5 Steps to a 5 AP Psychology, 2010-2011 Edition (86 page)

Ethnocentrism
—
belief that our culture or social group is superior to others.

Ethologists
—
scientists who study animal behavior and how it has evolved in different species.

Eustress
—
physiological and emotional arousal that may be productive and motivating.

Evoked potentials
—
EEGs resulting from a response to a specific stimulus presented to the subject.

Evolutionary psychologist
—
studies how natural selection favored behaviors that contributed to survival and spread of our ancestors’ genes; evolutionary psychologists look at universal behaviors shared by all people.

Excitatory neurotransmitter
—
chemical secreted at terminal button that causes the neuron on the other side of the synapse to generate an action potential (to fire).

Exhaustion stage
—
third stage of Selye’s general adaptation theory when our resistance to illness decreases and we are susceptible to many stress-related disorders.

Existential therapies
—
focus on helping clients find purpose and meaning in their lives and emphasize individual freedom and responsibility.

Experiential intelligence
—
according to Sternberg, is made up of thinking in different ways, having insight, and being able to see more than one way to solve a problem.

Experimental group
—
in a controlled experiment, the subgroup of the sample that receives the treatment or independent variable.

Experimenter bias
—
a phenomenon that occurs when a researcher’s expectations or preferences about the outcome of a study influence the results obtained.

Explicit memory (declarative memory
)
—
long-term memory of facts and experiences we consciously know and can verbalize.

External locus of control
—
based on Julian Rotter’s research, the belief that what happens to you is due to fate, luck, or others.

Extinction
—
the weakening of a response. In classical conditioning it’s the removal of the UCS and in operant conditioning it occurs when the reinforcement for the behavior is removed.

Extravert (also extrovert
)
—
originally described by Jung, a person who exhibits the traits of sociability, and positive affect, and prefers to pay attention to the external environment.

Extrinsic motivation
—
the desire to perform a behavior for a reward or avoid punishment.

Face validity
—
a measure of the extent to which content of a test, on its surface, seems to be meaningfully related to what is being tested.

Factor analysis
—
a statistical procedure that identifies common factors among groups of items by determining which variables have a high degree of correlation.

False consensus bias
—
the tendency of a person to perceive his or her own views as representative of a general consensus.

Farsighted
—
too little curvature of the cornea and/or lens, focusing the image behind the retina so distant objects are seen more clearly than nearby objects.

Feature detectors
—
individual neurons in the primary visual cortex/occipital lobes that respond to specific features of a visual stimulus.

Feature extraction
(pattern recognition)—
when new information comes into sensory storage, we actively search through long-term memory in an effort to find a match for these new raw data.

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS
)
—
a cluster of abnormalities that occurs in babies of mothers who drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy.

Fetus
—
the developing human organism from about nine weeks after conception to birth when organ systems begin to interact, and sex organs and sense organs become refined.

Fictional final goals
—
according to Adler’s personality theory, these direct our behavior and since largely unattainable need to be modified over time.

Fight-or-flight response
—
physiological reactions that help ready us to fight or to flee from a dangerous situation; activation of the sympathetic nervous system.

Fixation
—
(for problem solving) an inability to look at a problem from a fresh perspective, using a prior strategy that does not lead to success; (in Freud’s theory) continuing to engage in behaviors associated with an earlier stage of development.

Fixed interval
—
schedule of reinforcement in which the first response after a specific time has passed is reinforced.

Fixed ratio
—
schedule of reinforcement in which reinforcement is presented after a set number of responses have been made since the previous reinforcement.

Flashbulb memories
—
a clear and vivid memory of an emotionally significant moment or event.

Flooding
—
behavior treatment for phobias; client is repeatedly exposed to feared object for extended periods of time and without escape, until the anxiety diminishes.

Fluid intelligence
—
those cognitive abilities requiring speed or rapid learning which tend to diminish with adult aging.

Foot-in-the-door
—
compliance strategy; an agreement to a smaller request leads to agreement with a larger request later.

Forensic psychologists
—
psychologists who apply psychological principles to legal issues.

Formal operational stage
—
Piaget’s fourth stage of cognitive development (12+ years) during which the child begins to think logically about abstract concepts and engage in hypothetical thinking.

Fovea
—
small area of the retina in the most direct line of sight, where cones are most concentrated for highest visual acuity in bright light.

Framing
—
refers to the way an issue is stated. How an issue is framed can significantly affect people’s perceptions, decisions, and judgments.

