Unit 1 AP psychology

Tabula Rasa

D: "blank slate" The idea that individual human beings are born "blank" with no built-in mental content and their identity is defined entirely by events after birth O: goes along with empiricism: all mental content is acquired from events. For example , a baby's mind can be shaped into whatever is desired by giving he/she experience and lessons that they will remember and learn from

Evolutionary Perspective

D: How the evolution of behavior and mind, using principles of natural selection O: might analyze how anger facilitated the survival of our ancestors' genes

Humanist Perspective

D: I historically significant perspective that emphasized the growth potential of healthy people O: Carl Rodgers and Abraham Maslow found that Freudian psychology and behaviorism was limiting. Rather than focusing on the meaning of early childhood memories or the learning of conditioned responses, psychologists drew attention to ways that current environmental influences can nurture or limit our growth potential, and to the importance of having our needs for love and expectance satisfied

Psychodynamic Perspective

D: Studies how unconscious drives and conflicts influence behavior, and uses that information to treat people with psychological disorders O: for example: how can someone's personality traits and disorders be explained by unfulfilled wishes and childhood traumas? Evolved from Freud's psychoanalysis. Might view an outburst as an outlet for unconscious hostility

Introspection

D: The examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings O: in psychology this process relies exclusively on observation of one's mental state and is closely related to human self reflection

Dualism

D: The human mind and body are two separate entities that interact with each other O: Descartes preposed this idea: he reason that the mind and body communicate with each other through a small structure of the base of the brain called the penial gland. Opposite of monism

Nature-Nurture

D: The long-standing controversy over the relative contributions that jeans and experience make to the development of psychological traits and behaviors. O: the ancient Greeks debated this a lot, such as Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Descartes, Darwin

Psychology

D: The scientific study of behavior and mental processes O: made up of two parts: behavior- anything in organism does or any action we can observe and record such as smiling blinking or sweating. Mental processes- internal subjective experiences we infer from behavior such as sensation and perception and dreams

Positive Psychology

D: The scientific study of human functioning, with the goals of discovering and promoting strengths and virtues that help individuals and communities thrive O: ex: can psychology contribute to a "good life" that engages ones skills, and "meaningful life" that points beyond itself?

Empiricist

D: The view that knowledge originates in experience and that science should therefore rely on observation and experimentation O: John Locke added on to Bacon's idea to from this theory (remember: empiricist and experience start with letter E) opposite of nativist

Behaviorism

D: The view that psychology 1. should be an objective science that 2. studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologist today agree with 1 but not 2 O: Watson and Skinner found that science is rooted in observation. you cannot observe a sensation, or feeling, or thought but you can observe and record people's behavior as they respond to different situations

Psychiatry

D: a branch of medicine dealing with psychological disorders; practiced by physicians who sometimes provide medical (for example, drug) treatments as well as psychological therapy O: only psychologists that are allowed to prescribe medicine and treat disorders. they are medical doctors

Counseling

D: a branch of psychology that assists people with problems in living (often related to school, work, or marriage) and in achieving greater well-being O: counselors can help with marriage issues, raising children properly, and anxiety and depression

Clinical Psychology

D: a branch of psychology that studies , assesses, and treats people with psychological disorders O: can administer and interpret tests, provide counseling and therapy, and sometimes conduct basic and applied research

Community Psychology

D: a branch of psychology that studies how people interact with their social environments and how social institutions affect individuals and groups O: ex: if school bullying is a problem, these people will seek to change the bullies

Developmental Psychology

D: a branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout life span O: studies how our life changes from womb to tomb

Human Factors Psychology

D: an I/O psychology subfield that explores how people and machines interact and how machines and physical environments can be made and safe and easy to use O: can improve and adapt technology for people

Gestalt

D: an organized whole. Psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful pieces O: shows that our minds tend to perceive objects as part of a greater whole and as elements of more complex systems.played a major role in the modern development of of the study of human sensation and perception. Was a response to structuralism theory from Wundt

Structuralism

D: early school of thought promoted by Wundt and Titchener that used introspection to reveal the structure of the human mind O: an experiment to study this was to train people to report elements of their experience as they looked at a rose, listened to a metronome, smell a scent, or tasted a substance. It was asked "what were their immediate sensations their feelings or their images" and how these related to each other

