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Perspectives in Psychology

Modern psychology explains behavior through several complementary lenses rather than one master theory.
  • Biological perspective: brain, genes, hormones, and neurotransmitters drive behavior
  • Behavioral perspective: behavior is learned through conditioning and environmental consequences
  • Cognitive perspective: focuses on mental processes like memory, perception, and problem-solving
  • Psychodynamic perspective (Freud): unconscious drives and early childhood conflicts shape behavior
  • Humanistic perspective (Rogers, Maslow): emphasizes free will, self-actualization, and personal growth
  • Sociocultural/evolutionary perspectives: behavior shaped by culture, social context, and natural selection

History of Psychology

Psychology emerged as a science in the late 1800s and branched into competing schools of thought.
  • Wilhelm Wundt founded the first psychology lab (1879, Leipzig), studying structure of consciousness
  • Structuralism (Titchener) used introspection to analyze the mind's basic elements
  • Functionalism (William James) asked how mental processes help organisms adapt
  • Gestalt psychology (Wertheimer, Koffka, Kohler) argued the whole perceptual experience differs from the sum of its parts
  • Behaviorism (Watson, later Skinner) rejected the study of mind, focusing only on observable behavior
  • The cognitive revolution (1950s-60s) brought mental processes back into scientific study

Research Methods

Psychologists choose research designs based on whether they want to describe, correlate, or establish cause and effect.
  • Descriptive methods: case studies, naturalistic observation, and surveys describe behavior without manipulation
  • Correlational research measures the relationship between two variables but cannot prove causation
  • Experiments manipulate an independent variable and measure a dependent variable to test cause and effect
  • Random assignment distributes participants to conditions by chance to control for confounding variables
  • Random sampling ensures every member of a population has an equal chance of being chosen, improving generalizability
  • Operational definitions specify exactly how a variable will be measured or manipulated

Experimental Design & Bias Control

Well-designed experiments guard against bias so that results reflect the true effect of the manipulated variable.
  • Independent variable is manipulated by the researcher; dependent variable is measured
  • Experimental group receives treatment; control group does not, providing a baseline for comparison
  • Placebo effect: participants improve simply because they expect to, not because of the actual treatment
  • Single-blind design hides condition assignment from participants; double-blind hides it from participants and researchers
  • Confounding variables are outside factors that could explain results instead of the IV
  • Demand characteristics are cues that reveal a study's purpose and bias participant behavior

Statistics in Psychology

Psychologists use descriptive and inferential statistics to summarize data and judge whether findings are meaningful.
  • Mean, median, and mode are measures of central tendency describing a 'typical' score
  • Standard deviation and range are measures of variability describing how spread out scores are
  • A normal curve is symmetrical, with most scores clustering around the mean
  • Statistical significance (commonly p < .05) indicates a result is unlikely to be due to chance
  • Correlation coefficients range from -1.00 to +1.00, indicating direction and strength of a relationship
  • Effect size indicates the strength/magnitude of a difference, separate from statistical significance

Ethics in Psychological Research

Ethical guidelines protect the rights and welfare of both human and animal research participants.
  • Informed consent: participants must be told enough about a study to decide voluntarily whether to join
  • Debriefing: after the study, researchers explain its true purpose and any deception used
  • Confidentiality protects participants' identities and data
  • Protection from harm: researchers must minimize physical and psychological risk
  • Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) review research proposals to ensure ethical standards are met
  • The APA sets special standards for animal research, requiring justification and humane treatment
Correlation shows a relationship, not causation — a lurking third variable may be responsible, not X causing Y.
Case studies provide rich detail about one individual, not generalizable data about a whole population.
A large sample size does not fix a biased (non-random) sample — representativeness matters more than size.
Statistical significance means a result is unlikely due to chance, not that the effect is large or practically important.

Neurons & Neural Communication

Neurons are the basic building blocks of the nervous system, communicating via electrical and chemical signals.
  • Dendrites receive signals; the axon carries the impulse away from the cell body, often insulated by myelin
  • An action potential is an all-or-none electrical impulse triggered once a neuron's threshold is reached
  • At the synapse, neurotransmitters are released from the presynaptic neuron and bind to receptors on the postsynaptic neuron
  • Reuptake is the process by which the sending neuron reabsorbs excess neurotransmitter from the synapse
  • Key neurotransmitters: dopamine (reward, movement), serotonin (mood), acetylcholine (muscle action, memory), GABA (inhibitory, calming), glutamate (excitatory)
  • Agonists mimic or enhance a neurotransmitter's effect; antagonists block or reduce it

The Nervous System

The nervous system is divided into the central and peripheral systems, each with specialized subdivisions.
  • The central nervous system (CNS) consists of the brain and spinal cord
  • The peripheral nervous system (PNS) connects the CNS to the rest of the body
  • The somatic nervous system controls voluntary skeletal muscle movements
  • The autonomic nervous system controls involuntary functions like heart rate and digestion
  • The sympathetic nervous system arouses the body for 'fight or flight' in stressful situations
  • The parasympathetic nervous system calms the body down, promoting 'rest and digest' functions

The Brain's Structures

Different brain structures are specialized for different functions, from basic survival to complex thought.
  • The brainstem (medulla, pons) controls automatic survival functions like heartbeat and breathing
  • The cerebellum coordinates voluntary movement, balance, and procedural learning
  • The thalamus acts as the brain's sensory relay station, directing input to appropriate cortical areas
  • The limbic system (hippocampus, amygdala, hypothalamus) governs emotion, memory, and drives
  • The amygdala processes fear and aggression; the hippocampus is crucial for forming new explicit memories
  • The hypothalamus regulates hunger, thirst, body temperature, and links to the endocrine system via the pituitary gland

The Cerebral Cortex

The cerebral cortex is the brain's outer layer responsible for higher-order thinking, divided into four lobes.
  • The frontal lobe handles planning, decision-making, personality, and voluntary motor control (motor cortex)
  • The parietal lobe processes touch and spatial sense (somatosensory cortex)
  • The occipital lobe processes visual information
  • The temporal lobe processes auditory information and is involved in language comprehension (Wernicke's area)
  • Broca's area (frontal lobe) controls language production; damage causes difficulty speaking fluently
  • Wernicke's area (temporal lobe) governs language comprehension; damage causes fluent but nonsensical speech

Brain Plasticity & Research Techniques

The brain can reorganize itself, and scientists use various tools to study its structure and function.
  • Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change and reorganize, especially after damage or with learning
  • An EEG measures electrical activity of the brain via scalp electrodes, showing overall patterns like sleep stages
  • An fMRI measures blood flow and oxygen use to show which brain areas are active during tasks
  • A CT or MRI scan shows brain structure/anatomy but not activity
  • Lesioning studies (destroying tissue) and split-brain research (severing the corpus callosum) reveal localized brain functions
  • The corpus callosum connects the two hemispheres, allowing them to communicate and share information

Genetics, Evolution & the Endocrine System

Behavior is shaped by heredity, evolutionary pressures, and hormones circulating through the bloodstream.
  • Behavior genetics studies how heredity and environment influence individual differences
  • Twin and adoption studies help separate genetic from environmental influences on traits
  • Evolutionary psychology explains behaviors as products of natural selection that increased survival and reproduction
  • The endocrine system communicates via hormones released into the bloodstream, acting more slowly than neurons
  • The pituitary gland, the 'master gland,' regulates other glands under hypothalamus control
  • Adrenal glands release adrenaline/cortisol during stress; the thyroid regulates metabolism
Broca's area controls speech production, not comprehension — that's Wernicke's area, not the reverse.
Agonists enhance a neurotransmitter's effect; antagonists block it — don't reverse these terms.
The action potential is all-or-none — it doesn't get 'stronger' with a more intense stimulus, only more frequent.
The endocrine system uses hormones through the bloodstream (slow, long-lasting) — it does not directly fire electrical impulses like neurons.

