General Psychology Final Exam Study Guide
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1. Definition of Psychology: Scientific study of the human mind and its functions,
especially those affecting behavior in a given context.
2. Subfields of Psychology: Clinical Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Forensic Psychology
Industrial-Organizational Psychology
Personality Psychology
Social Psychology
School Psychology
3. Clinical Psychology: Studies, assesses, and treats people with psychological
disorders.
4. Developmental Psychology: Studies physical, cognitive, and social change
throughout life span.
5. Forensic Psychology: Concerned with intersections between psychological
practice and research and the judicial system.
6. Industrial-Organizational Psychology: Application of psychological concepts
and methods to optimizing human behavior in workplaces.
7. Personality Psychology: Study of an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting.
8. Social Psychology: Studies the causes and consequences of interpersonal
behavior.
9. School Psychology: Counseling children in elementary and secondary
schools who have academic or emotional problems.
10. 4 Parts of the Brain: Cerebrum: Area of the brain responsible for all voluntary
activities of the body.
Cerebellum: A large structure of the hindbrain that controls fine motor skills.
Limbic System: A group of neural structures at the base of the cerebral hemispheres that is associated with emotion and motivation.
Brain Stem: Connection to spinal cord. Filters information flow between peripheral
nervous system and the rest of the brain.
11. Goals of Psychology: Describe
Explain
Predict
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Change
Review
12. Bottom Up vs Top Down Processing: Top-Down: Processing of stimulus in
which information from the general context is used to help organize the stimulus.
We use knowledge and memory to "fill in the details."
Bottom-Up: Processing of a stimulus in which information forms a physical stimulus
rather than from a general context. Stimulus information arrives from the sensory
receptors. The combination of these simple features allow us to recognize more
complex patterns.
13. Operant Conditioning: Model of learning based on the simple principle that
behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences. Enables therapists to
use behavior modification, in which desired behaviors are rewarded and undesired
behaviors are either unrewarded or punished.
14. Perspectives of Psychology: Biological
Behaviorism
Cognitive
Humanistic
Psychodynamic
Sociocultural
Evolutionary
15. Critical Thinking: Objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to
form a judgment.
16. Sympathetic vs. Parasympathetic Nervous System: Sympathetic: Involved
in the stimulation of activities that prepare the body for action, such as increasing
the heart rate, increasing the release of sugar from the liver into the blood, and
other generally considered as fight-or-flight responses.
Parasympathetic: Activates tranquil functions, such as stimulating the secretion of
saliva or digestive enzymes into the stomach.
17. Sleep Disorder: Problem with sleeping, including trouble falling or staying
asleep, falling asleep at the wrong times, too much sleep, or abnormal behaviors
during sleep.
18. Insomnia: Sleep disorder characterized by difficulty falling or staying asleep,
waking too early, or by sleep that is light, restless, or of poor quality.
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19. Classical Conditioning: A type of learning in which one learns to link two or
more stimuli and anticipate events.
20. Observational Learning: Learning to act by seeing it done.
21. Stages of Memory: Encoding: As information comes into our memory it needs
to be changed into a form that can be understood and stored.
Storage: Where the information is stored, how long the memory lasts, how much
can be stored at any time, and what kind of information is held. The way we store
information affects the way we retrieve it.
Retrieval: Getting information out of storage. If we can't remember something, it
may be because we are unable to retrieve it.
22. Intelligence: Mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience,
solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.
23. Reliability and Validity: Reliability: Measurement accuracy.
Validity: Quality of being logically or factually sound.
24. Characteristics of Motivation: Activation
Persistence
Intensity
25. Three Styles of Parenting: Authoritarian Parenting: Children follow strict rules
established by parents. Failure to follow rules results in punishment. No explanation
for these rules other than "because I said so." Parents have high demands, but are
not responsive to their children.
Authoritative Parenting: Parents democratically establish rules and guidelines that
their children are expected to follow. Parents are responsive and willing to listen
to questions. When children fail to meet expectations, parents are nurturing and
forgiving rather than punishing.
Permissive Parenting: Parents have few demands to make. Rarely discipline their
children because of low expectations of maturity and self-control. Sometimes
referred to as indulgent parents.
26. Gender: Biologically and socially influenced characteristics by which people
define male and female.
