Psychology and Life Chapter 1
Terms
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- scientific study of the behavior of individuals and their mental processes
- psychology
- consists of a set of orderly steps used to analyze and solve problems
- scientific method
- means by which organisms adjust to their environment
- behavoir
- reports of observation about the behavior of organisms and the conditions under which the behavior occurs
- behavioral data
- from the broadest, most global level down to the most minute, specific level
- levels of analysis
- prediction based on an understanding of the ways events relate to one another, and it suggests what mechanisms link those events to certain predictors
- scientific prediction
- prediction that specifies the conditions under which behaviors will change
- casual prediction
- one simple principal of modern psychology
- ideas matter
- study of the structure of mind and behavior
- structuralism
- 3 fronts of structuralism
- reductionistic, elemental, and mentalistic
- organized wholes
- gestalls
- minds with purpose
- functionalism
- bevior is driven or motivated by powerful inner forces
- psychodynamic perspective
- seek to understand how particular environmental stimuli control particular kinds of behavior
- behaviorist perspective
- people are neither driven by the powerful, intictive forces postulated by the Freudians nor manipulated by their environments
- humanistic perspective
- human thought and all the processes of knowing-- attending, thinking, remembering, and understanding
- cognitive perspective
- guides psychologists who search for the causes of behavior in the functioning of genes, the brain, the nervous system, and the endocrine system
- biological perspective
- attempts to understand the brain processes underlying behaviors such as sensation, learning, and emotion
- behavioral neuroscience
- seeks to connect contemporary psychology to a central idea of the life sciences, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection
- evolutionary perspective
- those organisms that are better suited to their environments tend to produce offspring and pass on their genes more successfully than those organisms with poorer adaptations
- natural selection
- study cross-cultural differences in the causes and consequences of behavior
- sociocultural perspective