Basic Sensory Concepts

Sensation is the process of detecting stimuli, while perception is how the brain organizes and interprets that raw information.
  • Sensation is bottom-up processing: raw sensory data flows from receptors up to the brain
  • Perception is top-down processing: the brain uses experience, expectations, and context to interpret sensations
  • Absolute threshold is the minimum stimulus intensity needed to detect a stimulus 50% of the time
  • Difference threshold (just noticeable difference) is the smallest detectable difference between two stimuli
  • Weber's Law states that the JND is a constant proportion of the original stimulus, not a fixed amount
  • Sensory adaptation is diminished sensitivity to an unchanging stimulus after prolonged exposure

Vision

The visual system converts light waves into neural signals that the brain interprets as color, form, and depth.
  • Light enters through the cornea and pupil, is focused by the lens, and projects onto the retina
  • Rods detect black-and-white/low-light vision; cones detect color and fine detail in bright light
  • The retina's bipolar and ganglion cells relay signals via the optic nerve to the brain
  • Trichromatic (Young-Helmholtz) theory: three cone types (red, green, blue) detect color
  • Opponent-process theory explains afterimages via paired opposing colors (red-green, blue-yellow, black-white)
  • Depth perception uses binocular cues (retinal disparity, convergence) and monocular cues (linear perspective, relative size, interposition)

Hearing (Audition)

Hearing converts sound waves into neural signals that let us perceive pitch, loudness, and location.
  • Sound waves travel through the outer ear canal, vibrating the eardrum, then the ossicles in the middle ear
  • The cochlea in the inner ear contains the basilar membrane and hair cells that transduce sound into neural signals
  • Place theory explains high-pitch perception: different locations on the basilar membrane respond to different frequencies
  • Frequency theory explains low-pitch perception: the whole basilar membrane vibrates at the same rate as the sound wave
  • Conduction hearing loss results from damage to the mechanical system (eardrum/ossicles); sensorineural loss results from damage to hair cells or the auditory nerve
  • Sound localization relies on comparing the timing and intensity of sound reaching each ear

Other Senses

Touch, taste, smell, and body-position senses provide crucial information about the body and environment.
  • Touch encompasses pressure, warmth, cold, and pain, each with distinct receptors in the skin
  • Gate-control theory explains pain: the spinal cord has a 'gate' that can block or allow pain signals to reach the brain
  • Taste (gustation) is a chemical sense with receptors for sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami
  • Smell (olfaction) is a chemical sense that sends signals directly to the brain's limbic system, closely linking scent and emotion/memory
  • Kinesthesis provides information about the position and movement of body parts
  • The vestibular sense, based in the inner ear (semicircular canals), monitors balance and head position

Perceptual Organization

Gestalt psychologists showed that the brain actively organizes sensory input into meaningful wholes.
  • Figure-ground: the tendency to organize a visual scene into an object (figure) distinct from its surroundings (ground)
  • Grouping principles include proximity (near objects grouped together), similarity (alike objects grouped together), and closure (filling in gaps to perceive a whole)
  • Perceptual constancy allows us to perceive objects as unchanging (in size, shape, color) despite changes in the retinal image
  • Monocular depth cues include interposition, relative size, linear perspective, and texture gradient
  • Perceptual set is a mental predisposition to perceive something in a certain way based on expectations, context, or schemas
  • Selective attention focuses conscious awareness on a particular stimulus, illustrated by the cocktail party effect

Attention & Perceptual Phenomena

Attention filters the vast amount of sensory information into what we consciously notice and process.
  • Selective attention allows focus on one stimulus while filtering out others
  • Inattentional blindness is failing to notice a fully visible object because attention is engaged elsewhere
  • Change blindness is failing to notice a change in the environment when attention is disrupted
  • The cocktail party effect describes selectively attending to one voice among many while still noticing your name elsewhere
  • Signal detection theory considers how much a person's sensitivity and decision criteria affect detecting a faint stimulus amid noise
  • Subliminal stimuli are below the absolute threshold and cannot be reliably or strongly influential in changing behavior
Sensation and perception are not the same thing — sensation detects, perception interprets; don't use them interchangeably.
Subliminal messages presented below threshold have not been shown to reliably or powerfully change behavior — that's a common myth, not fact.
Weber's Law is about a constant proportion (percentage), not a constant fixed amount, needed for a noticeable difference.
Inattentional blindness (missing something because you weren't looking) is different from change blindness (missing a change during a disruption).

Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning, discovered by Ivan Pavlov, is a form of learning in which a neutral stimulus comes to trigger a response through association.
  • Unconditioned stimulus (UCS) naturally triggers an unconditioned response (UCR) without learning
  • A neutral stimulus (NS) is repeatedly paired with the UCS until it becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS)
  • The conditioned response (CR) is the learned response to the previously neutral stimulus
  • Acquisition is the initial stage of learning the association between the NS and UCS
  • Extinction occurs when the CS is repeatedly presented without the UCS, weakening the CR
  • Spontaneous recovery is the reappearance of a weakened CR after a rest period following extinction
  • Stimulus generalization is responding similarly to stimuli resembling the CS; discrimination is learning to distinguish between similar stimuli

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning, developed by B.F. Skinner, explains how consequences shape voluntary behavior.
  • Reinforcement increases the likelihood of a behavior recurring; punishment decreases it
  • Positive reinforcement adds a desirable stimulus after a behavior; negative reinforcement removes an aversive stimulus
  • Positive punishment adds an aversive stimulus; negative punishment removes a desirable stimulus
  • A Skinner box is used to study operant conditioning with animals like rats and pigeons
  • Shaping involves reinforcing successive approximations toward a desired target behavior
  • Primary reinforcers satisfy biological needs directly (food, water); secondary reinforcers gain value through association (money, praise)

Schedules of Reinforcement

The pattern and timing of reinforcement affects how quickly a behavior is learned and how resistant it is to extinction.
  • Continuous reinforcement rewards every correct response, leading to fast learning but fast extinction
  • Partial (intermittent) reinforcement schedules produce slower learning but greater resistance to extinction
  • Fixed-ratio schedules reinforce after a set number of responses, producing high, steady response rates with a post-reinforcement pause
  • Variable-ratio schedules reinforce after an unpredictable number of responses, producing high, steady rates resistant to extinction (e.g., gambling)
  • Fixed-interval schedules reinforce the first response after a set time period, producing a scalloped response pattern
  • Variable-interval schedules reinforce the first response after unpredictable time periods, producing slow, steady response rates

