PSY100 Final Review: Development, Personality, Psychological Disorders and Social Psychology

Terms in this set (34)

1. List Piaget's four stages of cognitive development with approximate ages.Sensorimotor (0 to 2 years), preoperational (2 to 7), concrete operational (7 to 11) and formal operational (11 and up).
2. What is object permanence, and when does it develop?Understanding that objects continue to exist when they are out of sight. Piaget placed it in the sensorimotor stage, developing in the first year or two; later research suggests infants show signs of it earlier.
3. What are conservation and egocentrism, and which stage are they tied to?Conservation: knowing that a quantity stays the same when its shape changes (for example water poured into a taller glass). Preoperational children lack it and are egocentric, meaning they struggle to take another person's perspective.
4. What is Vygotsky's zone of proximal development?The gap between what a child can do alone and what they can do with guidance from a more skilled person. Learning is most effective in this zone, with support (scaffolding) that is gradually withdrawn.
5. What did Harlow's monkey studies show about attachment?Infant monkeys preferred a soft cloth mother over a wire mother that provided milk, especially when frightened. Attachment depends on contact comfort, not just feeding.
6. Describe the attachment styles identified with Ainsworth's Strange Situation.Secure: upset when the caregiver leaves and easily comforted on return. Insecure-avoidant: little distress and avoids the caregiver on return. Insecure-resistant (ambivalent): very distressed and hard to soothe, clinging and angry. A disorganized style was added later.
7. What are Kohlberg's three levels of moral reasoning?Preconventional: avoid punishment and gain rewards. Conventional: follow rules and social approval. Postconventional: reason from abstract principles and rights. The levels are based on the reasoning given, not on the decision itself.
8. What is Erikson's main psychosocial crisis of adolescence?Identity vs role confusion: teenagers try out roles and values to form a coherent sense of who they are. It is one of Erikson's eight lifespan stages, such as trust vs mistrust in infancy.
9. Fluid intelligence vs crystallized intelligenceFluid intelligence is the ability to reason and solve new problems; it peaks in early adulthood and then declines. Crystallized intelligence is accumulated knowledge and vocabulary; it stays stable or grows into later adulthood.
10. What does heritability mean, and what is a common misreading of it?The proportion of variation in a trait within a particular population that is due to genetic differences. It does not describe how much of one person's trait is genetic, and it can change when environments change.
11. How are twin studies used to estimate genetic influence?Identical (monozygotic) twins share about 100% of their genes and fraternal (dizygotic) twins about 50%. If identical twins are much more similar on a trait, the trait has a substantial genetic component.
12. Name the Big Five personality traits.OCEAN: Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Each is a continuous dimension, fairly stable in adulthood and partly heritable.
13. Freud's id, ego and superegoThe id seeks immediate pleasure (the pleasure principle). The superego holds internalized moral standards. The ego mediates between them and reality (the reality principle).
14. Projection vs displacement as defence mechanismsProjection: attributing your own unacceptable feelings to others ("he hates me" when you dislike him). Displacement: redirecting an impulse toward a safer target (yelling at your sibling after a boss criticizes you).
15. What is Carl Rogers' humanistic view of personality?People strive toward self-actualization. Healthy growth needs unconditional positive regard, acceptance that is not tied to meeting conditions; conditions of worth create a gap between the real self and the ideal self.
16. What did Bandura mean by reciprocal determinism and self-efficacy?Reciprocal determinism: behaviour, personal factors (thoughts) and the environment all influence one another. Self-efficacy: belief in your ability to succeed at a task, which predicts effort and persistence.
17. What is the fundamental attribution error?Overestimating personality (dispositional) causes and underestimating situational causes when explaining other people's behaviour. For example, assuming a driver who cuts you off is a jerk rather than rushing to the hospital.
18. What did Festinger and Carlsmith's cognitive dissonance study find?After a boring task, participants paid $1 to tell others it was fun later rated it as more enjoyable than those paid $20. With too little external justification, they changed their attitude to reduce dissonance.
19. What did Asch's line judgment studies show?Many people gave an obviously wrong answer to match a unanimous group: about 75% conformed at least once. Conformity dropped sharply when even one other person disagreed with the group.
20. What did Milgram's obedience studies find?About 65% of participants obeyed an authority figure and gave what they believed were maximum 450-volt shocks to another person. Obedience fell when the experimenter was absent or the victim was closer.
21. What is the bystander effect, and what explains it?People are less likely to help in an emergency when others are present. Diffusion of responsibility (each person feels less personally responsible) and pluralistic ignorance (taking others' inaction as a sign that nothing is wrong) explain it (Darley and Latané).
22. Social facilitation vs social loafingSocial facilitation: the presence of others improves performance on simple or well-learned tasks and impairs it on hard or new ones. Social loafing: people put in less effort when individual contributions in a group are not identifiable.
23. What is groupthink?A cohesive group's drive for agreement overrides realistic evaluation of alternatives, leading to poor decisions. Contributing factors include strong directive leaders, isolation and self-censorship of doubts.
24. What is the mere exposure effect?Repeated exposure to a stimulus (a face, a song, a brand) tends to increase how much we like it, even without conscious recognition.
25. What criteria help define a psychological disorder?Patterns of thought, emotion or behaviour that are deviant (unusual in context), distressing to the person and dysfunctional (they interfere with daily life). Diagnosis uses systems such as the DSM-5.
26. What are the core features of major depressive disorder?At least 2 weeks of depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure (anhedonia), plus other symptoms such as sleep or appetite change, fatigue, worthlessness, poor concentration or suicidal thoughts, causing significant impairment.
27. Bipolar I vs bipolar II disorderBipolar I requires at least one full manic episode (elevated mood, little need for sleep, grandiosity, risky behaviour). Bipolar II involves hypomanic episodes, which are milder and less impairing, plus major depressive episodes.
28. Positive vs negative symptoms of schizophreniaPositive symptoms are excesses added to normal experience: hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech. Negative symptoms are deficits: flat affect, reduced speech, lack of motivation and social withdrawal.
29. What is the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia?Excess dopamine activity, especially in certain pathways, contributes to positive symptoms. It is supported by antipsychotics that block D2 receptors and by stimulants that can trigger psychosis. It is incomplete, since glutamate and brain structure are also involved.
30. Generalized anxiety disorder vs panic disorder vs specific phobiaGAD: persistent, excessive worry about many things for at least 6 months. Panic disorder: recurrent unexpected panic attacks plus fear of future attacks. Specific phobia: intense, irrational fear of a particular object or situation, leading to avoidance.
31. Obsessions vs compulsions in OCDObsessions are intrusive, unwanted thoughts or urges that cause anxiety (for example fear of germs). Compulsions are repetitive behaviours or mental acts performed to reduce that anxiety (for example repeated handwashing).
32. How does cognitive behavioural therapy differ from psychodynamic therapy?CBT is structured and present-focused: it identifies and challenges distorted thoughts and changes behaviour, for example through exposure. Psychodynamic therapy explores unconscious conflicts and past experiences to build insight.
33. What is the diathesis-stress model?Psychological disorders arise from an interaction between a predisposition or vulnerability (the diathesis, such as genetic risk) and environmental stressors. Neither alone is usually enough.
34. What are the three stages of Selye's general adaptation syndrome?Alarm (the initial fight-or-flight reaction), resistance (sustained physiological effort to cope) and exhaustion (resources become depleted, increasing vulnerability to illness).