PSYC 100 · Flashcards

PSYC 100 Final Review: Development, Personality, Social Psychology and Mental Health

31 termsMcGill Universityby @studyboardUpdated October 2026

Study FlashcardsAdd to Studyboard

A study set written by the Studyboard team for the topics in this course's published outline. It isn't official course material from McGill University and doesn't contain real exam questions.

Terms in this set (31)

  1. Ainsworth's Strange Situation: main attachment stylesSecure (upset when caregiver leaves, easily comforted on return), anxious-ambivalent or resistant (very distressed, hard to soothe), and avoidant (little distress, ignores caregiver). A disorganized style was added later.
  2. What did Harlow's infant monkey studies show?Infant monkeys preferred a soft cloth surrogate mother to a wire one that provided milk, especially when frightened. Contact comfort, not just feeding, is central to attachment.
  3. Piaget's four stages of cognitive developmentSensorimotor (0-2 years, object permanence), preoperational (2-7, symbolic thought, egocentrism), concrete operational (7-11, conservation, logic about concrete things), formal operational (11+, abstract reasoning).
  4. Object permanence vs conservationObject permanence: knowing objects still exist when out of sight, developed in the sensorimotor stage. Conservation: knowing quantity stays the same despite changes in shape, mastered in the concrete operational stage.
  5. Vygotsky's zone of proximal developmentThe gap between what a child can do alone and what they can do with guidance from a more skilled person. Support within this zone (scaffolding) drives learning.
  6. Baumrind's parenting stylesAuthoritative (warm, firm, explains rules), authoritarian (strict, low warmth, demands obedience), and permissive (warm, few demands). A neglectful (uninvolved) style was added later. Authoritative is linked to the best outcomes on average.
  7. Erikson's main crisis of adolescenceIdentity vs role confusion: teens explore roles and values to form a coherent sense of who they are.
  8. The Big Five personality traitsOpenness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism (OCEAN). They are relatively stable and partly heritable.
  9. Freud's id, ego and superegoId: unconscious drives seeking immediate pleasure. Superego: internalized moral standards. Ego: the mostly rational part that balances the id's demands, the superego and reality.
  10. Define projection, repression and displacementProjection: attributing your own unacceptable feelings to others. Repression: pushing threatening thoughts out of awareness. Displacement: redirecting impulses toward a safer target.
  11. Person-situation debateMischel argued that behaviour varies across situations more than trait theories predicted. The modern view is interactionist: traits predict average behaviour, while situations strongly shape specific actions.
  12. How does personality tend to change across adulthood?On average, conscientiousness and agreeableness increase and neuroticism decreases from young adulthood to middle age, a pattern often called the maturity principle.
  13. Fundamental attribution errorOverestimating personality (dispositional) causes and underestimating situational causes when explaining other people's behaviour.
  14. Cognitive dissonance (Festinger and Carlsmith)Discomfort from holding conflicting beliefs and actions. Participants paid $1 to say a dull task was fun later rated it as more enjoyable than those paid $20, because they lacked a strong external justification.
  15. What did Asch's line studies show?Many people conformed to a clearly wrong group answer about line lengths on at least some trials. Conformity dropped sharply when even one other person gave the correct answer.
  16. What did Milgram's obedience study find?About 65 percent of participants obeyed an experimenter's orders to deliver what they believed were the strongest shocks to another person. Obedience fell when the authority was less present or the victim was closer.
  17. Bystander effect and diffusion of responsibilityPeople are less likely to help in an emergency when others are present, because each person feels less personal responsibility to act (Darley and Latane).
  18. Social facilitation vs social loafingSocial facilitation: the presence of others improves performance on easy or well-practiced tasks but impairs it on hard ones. Social loafing: people exert less effort in a group when individual contributions are not identifiable.
  19. GroupthinkA pattern in cohesive groups in which the desire for agreement overrides realistic evaluation of alternatives, leading to poor decisions. Dissent is suppressed and risks are underestimated.
  20. Frustration-aggression hypothesisBeing blocked from a goal creates frustration that increases the likelihood of aggression. It was later revised: frustration produces anger, which raises the readiness to aggress, especially with aggressive cues present.
  21. Contact hypothesis for reducing prejudicePrejudice between groups decreases with contact under the right conditions: equal status, shared goals, cooperation and support from authorities.
  22. Learned helplessness (Seligman) and its link to depressionAfter repeated uncontrollable bad events, animals and people stop trying to escape even when escape becomes possible. It became a model for the hopelessness and passivity seen in depression.
  23. Core features of major depressive disorderAt least two weeks of depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure, plus other symptoms such as sleep or appetite changes, fatigue, worthlessness, poor concentration or thoughts of death, causing significant impairment.
  24. Beck's cognitive triadNegative automatic thoughts about the self, the world and the future, which Beck proposed maintain depression.
  25. Diathesis-stress modelPsychological disorders arise from an interaction between a predisposition (diathesis, such as genetic vulnerability) and environmental stressors. Neither alone is usually sufficient.
  26. Bipolar I vs bipolar II disorderBipolar I involves at least one full manic episode. Bipolar II involves at least one hypomanic episode (milder, no severe impairment) and at least one major depressive episode, but no full mania.
  27. Positive vs negative symptoms of schizophreniaPositive symptoms are added experiences: hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech. Negative symptoms are reduced functions: flat affect, lack of motivation, reduced speech and social withdrawal.
  28. Generalized anxiety disorder vs panic disorderGAD: persistent, hard-to-control worry about many things for at least six months. Panic disorder: recurrent unexpected panic attacks plus ongoing worry about future attacks or changes in behaviour to avoid them.
  29. Cognitive-behavioural therapy vs psychodynamic therapyCBT targets current maladaptive thoughts and behaviours through structured techniques like cognitive restructuring and exposure. Psychodynamic therapy explores unconscious conflicts and past relationships to build insight.
  30. How do SSRIs work?Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors block reuptake of serotonin into the presynaptic neuron, increasing serotonin in the synapse. They are widely used for depression and anxiety disorders.
  31. What does heritability mean, and what is a common misconception?Heritability is the proportion of variation in a trait within a population that is due to genetic differences. It does not describe how much of one individual's trait is genetic, and it can change across environments.

More PSYC 100 flashcards

See all PSYC 100 flashcards

Something wrong with this flashcard set? Open it in Studyboard and choose Report.