Cognitive Influences on Learning

Learning is not always purely mechanical; cognitive factors like expectations, insight, and observation also shape behavior.
  • Cognitive maps are mental representations of the layout of one's environment, demonstrated by Tolman's rat maze studies
  • Latent learning is learning that occurs without reinforcement and is not demonstrated until there is incentive to do so
  • Insight learning is the sudden realization of a problem's solution, as shown in Kohler's studies with chimpanzees
  • The Garcia effect demonstrates biological preparedness: taste aversion can form after a single pairing, even with a long delay
  • Learned helplessness occurs when repeated exposure to uncontrollable negative events leads to passive acceptance of future negative events
  • Overjustification effect: offering excessive external rewards can undermine a person's intrinsic motivation for a task

Observational Learning

Albert Bandura demonstrated that much learning occurs by watching and imitating others, without direct reinforcement.
  • Observational learning occurs when an organism learns by watching a model perform a behavior
  • Bandura's Bobo doll experiment showed children imitate aggressive behavior after observing an adult model
  • Mirror neurons are thought to underlie the neural basis of observational learning and empathy
  • Vicarious reinforcement/punishment occurs when observing a model being rewarded or punished influences imitation
  • For observational learning to occur, Bandura proposed four processes: attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation
  • Media violence research draws on observational learning theory to explain increases in aggressive behavior after exposure

Biological Constraints & Real-World Applications

Learning is shaped by an organism's biology, and conditioning principles have wide practical use.
  • Biological preparedness means organisms are predisposed to learn certain associations more easily than others
  • Instinctive drift is the tendency for learned behavior to revert to instinctive patterns over time
  • Aversion therapy applies classical conditioning to pair an unwanted behavior with an unpleasant stimulus
  • Token economies apply operant conditioning, using secondary reinforcers exchangeable for rewards to shape behavior
  • Applied behavior analysis (ABA) uses operant principles like shaping and reinforcement, notably in treating autism spectrum disorder
  • Little Albert (Watson & Rayner) demonstrated that classical conditioning can create learned fears (phobias) in humans
Negative reinforcement strengthens a behavior by removing something unpleasant — it is not the same as punishment, which weakens behavior.
In classical conditioning, the CS never causes the UCR directly before conditioning — the response to the CS is only the CR, learned through association.
Extinction is not 'forgetting' — the association can return via spontaneous recovery, showing it was only suppressed, not erased.
Continuous reinforcement leads to fast extinction, while partial reinforcement leads to greater resistance to extinction — don't reverse these.

Memory Models

Psychologists model memory as a multi-stage system that encodes, stores, and retrieves information.
  • The Atkinson-Shiffrin model proposes three stores: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory
  • Sensory memory holds vast amounts of information for a fraction of a second (iconic for visual, echoic for auditory)
  • Short-term (working) memory holds about 7±2 items for roughly 20-30 seconds without rehearsal
  • Baddeley's working memory model expands short-term memory into active components: central executive, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and episodic buffer
  • Long-term memory has a vast, relatively permanent capacity for storing information
  • Encoding, storage, and retrieval are the three basic processes required for memory to function

Encoding Strategies

How information is encoded strongly affects how well it is later remembered.
  • Maintenance rehearsal (rote repetition) is less effective than elaborative rehearsal (linking to existing knowledge)
  • The levels-of-processing model shows deeper, semantic processing produces better recall than shallow, structural processing
  • Chunking groups information into meaningful units, effectively increasing short-term memory capacity
  • Mnemonic devices (acronyms, method of loci, peg-word systems) improve encoding through organization and imagery
  • The self-reference effect shows information related to oneself is remembered better
  • The spacing effect shows distributed practice over time produces better long-term retention than massed practice (cramming)

Long-Term Memory Types

Long-term memory is not a single system, but is divided into distinct types with different brain bases.
  • Explicit (declarative) memory involves conscious recollection of facts and experiences
  • Semantic memory stores general facts and knowledge about the world
  • Episodic memory stores personally experienced events tied to a specific time and place
  • Implicit (nondeclarative) memory involves unconscious skills and conditioned associations
  • Procedural memory, a type of implicit memory, stores learned motor and cognitive skills (e.g., riding a bike)
  • The hippocampus is crucial for forming explicit memories; the cerebellum and basal ganglia are involved in procedural/implicit memory

Retrieval & Forgetting

Retrieval success depends on retrieval cues, while forgetting can occur at any stage of memory processing.
  • Retrieval cues, especially those matching the encoding context (encoding specificity), improve recall
  • State-dependent memory: recall improves when one's physical/emotional state matches that during encoding
  • The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon illustrates a temporary retrieval failure despite a stored memory
  • Proactive interference occurs when old information disrupts recall of new information
  • Retroactive interference occurs when new information disrupts recall of old information
  • The serial position effect describes better recall for items at the beginning (primacy) and end (recency) of a list

Memory Construction & Distortion

Memory is reconstructive, not a perfect recording, making it vulnerable to errors and distortion.
  • Elizabeth Loftus's research on the misinformation effect shows that post-event information can distort existing memories
  • Source amnesia occurs when a person recalls information but cannot remember where or how they learned it
  • Flashbulb memories are vivid, emotionally-charged memories of significant events, though they are not perfectly accurate
  • Reconsolidation refers to memories becoming malleable again each time they are retrieved and re-stored
  • False memories can be implanted through suggestive questioning, imagination, and repeated exposure to misinformation
  • Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable due to the reconstructive nature of memory

Thinking, Language & Problem Solving

Cognition involves how we form concepts, solve problems, make decisions, and use language.
  • A concept is a mental grouping of similar objects, events, or people; prototypes are the best example of a category
  • An algorithm is a step-by-step procedure guaranteed to eventually solve a problem, though it can be slow
  • A heuristic is a mental shortcut that is faster but more error-prone than an algorithm
  • The availability heuristic estimates likelihood based on how easily examples come to mind
  • The representativeness heuristic judges likelihood based on how well something matches a prototype, sometimes ignoring base rates
  • Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for and favor information that confirms existing beliefs
  • Functional fixedness and mental set are obstacles to problem solving that involve rigidly viewing objects/problems in familiar ways
Short-term/working memory has a limited capacity of about 7±2 items — it is not unlimited like long-term memory.
Recognition is typically easier than recall — being asked to recognize an answer among choices is not the same task as free recall.
Flashbulb memories feel vivid and certain, but research shows they are not perfectly accurate — vividness does not equal accuracy.
The availability heuristic and representativeness heuristic are different shortcuts — one is about ease of recall, the other about resemblance to a prototype.

