Representative heuristic

When you see this young gentleman in a suit, what floats your mind? Doesn't he look successful or more likely attending some famous university? This is called representative heuristic because a man in suit (prototype) usually represents all of the samples of men in suit out there that are college professors, doctors, or lawyers. This isn't always true because he could just be wearing that suit for fun (Halloween) or going to the prom in it.

Representative heuristic: people assume the common characteristics/jobs of a person or object that they represent, a prototype.

Double-blind procedure

In this procedure, a group of patients are given the real drug and another group with the placebo, or just sugar pills. The patients given the placebo usually get better from their illness by believing that they were given the real drug. This effect is called the placebo effect.

Double blind procedure: used in drug therapies, the patients and group of assistants are given placebo pills instead of the real ones so that patients shouldn't always rely on pills when they get sick. Make believe that positive results will happen because you think it's real.

PET scan

PET scan (Positive emission tomography) images here show the differences between a normal brain patient and a patient with Parkinson disease. This type of scan is used to diagnose brain disorders before they progress.

PET scan: small amount of radioactive sugar is injected into a vein that show up in the patient's brain in the machine. Different colors show what is happening in the brain

Phantom limb

This man is experiencing the phantom limb phenomenon. By placing his intact hand in front of a mirror and the amputated hand beside it, the reflection of his intact hand will actually be felt like the hand of his amputated hand. This is because of dendrites in his amputated hand still signal the missing part and "thinking" that it's still there.

Phantom limb: the illusion that a limb still exists after it has been amputated

Light exposure therapy

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a form of depression caused by lack of natural light during winter. Light therapy is proven effective in treating this type of depression because the patient is exposed to as much light as possible indoors when light is minimal outdoors.

Light Exposure Therapy: treatment for SAD by using indoor extra bright lighting

American Sign Language

This form of language is widely used by the hearing impaired population. This is useful since those who can't talk or hear well can communicate to each other using universal signs by the hands.

ASL: visual language for the hearing impaired.

Animal Language

Bees use the waggle dance to indicate that nectar is nearby to their fellow bee workers.

Animal language: use of sounds or movements to signal others in species of danger, mating call, indicate foodsource is nearby, or fend of predators (ex. rattlesnake)

Groupthink

The 13 colonies must join together to create a more powerful force by having similar ideas to complete the snake. These colonies are not allowed to be on their own to form new ideas or they will die

Groupthink: situation where people think alike and new ideas are not tolerated.

Functional fixedness

Apparently Ariel in Little Mermaid has no functional fixedness because she can use a fork as her comb too :).

functional fixedness: inability to think of other uses for one object but just the typical everyday use for it.

Skinner box

In order to get food, the rat has to cross an electrical field which gives them shock. To avoid the shock the rat has to push the lever. The lights will indicate whether the rat will get food or not. If he doesn't he will constantly be shocked until he gets it.


Skinner box: used for operant conditioning, isolated from outside conditions to study animal behavior. Designed by BF Skinner.

Hindsight Bias

Ok, looking at this problem you have no idea how to solve it. After listening to your teacher telling you how to do it, you'd say "I knew the answer was that all along". If you knew it then why couldn't you do it on your own? The answer is that you couldn't see the answer coming so you'd make up a reason to mask your "stupidity". This also applies to 9/11 when the people thought they could have seen it coming.

Hindsight Bias: tendency to believe, after learning of an outcome, that one could have foreseen it.

Operant Conditioning

This pictures show a mother giving candy to a child which implies that she probably wants the boy to stop crying/whining/bothering her so the candy is the positive reinforcement to have a decrease in his bad behavior.

Operant Conditioning: use of consequences (punishment or reward) to reform a certain behavior.

Self-actualization

Journey to find the own self. This would be the motto of Siddhartha, where he went out to find the truth of who he was by experiencing the world. I heard my English teacher said that this is Atman in India, which is the same concept.

Self-actualization: Abraham Maslow's term in hierarchy of needs to develop as a person as one lives up to his potential. Acceptance of self and lack of prejudice. To find identity in the world by doing purposeful things a person loves doing.

Displacement

This man is demeaning his wife, who's less threatening than him and maybe his boss at work who yelled at him for messing things up. He needs an outlet of his anger so he chooses a weaker subject to be it. "It's your fault I got yelled at work." He's expressing displacement.

Displacement: shifting aggressive impulses toward a less threatening object or person. One of the defense mechanisms.

Need to belong

This couple feels really happy when they're together, which boosts their self-esteem and emotional level. Humans are social animals so they can't always live alone but have to have somebody to be with.

Belongingness: need to be part of a group (friends, family, career, school)

Hippocampus

Found in temporal lobe of the brain that controls memory and personality.

Hippocampus: a horse with dolphin tail. Jk... the part of the brain in limbic system that controls memories

Incentive

Catch a rabbit by a.... carrot! This is the incentive, or push for the hungry rabbit to keep chasing the carrot even though he's going to fail catching it.

Incentive: Needs that push to reduce our drives (hunger). Positive motivational influence. Without incentives, people wouldn't feel the need for working. In this case, money.

