Bihar BSEB Intermediate Psychology flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Structuralism

The early school founded by Wundt and Titchener that analysed conscious experience into its basic mental elements using trained introspection.

Functionalism

The school associated with William James that studies how mental processes help the organism adapt to its environment rather than analysing elements of consciousness.

Gestalt psychology

The school holding that perception and thought are organised wholes; the whole pattern is more than the sum of its parts, as shown in figure-ground phenomena.

Behaviourism

The school, associated with Watson and Skinner, that restricts psychology to observable behaviour and explains learning through stimulus-response association and reinforcement.

Reliability versus validity

Reliability is consistency of scores across occasions or items; validity is whether a test measures the construct it claims to measure. Valid tests must be reliable, but reliable tests may be invalid.

Self-concept

The organised set of beliefs and knowledge a person holds about their own characteristics, abilities and roles, which guides how they interpret new experience.

Real versus ideal self

In Rogers's theory, the real self is how one actually is and the ideal self is how one wishes to be; a large discrepancy produces incongruence and anxiety.

Big Five traits

The five broad personality dimensions of openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, derived from factor analysis of trait ratings.

Projective techniques

Assessment methods such as the Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Test that present ambiguous stimuli so respondents project underlying needs and conflicts into their responses.

General Adaptation Syndrome

Selye's three-stage model of stress response: alarm reaction with sympathetic arousal, resistance with sustained resource mobilisation, and exhaustion with depleted resources and illness risk.

Primary and secondary appraisal

In Lazarus's transactional model, primary appraisal judges whether an event is threatening or benign; secondary appraisal judges whether one's resources can cope with it.

Problem-focused coping

Coping that directly acts on the stressor to change or remove it, such as planning, seeking information or solving the problem, rather than only regulating emotional distress.

Psychological hardiness

Kobasa's stress-buffering personality pattern consisting of commitment, a sense of control, and viewing change as a challenge rather than a threat.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

An anxiety-related disorder marked by recurrent intrusive obsessions and repetitive compulsions performed to reduce the distress those obsessions produce.

Diathesis-stress model

The explanation that disorders emerge when a pre-existing biological or psychological vulnerability is triggered by environmental stressors, rather than either factor alone.

Positive versus negative symptoms

In schizophrenia, positive symptoms add unusual experience such as delusions and hallucinations; negative symptoms subtract normal functioning, as in flat affect and avolition.

Systematic desensitisation

Wolpe's behaviour technique that pairs progressive muscle relaxation with gradual exposure to a graded hierarchy of feared situations, extinguishing the anxiety response.

Transference

In psychoanalysis, the client's unconscious displacement onto the therapist of feelings and conflicts originally attached to important figures from childhood.

Rational emotive behaviour therapy

Ellis's cognitive therapy that disputes irrational beliefs through the ABCDE sequence of activating event, belief, consequence, disputation and new effect.

Client-centred therapy

Rogers's humanistic approach in which unconditional positive regard, empathy and therapist genuineness create conditions for the client's self-directed growth.

Cognitive dissonance

Festinger's state of discomfort produced by inconsistency among cognitions or between attitude and behaviour, motivating change in attitude, behaviour or added beliefs.

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency to explain other people's behaviour mainly by their dispositions while underestimating the influence of situational factors on that behaviour.

Elaboration likelihood model

A model of persuasion distinguishing the central route, based on careful argument evaluation under high involvement, from the peripheral route, based on simple cues.

Bystander effect

The finding that individuals are less likely to help in an emergency as the number of other bystanders increases, partly through diffusion of responsibility.

Conformity

Change in belief or behaviour toward a group standard, as in Asch's studies where participants accepted a clearly incorrect majority judgement on some trials.

Groupthink

Janis's term for a concurrence-seeking tendency in cohesive groups that suppresses dissent and produces poor decisions through self-censorship and pressure on dissenters.

Social loafing

The reduction in individual effort when people work in a group on an additive task and their personal contribution cannot be separately identified.

Personal space

The invisible boundary individuals maintain around themselves in social settings, varying with culture, relationship, gender and situational density.

Burnout

An occupational stress syndrome with three components: emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation or cynicism toward recipients, and a reduced sense of personal accomplishment.

Active listening

A communication skill in which the listener attends fully, paraphrases content, reflects feelings and summarises, checking understanding rather than advising prematurely.

Counselling versus guidance

Guidance offers information and direction, often educational or vocational; counselling is a confidential relationship in which clients explore problems and reach their own decisions.

Case study method

An in-depth investigation of one person or small group using interviews, records and observation, offering rich detail but limited generalisability and risk of observer bias.