Theories of Motivation

Several major theories explain why organisms are driven to act, from biological needs to psychological growth.
  • Instinct theory proposes behavior is driven by innate, unlearned biological patterns
  • Drive-reduction theory states physiological needs create an aroused drive state that motivates behavior to restore homeostasis
  • Arousal theory proposes people are motivated to maintain an optimal level of arousal, not just reduce drives
  • The Yerkes-Dodson law states performance is best at moderate arousal, with best performance at lower arousal for difficult tasks and higher arousal for simple tasks
  • Maslow's hierarchy of needs arranges motives from basic physiological needs up to safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization
  • Self-determination theory emphasizes autonomy, competence, and relatedness as key needs for intrinsic motivation

Hunger & Other Biological Motives

Hunger illustrates how biological, psychological, and social factors interact to drive motivated behavior.
  • The hypothalamus regulates hunger: the lateral hypothalamus stimulates eating, while the ventromedial hypothalamus signals satiety
  • Ghrelin, secreted by the stomach, increases hunger; leptin, secreted by fat cells, signals satiety
  • Set point theory suggests the body works to maintain a particular weight through metabolism and hunger adjustments
  • Cultural and environmental factors, such as food availability and social norms, strongly influence eating behavior
  • Anorexia nervosa involves severe food restriction and an intense fear of weight gain despite being underweight
  • Bulimia nervosa involves cycles of binge eating followed by compensatory behaviors like purging

Emotion Theories

Psychologists debate the order in which physiological arousal, cognitive appraisal, and subjective feeling occur during an emotional experience.
  • The James-Lange theory proposes that physiological arousal comes first, and the emotion follows from interpreting that arousal (we feel afraid because we tremble)
  • The Cannon-Bard theory proposes that the physiological response and the subjective emotional experience occur simultaneously and independently
  • The Schachter-Singer two-factor theory proposes emotion requires both physiological arousal and a cognitive label/interpretation of that arousal
  • Lazarus's cognitive appraisal theory emphasizes that a cognitive appraisal of a situation must occur, sometimes without conscious awareness, before an emotional response
  • The facial feedback hypothesis suggests that facial expressions can influence and even amplify the emotions we feel
  • Universal facial expressions (Ekman) suggest basic emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise are expressed and recognized similarly across cultures

Stress & Health

Stress is the body's response to challenging or threatening events, with both physiological and psychological effects.
  • Stressors can be catastrophic events, significant life changes, or daily hassles
  • Hans Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) describes three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion
  • The fight-or-flight response is triggered by the sympathetic nervous system and adrenal glands during acute stress
  • The tend-and-befriend response describes a stress response, more common in women, involving seeking social support
  • Chronic stress is linked to weakened immune function and increased risk of cardiovascular disease
  • Problem-focused coping addresses the stressor directly; emotion-focused coping manages the emotional response to the stressor

Developmental Psychology: Physical & Cognitive

Development follows predictable physical and cognitive patterns from infancy through adulthood.
  • Piaget's stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor (object permanence), preoperational (egocentrism, lack of conservation), concrete operational (conservation, logical thought about concrete objects), formal operational (abstract, hypothetical reasoning)
  • Object permanence, developing in the sensorimotor stage, is understanding that objects continue to exist even when out of sight
  • Conservation, mastered in the concrete operational stage, is understanding that quantity remains the same despite changes in shape or appearance
  • Vygotsky's sociocultural theory emphasizes the zone of proximal development, the range of tasks a child can do with guidance but not yet alone
  • Teratogens (like alcohol, drugs) are agents that can cause birth defects during prenatal development
  • The maturation of the brain, especially the frontal lobe (not fully developed until the mid-20s), affects impulse control and judgment in adolescence

Developmental Psychology: Social & Moral

Social and emotional development is shaped by early attachment, identity formation, and moral reasoning.
  • Erikson's psychosocial stages describe eight crises across the lifespan, such as trust vs. mistrust (infancy) and identity vs. role confusion (adolescence)
  • Harlow's monkey studies showed that contact comfort, not just feeding, is crucial for attachment
  • Ainsworth's Strange Situation identified attachment styles: secure, avoidant, and anxious/ambivalent (resistant)
  • Kohlberg's stages of moral development progress from preconventional (avoiding punishment) to conventional (social norms) to postconventional (abstract ethical principles)
  • Authoritative parenting (high warmth, high structure) is generally associated with the most positive child outcomes, compared to authoritarian, permissive, or neglectful styles
  • Temperament, an infant's innate disposition (e.g., easy, difficult, slow-to-warm-up), interacts with parenting to shape personality
James-Lange theory says the physical response causes the emotion, not the reverse — you feel fear because you're trembling, not the other way around.
Object permanence develops in the sensorimotor stage; conservation develops later, in the concrete operational stage — don't confuse the two milestones.
Authoritative parenting (high warmth AND high structure) is not the same as authoritarian parenting (high structure, low warmth) — these terms sound alike but describe very different styles.
The General Adaptation Syndrome's stages are alarm, resistance, then exhaustion — exhaustion happens last, after the body's resources are depleted.

Psychodynamic Theory

Sigmund Freud's psychodynamic theory proposes that personality is shaped by unconscious conflicts and childhood experiences.
  • The id operates on the pleasure principle, seeking immediate gratification of basic drives
  • The ego operates on the reality principle, mediating between the id's demands and the real world
  • The superego represents internalized moral standards and ideals, creating feelings of guilt or pride
  • Freud proposed psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital); fixation at a stage can shape adult personality
  • Defense mechanisms (repression, denial, projection, displacement, rationalization, reaction formation) protect the ego from anxiety
  • Neo-Freudians like Jung, Adler, and Horney retained the idea of unconscious influence but placed less emphasis on sexual drives

Humanistic Theory

Humanistic psychologists emphasize personal growth, free will, and the drive toward self-actualization.
  • Carl Rogers proposed that unconditional positive regard fosters a healthy self-concept and personal growth
  • Rogers's concept of congruence describes alignment between one's ideal self and actual self
  • Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs culminates in self-actualization, realizing one's full potential
  • Humanistic theory emphasizes subjective experience and the inherent goodness/growth potential of people
  • Client-centered therapy, developed by Rogers, uses genuineness, empathy, and unconditional positive regard
  • Critics argue humanistic theory is difficult to test scientifically and may be overly optimistic about human nature

Trait Theory

Trait theorists describe personality using stable dimensions along which individuals differ, rather than dynamic processes.
  • The Big Five (OCEAN) traits are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism
  • Trait theory assumes personality traits are relatively stable across situations and over time
  • The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator sorts people into personality types, but has weaker scientific reliability/validity than the Big Five
  • Trait theorists like Allport, Cattell, and Eysenck sought to identify the fundamental dimensions of personality
  • The person-situation debate questions how much behavior is due to stable traits versus the specific situation
  • Traits are typically assessed through self-report inventories, which can be affected by social desirability bias

Social-Cognitive Theory

Albert Bandura's social-cognitive perspective emphasizes the interaction between behavior, cognition, and environment.
  • Reciprocal determinism describes how behavior, personal/cognitive factors, and environment all influence each other
  • Self-efficacy is one's belief in their own ability to succeed at a specific task or in specific situations
  • Locus of control refers to whether a person believes outcomes are controlled internally (by their own effort) or externally (by fate/luck)
  • Observational learning is central to how social-cognitive theorists explain personality development
  • Personal control and optimism are linked to better health, achievement, and well-being outcomes
  • Situational and cognitive factors are given more weight than unconscious drives in explaining personality