Egocentricism

"It's all about me" is the psychology behind this term. Young children usually associate worldly things with having benefits to themselves not to anyone else. Also happens with adults (ex. barging into someone's house at odd hours without calling them first would be egocentric)

Egocentricism: tendency to understand and interpret the world as to self.

Sensory Adaptation

This shirt stands for sensory adaptation because after a while putting on our clothes, we don't feel them anymore on our body. They're kinda just there but we don't notice them 24/7.

Sensory Adaptation: Diminished sensitivity to stimulus after long period of being exposed to it

Opponent Colors

This American flag represents Opponent colors, because after a while staring at it then switch to a blank white piece of paper then you'll start to see the opposite colors which are red, white, and blue.

Opponent Colors: processing of colors using rods and cones to see the opposite colors corresponding to the colors being presented

Achievement Test

The SAT is the most prevalent, nationwide high school achievement test that we have all come to know and love. It is a staple of the college admission process, and measures how much Math, English, and Writing you have learned in high school. It was once also called an aptitude test, to assess how ready you are for college, but CollegeBoard has since dropped that name because of controversy.

Achievement Test - A test designed to assess what a person has learned

Culture

McDonalds has become a signature of American culture, and I hesitate to say, but also, arguably, a staple of the cornerstone of our culture, democracy. They are everywhere around us. If you travel around the world, you can see McDonalds in many different countries, a sign that American culture is spreading across the globe, even to places such as the Middle East.

Culture - The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next

Recall

Recall reminds me of Frank Fan, who could memorize a few hundred digits of pi. This is recall because he must retrieve information that he has stored in his memory. 

Recall - A measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the blank test.

Conformity

Richard Orben once said 'graduation is when the commencement speaker tells thousands of students in identical caps and gowns that diversity is the key to success.' This was my senior quote. It fits well with conformity, because we forget that at graduation, everyone is the same as everyone else, except for the top 10 that get to graduate first and the officers, valedictorian, and salutatorian that get to make a speech. It's ironic that we're reminded about diversity when we all are dressed exactly the same for the most part, barring a few rebels that decide to wear sandals anyway even though the vice-principle specifically told everyone not to.

Conformity - Adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coinicide with a group standard.

Social Facilitation

This is a picture of a slam dunk, one of the more flashy moves in the sport of  basketball. This reminds me of social facilitation because when there are people watching, you tend to try to outperform yourself and make yourself look good.

Social Facilitation - Improved performance of tasks in the presence of others; occurs with simple or well-learned tasks but not with tasks that are difficult or not yet mastered

Rorschach Inkblot Test

This is a picture that psychologists use in the Rorscach Inkblot Test. Depending on what you say you see, the psychologist will determine your personality and inner feelings.

Rorscach Inkblot Test -the most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots

Imprinting

This is the example of imprinting that our bio textbook uses. If a ducking sees a human at an early enough age, the duckling will imprint onto the human by becoming attached to him or her, and will believe that the human is their mother figure, and will take to following him or her around. 

Imprinting -The process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life.

Artificial Intelligence

This is a screenshot from the movie I, Robot. The movie deals with robots in the future that are able to think for themselves (artificial intelligence) and what can go wrong with them. In the future, machines will become more and more intelligence, and human control will become less of an important factor. Pop culture speculates about the fear of artificial intelligence becoming too powerful.

Artificial Intelligence -The science of designing and programming computer systems to do intelligent things and to simulate human thought processes such as intuitive reasoning, learning, and understanding language. Includes practical applications and efforts to model human thinking inspired by our current understanding of how the brain works.

Algorithm

Digital Fortress is about a group of scientists who crack codes for the government. One of their primary methods of cracking codes is called the brute force method. It is an algorithm because basically they try every possibility in order to eventually come up with the key to unlocking the code. For example, with a 3 digit key consisting of only 1s and 2s, the possibilities are 111, 112, 121, 122, 211, 212, 221, 222.

Algorithm - A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem

Learning

When thinking about learning, this came to my mind. Given empty crates and a dangling banana, monkeys can learn to pile the crates up to use them to climb and reach the bananas. Learning from experience is something that enables animals to survive. 

Learning - A relative change in an organism's behavior due to experience.

Dream

This is a picture of Salvador Dali's famous painting, The Persistence of Memory. Salvador Dali was an important surrealist artists that created distorted landscapes and morphed versions of every day objects. Surrealism reminds me of dreams because like surrealism, dreams consist of every-day objects that we see and people we interact with, but we give them an unreal quality. In dreams, anything can happen and are often given a little twist, and things are not as they seem.

Dream - A sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person's mind. Dreams are notable for their hallucinatory imagery, discontinuities, and incongruities, and for the dreamer's delusional acceptance of the content and later difficulties remembering it.

Anorexia Nervosa

This is a picture of Mary-Kate Olsen. She was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa a few years ago, and it made headline news (what a sad, sad world we live in). Many hollywood stars are becoming role models for young people today. They are shown as very thin, which has led to teens across the country struggling to find the perfect body. This has led to many cases of anorexia nervosa, as teenagers try dieting and various other methods to try to reduce their weight. When they get this, they constantly think they are overweight, leading to a vicious cycle of weight-loss, where therapy becomes a necessity.

