UPMSP Intermediate Psychology - Code 133 cheat sheet

Psychology is the scientific study of behaviour and mental processes; 'science' distinguishes it from philosophy and common sense.

Wilhelm Wundt founded the first psychology laboratory at Leipzig in 1879, marking psychology's emergence as an independent discipline.

Structuralism (Wundt, Titchener) used introspection to analyse consciousness into elements; functionalism (James) studied the purpose of mental processes in adaptation.

Psychoanalysis (Freud) emphasises unconscious conflict and early experience; behaviourism (Watson, Skinner) restricts psychology to observable behaviour; Gestalt psychology holds that the whole differs from the sum of parts.

Humanistic psychology (Maslow, Rogers) stresses self-actualisation and free will; cognitive psychology studies information processing; the cognitive revolution displaced strict behaviourism from the 1960s.

Branches include physiological, developmental, social, clinical, counselling, educational, industrial-organisational and environmental psychology.

Methods of enquiry: observation, survey/interview, experiment, case study, correlation and psychological testing; each has distinct strengths and limits.

Indian contributions: ancient texts such as the Bhagavad Gita and Buddhist Abhidhamma discuss mind and consciousness; the first Indian psychology department was established at Calcutta University in 1916.

Observation: systematic recording of behaviour in natural (naturalistic) or controlled settings; observer bias and reactivity are the main threats to validity.

Survey and interview: structured or unstructured; the sample must be representative, and question wording, social desirability and acquiescence bias distort self-report data.

Experiment: manipulation of an independent variable, measurement of a dependent variable, random assignment and control of extraneous variables permit causal inference.

Case study: intensive study of a single individual or group; rich qualitative data, but limited generalisability and risk of researcher subjectivity.

Correlation: coefficient r ranges from -1 to +1; it measures the direction and strength of association, never causation; zero correlation means no linear relationship.

Reliability = consistency of a measure; validity = whether it measures what it claims; a test can be reliable without being valid, but not valid without being reliable.

Ethical principles: informed consent, voluntary participation, confidentiality, right to withdraw, debriefing, and avoidance of harm or deception (deception must be justified and later disclosed).

Development is life-span, multidimensional, multidirectional and plastic; it proceeds from conception to death, not only through childhood.

Heredity supplies genetic potential; environment supplies experience; the interaction (nature x nurture) shapes development - genotype is the genetic makeup, phenotype the observable expression.

Prenatal stages: germinal (first 2 weeks), embryonic (2-8 weeks, organ formation), foetal (8 weeks to birth); teratogens are environmental agents causing prenatal harm.

Infancy: reflexes, attachment (Bowlby; Ainsworth's strange situation identifies secure, avoidant and ambivalent patterns), and Piaget's sensorimotor stage with object permanence emerging around 8-12 months.

Piaget's stages: sensorimotor (0-2), preoperational (2-7, egocentrism, conservation failure), concrete operational (7-11, conservation and classification), formal operational (11+, abstract and hypothetical reasoning).

Adolescence: puberty, Erikson's identity vs role confusion, and the emergence of abstract thought and peer influence.

Adulthood: Erikson's intimacy vs isolation (young adulthood), generativity vs stagnation (middle), integrity vs despair (old age); Kohlberg's moral stages run preconventional, conventional, postconventional.

Sensation is the detection of physical energy by sense organs; perception is the interpretation and organisation of that sensory information.

Psychophysics: absolute threshold = minimum stimulus intensity detected 50% of the time; difference threshold (just noticeable difference) follows Weber's law - the JND is a constant proportion of the original stimulus.

Signal detection theory separates sensory sensitivity (d') from response bias (criterion); it explains detection under noise and motivation.

Gestalt laws of perceptual organisation: proximity, similarity, closure, continuity and figure-ground; these describe how elements group into wholes.

Depth cues: monocular (linear perspective, relative size, interposition, texture gradient, motion parallax) and binocular (retinal disparity, convergence).

Perceptual constancies (size, shape, brightness, colour) preserve stable perception despite changing retinal images; illusions such as Müller-Lyer arise from misapplied constancy cues.

Attention is selective, divided and sustained; selective attention (cocktail-party effect) filters relevant input; divided attention is limited by processing capacity.

Classical conditioning (Pavlov): a neutral conditioned stimulus paired with an unconditioned stimulus elicits a conditioned response; acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalisation and discrimination describe the process.

Operant conditioning (Skinner): behaviour is shaped by consequences - positive reinforcement (add stimulus), negative reinforcement (remove aversive stimulus), punishment (positive = add aversive, negative = remove pleasant).

Reinforcement increases behaviour; punishment decreases it; continuous reinforcement produces fast learning, partial (intermittent) schedules produce greater resistance to extinction.

Schedules of reinforcement: fixed ratio, variable ratio, fixed interval, variable interval; variable schedules yield the highest and most persistent response rates.

Observational learning (Bandura): attention, retention, reproduction and motivation; the Bobo doll experiments showed aggression can be acquired through modelling.

Cognitive approaches: Kohler's insight learning in chimpanzees; Tolman's latent learning and cognitive maps show learning without immediate reinforcement.

Shaping reinforces successive approximations of a target behaviour; extinction removes the reinforcement that maintains a response.

The Atkinson-Shiffrin model: sensory memory (iconic ~0.5 s, echoic ~2-4 s), short-term memory (capacity 7±2 items, duration ~20-30 s), long-term memory (unlimited capacity, long duration).

Working memory (Baddeley) comprises a central executive plus phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad (and an episodic buffer).

Long-term memory types: declarative (episodic and semantic) versus non-declarative (procedural, priming, conditioning).