Personality Assessment

Psychologists use a variety of tools to measure and study personality, each with distinct strengths and weaknesses.
  • Projective tests (Rorschach inkblot test, Thematic Apperception Test) ask people to interpret ambiguous stimuli, aiming to reveal unconscious content
  • Projective tests have relatively low reliability and validity compared to objective tests
  • Self-report inventories (like the MMPI) ask direct questions and are scored objectively, offering higher reliability
  • The MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) was originally developed to identify psychological disorders
  • Reliability refers to the consistency of a measure; validity refers to whether it measures what it claims to measure
  • Social desirability bias can distort self-report measures, as people may answer to appear more favorable

Intelligence & Testing

Intelligence testing has a long, sometimes controversial history connected closely to personality assessment methods.
  • Alfred Binet developed the first intelligence test to identify French schoolchildren needing extra academic help
  • IQ (intelligence quotient) was originally calculated as mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100
  • The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) provides both verbal and performance IQ scores and is widely used today
  • Spearman's g factor proposes a single general intelligence underlying performance across cognitive tasks
  • Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences and Sternberg's triarchic theory challenge the idea of a single general intelligence
  • Standardization, reliability, and validity are essential requirements for a good intelligence test
The id seeks immediate gratification (pleasure principle); the ego deals with reality — don't mix up which structure does what.
Reliability (consistency) and validity (measuring what it claims to) are not the same thing — a test can be reliable without being valid.
Self-actualization is the top of Maslow's hierarchy, not a Freudian concept — don't attribute humanistic ideas to psychodynamic theory.
Internal locus of control means believing YOU control outcomes; external locus of control means believing outside forces do — the names describe where control is believed to reside, not what type of person one is.

Defining & Classifying Disorders

Psychological disorders are diagnosed using standardized criteria that identify dysfunction, distress, and deviation from norms.
  • A psychological disorder involves a pattern of behavior/thought causing significant distress or impaired functioning
  • The DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is the standard classification system used by clinicians in the U.S.
  • The medical model views psychological disorders as illnesses with identifiable symptoms and possible cures/treatment
  • The biopsychosocial model explains disorders as arising from the interaction of biological, psychological, and social-cultural factors
  • The diathesis-stress model proposes that disorders develop when a biological predisposition (diathesis) interacts with environmental stress
  • Labeling people with disorders can be helpful for treatment but risks stigma, as shown by Rosenhan's 'On Being Sane in Insane Places' study

Anxiety, OCD & Trauma-Related Disorders

This group of disorders involves distressing, persistent anxiety, intrusive thoughts, or reactions to trauma.
  • Generalized anxiety disorder involves chronic, excessive worry not tied to any specific object or situation
  • A specific phobia is a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object or situation that leads to avoidance
  • Panic disorder involves recurrent, unexpected panic attacks along with persistent fear of future attacks
  • Social anxiety disorder involves intense fear of social situations due to fear of judgment or embarrassment
  • Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) involves unwanted, intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviors performed to reduce anxiety (compulsions)
  • Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) develops after exposure to trauma, involving flashbacks, hypervigilance, and avoidance of trauma reminders

Mood Disorders

Mood disorders involve significant and prolonged disturbances in emotional state.
  • Major depressive disorder involves persistent sadness, loss of interest/pleasure, and other symptoms lasting at least two weeks
  • Persistent depressive disorder (dysthymia) involves a milder but more chronic, long-term depressed mood
  • Bipolar I disorder involves at least one full manic episode, often alternating with depressive episodes
  • A manic episode involves abnormally elevated mood, high energy, and impulsive/risky behavior
  • The negative cognitive triad (Beck) in depression involves negative views of the self, the world, and the future
  • Learned helplessness and rumination are cognitive factors linked to the development and maintenance of depression

Schizophrenia & Other Psychotic Disorders

Schizophrenia is a severe disorder marked by a break from reality, involving disturbances in thought, perception, and behavior.
  • Positive symptoms are additions to normal experience: hallucinations (false sensory perceptions) and delusions (false beliefs)
  • Negative symptoms are the absence of normal functioning: flat affect, social withdrawal, and reduced speech (alogia)
  • Disorganized thinking/speech and grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior are also core features of schizophrenia
  • The dopamine hypothesis proposes that excess dopamine activity contributes to schizophrenia's positive symptoms
  • Chronic (process) schizophrenia develops slowly and has a poorer prognosis; acute (reactive) schizophrenia develops suddenly, often in response to stress, with a better prognosis
  • Twin and adoption studies indicate a strong genetic component to schizophrenia, interacting with environmental/prenatal factors

Personality & Dissociative Disorders

These disorders involve enduring, inflexible patterns of behavior or disruptions in identity, memory, and consciousness.
  • Personality disorders involve inflexible, enduring patterns of behavior and inner experience that deviate from cultural expectations
  • Antisocial personality disorder involves a persistent disregard for and violation of the rights of others, often with a lack of remorse
  • Borderline personality disorder involves instability in relationships, self-image, and emotions, along with impulsivity
  • Dissociative identity disorder (DID) involves the presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states within one person
  • Dissociative amnesia involves an inability to recall important personal information, usually following trauma or stress
  • Dissociative disorders remain controversial in psychology regarding their prevalence and causes

Treatment & Social Psychology

Treatment approaches vary widely, and social psychology explains how the presence and behavior of others shape our own actions.
  • Psychodynamic and humanistic (client-centered) therapies focus on insight, unconscious conflict, or personal growth
  • Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) helps clients identify and change distorted thoughts and maladaptive behaviors
  • Biomedical therapies include antidepressants, antipsychotics, and anti-anxiety medications that alter brain chemistry
  • Solomon Asch's conformity studies showed people often conform to group judgments even when they know the group is wrong
  • Stanley Milgram's obedience studies showed a majority of participants would deliver what they believed were dangerous shocks when ordered by an authority figure
  • The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to overemphasize personality-based explanations while underemphasizing situational factors when judging others' behavior
  • The bystander effect describes how individuals are less likely to help a victim when other people are present
Antisocial personality disorder is not the same as being merely shy or introverted — it involves a persistent disregard for others' rights, often with manipulation or lack of remorse.
Bipolar disorder involves manic episodes, not simply mood swings from good days to bad days — mania is a distinct, extreme, and impairing state.
Hallucinations (false perceptions) and delusions (false beliefs) are both positive symptoms of schizophrenia — 'positive' here means added experiences, not 'good.'
The bystander effect predicts LESS helping as more people are present, due to diffusion of responsibility — more witnesses does not mean more help.
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Unit 1: History & Research Methods

Wilhelm Wundt
Founded the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany in 1879, marking psychology's birth as a formal science.
Structuralism
Early school of psychology (Titchener) that used introspection to break consciousness into its basic elements.
Functionalism
William James's approach focusing on how mental processes help organisms adapt and survive.
Independent Variable (IV)
The factor a researcher manipulates in an experiment to observe its effect.
Dependent Variable (DV)
The outcome variable that is measured in an experiment, expected to change due to the IV.
Random Assignment
Assigning participants to experimental conditions by chance, controlling for confounding variables.
Operational Definition
A precise, measurable description of how a variable is defined and measured in a study.
Correlation Coefficient
A statistic from -1.00 to +1.00 indicating the strength and direction of a relationship between variables.
Double-Blind Procedure
A study design where neither participants nor researchers know who received the treatment, reducing bias.
Informed Consent
An ethical requirement that participants agree to take part in research after learning what it involves.

