Essay on Psychology and Psychological Processes

Submitted By ihateditto
Words: 520
Pages: 3

AP Psychology 5th
July 21, 2012

1. Empiricism – the theory that all knowledge originates from experiment and observations 2. Structuralism – method of interpretation and analysis of aspects of human cognition, behavior, culture, and experience that focuses on relationships 3. Functionalism – belief in or stress on the practical application of a specific thing 4. Experimental psychology – psychology concerned with the scientific investigation of basic psychological processes such as learning, memory, and cognition in humans and animals 5. Behaviorism – science that rooted in observation, observe and record people’s behaviors as they respond to different situations 6. Humanistic psychology – historically significant perspective that emphasized on growth potential 7. Cognitive neuroscience – the study of brain activity linked with mental activity 8. Psychology – science of behavior and mental processes; behavior is anything an organism does and mental are the internal subjective experiences we infer from behaviors 9. Nature-nurture issue - the controversy over the relative contributions of biology and experience 10. Natural selection – evolutionary process where nature selects the traits that best enables an organism to survive and reproduce in a specific environment 11. Levels of analysis – different complementary views from biological to psychological to social cultural for analyzing a given situation 12. Biopsychosocial approach – approach that incorporates all three aspects of biological, psychological, and social cultural levels of analysis 13. Biological psychology – branch of psychology that studies the links between biological and psychological processes 14. Evolutionary psychology – the study of the roots of behavior and mental processes using the principals of natural selection 15. Psychodynamic psychology – a branch that studies how unconscious drives and conflicts influence behavior and uses the information to treat people with psychological disorders 16. Behavioral psychology – the scientific study of observable behavior and its explanation by principles of learning 17. Cognitive psychology – the scientific study of all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating 18. Social-cultural psychology – the study of how situations and cultures affect our behavior and thinking 19. Psychometrics – study of the length of