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Psy 101 Midterm 2
Starting at chapter 8
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| cognition | all of the mental activities associated with thinking, including knowing, remembering, solving problems, making judgements and decisions, and communicating |
| cognitive psychology | the study of mental activities and how they operate |
| mental representations | internal mental symbols that stand for some object, event or state of affairs in the world |
| concepts | mental categories that group similar objects, events, ideas, or people |
| prototype | best example or average member of the concept that incorporates more of the features most commonly associated with it |
| algorithms | step-by-step procedures that guarantee a solution |
| insight | a sudden, conscious change in a person's understanding of some situation or problem |
| mental set | a mental framework for how to solve a problem based on prior experience with similar problems |
| functional fixedness | a tendency to focus on an object's typical functions and thus fail to recognize unusual functions that could solve a problem |
| restructuring | the process of reorganizing one's understanding of a problem to facilitate a solution |
| bounded rationality | the idea that rational decision making is constrained by limitations in people's cognitive abilities, available information, and time |
| dual-processing theories | people have two types of thinking that they can use to make judgements and decisions; controlled system and automatic system |
| controlled system | slower and more effortful and leads to more thoughtful and rational outcomes |
| automatic system | fast and fairly effortless and leads to decent outcomes most of the time |
| heuristics | mental shortcuts that people use to efficiently navigate everyday judgements and decisions |
| representativeness heuristic | shortcut for judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent or be prototypical of some category |
| availability heuristic | shortcut for deciding how frequent or probable something is based on how easily examples come to mind |
| affect heuristic | tendency to use the affect we associate with various objects and events in the world to make judgements and decisions |
| confirmation bias | tendency to look for and weigh evidence that confirms preexisting beliefs more strongly than evidence |
| belief perseverance | tendency for people to resist changing their beliefs, even when faced with |
| framing | the particular way that an issue, decision, or set of options is described can change decisions by shifting the decision maker's reference point |
| loss aversion | tendency to make choices, including riskier ones, that minimize losses |
| overconfidence bias | tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one's knowledge and judgements |
| hindsight bias | the tendency, once the outcome is known, to overestimate the likelihood that they would have predicted that outcome in advance |
| language | shared system of symbols, including spoken, written, and signed words and gestures, and a set of rules for how to combine those symbols to communicate meaning |
| phonemes | smallest unit of language, such as the individual sounds that make up speech |
| morphemes | smallest unit of meaningful language |
| grammar | system of rules that governs the way that language parts are put together so that people can understand each other |
| syntax | grammatical rules that govern how words and phrases combine into well-formed sentences |
| pragmatics | rules that govern the practical aspect of language use, such as taking turns, using hand and face gestures, sarcasm, talking to children vs. elders, etc. |
| linguistic determinism hypothesis (Whorfian hypothesis) | different languages impose different ways of understanding the world that can constrain and shape our thinking |
| babbling | production of speech sounds by infants taking the form of consonant-vowel combinations (ma, ba) emerging around 6 to 7 months of age |
| over regularization errors | a language error made by children that involves extending rules of word formation (runned, eated) |
| language acquisition device | Noam Chomsky proposed that children are prewired to learn language, activated by language exposure and guides language learning automatically with no direct teaching necessary |
| sensitive period | an early period in life where language acquisition can occur, but afterward, language acquisition will be limited |
| intelligence | capability to think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, reason, plan, solve problems, learn from experience, and acquire new knowledge |
| factor analysis | analyzes a pattern of correlations to look for the common factors, or ingredients underlying the scores |
| general intelligence (g factor) | general mental ability that Charles Spearman hypothesized is required for virtually any mental test (consists of fluid and crystalized intelligence) |
| fluid intelligence (gF) | ability to tackle new and unusual situations/problems |
| crystallized intelligence (gC) | accumulated knowledge and skills |
| savant syndrome | presence of unusual talents in people who are otherwise profoundly mentally disabled |
| analytical intelligence (sternberg) | ability to break down problems into component parts of problem solving |
| creative intelligence (sternberg) | ability to deal with new problems and generate innovative ideas and solutions |
| practical intelligence (sternberg) | street smarts, ability to reason skillfully in day to day life |
| mental age | number that represents the average age at which children perform closest to the given child's score on an intelligence test |
| intelligence quotient (IQ) | measure of intelligence that is calculated by dividing child's mental age by chronological age and then multiplying 100 |
| achievement tests | determine how much you have learned over a certain period of time |
| aptitude tests | designed to measure the potential to learn new skills |
| Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) | lengthy tests composed of subtests that assess general knowledge, vocabulary, comprehension, and are combined to capture overall ability or relative strengths and weaknessess |
| standardization | process of making test scores more meaningful by defining them in relation to the performance of a pretested group |
| reliability | extent to which a test produces consistent results |
| validity | extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to do |
| stereotype threat | a concern that one's performance or behavior might confirm a negative stereotype about one's group |
| achievement gaps | persistent differences in education outcomes of certain groups of people, usually based on characteristics like race or gender |
| motives | forces that move us to act in certain ways and not others |
| instinct | genetically endowed tendency to behave in a particular way |
| homeostasis | body's tendency to maintain internal equilibrium through various forms of self regulation |
| drive | a state of internal bodily tension, such as hunger or thirst or the need for sleep |
| pain matrix | a distributed network of brain regions, including the amygdala, that respond to many types of pain |
| intrinsically rewarding | being pursed for its own sake |
| extrinsically rewarding | being pursued because of the rewards that are not an inherent part of the activity or object |
| glucostatic hypothesis | hunger and eating are regulated by the body's monitoring and adjustment of blood glucose levels |
| lipostatic hypothesis | adipose tissue plays an important role in governing hunger and regulating longer-term energy balance |
| adipose cells | fat cells that absorb fatty acids created by the liver that can drain into blood stream to be converted into glucose |
| body weight set point | the weight an organism will seek to maintain despite alterations in dietary intake |
| metabolic rate | the rate at which the body uses its energy |
| unit bias | the amount of food that is regarded as a single portion |
| anorexia nervosa | eating disorder characterized by an extreme concern with being overweight and by compulsive dieting, sometimes to the point of self starvation |
| bulimia nervosa | eating disorder characterized by repeated binge and purge bouts |
| body mass index (BMI) | a measure of if someone is at a healthy weight or not, ones kilograms divided by the square of ones height in meters |
| thrifty gene hypothesis | evolutionary hypothesis that natural selection has favored individuals with efficient metabolisms that maximize fat storage |
| estrus | a mammal's period of sexual receptivity |
| neurodevelopmental perspective | sexual orientation is built into the circuitry of the brain early in fetal development |
| performance orientation | a motivational stance that focuses on performing well and looking smart (avoidance motivation) |
| mastery orientation | characterized by a focus on learning and improving (approach motivation) |
| hierarchy of motives | the order in which needs are though to become dominant; the lower order physiological motives are at the bottom, safety motives farther up, desire for is esteem higher, and self transcendence at the top |
| self actualization | the desire to realize ones potential to the fullest |
| self transcendence | desire to a further cause that goes beyond the self (such as truth, social justice, or religious faith) |
| emotion | the coordinated behaviors, feelings, and physiological changes that occur when a situation becomes relevant to our personal goals |
| display rules | cultural rules that govern the expression of emotion |
| discrete emotions approach | focuses on defining specific categories of emotions |
| dimensional approach | uses dimensions rather than categories to make sense of emotion |
| alexithymia | people who have the greatest difficulty describing their emotional experiences |
| happiness set point | the level of happiness that is characteristic of a certain individual |
| adaptation | ability to quickly grow accustomed to any stimulus or state to which one is continually exposed |
| james-lange theory of emotion | a theory that the subjective experience of emotion is the awareness of one's own bodily reactions in the presence of certain arousing stimuli |
| cannon-bard theory of emotion | the theory that a stimulus elicits an emotion by triggering a particular response in the thalamus which then causes both the physiological changes associated with the emotion and the emotional experience itself |
| Schachter-singer theory of emotion | the theory that emotion arises from the interpretation of bodily responses in the context of situational cues |
| empathy | ability to accurately track what others are feeling |
| affect-as-information perspective | the subjective experience of emotion is a key resource during problem solving / decision making |
| self control | refers to the efforts we make to pursue our longer term interests when they conflict with momentary impulses |
| willpower | ability to engage in self control |
| strength model of ego control | engaging in self control efforts depletes a finite pool of cognitive resources, in just the same way using a muscle repeatedly tires it out |
| ego depletion | state of diminished self regulatory ability due to repeated demands on cognitive resources required for self regulation |
| emotion regulation | an attempt to modify one or more aspects of the emotion response trajectory |
| situation selection | choosing to expose yourself to some situations and not others based in part on the emotional impact you expect the situation to have |
| situation modification | changing one or more aspects of a situation you are in so it has a different emotional impact for you |
| attentional deployment | changing your attentional focus |
| cognitive change | modifying your thinking in order to change how you feel |
| response modulation | changing one or more aspects of your emotional responses |
| reappraisal | type of cognitive change that occurs when someone tries to decrease an emotional response by changing the meaning a situation has |