27. Gender-Role Stereotypes: Oversimplified, preconceived beliefs about the
gender roles of men and women.
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28. Perceptual Set: Mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.
29. Action Potential in a Neuron: Neural membrane opens to allow positively
charged ions inside the cell and negatively charged ions out. This causes rapid
increase in the positive charge of the nerve fiber. When the charge reaches +40
mv, the impulse is spread down the nerve fiber. This electrical impulse is carried
down the nerve through a series of action potentials.
30. Ways of Retrieving Information from Long-Term Memory: Recall: Being
able to access the information without being cued. Example: Answering a question
on a fill-in-the-blank test.
Recollection: Reconstructing memory, utilizing logical structures, partial memories,
narratives or clues. Example: Writing an answer on an essay exam often involves
remembering bits on information and restructuring the remaining information
based on these partial memories.
Recognition: Identifying information after experiencing it again. Example: Taking a
multiple-choice quiz requires that you recognize the correct answer out of a group
of available answers.
Relearning: Relearning information that has been previously learned. Often makes
it easier to remember and retrieve information in the future and can improve the
strength of memories.
31. Types of Attachment: Healthy Attachment
Unhealthy Attachment
32. Teratogen: Agent or factor that causes malformation of an embryo.
33. Psychoactive Drugs: Chemical substances that affect the brain functioning,
causing changes in behavior, mood and consciousness. Includes depressants,
Stimulants, and Psychedelics.
34. Caffeine: Crystalline compound found in tea and coffee plants that acts as a
stimulant of the central nervous system.
35. Types of Conflict: Approach-Approach: People attracted about equally to
goals but carrying out one goal results in abandoning the other. Example: Buying
a house means giving up your apartment.
Avoidance-Avoidance: Person is simultaneously repelled by two goals, objects, or
actions but still obliged to select one. Example: Young boy must choose to either
clean his room or do dishes.
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Single Approach-Avoidance: When a person is attracted to and repelled by one
goal, we have a single approach. These conflicts are difficult to resolve and
generate much anxiety. Example: You want to go to college but know it's very
expensive.
Double Approach-Avoidance: Two goals, each with good and bad points. Like
single approach-avoidance conflicts, these are anxiety-provoking and hard to
resolve. Example: I want to date both Amy and Beth but don't know which one to
pursue.
36. Positive Incentive Value: Anticipated pleasure involved in the performance
of a particular behavior, such as eating a particular food or drinking a particular
beverage.
37. Conformity: Behavior in accordance with socially accepted conventions or
standards.
38. Milgram's Study: Shocking obedience experiments.
39. Basic Components of Emotion: Physiological Arousal (heart pounding)
Expressive Behaviors (quickened pace)
Consciously Experienced Thoughts and Feelings (sense of fear and joy)
40. Stereotypes: Widely held but oversimplified image or idea of a particular type
of person or thing.
41. General Adaptation Syndrome: Three staged response to stress.
Alarm: First stage. Divided into two phases.
-Shock Phase results in Hypoglycemia—The Stressor Effect.
-Antishock Phase: Stressor identified and body starts to respond while in a state
of alarm. Fight-or-flight response.
Resistance: Increases secretion of glucocorticoids to intensify the systemic response.
Recovery or Exhaustion:
-Recovery: Body's compensation mechanisms have successfully overcome the
stressor effect.
-Exhaustion: Resources are depleted and the body is unable to maintain normal
function.
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42. Socioeconomic Status (SES) and Stress: Lower Socioeconomic Status =
More Stress
Higher Socioeconomic Status = Less Stress
43. Phobia Treatments: Beta blockers: Works by blocking stimulating effects of
adrenaline on your body, such as increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure,
pounding heart, and shaking voice and limbs that are caused by anxiety.
Antidepressants: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) act on the chemical serotonin, a neurotransmitter in your brain to influence mood.
Sedatives: Benzodiazepines help you relax by reducing the amount of anxiety you
feel.
Desensitization or Exposure Therapy: Focuses on changing your response to the
object or situation that you fear. Gradual, repeated exposure to the cause of the
phobia may help learn to conquer the anxiety.
44. Personality Disorders: Psychological disorders characterized by inflexible
and enduring behavior patterns that impair social functioning.
