introduction to applied psychology keywords

Ethnocentrism

A stance in which an individual believes that their own ethnic group (or aspects of it e.g. its culture) is superior to other groups.

Stress

"A combination of cognitive, behavioural and biological changes arising from a 'stressor' that is a stimulus or event that is appraised, judged, or perceived as being aversive" (Anisman, 2015:4).

Probiotics

'Friendly bacteria' that keeps your gut healthy.

Hook-Up

- "A sexual encounter, usually only lasting one-night, between two people who are strangers or brief acquaintances. Some psychical interaction is typical but may or may not include sexual intercourse." (McManus and Hayes, 2000: 79). - "A hookup is a sexual encounter between people who are not dating or in a relationship and where a more traditional relationship is NOT an explicit condition of the encounter." (Garcia and Reiber, 2008: 196). - "An event where you were physically intimate (any of the following: kissing, touching, oral sex, vaginal sex, anal sex) with someone whom you were not dating or in a romantic relationship with at the time and in which you understood there was no mutual expectation of a romantic commitment." (Lewis, Granato, Blayney, Lostutter and Kilmer, 2011: 4). - "When a girl and a guy get together for a physical encounter and don't necessarily expect anything further." (Glenn and Marquardt, 2001: 82).

Friends with Benefits

- "Two friends who have a sexual relationship without being emotionally involved. Typically two good friends who have casual sex without a monogamous relationship or any kind of commitment." (Urban Dictionary, 2003). - "A safe relationship, that mimics a real partnership but is void or greatly lacking jealousy and such other emotions that come with a serious relationship." (Urban Dictionary, 2005).

Norm

A social rule of a particular group that group members are generally expected to follow.

Type

This is a cluster of personality characteristics that consistently occur together.

Sensitive Period

A specific and usually short period of time in early development during which learning of a particular type is especially active.

Perception

A 2-part process integrating physiological sensory input and processing within the brain by which information in the environment is 'translated' into a recognition of objects, sound etc.

Lexical Approach

A bottom-up approach (i.e. it works with how the general population uses language about personality, rather than how experts define personality). This approach assumes that the optimal way to understand and measure personality is through the analysis of language that the general population uses to portray people' personalities. With this assumption, there is also the hypothesis that personality ca best be characterised through single words such as as aggressive, sociable, punctual, irritating (John, Angleitner and Ostendorf, 1988).

Disorder

A disorder is defined as a factor that prevents, prohibits or restricts the natural and regular functioning (of body or mind) of an individual. The DSM IV classification system has classified over 200 mental health disorders, such as schizophrenia and depression, that are considered to reduce normal psychological and physical functioning.

Emotion

A display of feelings that are evoked when important things happen to us.

Place Attachment

A feeling of connection to a specific locale e.g. your home.

Soliphobia

A feeling of deep caring and responsibility for a particular bioregion and its inhabitants that may serve as a psychological foundation for sustainable behaviour (Albrecht, 2012).

Flashbulb Memory

A flashbulb memory is an unusually vivid, highly detailed and often long-lasting memory of any situation or experience in which important or dramatic events have occurred. Flasbulb memories can often be incorrect. An example of a flashbulb memory is that many people can recollect where they were and/or what they were doing at the time Neil Armstrong walked on the moon or the New York twin towers were destroyed.

Duchenne Smile

A genuine smile that involves contraction of the zygomatic muscles.

Ingroup

A group of which a person believes they are a member.

Solistalgia

A melancholic feeling that arises when one's beloved landscape is threatened by enviornmental hazards (Albrecht, 2005; Albrecht et al., 2007).

Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)

A network of nerve fibres connecting the brain and spinal cord to the body. It regulates the major involuntary functions, such as heart rate, digestion and respiration and can prepare the body for action or rest.

Projective Test

A personality test where the individual is presented with an ambiguous stimulus (such as an inkblot) and is asked to describe its contents, with the assumption being that they will project their own thoughts, feelings and concerns on to the ambiguous image.

Ecological Unconscious

A sense of interconnectedness between humans and other living things with roots in our ancestral past.

Minimal Group Studies

A series of experiments exploring the minimal conditions necessary for intergroup discrimination to occur.