Anorexia Nervosa - An eating disorder in which a normal-weight person (usually an adolescent female) diets and becomes significantly (15% or more) underweight, yet, still feeling fat, continues to starve.

Motivation

This image is often associated with motivation. It shows a donkey that is motivated to pull a wagon in order to reach a goal, the carrot. Unfortunately for the donkey, it doesn't realize that the goal is unattainable, but it is enough motivation for the simple beast. We often need motivation to do things that we are unwilling to do. These can be shaped by our desires and needs, depending on what we want at the moment, and it can come in many forms, including food.

Motivation - A need or desire that energizes and directs behavior. 

Gender

These are the two symbols we commonly use to denote gender (besides the two humanoid symbols we see on bathroom doors.) The arrow represents male, and the cross represents female. This also uses colors to distinguish between the two, because blue is usually associated with boys, and pink is usually associated with girls.

Gender - In psychology, the characteristics, whether biologically or socially influenced, by which people define male and female.

Reflex

When asked to picture a reflex, this knee-jerk reflex is probably the first thing that comes to our minds. We all have experienced it in the doctors office, where the doctor hits your knee and makes sure your reflex is working.

Reflex - A simple, autonomic, inborn response to a sensory stimulus.

Stereotype

this is probably the least offensive (at least to the general public) stereotype that exists and usually people only joke about it, but it must have been started for a good reason...

Stereotype: a generalization (sometimes accurate but often overgeneralized) about a group of people.

Type B

This man is obviously a Type B personality because he is very laid back and relaxed. He may not actually be a Type B, however this picture certainly makes it seem like he is.

Type B: Friedman and Rosenman's term for easygoing, relaxed people.

Electroconvulsive Therapy

Electroconvulsive therapy has come under scrutiny due to possible severe side effects. This picture shows how ECT used to be done.

Electroconvulsive Therapy: a biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized paitient.

Dissociative Identity Disorder

this picture is a perfect representation of dissociative identity disorder because it reflects the multiple different people that exist in only one body.

Dissociative Identity Disorder: a rare dissociative disorder in which a person exhibits two or more distinct and alternating personalities; also called multiple personality disorder.

Repression

This picture represents repression because it shows physically what possibly happens inside the brain when a repressed memory is recovered. It's like a new room is being opened in your mind that can be opened and examined after it is found.

Repression: in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.

Feel-good, do-good phenomenon

the feel-good, do-good phenomenon is interesting to me because i wouldn't have guessed that someone's emotional state can have such an effect on their actions. this is a picture of a woman being helped out of a boat and you can probably safely assume that the man helping her out is in at least a decently good mood.

Feel-good, do-good phenemenon: people's tendency to be helpful when already in a good mood.

Sexual Orientation

Sexual orientation is a big deal in the country for some reason that is unknown to me. I tend not to shy away from conflict, so I chose sexual orientation as my vocab word for chapter 12. Obviously this is a picture of a gay couple.

Sexual Orientation: an enduring sexual attraction toward members of either one's own gender (homosexual orientation) or the other gender (heterosexual orientation).

Down Syndrome

So it is fairly obvious why i chose this image for down syndrome. I chose down syndrome as my vocab word for chapter 11 because i feel strongly about special education children and i would like to pursue that somehow as a career later in life.

Down Syndrome: a condition of retardation and associated physical disorders caused by an extra chromosome in one's genetic makeup.

Babbling Stage

At the babbling stage, babies simply utter sounds that are completely unrelated to any form of language spoken around them. this picture shows one baby babbling to another, and that's why i chose it...and because the babies are cute.

Babbling Stage: beginning at 3 to 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language.

Iconic Memory

Iconic memory is a momentary photograph-like picture that remains in your mind of a stimulus. I used the picture of a man sitting backwards in a chair because that's something you could see that would remain in your iconic memory for a couple of seconds and you would be able to recall it.

Iconic Memory: a momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second.

Classical Conditioning

Probably the most associated thing with classical conditioning would have to be Pavlov's dog. It's the epitome of classical conditioning.

Classical Conditioning: a type of learning in which an organism comes to associate stimuli; a neutral stimulus that signals an unconditional stimulus begins to produce a response that anticipates and prepares for the unconditioned stimulus, also called Pavolvian conditioning.

Independent Variable

I always remember which one is the dependent variable as the data you can depend on, the data that you predetermined, hence the picture of someone leaning on another person.

Independent Variable: the experimental factor that is manipulated, the variable whose effect is being studied.

Dream

I think dreams are one of the most fascinating things we have talked about this year in AP Psych. I can't believe that we don't fully understand why we dream and the significances of those dreams, and yet we're venturing farther away than ever into outer space.

Dreams: periodic, natural, reversible loss of consciousness - as distinct from unconsciousness resulting from a coma, general anesthesia, or hibernation.

Extrasensory Perception

I personally have never believed in ESP, however apparently it is at least a slightly viable thing if it is recognized in our Psychology book. It seems a little out there, but i guess it's not quite as out there as i first thought it was.

Extrasensory Perception: the controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input; said to include telepathy, clarivoyance, and precognition.