AP Psychology Exam Cram Sheet Notes

People in Psychology

  • Wundt: "Father of Psychology," known for introspection.
  • Wertheimer: Gestalt Psychology.
  • Titchner: Structuralism.
  • James: Functionalism.
  • Watson: Behaviorism; famous for the "Little Albert Study."
  • Freud: Psychoanalytic theory, including dream analysis, free association, structure of personality, stages of development, and defense mechanisms.
  • Milgram: Known for studies on obedience and associated ethical considerations.
  • Broca: Identified the left frontal lobe area associated with expressive language.
  • Wernicke: Identified the left frontal lobe area associated with receptive language.
  • Pavlov: Classical conditioning with dogs.
  • Thorndike: Instrumental learning with cats, known for the law of effect.
  • Skinner: Operant conditioning with rats and pigeons; a prominent Behaviorist.
  • Tolman: Latent learning and cognitive maps.
  • Bandura: Observational learning through Bobo Dolls, Social-Cognitive Theory.
  • Ebbinghaus: Studied forgetting, developed the Decay Model.
  • Chomsky: Proposed the Native Theory, suggesting an inherent existence of cognitive structures.
  • Whorf: Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis.
  • Washoe, Sara, and Koko: Apes involved in language studies.
  • Jung: Collective unconscious and archetypes; Psychoanalytic.
  • Horney: Basic childhood anxiety; Psychoanalytic.
  • Erickson: Life crisis and psychosocial development; Psychoanalytic.
  • Adler: Inferiority Complex; Psychoanalytic.
  • Piaget: Stages of Cognitive Development; Cognitive theorist.
  • Rogers: Client-centered therapy, unconditional positive regard, transactional Analysis.
  • Ellis: Rational Emotive Therapy; Cognitive Theorist.
  • Maslow: Hierarchy of Needs; Humanistic.
  • Binet: I.Q.
  • Eysenck: Biological model of Personality; Trait-type hierarchy.
  • Harlow: Monkey Studies on attachment.
  • Lorenz: "Survival of the Fittest Theory" and imprinting.
  • Phineas Gage: Railroad spike injury led to damage (limbic system), affecting emotions/motivational control center.
  • Beck: Cognitive therapy for treating depression.
  • Murray: Need to achieve; TAT (Thematic Apperception Test).
  • Allport: Trait Approach - cardinal, central, secondary traits.
  • Cattell: Crystallized and Fluid Intelligence.
  • Kelley: Personal Construct Theory.
  • Mishel: Social-learning theory.
  • Gilligan: Examined moral differences between boys and girls based on social rules and an ethic of caring and responsibility (turtle and Hare scenario).

Psychological Perspectives

  • General Behaviorism: Focuses on learning, environmental factors, and nurture.
  • Biological: Emphasizes physiology, genetics, and nature.
  • Cognitive: Focuses on mental processes.
  • Psychoanalytic: Deals with unconscious conflicts.
  • Humanistic: Centers on freewill, self-direction, and the basic goodness of people.
  • Gestalt: Emphasizes the organization process in behavior and focuses on the problem of perception.

Personality Perspectives

  • Psychoanalytic: People are driven by instincts, largely sexual.
  • Behaviorist: Behavior is personality; determined by history of reinforcement.
  • Humanistic: People are inherently good, but society ruins them; people strive to satisfy a hierarchy of motives toward self-actualization.
  • Cognitive: People are rational and want to predict and control their world; personal constructs help in this process.
  • Biological: Biological factors such as body type or genetics influence personality.

Perspectives on Abnormal Psychology

  • Psychoanalytic: Disorders emerge from initial psychological conflicts that are unconscious, often arising from childhood trauma.
  • Biomedical: Disorders are traceable to physical abnormalities, biochemistry, or structural defects.
  • Cognitive: Disorders result from unusual ways of thinking and inappropriate belief systems.
  • Behavioral: Disorders result from faulty contingencies of reinforcement contexts contribute to the development of psychological disorders.
  • Cultural: Variables such as social class, gender, and rural-urban contexts contribute to the development of psychological disorders.
  • Humanistic/Existential Model: Disorders result from failure to fulfill one's potential.