Neural Networks

A set of interconnected neurons producing complex patterns of inhibitory and excitation activation.

Working Memory

A short-term store for visual and verbal information which allows that information to be actively manipulated and transformed.

Factor Analysis

A statistical technique used to determine the underlying structure of the personality traits making up each model. As a method, it helps to reduce complex numerical data into a smaller amount of psychological concepts, known as factors.

Meta-Stereotype

A stereotype of the ingroup believed to be held by a specific outgroup.

Realistic Conflict Theory

A theory explaining how competition and hostility between group arises as a result of conflicting goals and limited access to resources.

Altruism

Altruism is often referred to in social psychology and social biology as a form of behaviour exhibited by an individual that benefits another individual or set of individuals, either in terms of direct advantages or by increasing their ability and chances to reproduce and survive. Altruistic behaviour is always undertaken at some form of cost or risk to the benefactor. Altruistic behaviour in animals appear to conflict with Darwin's (1859) theory of natural selection, which portrays animal behaviour as being motivated to increase the chances of reproduction and survival. According to Krebs and Davies (1993), there are 4 main reasons that may offer an explanation as to why animals engage in altrustic behaviours: - Kin Selection: If an individual offers help to its close relatives it can actually increase its genetic representation within future generations. - Reciprocity: In offering help to another individual, the 'giver' may expect help in return - Mutualism: 2 individuals may both engage in altruistic behaviour and both gain from the alliance. - Manipulation: An individual may be misled or falsely guided in some way to engage in an altruistic act. Bateson's (1987) empathy-altruism hypothesis suggests that there are links between empathy, altruistic and unselfish behaviour. Bateson suggests that we exhibit 2 emotional reactions when we observe someone in distress. - Empathetic Concern: We sympathise with the individual's distress and are motivated to reduce it. - Personal Distress: We are concerned with our own discomfort and are motivated to reduce it.

Behaviourism

An approach to the study of psychology which focuses on observable events and the behaviours associated with them, without referring to the mind and emotions.

Simulation

An attempt to express an emotion we don't feel.

Chronic Medical Condition

An illness or disease which lasts for a long period of time or a lifetime (e.g. osteoporosis, chronic asthma, diabetes or cancer).

Acute Medical Condition

An illness, disease or affliction with a sudden onset and a rapid course (e.g. a cold, injury, conjunctivitis or heart attack). Acute conditions can sometimes become chronic.

Implicit Association Test

An indirect measure of psychological constructs which are typically sensitive or subject to social desirability.

Imprinting

An instinctive process of learning the features of other members of the same species that occurs shortly after hatching or birth, usually focused on the mother.

Abnormal Psychology

An interchangeable term with psychopathology which covers the scientific study of abnormal psychology.

Trait

An internal disposition that is durable and casual. Traits describe and explain differences in people's forms of thinking, feeling or behaving in the world that are relatively stable and predictable over a variety of different situations.

Motivation

An internal force pushing behaviour in certain directions.

Stereotype

An oversimplified, generalised impression of a group and its members.

Prejudice

An unreasonable or unfair dislike of something or, more usually, of someone, typically because they belong to a specific race, religion or group.

Applied Psychology

Applied psychology is a general term used to define the various strands of psychology that link and use research findings to inform and enhance applied psychological practice. It is a term that can be applied to branches such as clinical, counselling, educational, forensic, health and occupational psychology. In fields such as clinical and counselling psychology, research into mental disorders and health is used and applied within healthcare and social care settings with the aim of helping individuals to address, overcome and cope with their difficulties. In educational psychology, research attempts to address issues such as 'how' children learn best, why problems in learning occur, and the best ways to address adjustment and behavioural difficulties in school. Applying such research findings within education enables both teachers and parents to understand the best ways of aiding children in their learning. In forensic psychology, problems associated with criminal behaviour, investigation and legal processes are addressed to allow different approaches and methods of addressing crime to be applied. In health psychology, research findings and psychological knowledge are applied to the development of better methods of preventing and treating illnesses and providing health care. In occupational psychology, research examines ways of enhancing the best performance and conditions for employees at work and is applied to address the problems that can arise in the workplace in such organisations.

Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA)

Applying the principles of behaviourism and operant conditioning to the assessment of treatment of those exhibiting behavioural difficulties.

Biophilic Architecture

Architects taking inspiration from theories and research on biophilia.

Modulation

Attempting to exaggerate or minimise the expression of emotion.

Masking

Attempting to hide an emotion.

Biophobia

Avoidance of contact with animals, plants, or organic materials; strong aversion to aspects of the natural world.

Gut-brain Axis

Bidirectional communication between the central and the enteric nervous system, linking emotional and cognitive centers of the brain with peripheral intestinal functions (Carabotti et al., 2015).

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

CBT is a method used to treat particular psychological disorders that integrates cognitive and behavioural therapies: - Behaviour Therapy helps to reduce the connections between troublesome situations and the individual's habitual, learnt responses to them where these are responses such as fear or depression, or self-defeating and self-damaging behaviour(s). It also teaches individuals how to calm their minds and bodies so that they can think more clearly, feel better and make better decisions. - Cognitive Therapy helps individuals to understand how certain ways of thinking are causing particular symptoms, by creating a distorted picture of what is happening in their lives, making them feel anxious, angry or depressed for no good reason or provoking them to engage in ill-chosen actions. CBT therefore attempts to: - Alter individuals' way of thinking, changing their thoughts, beliefs, ideas, attitudes, assumptions, mental imagery and promoting more positive ways of directing their attention for the better. - Help people to greet the challenges and opportunities in their lives with a clear and calm mind, helping them to take actions that are likely to have desirable results. CBT is often used to treat a multitude of disorders such as depression, social anxiety, mood swings, insomnia, eating disorders, panic attacks, shyness and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

Self-Regulated Learning

Comprises the deliberate application of known strategies to tasks, planning their use in advance, monitoring them in action, evaluating their output and modifying subsequent behaviour on the basis of performance.

Personality Coefficient

Contrary to the belief that an individual's personality is consistent over time, Mischel (1968) suggested that humans are consistently inconsistent/ By examining a range of studies into how personality traits are related to units of behaviour, Mischel found an average correlation coefficient of 0.30 (which represents a weak correlation at best) with regard to correlations between 2 single behaviours in 2 separate situations.

Self-efficacy

The belief in one's own ability to plan and carry out a set of intended actions in order to accomplish tasks and reach one's goals.

Declarative Memory

Declarative memory is the memory storage system that contains declarative knowledge. It contains all knowledge that is concerned with an individual's conscious awareness and understanding of factual statements about the social world. It is concerned with facts about 'knowing that', rather than 'knowing how'. Certain conditions must be met to obtain declarative memory: the information must be true, and the person must believe that the information is true, and the person must be in a position to know or confirm it is true. Examples of declarative memories are knowing the dates that JFK, Marilyn Munroe or Princess Diana died. Such knowledge is understood to be true as the person has the opportunity to confirm the facts through reference material such as newspapers and books.

Developmental Psychology

Developmental psychology is a branch of psychology that is concerned with the study of mental changes, both cognitive and emotional, and development that take place over an individual's lifespan. Developmental psychology is strongly associated with theorists such as Piaget and Chomsky, whose focus has been on child development and the term child psychology. Terms such as 'gerontology' and 'lifespan psychology' have been created to refer to study of later development.

Top-Down Processing

Direction of information processing by pre-existing neural and cognitive structures aimed at confirming the presence of expected features.

Echoic Memory

Echoic memory is a type of short-term auditory memory which is concerned with the storage of all aspects of heard sound.

Polymorphus Sexuality

Enjoying and taking part in sexual relations with many people.

Restorative Environments

Environments that trigger a psychological and/or physiological recovery process (Joye and van den Berg, 2012).

Episodic Memory

Episodic memory is a form of long-term memory that preserves information about personal experiences and events, such as getting married a few years ago or drinking coffee a few seconds ago. Episodic memory stores specific information about specific events and experiences that occur in particular times and places, allowing the individual to retain a sense of coherence and familiarity with the past.

Explicit Memory

Explicit memory is a form of memory that is generated when performance on a task requires conscious recollection of previous learnt information of knowledge. It allows learning to take place by consciously recalling previously learnt information.

