Understanding Psychology: Key Concepts and Definitions
Key Concepts in Psychology
Psychology: The science that studies the behavior and mental processes of human beings.
- Behavior: The observable actions of human beings.
- Cognitive: Mental processes; the process by which a person acquires and organizes information and knowledge.
- Affective: The experience and expression of emotion.
- Adjustment: The everyday process of dealing with the events in our life.
- Reactive: How we react or respond to events.
- Proactive: Involves changing our behavior or manipulating the environment in order to help us reach our goal.
- Healthy: Effective behavior, adaptive behavior, or functional behavior.
- Outer: Dependent, go with the flow, conventional in decision-making, rely on good luck, let others decide for them.
- Inner: Independent, self-directing, autonomous, feel that the outcomes of situations are based on their actions, see life as a series of choices.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: A belief about oneself that leads one to act in ways which make the initially false belief come true.
- Characteristics of Effective Goals: Realistic, short-term, focused on the present.
- Paradigm/Frame of Reference: One’s unique way of looking at the world and ourselves.
- Paradigm Shift: Changing one’s perspective, attitude, or approach.
- Low Mood: Feeling low/down, lacking energy and creativity, pessimistic outlook, problems appear impossible, emotion-driven.
- High Mood: Feeling energetic, optimistic outlook, realistic/practical view, heightened creativity, cognitive-driven.
- Selective Perception: Seeing only what you want to see.
- Functional Fixedness: Seeing things as only having one function (reduces creativity and problem-solving ability).
- Sensation: The process by which our sense receptors receive information from the environment and send it to the brain for processing (this process is similar for most of us).
- Perception: The adding of meaning to the information provided by our senses (this is a very unique and highly individual process).
- Attributions: An explanation for why someone else does something.
Attribution and Self-Esteem
- Low Self-Esteem: Characterized by internal, stable, and global attributions.
- Good Self-Esteem: Characterized by external, unstable, and specific attributions.
- Internal Attribution: A behavior is due to personal factors like feelings, traits, or abilities.
- External Attribution: Behavior is due to situational factors.
- Stable Attribution: Attributing outcomes to unchanging factors (e.g., always having bad luck).
- Unstable Attribution: Attributing outcomes to temporary factors (e.g., not having enough time to study).
- Global Attribution: Generalizing a negative outcome to multiple areas (e.g., being hopeless at a sport).
- Fundamental Attribution Error: The tendency to place greater emphasis on internal factors as a cause for other people’s behavior.
- Self-Serving Bias: Attributing our successes to personal characteristics and our failures to things beyond our control.
- Inferiority Complex: Low self-esteem characterized by internal, global, and stable attributions.
Parenting Styles
- Authoritarian: Emphasizes authority through punishments. Displays little warmth, restricts child autonomy, uses plenty of directives. (Children can be fearful, withdrawn, moody, and quiet, exhibiting hostile, aggressive, or malevolent attitudes.)
- Permissive: Frees children from any control, does not set limits or boundaries, accepts child’s impulses without trying to correct misbehavior. Includes permissive/indulgent and indifferent styles. (Children may have low self-esteem and inappropriate social behavior, leading to peer rejection.)
- Authoritative: Firm but fair, controls child’s behavior in a rational, sensitive manner, encourages discussion with the child, increases autonomy. (Children tend to have positive self-esteem, are confident, and controlled.)