Encoding, storage and retrieval are the three processes of memory; failure at any stage produces forgetting.

Forgetting theories: trace decay, interference (proactive = old learning disrupts new; retroactive = new disrupts old), retrieval failure, motivated forgetting (Freud), and encoding failure.

The serial position effect: primacy (long-term memory) and recency (short-term memory) effects on free recall of word lists.

Improving memory: chunking, rehearsal (maintenance vs elaborative), organisation, mnemonic devices, spaced practice, method of loci and adequate sleep.

Thinking is the mental manipulation of information; concepts and prototypes categorise experience; problem solving transforms an initial state into a goal state.

Problem-solving strategies: algorithms guarantee a solution but are slow; heuristics are fast rules of thumb (means-ends analysis, working backward, analogy) but can fail.

Obstacles to problem solving: mental set (rigidity from past solutions), functional fixedness (inability to see new uses for objects), and confirmation bias.

Reasoning: deductive reasoning moves from general premises to specific conclusions (validity depends on form); inductive reasoning generalises from specific observations (conclusions are probable, not certain).

Judgement heuristics (Kahneman and Tversky): availability (ease of recall), representativeness (similarity to a stereotype), anchoring and adjustment, and overconfidence.

Creative thinking: divergent (many solutions) versus convergent (one correct solution) thinking; Guilford's traits include fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration.

Stages of creative thought (Wallas): preparation, incubation, illumination and verification; brainstorming separates idea generation from evaluation.

Motivation is the internal state that directs behaviour toward a goal; motives are biological (hunger, thirst, sex, sleep) or psychosocial (achievement, affiliation, power, curiosity).

Drive-reduction theory (Hull): biological needs create drives that push behaviour to restore homeostasis; arousal theory holds that performance is optimal at moderate arousal (Yerkes-Dodson law).

Maslow's hierarchy (bottom to top): physiological, safety, belongingness and love, esteem, self-actualisation; lower needs generally dominate until satisfied.

Intrinsic motivation arises from interest in the activity itself; extrinsic motivation comes from external rewards; over-rewarding intrinsic activity can reduce it.

James-Lange theory: bodily arousal precedes and produces emotion; Cannon-Bard: arousal and emotion occur simultaneously; Schachter-Singer two-factor theory: arousal plus cognitive label produces emotion.

Facial feedback hypothesis: facial expression can influence emotional experience; the limbic system (especially the amygdala) is central to emotion.

Emotion has physiological, cognitive, behavioural and subjective components; basic emotions (Ekman) include happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust.

Intelligence is the capacity to understand the world and adapt to it; Spearman proposed a general factor g plus specific factors s; Thurstone identified primary mental abilities.

Gardner's multiple intelligences (linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinaesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic); Sternberg's triarchic theory (analytical, creative, practical).

IQ = mental age / chronological age x 100 (ratio IQ); deviation IQ compares a score to age-group norms with mean 100 and SD 15.

Reliability and validity are essential test properties; aptitude tests predict future performance, achievement tests measure present knowledge.

Personality: Freud's id (pleasure principle), ego (reality principle) and superego (morality); psychosexual stages - oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital.

Trait theories: Allport's cardinal, central and secondary traits; Cattell's 16PF; Eysenck's extraversion-introversion, neuroticism-stability and psychoticism; the Big Five (OCEAN) - openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism.

Assessment methods: self-report inventories (MMPI, 16PF), projective tests (Rorschach inkblots, TAT), interviews and behavioural observation.

Abnormality is judged by statistical deviance, violation of social norms, maladaptive behaviour and subjective distress; the DSM-5 and ICD-10/11 classify disorders.

Anxiety disorders: generalised anxiety disorder, panic disorder, phobias (specific and social), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (intrusive obsessions plus repetitive compulsions).

Mood disorders: major depressive disorder (persistent low mood, anhedonia, fatigue, worthlessness) and bipolar disorder (alternating manic and depressive episodes).

Schizophrenia: positive symptoms (delusions, hallucinations, disorganised speech) and negative symptoms (flat affect, avolition, social withdrawal); genetic and environmental factors contribute.

Somatoform and dissociative disorders: conversion disorder, hypochondriasis, dissociative amnesia and dissociative identity disorder.

Therapeutic approaches: psychoanalysis (free association, dream analysis, transference), behaviour therapy (systematic desensitisation, token economy, aversion therapy), cognitive-behaviour therapy, and humanistic/client-centred therapy (unconditional positive regard, empathy).

Mental health is more than the absence of disorder: coping strategies include problem-focused and emotion-focused coping, social support, relaxation and stress management.

Attitude has three components: cognitive (beliefs), affective (feelings) and behavioural (action tendency); attitudes can be explicit or implicit.

Attitude change: the Yale communication model - source credibility, message content, channel and receiver characteristics; cognitive dissonance (Festinger) motivates change when beliefs and behaviour conflict.

Prejudice is a negative attitude toward a group; discrimination is the behaviour; stereotypes are overgeneralised beliefs; scapegoating and in-group/out-group bias sustain prejudice.

Attribution: internal (dispositional) versus external (situational) causes; the fundamental attribution error overweights dispositional factors for others; the actor-observer bias and self-serving bias are related.

Conformity (Asch): line-judgement studies showed that a majority can shift individual judgements; conformity rises with group size (up to a point) and unanimity.

Obedience (Milgram): a legitimate authority figure can produce high rates of compliance with harmful commands; proximity of victim and authority affect obedience.

Group processes: social facilitation (improved performance on simple tasks), social loafing (reduced effort in groups), group polarisation, groupthink (Janis) and deindividuation.