Functionalism

D: early school thought promoted by James and influenced by Darwin that explored how mental and behavioral processes function and how they enable the organism to adapt survive and flourish O: as a functionalist, james encouraged explorations of down to earth emotions, memories, will power, habits, and moment to moment steams on consciousness

Socio-Cultural (sociocultural) perspective

D: how behavior and thinking vary across situations and cultures O: might explore how expressions of anger vary across cultural contexts

Biological Perspective

D: how the body and brain enables emotions, memories, and sensory experiences; how genes combine with environment to influence individual differences. O: might study the brain circuits that cause us to be "red in the face" and "hot under the collar" or how heredity and experience influence our individual differences in temperament

Behavioral Perspective

D: how we learn observable responses O: might attempt to determine which external stimuli trigger angry responses or aggressive acts

Nativist

D: people are genetically equipped with all their perceptual abilities at birth O: for example, everything comes natural at birth without any experiences. this is the opposite of empiricist

Psychoanalytic Theory

D: personality develops through a series of stages that are each characterized by a certain internal psychological conflict O: Freud did many studies and experiments to develop this theory. Freud discovered the id ego and superego through this research

Basic Research

D: pure science that aims to increase the scientific knowledge base O: includes biological psychologists, developmental psychologists, cognitive psychologists, educational psychologists, personality psychologists, and social psychologists

Applied Research

D: scientific study that aims to resolve practical problems O: includes Industrial-organizational psychologists (I/O), human factors psychologists, counseling psychologists, clinical psychologists, and psychiatrists

BioPsychSocial Approach

D: systematically considers biological, psychological, and social factors and their complex interactions in understanding health illness, and health care delivery. O: looking at the name of this approach, it combines biological, psychological, and social cultural approach all in into one

I/O Psychology (Industrial-Organizational)

D: the application of psychological concepts and methods to optimizing human behavior in workplaces O: help organizations and companies select and train employees, boost morale and productivity, design products, and implement systems

Monism

D: the idea that the brain and mind are constructed of the same material O: there are 2 views: idealism- The idea that there isn't actually a physical world and everything is actually in our head materialism- The idea that the mind is really just part of the physical world. Opposite of dualism

Cognitive Neuroscience

D: the interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with cognition (including perception, thinking, memory, and language) O: this cognitive approach have given us new ways to understand ourselves and to treat disorders such as depression

Natural Selection

D: the principle that, among the range inherited trait variations, those contributing to reproduction and survival will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations O: Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" explained this theory

Cognitive Perspective

D: the scientific study of all the mental activity associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating O: might study how our interpretation of a situation affects our anger and how our anger affects our thinking

Social Psychology

D: the scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another O: can go through the relationships we have with others and how it can affect one another

Psychometrics

D: the scientific study of the measurement of human abilities, attitudes, and traits O: a subfield of psychology. (remember METRICS and MEASUREMENT)

Personality Psychology

D: the study of an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting O: investigates our persistent traits

Educational Psychology

D: the study of how psychological processes affect and can enhance teaching and learning O: can study different learning styles of studies and different teaching techniques for teachers

Ivan Pavlov

Field: Behaviorism Contributions: had a passion for research. Earned Russia's first nobel prize. experimented on dogs to determine unconditioned response and unconditioned stimulus. Was testing dogs to see if they salivate in response to food and why this can happen. he asked "If a sight or sound regularly signaled the arrival of food, would the dog learn the link?" and "If so, would it begin salivating in anticipation of the food?"

B.F Skinner

Field: Behaviorist Psychology Contribution: considered free will an illusion and human action dependent on consequences of previous actions. If the consequences are bad, there is a high chance the action will not be repeated; if the consequences are good, the actions that led to it being repeated become more probable. Called this the principle of reinforcement. Behavior is influenced by conditioning. Worked elaborated law of effect which deals with rewards and behavior. Worked with behavior control. Used pigeons for experiments (used operant chamber box aka skinner box). Had a concept of reinforcement (event that strengthens behavior that follows).

Sigmund Frued

Field: Behaviorists Contributions: studied how unconscious thoughts and responses to childhood experiences affect behavior

Rene Decartes

Field: Dualism Contributions: did experiments with animal spirits and agreed with Socrates and Plato.