Unit 2: Biological Bases

Neuron
The basic building block of the nervous system; transmits electrical and chemical signals.
Synapse
The tiny gap between neurons where neurotransmitters are released to relay a signal.
Action Potential
An all-or-none electrical impulse that travels down a neuron's axon when threshold is reached.
Dopamine
A neurotransmitter involved in reward, motivation, and movement; linked to Parkinson's and schizophrenia.
Amygdala
A limbic system structure central to processing fear and aggressive emotional responses.
Hippocampus
A limbic structure essential for forming new explicit (conscious) long-term memories.
Broca's Area
A frontal lobe region controlling speech production; damage causes halting, effortful speech.
Wernicke's Area
A temporal lobe region governing language comprehension; damage causes fluent, nonsensical speech.
Corpus Callosum
The band of neural fibers connecting the brain's left and right hemispheres.
Endocrine System
A network of glands that releases hormones into the bloodstream to influence body and behavior.

Unit 3: Sensation & Perception

Sensation
The bottom-up process by which sensory receptors detect physical stimulus energy.
Perception
The top-down process of organizing and interpreting sensory information into meaningful experience.
Absolute Threshold
The minimum stimulus intensity needed to detect a stimulus 50% of the time.
Weber's Law
The principle that a just noticeable difference is a constant proportion of the original stimulus.
Trichromatic Theory
The theory that three types of cones (red, green, blue) allow us to perceive color.
Opponent-Process Theory
The theory that color vision relies on paired opposing colors, explaining afterimages.
Place Theory
Theory of hearing stating different locations on the basilar membrane detect different (mainly high) pitches.
Gate-Control Theory
The theory that the spinal cord contains a neurological gate that can block or allow pain signals to the brain.
Gestalt Principles
Rules like proximity, similarity, and closure describing how the brain organizes sensory input into wholes.
Inattentional Blindness
Failing to notice a fully visible object because attention is focused elsewhere.

Unit 4: Learning

Classical Conditioning
Learning process in which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with an unconditioned stimulus to elicit a conditioned response.
Operant Conditioning
Learning process in which behavior is strengthened by reinforcement or weakened by punishment.
Extinction
The weakening of a learned response when the CS is no longer paired with the UCS, or a behavior is no longer reinforced.
Negative Reinforcement
Strengthening a behavior by removing an unpleasant/aversive stimulus after the behavior occurs.
Variable-Ratio Schedule
A reinforcement schedule delivering reward after an unpredictable number of responses; produces high, extinction-resistant rates.
Shaping
Gradually guiding behavior toward a target by reinforcing successive approximations.
Latent Learning
Learning that occurs without reinforcement and is not demonstrated until there is an incentive to do so.
Observational Learning
Learning by watching and imitating a model's behavior, as shown in Bandura's Bobo doll study.
Learned Helplessness
Passive resignation resulting from repeated exposure to uncontrollable negative events.
Biological Preparedness
The idea that organisms are evolutionarily predisposed to learn certain associations, like taste aversions, more easily.

Unit 5: Cognition & Memory

Working Memory
An active system for temporarily holding and manipulating information, including a central executive and other components (Baddeley).
Encoding
The process of getting information into the memory system.
Chunking
Grouping information into larger, meaningful units to increase memory capacity.
Levels of Processing
The idea that deeper, semantic processing of information leads to better long-term retention than shallow processing.
Episodic Memory
Explicit memory for personally experienced events tied to a specific time and place.
Procedural Memory
Implicit memory for learned skills and habits, such as riding a bicycle.
Misinformation Effect
Elizabeth Loftus's finding that exposure to misleading information after an event can distort memory of that event.
Serial Position Effect
The tendency to recall the first (primacy) and last (recency) items in a list better than middle items.
Availability Heuristic
Judging the likelihood of an event based on how easily examples come to mind.
Confirmation Bias
The tendency to search for and favor information that confirms one's preexisting beliefs.

Unit 6: Motivation, Emotion & Development

Drive-Reduction Theory
The theory that physiological needs create an aroused drive state motivating behavior to restore homeostasis.
Yerkes-Dodson Law
The principle that performance is optimal at a moderate level of arousal, varying with task difficulty.
James-Lange Theory
Theory of emotion proposing that physiological arousal occurs first, and the emotion follows from interpreting that arousal.
Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory
Theory proposing emotion results from both physiological arousal and a cognitive label applied to that arousal.
General Adaptation Syndrome
Hans Selye's model of the body's stress response in three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.
Object Permanence
The understanding, developed in Piaget's sensorimotor stage, that objects continue to exist even when out of sight.
Conservation
The understanding, mastered in Piaget's concrete operational stage, that quantity stays the same despite changes in shape or appearance.
Zone of Proximal Development
Vygotsky's concept for the range of tasks a child can perform with guidance but not yet independently.
Strange Situation
Ainsworth's research procedure used to identify infant attachment styles: secure, avoidant, and anxious/ambivalent.
Authoritative Parenting
A parenting style combining high warmth with high structure/expectations, linked to the best child outcomes.

Unit 7: Personality & Testing

Id
The unconscious personality structure that seeks immediate gratification, operating on the pleasure principle.
Ego
The largely conscious personality structure that mediates between the id and reality, operating on the reality principle.
Superego
The internalized moral component of personality that produces feelings of guilt or pride.
Defense Mechanisms
Unconscious ego strategies, like repression and projection, that reduce anxiety from unacceptable thoughts or impulses.
Unconditional Positive Regard
Carl Rogers's concept of accepting and valuing a person regardless of their behavior, fostering healthy self-concept.
Big Five Traits
The OCEAN model: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
Reciprocal Determinism
Bandura's concept that behavior, personal/cognitive factors, and environment continuously influence one another.
Self-Efficacy
One's belief in their own capability to succeed at a specific task or challenge.
Projective Test
A personality assessment, like the Rorschach inkblot test, using ambiguous stimuli to reveal unconscious content.
Reliability vs. Validity
Reliability is a test's consistency; validity is whether a test measures what it claims to measure.