Consciousness

Human consciousness is defined as being in the normal mental and physical state of being awake and alert. It is characterised by an individual experiencing perceptions, thoughts, emotions and an awareness of the outside world and possessing self-awareness. In different psychological theories consciousness is viewed in more specific ways: - Psychoanalytic theory identifies consciousness as being the level in which the ego functions and it is the decision-making, logical part of the mind. - Cognitive psychology identifies consciousness as being an aspect of attention.

Implicit Personality Theory

Implicit personality theories suggest that individuals make a series of assumptions, often unconsciously derived from their own experiences, about what kind of personality traits or characteristics, other individuals possess. For example, we may believe that artistic individuals tend to be unconventional, writers to be romantic and withdrawn, and librarians bookish and dowdy. Such theories are regarded as implicit because, even though these assumptions do affect and certainly influence our judgements and understandings of other people, they are not based on substance or any conscious awareness that these traits or characteristics actually exist.

Vicarious Learning

Learning how to behave by observing important models and imitating what they do.

Observational Learning

Learning through imitation.

Long-Term Memory

Long-term memory is a form of memory that can store information for a period ranging from 30 seconds up to many decades. It is also known as secondary memory. Long-term memory is often divided into semantic and episodic.

Nature Deficit Disorder

Louv (2005) - As the trend is turning to an increase in 'indoor children', the lack of being in nature has a negative impact on their health. It isn't recognised as a 'official diagnosis'.

Memory

Memory can be viewed as a psychological, mental function through which individuals are able to retain and retrieve information about experiences and events that have ocscurred in the past. While being regarded as a function, it can also be seen as a mental structure, a storage system in which memories are held within the brain. A memory also refers to the information itself, the memory that we recall and remember.

Nomothetic and idiographic

Nomothetic approaches seek to establish the generalised laws of behaviour and are typified b observable, verifiable and quantifiable measurements. They are concerned with averages and norms - what we share with other people. By contrast, idiographic approaches concern themselves with what makes us unique and individual.

Systematic Observation

Observations of subject matter need to be empirical. This means that they must be structured in order to provide a systematic account of observed phenomena.

Attention

Part of the information-processing system of the human brain related to taking notice and observing.

Semantic Memory

Semantic memory is a form of long-term memory in which factual information about the world, including about one's own experiences is contained. Examples include knowledge stored of the dates that JKF died. Tulving introduced this concept in 1972, thus identifying semantic memory as being different from episodic and procedural memory.

Hierarchical Structure

Personality is organised at a number of levels (Paunonen, 1998). At the highest level is the personality factor (e.g. conscientiousness). The level below is at the trait level (i.e. in the case of conscientiousness, this includes the traits of orderliness, ambition, endurance, responsibility and methodicalness). The level below is the habitual responses that a person displays to enact each of the traits. At the lowest level are the specific responses that an individual displays in each situation that eventually may get hard-wired into becoming a habitual response. The personality factor level has been found to be the most powerful level in predicting complex behaviours (Paunonen and Ashton, 2001).

Procedural Memory

Procedural memory contains all our information about how to do things (procedural knowledge). The knowledge contained within this memory has been gained through repetition and learning over a long period of time. Sometimes it has been gained without conscious awareness, through association, reinforcement and repetition and can become an automatic response to specific stimuli. An example is driving: after 10 years of driving, an individual no longer has to think consciously about how to drive a car.

Biophilia Hypothesis

Proposes that humans are born with an "innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike process" (Wilson, 1984: 1).

Cattell

Raymond Cattell (1905-1998), an American psychologist who suggested that human personality consisted of traits (a trait being a marked feature or characteristic style of behaviour, such as perfectionism, warmth, liveliness). Cattell in 1946 identified 171 personality traits, which he narrowed to 35 surface traits, from which could be derived from 16 source traits that made up an individual's personality. Cattell viewed source traits as the underlying basic factors of an individual's personality. From this theory he developed the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire designed to assess 16 different source traits associated with normal behaviour. The Cattell 16PF model is probably the most widely used system for categorising and defining personality.

Display Rules

Rules that prescribe under what situations we should or shouldn't display signs of particular emotions.

