipolar I: Periods of severe mood episodes from mania to depression.
Bipolar II: A milder form of mood elevation, involving milder episodes of hypomania alternating with periods of severe depression.
Feeding & Eating Disorders
Feeding & Eating Disorders:
Anorexia Nervosa: An eating disorder in which a person maintains a starvation diet despite being significantly underweight.
Bulimia Nervosa: An eating disorder in which a person alternates binge eating with purging or fasting.
Neurodevelopmental Disorders
Neurodevelopmental Disorders:
Autism Spectrum Disorder: A disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by significant deficiencies in communication and social interaction, and by rigidly fixated interests and repetitive behaviors.
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): A psychological disorder marked by extreme inattention and/or hyperactivity and impulsivity.
Treatment (Clinical Psychology)
General:
Deinstitutionalization: Moving people with psychological or developmental disabilities from highly structured institutions to home- or community-based settings
Psychotherapy: Treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth
Biomedical Therapy: Prescribed medications or procedures that act directly on the person's physiology
Eclectic Approach: Uses techniques from various forms of therapy
Psychoanalysis
Main focus of psychoanalysis as a treatment for mental illness: To bring repressed feelings into conscious awareness.
Techniques:
Free Association: A method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.
Dream Analysis: Interpreting symbolic meaning of dreams.
Hypnosis: Inducing a state of relaxation.
Disorders typically treated using psychoanalysis: Anxiety, depression, and trauma-related disorders.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Main focus of cognitive-behavioral therapy as a treatment for mental illness: To change maladaptive thoughts and behaviors.
Cognitive Triad: Thoughts about the self, the world, and the future.
Cognitive Restructuring: Changing negative thought patterns.
Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET): A confrontational cognitive therapy, developed by Albert Ellis, that vigorously challenges people's illogical, self-defeating attitudes and assumptions.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT): A form of therapy used to treat borderline personality disorder.
Disorders typically treated using cognitive-behavioral therapy: Anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and personality disorders.
Behavioral Therapy
Main focus of behavioral therapy as a treatment for mental illness: To change maladaptive behaviors through conditioning.
Techniques:
Aversion Therapy: Pairing an unpleasant stimulus with an unwanted behavior.
Exposure Therapy: Exposing people to what they normally avoid.
Systematic Desensitization: A type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli; commonly used to treat phobias.
Flooding/Immersion: Exposing the patient to a great amount of an undesirable stimulus in the attempt to extinguish the unwanted response
Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA): Uses learning principles to change behavior.
Token Economy: An operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token of some sort for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange the tokens for various privileges or treats
Biofeedback: A system for electronically recording, amplifying, and feeding back information regarding a subtle physiological state, such as blood pressure or muscle tension
Disorders typically treated using behavioral therapy: Phobias, OCD, and substance use disorders.
Humanistic/Client-Centered Therapy
Main focus of humanistic therapy as a treatment for mental illness: To facilitate self-awareness and self-acceptance.
Techniques:
Active Listening: Empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies.
Unconditional Positive Regard: A caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.
Disorders typically treated using humanistic therapy: Anxiety, depression, and relationship issues.
Biomedical Therapies
Biomedical Therapies:
Psychosurgery: Surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior
Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): A biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS): A repetitive pulse, applied to the head of a person, designed to stimulate neurons in the brain
Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS): A procedure that electrically stimulates specific regions of the brain
Antipsychotics (neuroleptics): Medications used to treat schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.
Tardive Dyskinesia: A side effect of antipsychotic medications characterized by uncontrollable facial and body movements.
Antidepressants: Medications used to treat depression.
Anxiolytics: Drugs that alleviate the symptoms of anxiety
Lithium/Mood Stabilizers: Medications used to treat bipolar disorder.
Disorders typically treated using each type of biomedical therapy: Schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorders.
Group Therapy
Main focus of group therapy as a treatment for mental illness: To provide support and shared experiences.
Benefits of group therapy: Reduces isolation, provides support, and allows for shared learning.
Disorders typically treated using cognitive therapy: Anxiety, depression, and relationship issues.
Social Psychology
Social Psychology: The scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another.
Perceiving Others, Attribution & Attributional Biases
Perceiving Others, Attribution & Attributional Biases:
Halo Effect: The tendency to generalize a favorable impression to unrelated aspects of an individual's personality.
Illusory Correlation: The perception of a relationship where none exists.
In-Group Bias: The tendency to favor our own group.
Out-Group Bias: The tendency to view other groups negatively.
Outgroup Homogeneity Bias: The tendency to view members of outgroups as more similar to each other than we see members of our own group.
Attribution: The process of explaining one's own behavior and the behavior of others.
External Attribution: Explaining behavior in terms of situational factors.
Internal Attribution: Explaining behavior in terms of personal characteristics.
Actor-Observer Bias: The tendency to attribute one's own behavior to external causes and the behavior of others to 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
Self-Serving Bias: A readiness to perceive oneself favorably
Defensive Attribution/Just-World Hypothesis: The belief that people get what they deserve.
Interpersonal Relationships & Attraction
Interpersonal Relationships & Attraction:
Matching Hypothesis: The tendency to choose partners who are similar to ourselves in attractiveness and other qualities.
Similarity & Proximity: Two key factors that influence attraction.
Triangular Theory of Love: Sternberg's theory that love has three components: intimacy, passion, and commitment.
3 components:
Commitment: The decision to remain together.
Passion: Physical and emotional attraction.
Intimacy: Feelings of closeness and connection.
Types of love:
Companionate Love: Intimacy and commitment.
Consummate Love: Intimacy, passion, and commitment.
Romantic Love: Intimacy and passion.
Comparing Yourself to Others
Comparing Yourself to Others:
Reference Groups: A group that people use as a point of reference in making evaluations about themselves.
Relative Deprivation: The perception that one is worse off relative to those with whom one compares oneself
Downward Social Comparison: Comparing ourselves to