AP®︎ Psychology: Unit 4 Flashcards

The study of how people explain the causes of their own and others’ behavior and mental processes

An explanation that attributes behavior or a mental process to qualities within the person, such as personality, ability, motives, or effort

An explanation that attributes behavior or a mental process to circumstances outside the person

A person’s recurring pattern of explaining good and bad events, including whether causes seem internal or external, stable or unstable, and global or specific

A pattern that treats negative events as temporary, limited, and changeable while connecting positive events to more enduring strengths or conditions

A pattern that treats negative events as internal, stable, and global while dismissing positive events as external, temporary, or specific

The tendency to explain one’s own behavior situationally but another person’s similar behavior dispositionally

The tendency to overemphasize dispositional causes and underestimate situational causes when explaining another person’s behavior

The tendency to attribute personal successes to internal causes and personal failures to external causes

The belief that outcomes are substantially influenced by one’s own actions, decisions, skills, and effort

The belief that outcomes are mainly determined by luck, fate, powerful others, institutions, or circumstances beyond personal control

The process of forming impressions and judgments about oneself and other people

The tendency for repeated exposure to a stimulus to increase liking for it

An expectation that changes behavior in ways that help produce and confirm the expected outcome

Evaluating oneself by comparing one’s abilities, achievements, opinions, appearance, possessions, or circumstances with those of others

Comparing oneself with someone perceived as better off, more successful, more skilled, or otherwise superior

Comparing oneself with someone perceived as worse off, less successful, or less skilled

The perception that one is deprived or disadvantaged compared with a relevant person or group

A generalized concept about a group that assigns presumed characteristics to individuals based on group membership

An unjustifiable, usually negative attitude toward a group and its members

Unjustifiable negative behavior toward people because of their group membership

An evaluation or association a person holds but may not consciously recognize or acknowledge

The tendency to believe that people generally get what they deserve and deserve what they get

The tendency to perceive members of an out-group as more similar to one another than members of one’s own group

The tendency to evaluate or treat members of one’s own group more favorably than members of an out-group

The tendency to judge other cultures by one’s own culture’s standards and treat one’s own culture as normal or superior

The persistence of a belief after evidence suggests it is inaccurate or its original supporting evidence has been discredited

The tendency to seek, notice, interpret, and remember information that supports an existing belief while discounting challenges

Mental discomfort caused by inconsistency between actions and attitudes or among important beliefs, motivating greater alignment

A society’s or group’s expectations about appropriate behavior, attitudes, and beliefs

A set of behavioral expectations associated with a particular social position

The theory that social pressure can alter behavior or thinking through normative or informational influence

Conforming to gain approval or belonging or to avoid rejection and disapproval

Accepting others’ behavior or opinions as evidence about what is correct, especially in uncertain situations

The use of messages or techniques to convince oneself or others to adopt an idea, attitude, belief, or action

A model of persuasion proposing central and peripheral routes that differ in how deeply a message is processed

Persuasion through careful evaluation of an argument’s evidence and reasoning, usually producing more durable attitudes

Persuasion through incidental cues such as attractiveness, fame, emotion, or popularity rather than argument quality

The tendency for a favorable impression in one area to produce broadly favorable judgments in other areas

Gaining agreement to a small request before making a larger, related request

Making a large request likely to be refused before making a smaller request that then seems more reasonable

Adjusting behavior or thinking to match a group’s norms, expectations, or behavior without a direct authoritative command

Experiments in which participants sometimes gave an obviously wrong line judgment after a unanimous group did so, demonstrating conformity pressure

Conformity increases when a group is unanimous, cohesive, at least moderately sized, observed publicly, or viewed as high-status, and when the person is uncertain or has not made a prior commitment

Compliance with an explicit directive from a perceived authority figure

Studies in which participants followed an experimenter’s orders to administer apparent shocks, with 65 percent reaching 450 volts in the baseline condition

Obedience increases when authority is nearby, legitimate, prestigious, and institutionally supported, the victim is distant or depersonalized, commands escalate gradually, and no peers model defiance