Therapy/Treatment Approaches

  • Psychoanalysis: Aims to alleviate unconscious conflicts.
    • Free association
    • Dream analysis
    • Transference
    • Symptom substitution
  • Behavior Therapy: Applies learning principles.
    • Systematic desensitization
      • In vivo desensitization
      • Counter-conditioning
    • Flooding - real event
    • Implosive therapy - imagine the event
    • Aversion therapy
  • Cognitive-Behavior Therapy: Addresses thoughts and behavior.
    • Cognitive therapy: Restructures a person's invalid perceptions of self, future, and the world or experience; used for depression.
    • Modeling and role play
    • Rational-emotive therapy: Forces a more realistic look in evaluating circumstances.
  • Humanistic: Focuses on getting the person to accept responsibility for their improvement.
    • Rogers' client-centered therapy
      • Unconditional positive regard
  • Biomedical Treatment: Includes medical procedures and medication to alleviate symptoms of psychological disorders.
    • Psychosurgery (ablation): Surgical destruction of involved brain tissue.
    • Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT): Used for major depression.
    • Psychopharmacological treatment
      • Neuroleptics (antipsychotics): e.g., Thorine, Haldol, Clozaril
      • Antidepressants: e.g., Tricyclic compounds, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, Prozac
      • Lithium Carbonate: Treats bipolar disorder
      • Anxiolytics (anti-anxiety): e.g., Valium or other benzodiazepines

The Experiment

  • Two variables are studied for cause and effect.
    • Independent variable: Manipulated by the experimenter.
    • Dependent variable: Assumed to be affected by the independent variable; measured.
    • Confounding variable: Other variables that may influence results.
    • Experiment group: Exposed to manipulation of the independent variable.
    • Control group: An unaffected comparison group.
    • Subject bias: A subject's behavior changes due to believed expectations of the experiment.
    • Researcher bias: Expectations influence what is recorded.
    • Double-blind technique: Controls for bias by keeping placement of subject secret.
    • Placebo: Inactive substance unknowingly given in place of a drug.