45. Mood Disorder: Class of disorders marked by emotional disturbances of
varied kinds that may spill over to disrupt physical, perceptual, social, and thought
processes.
46. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): Anxiety disorder characterized by
unwanted repetitive thoughts (obsession) and actions (compulsions).
47. Depression: Mental disorder characterized by sadness, hopelessness, pessimism, loss of interest in life, reduced emotional wellbeing, and abnormalities in
sleep, appetite, and energy level.
48. What Decreases Depression?: Removing cause of stress.
Not making life decisions.
Talking to a neutral party.
Doing things you enjoy.
Exercising and being active.
49. Trait Theorist Viewpoint: Small number of source traits that represent a universal way of describing individual personality differences.
50. Purpose of Personality Inventories: Identify particular characteristics and
explain individual differences in behavior.
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51. Neo-Freudian Personality Perspective vs. Freud's Perspective on Personality Development: Neo-Freudian Personality Perspective: Accept Freud's basic
ideas of unconscious, id, ego, superego, shaping of personality in childhood,
defense mechanisms. Does not include anything with psychosexual stages.
Freud's Perspective on Personality Development: Personality develops in stages
that are related to specific erogenous zones. Failure to successfully complete these
stages would lead to personality problems in adulthood.
52. Personality: Pattern of relatively permanent traits, dispositions, or characteristics that give some consistency to people's behavior.
53. Perspectives of Personality: Psychoanalytic Perspective: Importance of early childhood experiences and the unconscious mind.
Humanistic Perspective: Psychological growth, free will, and personal awareness.
Positive outlook on human nature and how people achieve their individual potential.
Trait Perspective: Identifying, describing, and measuring specific traits that make
up human personality.
Social Cognitive: Observational learning, self-efficacy, situational influences and
cognitive processes.
54. Levels of Awareness (Freud): id: Present at birth. Unconscious and includes
instinctive and primitive behaviors. Source of all psychic energy, making it the
primary component of personality.
Ego: Responsible for dealing with reality. Develops from the id and ensures that its
impulses can be expressed in a manner acceptable in the real world. Functions in
the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious mind.
Superego: Holds all of our internalized moral standards and ideals that we acquire
from both parents and society; our sense of right and wrong. Provides guidelines
for making judgments. Begins to emerge around age five.
55. Free Association: Method of exploring the unconscious in which the person
relaxes and says whatever comes to mind.
56. Regression (Defense Mechanism): When confronted by stressful events,
people abandon coping strategies and revert to patterns of behavior used earlier
in development.
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57. Body Dysmorphic Disorder: Preoccupation with non-existent physical flaws
that interfere with one's functioning.
58. Projective Personality Tests: Test where people offer responses to ambiguous scenes, words, or images to help uncover unconscious desires that are hidden
from conscious awareness. From psychoanalytic school of thought.
59. Stress: State of mental or emotional strain or suspense.
60. Fundamental Attribution Error: Tendency for observers, when analyzing another's behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate
the impact of personal disposition.
61. Diffusion of Responsibility: Bystander's sense of responsibility to help decreases as the number of witnesses increases.
62. Social Loafing: Decrease in effort and productivity that occurs when an individual works in a group instead of alone.
63. Health Psychology: Provides psychology's contribution to behavioral medicine.
64. Biopschosocial Perspective: Incorporates biological, psychological, and social-cultural levels of analysis.
65. Daily Hassles: Small, stressful events that happen each day.
66. Type A vs. Type B Personality: Type A: Competitive.
Type B: Enjoys achievement but don't become stressed when they fail.
67. Clinical Psychologist: Specific training in psychoanalysis that treats any kind
of emotional disorder or pathology.
68. Client-Centered Therapy (Rogers): Therapeutic environment that is conformable, non-judgmental and empathetic. Clients lead discussion and no one tries
to steer the client in a particular direction. Unconditional positive regard, shows
complete acceptance and support for their clients.
69. External Locus of Control: Perception that chance or outside forces beyond
one's personal control determine one's fate.
70. Goal of Psychoanalysis: Make patient aware of repressed, unconscious conflict that are actually causing a persons problems.
71. Goal of Cognitive Therapy: Change how people think and their faulty perception by replacing them with adaptable and useful alternatives.
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72. Prescribing Medicine: Psychiatrists can prescribe medicine, but psychologists cannot.
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