A cultural emphasis on personal identity, autonomy, individual rights, personal goals, and achievement

A cultural emphasis on interdependence, relationships, social roles, group obligations, and harmony

Recognition and valuing of multiple cultural identities, traditions, and perspectives within a shared society or organization

The tendency for discussion among like-minded people to strengthen the group’s initially dominant tendency

Defective group decision-making in which the desire for agreement and cohesion suppresses critical evaluation and dissent

Reduced personal responsibility for acting when other people are present and could act instead

Exerting less effort when individual contributions are combined into a group product and are difficult to identify

Reduced self-awareness and self-restraint when anonymity or immersion in a group weakens individual accountability

The presence of others strengthens dominant responses, usually improving simple or practiced performance and impairing difficult or unfamiliar performance

The tendency to overestimate how widely other people share one’s beliefs, preferences, and behaviors

A shared objective that separate or competing groups can achieve only through cooperation

A situation in which individually rewarding actions produce harmful collective consequences when many people act in self-interest

The application of psychological science to work, workers, management, and organizations

Emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion from prolonged occupational stress, often including cynicism and reduced effectiveness

Behavior intended to benefit another person or group, such as helping, sharing, cooperating, or comforting

Selfless concern expressed through helping behavior without expectation of an external reward

A felt obligation to repay help, support, or another benefit one has received

The expectation that people should help, support, or repay those who have helped them

The expectation that people should help those in need even when repayment is unlikely

The tendency for an individual’s probability of helping to decrease when other potential helpers are present

The view that unconscious motives, conflicts, and interacting psychological forces drive personality and behavior

The thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and memories currently within a person’s awareness

Material not currently in awareness that can be brought into awareness relatively easily

Thoughts, wishes, fears, motives, and conflicts outside ordinary awareness that still affect thoughts, emotions, and behavior

The primitive part of personality that seeks immediate gratification of impulses

The part of personality that deals with reality, regulates impulses, and mediates among the id, superego, and external demands

The part of personality representing internalized moral standards and ideals

Unconscious processes that protect the ego from anxiety, threatening ideas, unacceptable impulses, or painful realities by altering awareness or interpretation

Refusing to accept or recognize a painful external reality

Redirecting an emotion or impulse from its original target to a safer or more available substitute target

Attributing one’s own unacceptable thoughts, motives, or feelings to someone else

Creating a plausible, self-protective explanation that conceals a more threatening motive or explanation

Expressing attitudes or behaviors opposite to an unacceptable unconscious feeling or impulse

Returning under stress or anxiety to behavior characteristic of an earlier developmental period

Unconsciously excluding distressing thoughts, impulses, or memories from conscious awareness

Channeling an unacceptable impulse into a constructive or socially valued activity

Personality assessments that use interpretations of ambiguous stimuli to probe preconscious or unconscious motives, conflicts, and concerns

A projective test in which a person reports what a standard series of symmetrical inkblots might represent

A projective test in which a person constructs stories about ambiguous pictures of people

The view that personality centers on subjective experience, conscious choice, acceptance, personal meaning, growth, and realizing one’s potential

Accepting and valuing a person without making their basic worth dependent on meeting particular conditions

The inherent motivation to develop one’s capacities, maintain or enhance oneself, and move toward fuller realization of one’s potential

The organized set of beliefs and perceptions a person has about who they are

Congruence is relative consistency among self-concept, lived experience, and the ideal self; incongruence is a substantial mismatch among them

The view that personality develops through ongoing interactions among personal factors, behavior, and the social environment; assessment examines beliefs and behavior in context

The mutual, multidirectional interaction among personal factors, behavior, and the environment

A person’s belief in their ability to perform the behaviors needed to succeed at a particular task or challenge

A person’s general positive or negative evaluation of their own worth or value

The view that personality consists of relatively enduring dimensions that describe and predict typical responses across time and situations

A relatively enduring characteristic or dimension on which people differ and that predicts typical, not invariant, responses

A trait model describing personality through openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability

The Big Five dimension involving curiosity, imagination, creativity, receptiveness to unfamiliar ideas, and interest in novelty

The Big Five dimension involving organization, responsibility, dependability, self-discipline, planning, and persistence

The Big Five dimension involving sociability, assertiveness, activity, and a tendency to seek interpersonal stimulation; its lower pole is introversion

The Big Five dimension involving cooperation, trust, empathy, compassion, and concern for social harmony

The Big Five dimension involving calmness and resilience; neuroticism is its inverse, reflecting greater negative emotional reactivity

A standardized set of items used to produce scores on one or more personality dimensions

A statistical method that organizes correlated inventory items or responses into broader underlying factors

Processes that initiate, direct, energize, and sustain behavior and goal-directed mental activity

The theory that physiological needs create drives that motivate behaviors that reduce tension and restore homeostasis

An internal state of tension associated with an unmet need that motivates need-reducing behavior

The body’s tendency to maintain relatively stable internal conditions

The theory that people are motivated to regulate stimulation toward an optimal level of arousal

The level of physiological and psychological activation at which a person performs or feels best, varying with the person and task

Performance rises as arousal approaches an optimum and falls when arousal is too low or high; difficult tasks generally require lower arousal than simple tasks

The theory distinguishing intrinsic from extrinsic reasons for acting and emphasizing autonomy, competence, and connection in self-directed motivation

Engaging in an activity because the activity itself is enjoyable, interesting, meaningful, or satisfying

Engaging in an activity to obtain a separate outcome or avoid an unwanted consequence

The theory that anticipated external rewards pull behavior toward them

The tendency for excessive external rewards to reduce intrinsic motivation for an activity that was already personally rewarding

An innate, complex, relatively fixed behavior pattern that appears in a species in response to particular stimuli

The theory that choices create motivational conflicts that a person must resolve

A motivational conflict requiring a choice between two appealing alternatives

A motivational conflict in which one option has both attractive and unattractive features

A motivational conflict requiring a choice between two unattractive alternatives

The theory that stable differences in the need for varied, novel, complex, or intense experiences motivate behavior

Pursuing new ideas, perceptions, cultures, environments, artistic experiences, or unconventional experiences

Desiring physically exciting activities involving speed, height, danger, or controlled risk

Seeking stimulation through socially uninhibited activities that loosen ordinary self-control or social restraints

A low tolerance for repetition, routine, predictability, or situations lacking novelty

The motivational state associated with seeking and consuming food

The state of fullness or satisfaction that reduces further eating

A hormone produced primarily by the stomach that commonly rises before eating and promotes hunger and food-seeking

A hormone produced primarily by fat cells that signals stored energy and generally promotes longer-term satiety and reduced eating

A brain structure that integrates hunger and satiety signals and coordinates feeding-related regulation

Environmental signals such as the sight, smell, availability, time, portion size, or social context of food that prompt eating independently of internal hunger

The motivation to form, maintain, and restore stable social connections, acceptance, inclusion, and enduring relationships

A complex psychological response to internal and external conditions involving physiological activity, cognition, subjective feeling, expression, and action tendencies

A general state of physiological and psychological activation ranging from very low alertness to intense excitement or stress

The interpretation and evaluation of a situation and its significance for one’s well-being, goals, and ability to cope, which helps shape emotion

The proposal that forming a facial expression can influence the corresponding emotional experience; research findings are mixed

Positive emotions tend to broaden awareness and possible actions, building lasting resources over time, while negative emotions tend to narrow attention and immediate responses

Pleasant emotional states such as joy, interest, contentment, and love that tend to broaden awareness and possible actions

Unpleasant emotional states such as fear, anger, sadness, and disgust that often narrow attention and prepare responses to threats, losses, or obstacles

The qualified proposal that anger, disgust, sadness, happiness, surprise, and fear show some cross-cultural commonality, although expression and recognition vary and findings are mixed

Socially learned norms governing whether, when, where, and how strongly emotions should be outwardly expressed

An event, object, condition, memory, or social situation that triggers an emotional response