Unit 8: Disorders & Social Psych

DSM-5
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the standard classification system for psychological disorders.
Diathesis-Stress Model
The theory that disorders develop when a biological predisposition interacts with environmental stress.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
A disorder involving intrusive unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviors performed to reduce anxiety (compulsions).
Major Depressive Disorder
A mood disorder involving persistent sadness and loss of interest or pleasure for at least two weeks.
Bipolar I Disorder
A mood disorder involving at least one full manic episode, often alternating with depressive episodes.
Positive Symptoms (Schizophrenia)
Added abnormal experiences in schizophrenia, such as hallucinations and delusions.
Negative Symptoms (Schizophrenia)
Diminished or absent normal functioning in schizophrenia, such as flat affect and social withdrawal.
Antisocial Personality Disorder
A personality disorder marked by persistent disregard for and violation of others' rights, often without remorse.
Milgram's Obedience Study
Classic research showing a majority of participants would obey an authority figure and deliver what they believed were dangerous shocks.
Bystander Effect
The finding that individuals are less likely to help a victim when other bystanders are present, due to diffusion of responsibility.
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Unit 1: History & Research Methods

Perspectives in Psychology
Modern psychology explains behavior through several complementary lenses rather than one master theory.
History of Psychology
Psychology emerged as a science in the late 1800s and branched into competing schools of thought.
Research Methods
Psychologists choose research designs based on whether they want to describe, correlate, or establish cause and effect.
Experimental Design & Bias Control
Well-designed experiments guard against bias so that results reflect the true effect of the manipulated variable.
Statistics in Psychology
Psychologists use descriptive and inferential statistics to summarize data and judge whether findings are meaningful.
Ethics in Psychological Research
Ethical guidelines protect the rights and welfare of both human and animal research participants.
Key fact
Wilhelm Wundt's 1879 Leipzig lab marks the formal founding of psychology as a science.
Key fact
Only true experiments with random assignment can establish cause-and-effect relationships.
Key fact
Correlation does not equal causation — a third variable may explain an observed relationship.
Key fact
Informed consent, debriefing, and IRB approval are the cornerstones of ethical human research.

Unit 2: Biological Bases

Neurons & Neural Communication
Neurons are the basic building blocks of the nervous system, communicating via electrical and chemical signals.
The Nervous System
The nervous system is divided into the central and peripheral systems, each with specialized subdivisions.
The Brain's Structures
Different brain structures are specialized for different functions, from basic survival to complex thought.
The Cerebral Cortex
The cerebral cortex is the brain's outer layer responsible for higher-order thinking, divided into four lobes.
Brain Plasticity & Research Techniques
The brain can reorganize itself, and scientists use various tools to study its structure and function.
Genetics, Evolution & the Endocrine System
Behavior is shaped by heredity, evolutionary pressures, and hormones circulating through the bloodstream.
Key fact
Neural signaling is electrical within a neuron and chemical (neurotransmitters) between neurons.
Key fact
The brain's four cortical lobes each specialize: frontal (planning/motor), parietal (touch/space), occipital (vision), temporal (hearing/language).
Key fact
The sympathetic nervous system arouses the body for action; the parasympathetic calms it back down.
Key fact
fMRI shows brain activity (function); MRI/CT shows brain structure (anatomy) only.

Unit 3: Sensation & Perception

Basic Sensory Concepts
Sensation is the process of detecting stimuli, while perception is how the brain organizes and interprets that raw information.
Vision
The visual system converts light waves into neural signals that the brain interprets as color, form, and depth.
Hearing (Audition)
Hearing converts sound waves into neural signals that let us perceive pitch, loudness, and location.
Other Senses
Touch, taste, smell, and body-position senses provide crucial information about the body and environment.
Perceptual Organization
Gestalt psychologists showed that the brain actively organizes sensory input into meaningful wholes.
Attention & Perceptual Phenomena
Attention filters the vast amount of sensory information into what we consciously notice and process.
Key fact
Sensation is the raw detection of stimuli (bottom-up); perception is interpreting/organizing that data (top-down).
Key fact
Rods handle black-and-white/night vision; cones handle color and detail in bright light.
Key fact
Place theory explains high-pitched sound perception; frequency theory explains low-pitched sound perception.
Key fact
Gestalt grouping principles (proximity, similarity, closure) show the brain actively organizes sensory input into wholes.

Unit 4: Learning

Classical Conditioning
Classical conditioning, discovered by Ivan Pavlov, is a form of learning in which a neutral stimulus comes to trigger a response through association.
Operant Conditioning
Operant conditioning, developed by B.F. Skinner, explains how consequences shape voluntary behavior.
Schedules of Reinforcement
The pattern and timing of reinforcement affects how quickly a behavior is learned and how resistant it is to extinction.
Cognitive Influences on Learning
Learning is not always purely mechanical; cognitive factors like expectations, insight, and observation also shape behavior.
Observational Learning
Albert Bandura demonstrated that much learning occurs by watching and imitating others, without direct reinforcement.
Biological Constraints & Real-World Applications
Learning is shaped by an organism's biology, and conditioning principles have wide practical use.
Key fact
In classical conditioning, the organism learns an association between two stimuli (passive/involuntary response).
Key fact
In operant conditioning, the organism learns an association between a behavior and its consequence (active/voluntary behavior).
Key fact
Variable-ratio schedules produce the highest, most extinction-resistant response rates (e.g., slot machines).
Key fact
Observational learning (Bandura) shows behavior can be learned by watching a model, without direct reinforcement of the observer.

Unit 5: Cognition & Memory

Memory Models
Psychologists model memory as a multi-stage system that encodes, stores, and retrieves information.
Encoding Strategies
How information is encoded strongly affects how well it is later remembered.
Long-Term Memory Types
Long-term memory is not a single system, but is divided into distinct types with different brain bases.
Retrieval & Forgetting
Retrieval success depends on retrieval cues, while forgetting can occur at any stage of memory processing.
Memory Construction & Distortion
Memory is reconstructive, not a perfect recording, making it vulnerable to errors and distortion.
Thinking, Language & Problem Solving
Cognition involves how we form concepts, solve problems, make decisions, and use language.
Key fact
The Atkinson-Shiffrin model divides memory into sensory, short-term, and long-term stores.
Key fact
Deeper, meaningful (semantic) processing produces better long-term recall than shallow processing.
Key fact
The misinformation effect (Loftus) shows memory can be distorted by information encountered after an event.
Key fact
Heuristics are fast mental shortcuts that can produce systematic errors, unlike slower but reliable algorithms.

Unit 6: Motivation, Emotion & Development

Theories of Motivation
Several major theories explain why organisms are driven to act, from biological needs to psychological growth.
Hunger & Other Biological Motives
Hunger illustrates how biological, psychological, and social factors interact to drive motivated behavior.
Emotion Theories
Psychologists debate the order in which physiological arousal, cognitive appraisal, and subjective feeling occur during an emotional experience.
Stress & Health
Stress is the body's response to challenging or threatening events, with both physiological and psychological effects.
Developmental Psychology: Physical & Cognitive
Development follows predictable physical and cognitive patterns from infancy through adulthood.
Developmental Psychology: Social & Moral
Social and emotional development is shaped by early attachment, identity formation, and moral reasoning.
Key fact
The Yerkes-Dodson law shows optimal performance occurs at moderate arousal, varying with task difficulty.
Key fact
James-Lange says arousal precedes emotion; Cannon-Bard says they occur simultaneously; Schachter-Singer says both arousal and cognitive labeling are needed.
Key fact
Piaget's four stages (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational) describe qualitatively different ways of thinking at each age.
Key fact
Harlow's studies showed contact comfort, not just food, is essential to infant attachment.