Theories

  • Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development
    • Sensorimotor: Schema assimilation and accommodation; Object permanence
    • Preoperational: Egocentrism, Animism, Artificialism
    • Concrete Operational: Reversibility, Conservation problems
    • Formal Operational: Personal fable
  • Kohlberg's Moral Judgment
    • Preconventional: Good and bad, right and wrong
    • Conventional: Social rules
    • Postconventional: Universal principles
  • Erickson's Psychosocial Development
    • Infancy: Trust vs. mistrust
    • Childhood: Autonomy vs. shame and doubt, initiative vs. guilt, Industry vs. territory
    • Adolescence: Identity vs. role confusion
    • Adulthood: Intimacy vs. isolation, Generality vs. stagnation, Ego integrity vs. despair
  • Kubler-Ross' Stages of Death:
    1. Denial
    2. Anger
    3. Bargaining
    4. Depression
    5. Acceptance
  • Weber's law: Just noticeable difference
  • Young-Helmholtz Color Theory (trichromatic theory): Color is determined by the relative activity in red, blue, or green sensitive cones.
  • Opponent-Process Color Theory: Color information is organized into 3 antagonistic pairs
  • Place Theory: Relates perceived pitch to region
  • Frequency Theory: Related pitch to the frequency of sound waves and frequency of neuron firing
  • Facial Feedback hypothesis: Sensations from the face provide cues to the brain that help us determine what emotion we are feeling (Ekman)
  • Statistical Significance: .05.05 chance accounts for results less than 5%5\% of the time
  • Template-Matching Theory: Stored copies
  • Prototype-Matching Theory: Recognition involves comparison
  • Feature-Analysis Theory: Patterns are represented and recognized by distinctive features
  • Restorative Theory: We sleep to replenish
  • Adaptive Nonresponding Theory: Sleep and inactivity have survived value
  • Activation-Synthesis hypothesis: Dreams are products of spontaneous neural activity
  • Thorndike's Law of effect: Reward and punishment encourages and discourages responding
  • Premack principle: States that any high-probability behavior can be used as a reward for any lower-probability behavior.
  • Continuity vs. Discontinuity: Theories of development, nature vs. nurture
  • Serial position phenomenon: Sequence influences recall
  • Primacy effect: Enhanced memory for items presented earlier
  • Recency effect: Enhanced memory for items presented last
  • Decay theory: Forgetting caused by learning similar materials proactive-initially retroactive-previously
  • Linguistic relativity hypothesis: A person's language determines and limits a person's experiences.
  • Hull's drive-reduction model: Motivation arises out of need
  • Cognitive consistency theory: Cognitive inconsistencies create tension and thus motivate the organism
  • Festinger's Cognitive dissonance theory: Reconcile cognitive discrepancies
  • Arousal Theories: We all have optimal levels of stimulation that we try to maintain
  • Yerkes-Dodson law: Arousal will increase performances up to a point, then further increases will impair performance; inverted U function.
  • Incentive theory: Behavior is pulled rather than pushed
  • James-Lange theory: Emotion is caused by bodily changes
  • Cannon-Bard's Thalamic theory: Emotional expression caused by simultaneous changing bodily event thoughts and feelings
  • Schachter's Cognitive-Physiological Theory: Bodily changes, current stimuli, events, and memories combine to determine behavior
  • Attribution theory: Explains how people make inferences about the causes of behavior; personal or situational; self-serving bias
  • Deindividuation: Loss of self-restraint that occurs out of anonymity
  • Contact theory: Proposes that equal-status contact between antagonistic groups should lower tension and bring harmony
  • Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS): Emergency reaction to stressful situations – Alarm reaction, resistance, and exhaustion
  • Lazaru's Cognitive-Psychological Model: Emphasizes the process of appraisal (primary and secondary) as the primary determinant of stress
  • Twin Studies: Allows a researcher to test influence of heredity v. environment
  • Personal Construct Theory: Unique system of reality
  • Deinstitutionalization: Occurred because of changes in political policy and development of new drug therapies
  • Ainsworth's Strange Situation: Looked at attachment in young children to their parents

Social Psychology Studies

  • Zimbardo's Prison Study: Effect of roles
  • Hawthorne Effect: People change their behavior when they think that they're being observed
  • Dailey and Latane's Bystander effect: Diffusion of responsibility (Kitty Genovese Case Study)
  • Asche Conformity Study: Lines of different lengths 75%75\% at lease once
  • Milgram's Obedience Study: Shocking the confederate 65%65\% delivered full range
  • Festinger – cognitive dissonance

Social Pressure

  1. Conformity: Occurs when individuals adopt the attitudes or behavior of others because of real or imagined pressure.
  2. Social Norms: Shared standards of behavior.
  3. Reciprocity norm: People tend to treat others as they have been treated.
  4. Compliance: To get along with a request made of you from a person who does not have authority over you, techniques include:
    • Foot in the door technique: If a small request is made first, a larger request will be easier to fill later.
    • Door in the face technique: Making a larger request first then making a smaller one, which will seem more reasonable.
    • Low balling: Getting agreement first, then adding specifics later.
  5. Obedience: Compliance with someone who has authority.

Altruism: Self concern for others

  1. Bystander intervention: Will individuals intervene in a harmful situation to another
  2. Bystander effect: People are less likely to help when several people witness an emergency due to diffusion of responsibility, thinking that someone else can be responsible.
  3. Social facilitation: Tendency to do better on well-learned tasks when another person is present.
  4. Social loafing: Reduction in effort by individuals when they work in groups compared to by themselves.
  5. Risky shift: Groups often arrive at riskier decisions than do individuals.
  6. Deindividuation: Loss of identity as a result of being part of a group.
  7. Groupthink: Members of a cohesive group emphasize agreement at the expense of critical thinking.