Beverly Inez Prossner

Field: Educational Psychology Contribution: teacher and school administrator, is often regarded as the first African-American female to receive a Ph.D in psychology. Was one of the key figures in the debate on how to best educate Black students. Arguments made in her dissertation were used in the 1920s and 1930s in the debate about school segregation. Her dissertation "examined personality differences in black children attending either voluntarily segregated or integrated schools and concluded that black children were better served in segregated schools"

Carl Rogers

Field: Humanistic Psychology Contribution: believed that people are provided with self actualizing tendencies and had a person centered perspective. Growth promoting climate needs genuineness acceptance and empathy (enable people to grow)

Dorothea Dix

Field: Humanistic Psychology Contribution: was an advocate for the mentally ill. She was originally a teacher for a prison, but when she was there, she noticed how poorly the prisoners were treated. She then went to court and advocated for the mentally ill when nobody else cared. As a result, she established 32 mental hospitals around the world

Abraham Maslow

Field: Humanistic Psychology Contribution: described the priorities people have with a hierarchy of needs, 1st level is basic psychological needs, then goes all the way up to needing to find meaning and identity beyond self

Aristotle

Field: Monism Contributions: Plato was his teacher. He disagreed with socrates and plato. He said that knowledge comes from experience stored in our memories

Charles Darwin

Field: Naturalist Contribution: pondered the incredible species variation he encountered including tortoises on one island that differed from those on nearby islands. His 1859 "On the Origin of Species" explained this diversity by proposing the evolutionary process of natural selection; From among chance variations, nature selects traits that best enables an organism to survive and reproduce in a particular environment. Studied evolution and both animal structures and animal behaviors

Edward Tichener

Field: Structuralism Contributions: introduced structuralism. one of Wundt's students. He wanted to discover how sensations, images, and feelings related to each other. His methods included engaging people in self-reflective introspection. Results varies from person to person and their experiences

Margaret Floy Washburn

Field: behaviorist Contributions: wrote an influential book called "The Animal Mind". in 1921- became the 2nd APA president. 1st foreign study in Wundt's journal. Was not allowed to be in the experimental psychologists because of her gender

John B. Watson

Field: behaviorist Contribution: redefine psychology as the scientific study of observable behavior -> rooted in observation. Behavior is influenced by "conditioning". Did the "Little Albert" study with Rayner that studied how fears can be conditioned. The 2 had an affair so he got fired from Johns Hopkins and joined an advertising agency as a resident psychologist

Mary Whiton Calkins

Field: cognitive psychology Contributions: was in James' graduate seminar. Made men leave because she was the only woman: was tutored alone by James as a result. Was treated unfairly: Harvard denied her the degree she earned because she was a woman. Became APA 1st female press in 1905 after lots of fighting debate about the topic. Was a distinguished memory researcher.

Jean Piaget

Field: developmental psychology Contributions: studied children's cognitive development (interest started in Paris while creating children's intelligence tests) Made conclusions about children's mind. Said that the mind develops through stages. Brain builds schemas. Assimilated vs accommodate

Plato

Field: dualism Contributions: Socrates was his teacher. concluded that the mind is separate from the body. Knowledge is innate. Aristotle was his student

Socrates

Field: dualism Contributions: was Plato's teacher. concluded that the mind is separate from the body. Knowledge is innate

John Locke

Field: empiricism Contributions: mind at birth is a tabula rasa ("blank slate" The idea that individual human beings are born "blank" with no built-in mental content and their identity is defined entirely by events after birth). Helped form modern empiricism, the idea that what we know comes from experience,. and that observation and experimentation enable scientific knowledge

G. Stanley Hall

Field: evolutionary/ educational psychology Contributions: one of Wundt's American students. established the first laboratory for psychology in the U.S. at Johns Hopkins University. He paved the way for different branches and schools of thought

Wilhelm Wundt

Field: experimental psychology Contributions: had the first psychological laboratory. Led the first psychological experiment in which he studies fast and simple mental processes. In the experiment, people were tested the time lapse between hearing a sound of a ball, and pressing a button when the sound is heard

William James

Field: functionalist Contributions: wanted to study deeper into the evolved functions of our thoughts and feelings. He wondered why certain parts of our body perform different jobs. He realized that all of this is developed because it was adaptive ( contributed to ancestors survival). Was a notable teacher at Harvard and gave great lectures. Wrote many published articles (took 12 yrs)

Noam Chomsky

Field:naturalistic psychology Contributions: linguist and political activist. He has composed and published many literary works that have been dispersed throughout the world and have touched all four corners. He has worked to further the study and understanding of linguistics from both the biological and psychological perspective.