Short-Term Memory

Short-term memory is a memory storage system that can hold a limited amount of information for a limited period of time, approximately 20-30 seconds. With rehearsal and repetition however, the information can be renewed and stored indefinitely.

Outgroup

Social group of which an individual they are not a member.

Scapegoat

Someone who is (often unfairly) made to take the blame for something.

Leakage

Subtle signs of an emotion, often used as the detection of lies in criminal investigations.

Social Referencing

The acquisition by infants of emotional reactions through using as a guide the emotional reactions of others, notably their care giver.

Psychology of Education

The application of psychological knowledge to the processes of learning.

Metacognition

The awareness of one's own thought processes, enabling effective learning through correction.

Stimulus-Response (SR) Mechanisms

The basic building blocks of behaviour in which an object (the stimulus) marked out as significant for survival triggers a specific effective response.

Stereotype Threat

The concern of an individual that they will be judged on the stereotypes of the social group to which they belong, and the concern that they will confirm this belief through their own actions (like the self-fulfilling prophecy).

Discrimination

The consideration or treatment of others based on general factors (e.g. their race, religion, or some other grouping), rather than on individual merit.

Imitation

The direct copying of another organism's behaviour.

Locus of Control

The extent to which people believe they are in control of the events that affect them. People with an internal locus of control think that situations around them are the direct result of their own actions and can therefore influence them. In contrast, people with an external locus of control believe that the events are due to circumstantial factors that are completely outside their control.

Central Executive

The key part of the working memory system which directs the manipulation and transformation of information.

Environmental Generational Amnesia

The phenomenon of each subsequent generation perceiving current environmental conditions as the new normal (Kahn, 1999, 2002).

Allostasis

The process of achieving stability, or homeostasis, through physiological or behavioural change.

Catharsis

The release of built-up emotional energy. The term is generally used to typify a healthy and restorative outpouring of such energy.

Neotenic

The retention of traits mainly found in juveniles.

Ethology

The study of animal behaviour, particularly its function and evolution.

Psychopathology

The study of the origin, development and experience of psychological or behavioural disorders.

Verification of Scientific Facts

The systematic observations and testable predictions are reviewed and even replicated to verify scientific facts. It is the replication that confirms scientific knowledge for public understanding, providing sense to a particular observed phenomenon. This is often called the 'peer review' stage.

Hysteria

The term hysteria is used to refer to a type of mental disorder or behavioural outburst characterized by fainting and emotional outbursts, and where an individual appears to seek attention. 2 particular forms of hysteria are: - Conversion Hysteria: An individual experiencing this particular neurosis will suffer physical symptoms and sensations, such as paralysis, deafness and loss of feeling in areas of the body, that cannot be linked to any physical or biological causes. - Dissociative Hysteria: This is a particular form of hysteria in which an individual displays dissociative symptoms, such as withdrawing from social interaction and situations.

Gut Microbiome

The totality of microorganisms, bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and fungi, and their collective genetic material present in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) (Gail et al., 2019).

Autobiographical Memory

This is a part of the long-term memory system that contains all the information, facts and personal experiences of an individual. It contains all knowledge of self, based on memories of past events and experiences.

Classical Conditioning

This was first theorised by Pavlov (1927), who was investigating the salivating reflex in dogs, an unconditioned response (UCR) that occurred in response to food being administered. Pavlov realised that dogs would salivate not just in response to food (unconditioned stimulus, US) but also to anything else that coincided with the feeding routine, such as the ringing of a bell (neutral stimulus, NS). In a classical conditioning experiment, an artificial neutral stimulus (such as the bell) is offered consistently just before the natural trigger (US, such as food). Following repeated exposure to the neutral stimulus, the dog learns (is conditioned) to respond to the neutral stimulus. The dog will now salivate to the ring of the bell. When a learned response is acquired, conditioning is said to have occurred, and the neutral stimulus is now termed the conditioned stimulus.

Testable Predictions

Through controlled settings, it should be possible to test these systematic observations. This is also referred to as falsification and allows researchers to test hypotheses about the way the world works.

Paraphilic Disorder

When an atypical sexual interest causes significant distress to the individual or harm to others. Note that it is not considered a disorder or deviant to have an atypical sexual interest per se.