Unit 7: Personality & Testing

Psychodynamic Theory
Sigmund Freud's psychodynamic theory proposes that personality is shaped by unconscious conflicts and childhood experiences.
Humanistic Theory
Humanistic psychologists emphasize personal growth, free will, and the drive toward self-actualization.
Trait Theory
Trait theorists describe personality using stable dimensions along which individuals differ, rather than dynamic processes.
Social-Cognitive Theory
Albert Bandura's social-cognitive perspective emphasizes the interaction between behavior, cognition, and environment.
Personality Assessment
Psychologists use a variety of tools to measure and study personality, each with distinct strengths and weaknesses.
Intelligence & Testing
Intelligence testing has a long, sometimes controversial history connected closely to personality assessment methods.
Key fact
Freud's structure of personality includes the id (pleasure principle), ego (reality principle), and superego (moral standards).
Key fact
The Big Five traits (OCEAN) are the most scientifically supported dimensional model of personality today.
Key fact
Bandura's reciprocal determinism holds that behavior, cognition, and environment continuously influence one another.
Key fact
Projective tests (like the Rorschach) have lower reliability/validity than objective self-report inventories (like the MMPI).

Unit 8: Disorders & Social Psych

Defining & Classifying Disorders
Psychological disorders are diagnosed using standardized criteria that identify dysfunction, distress, and deviation from norms.
Anxiety, OCD & Trauma-Related Disorders
This group of disorders involves distressing, persistent anxiety, intrusive thoughts, or reactions to trauma.
Mood Disorders
Mood disorders involve significant and prolonged disturbances in emotional state.
Schizophrenia & Other Psychotic Disorders
Schizophrenia is a severe disorder marked by a break from reality, involving disturbances in thought, perception, and behavior.
Personality & Dissociative Disorders
These disorders involve enduring, inflexible patterns of behavior or disruptions in identity, memory, and consciousness.
Treatment & Social Psychology
Treatment approaches vary widely, and social psychology explains how the presence and behavior of others shape our own actions.
Key fact
The DSM-5 provides the standardized diagnostic criteria clinicians use to classify psychological disorders.
Key fact
Schizophrenia's positive symptoms (hallucinations, delusions) are additions to experience; negative symptoms (flat affect, withdrawal) are absences of normal functioning.
Key fact
Milgram's obedience studies showed most participants obeyed authority to administer what they believed were dangerous shocks.
Key fact
The diathesis-stress model explains disorders as arising from a biological predisposition combined with environmental stress.
Common mistakes for each unit — read the mistake, then make sure you know why it's wrong.

Unit 1: History & Research Methods

Watch out
Correlation shows a relationship, not causation — a lurking third variable may be responsible, not X causing Y.
Watch out
Case studies provide rich detail about one individual, not generalizable data about a whole population.
Watch out
A large sample size does not fix a biased (non-random) sample — representativeness matters more than size.
Watch out
Statistical significance means a result is unlikely due to chance, not that the effect is large or practically important.

Unit 2: Biological Bases

Watch out
Broca's area controls speech production, not comprehension — that's Wernicke's area, not the reverse.
Watch out
Agonists enhance a neurotransmitter's effect; antagonists block it — don't reverse these terms.
Watch out
The action potential is all-or-none — it doesn't get 'stronger' with a more intense stimulus, only more frequent.
Watch out
The endocrine system uses hormones through the bloodstream (slow, long-lasting) — it does not directly fire electrical impulses like neurons.

Unit 3: Sensation & Perception

Watch out
Sensation and perception are not the same thing — sensation detects, perception interprets; don't use them interchangeably.
Watch out
Subliminal messages presented below threshold have not been shown to reliably or powerfully change behavior — that's a common myth, not fact.
Watch out
Weber's Law is about a constant proportion (percentage), not a constant fixed amount, needed for a noticeable difference.
Watch out
Inattentional blindness (missing something because you weren't looking) is different from change blindness (missing a change during a disruption).

Unit 4: Learning

Watch out
Negative reinforcement strengthens a behavior by removing something unpleasant — it is not the same as punishment, which weakens behavior.
Watch out
In classical conditioning, the CS never causes the UCR directly before conditioning — the response to the CS is only the CR, learned through association.
Watch out
Extinction is not 'forgetting' — the association can return via spontaneous recovery, showing it was only suppressed, not erased.
Watch out
Continuous reinforcement leads to fast extinction, while partial reinforcement leads to greater resistance to extinction — don't reverse these.

Unit 5: Cognition & Memory

Watch out
Short-term/working memory has a limited capacity of about 7±2 items — it is not unlimited like long-term memory.
Watch out
Recognition is typically easier than recall — being asked to recognize an answer among choices is not the same task as free recall.
Watch out
Flashbulb memories feel vivid and certain, but research shows they are not perfectly accurate — vividness does not equal accuracy.
Watch out
The availability heuristic and representativeness heuristic are different shortcuts — one is about ease of recall, the other about resemblance to a prototype.

Unit 6: Motivation, Emotion & Development

Watch out
James-Lange theory says the physical response causes the emotion, not the reverse — you feel fear because you're trembling, not the other way around.
Watch out
Object permanence develops in the sensorimotor stage; conservation develops later, in the concrete operational stage — don't confuse the two milestones.
Watch out
Authoritative parenting (high warmth AND high structure) is not the same as authoritarian parenting (high structure, low warmth) — these terms sound alike but describe very different styles.
Watch out
The General Adaptation Syndrome's stages are alarm, resistance, then exhaustion — exhaustion happens last, after the body's resources are depleted.

Unit 7: Personality & Testing

Watch out
The id seeks immediate gratification (pleasure principle); the ego deals with reality — don't mix up which structure does what.
Watch out
Reliability (consistency) and validity (measuring what it claims to) are not the same thing — a test can be reliable without being valid.
Watch out
Self-actualization is the top of Maslow's hierarchy, not a Freudian concept — don't attribute humanistic ideas to psychodynamic theory.
Watch out
Internal locus of control means believing YOU control outcomes; external locus of control means believing outside forces do — the names describe where control is believed to reside, not what type of person one is.

Unit 8: Disorders & Social Psych

Watch out
Antisocial personality disorder is not the same as being merely shy or introverted — it involves a persistent disregard for others' rights, often with manipulation or lack of remorse.
Watch out
Bipolar disorder involves manic episodes, not simply mood swings from good days to bad days — mania is a distinct, extreme, and impairing state.
Watch out
Hallucinations (false perceptions) and delusions (false beliefs) are both positive symptoms of schizophrenia — 'positive' here means added experiences, not 'good.'
Watch out
The bystander effect predicts LESS helping as more people are present, due to diffusion of responsibility — more witnesses does not mean more help.