Fraternal twins
—
also called dizygotic twins; siblings that share about half of the same genes because they develop from two different zygotes.

Free association
—
a psychoanalytic procedure in which the client is encouraged to to say whatever is on his/her mind without censoring possibly embarrassing or socially unacceptable thoughts or ideas.

Frequency
—
the number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a given amount of time. The wavelength is inversely proportional to the frequency. Frequency or wavelength determines the hue of a light wave and the pitch of a sound.

Frequency distribution
—
an orderly arrangement of scores indicating the frequency of each score or group of scores.

Frequency theory
—
the rate of neural impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone, which enables one to sense its pitch. How low-pitched sounds are heard.

Frontal lobes
—
front region of the cerebral cortex that interprets and controls emotional behaviors, makes decisions, carries out plans; contains motor cortex (just in front of somatosensory cortex) that initiates movements and integrates activities of skeletal muscles; produces speech (Broca’s area).

Fully-functioning
—
Rogers’s term for a greater acceptance of who we are and who we want to be, and taking individual responsibility for our behavior; similar to Maslow’s self-actualization.

Functional fixedness
—
inability to recognize novel uses for a familiar object because we’re fixated on its common use; a hindrance to problem solving.

Functional MRI
(fMRI)—
shows brain activity at higher resolution than the PET scan when changes in oxygen concentration near active neurons alter magnetic qualities.

Functionalism
—
early psychological perspective concerned with how an organism uses its perceptual abilities to adapt to its environment

Fundamental attribution error
—
the tendency to overestimate the significance of dispositional factors and underestimate the significance of situational factors in explaining other people’s behavior.

g
—
According to Spearman, a factor of intelligence that is common to all intellectual tasks; generalized intelligence which fuels special abilities.

Gamma-aminobutyric acid
(GABA)—
a neurotransmitter that inhibits firing of postsynaptic neurons. Huntington’s disease and seizures are associated with malfunctioning GABA systems.

Ganglion cells
—
third layer of neurons in the retina whose axons converge to form the optic nerve.

Gate-control theory
—
idea that pain is experienced only if pain messages can pass through a gate in the spinal cord on their route to the brain. This gate is opened by small nerve fibers that carry pain signals and is closed by neural activity of larger nerve fibers that conduct most other sensory signals, or by information coming from the brain.

Gender
—
is the social definition of being male or female.

Gender consistency
—
understanding that one’s sex won’t change even if he/she acts like the opposite sex.

Gender identity
—
person’s sense of being male or female.

Gender roles
—
sets of expectations that prescribe how males and females should act, think, and feel.

Gender role stereotypes
—
broad categories that reflect our impressions and beliefs about males and females.

Gender schema theory
—
mental set of what society considers appropriate behavior for each of the sexes; assumes that gender becomes a cognitive “lens” through which children experience and acquire their gender identity.

Gender stability
—
understanding that sex identity is stable over time.

Gene
—
each DNA segment of a chromosome that determines a trait.

General adaptation syndrome (GAS
)
—
Selye’s three-stage process (alarm, resistance, and exhaustion) that describes our biological reaction to sustained and unrelenting stress.

Generalization
—
in classical conditioning, CRs elicited by stimuli that resemble the CS used in training. In operant conditioning, the occurrence of responding when a stimulus similar (but not identical) to the discriminative stimulus is present.

Generalized anxiety disorder
—
an anxiety disorder characterized by persistent, pervasive feelings of doom for at least six months not associated with a particular object or situation.

Generalized reinforcer
—
secondary reinforcers that are associated with a wide variety of other reinforcers, like money, which is almost guaranteed to be motivating.

Genital stage
—
the final of Freud’s psychosexual stages, during which the adolescent develops adult sexual desires; pleasure from intercourse and intimacy with opposite sex and/or same sex.

Genotype
—
the genetic make-up of an individual for a trait.

Gerontologist
—
person who specializes in the study of aging.

Gestalt therapy
—
developed by Perls, a humanistic therapy emphasizing the unity of mind and body;
teaches the client to “get in touch” with unconscious bodily sensations and emotions.

Glial cells
—
supportive cells of the nervous system that guide the growth of developing neurons, help provide nutrition for and get rid of wastes of neurons, and form an insulating sheath around neurons that speeds conduction.

Grammar
—
a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others.

Grasping reflex
—
infant closes his/her fingers tightly around an object put in his/her hand.