| suppression | form of response modulation that occurs when someones tries to decrease the emotion he shows on his face or in his behavior |
| social psychology | study of how social context as well as broader cultural environments influence people's thoughts, feelings, and actions |
| transference | tendency to assume that a new and unfamiliar person has the same traits as another known person who they resemble in any way |
| impression management | series of strategies people use to influence the impressions that others form of them |
| attribution | assignment of a causal explanation for an event, action or outcome |
| fundamental attribution error (FAE) | the tendency to assume that people's actions are more the result of their internal dispositions than of the situational context |
| false consensus effect | tendency to use the self as an. anchor and overestimate the extent to which other people's beliefs and attitudes are similar to our own |
| self serving attributions | we tend to make dispositional attributions for positive events but situational attributions for negative events |
| affective forecasting errors | our estimations of future happiness are not very accurate, we overestimate the influence of some factors and underestimate the influence of others |
| attitude | orientation toward target stimulus with 3 components; affective feeling ranging for positive to negative, cognitive belief about characteristics of target, and behavioral motivation such as tendency to approach or avoid that target |
| implicit attitudes | automatically activated associations which are often learned through repeated exposure to a person, place, thing or issue |
| explicit attitudes | what we explicitly report that we feel or believe about a person, place, thing, or issue |
| elaboration likelihood model | theory of persuasion contending that attitudes can change by 2 different routes: central and peripheral route |
| central route | relies on more thoughtful, reflective processes |
| peripheral route | attitudes swayed by surface level features and more automatic associations |
| scarcity principle | people tend to place higher value on things that are in short supply |
| door in the face strategy | eliciting a bit of guilt after people decline an unreasonably large request so that they feel more open to a smaller one |
| cognitive dissonance | when people find themselves behaving in ways that are out of line with their beliefs, values, or attitudes |
| social norms | patterns of behavior, traditions, beliefs and preferences that are accepted and reinforced by others and influence our behavior |
| conformity | people implicitly mimic or adopt the behaviors, beliefs and preferences of those around them |
| informational social influence | pressure to conform to others actions or beliefs based on a desire to behave correctly or gain an accurate understanding of the world |
| social facilitation | evidence that the mere presence of others can boost arousal in a way that facilitates the dominant response to that task |
| dominant response | most likely behavioral reaction |
| social loafing | tendency for individuals to expend less effort on a task when they are doing it with others rather than alone |
| group polarization | tendency for people's attitudes on an issue to become more extreme after discussing it with like-minded others |
| groupthink | occurs during group decisions when people feel pressure to maintain allegiance to a group leader or to render a difficult decision under time pressure |
| general aggression model | framework that suggests that factors of both personality and the situation combine to alter one's affective, physiological and cognitive responses to a situation in ways that can increase aggressive behavior |
| weapons effect | simple exposure to a gun or weapon can increase aggressive responses by bringing violent thoughts to mind |
| kin selection | evovled or adapted strategy of assisting those who share one's genes, even at personal cost, as means of increasing the odds of genetic surival |
| norm of reciprocity | people agree to help others who have helped them in the past or might help them in the future |
| empathy gap | inability to accurately simulate the mental suffering of another person |
| bystander effect | people are less likely to come to the aid of a victim when other observers are present than when they are alone |
| pluralistic ignorance | people are collectively unaware of each other's true attitudes or beliefs |
| diffusion of responsibility | assume that someone either has already gone for help or would be more skilled at knowing what to do |
| stereotypes | mental representations or schemas we have about groups |
| prejudice | negative attitude toward a group or members of a group |
| discrimination | tendency for individuals to receive different treatment or outcomes as a result of their membership in a given social group |
| realistic group conflict theory | negative intergroup attitudes can develop whenever groups compete against one another for access to the same scarce resources |
| social identity theory | people maintain positive attitude for their ingroup by by seeing outgroups in a more negative light |
| symbolic racism | tendency to redirect one's prejudice toward a racial or ethnic group to the policies that might benefit that group |
| aversive racism | unconscious negative reactions to racial or ethnic outgroup |
| contact hypothesis | prejudice can be reduced by friendly/cooperative interactions between members of different groups |
| jigsaw classroom | dividing a cooperative assignment among diverse groups of students |
| parental investment theory | suggests that women's greater expenditure of time, resources, and effort leads to far greater caution in selecting a single long term mate for support and protection |
| triangular theory of love | passion, intimacy and commitment create different variations of what love can be |
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justinem
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