1. Seven Perspectives of Psychology – Terms Checklist
Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic
The psychodynamic approach was promoted by Sigmund Freud,
who believed that many of our impulses are driven by sex.
Freud, who was medically trained in neurology, developed a
theory of personality that made the assumption that human
motivation was propelled by conflicts between instinctual,
mostly unconscious, psychological forces. He called these
intrapsychic elements the id, ego and superego.
This psychodynamic theory caught on like wild fire and due to
its explanatory power for human behavior, became very popular
over the following century. Freud's therapeutic method, called
psychoanalysis, was developed to identify the underlying
conflicts between intrapsychic structures and resolve them by
bringing them to consciousness. Insight therapy was one term
used to describe Freud's treatment approach. Freud also
contributed the first developmental theory of human
personality. It suggests that human development progresses
through psychosexual stages. Each stage is characterized by
specific behavioral and psychodynamic developments and
challenges.
Although Freud thought of himself as a scientist, and he was
indeed very thorough in recording his methods and outcomes, he
did not practice scientific methods. Psychoanalytic theory was
developed through case study analysis, a qualitative, not
scientific, method.
There are a lot of jokes about Freud and his now mostly
outdated theories. But have you ever thought that something
about who you are today comes from your experiences as a

2. child? Say, you blame your smoking habit on an oral fixation
that stems from being weaned from breastfeeding too early as a
baby. Well, that also comes from Freud's theories, and it was
an idea that revolutionized how we see ourselves.
Psychologists in this school of thought believe that unconscious
drives and experiences from early childhood are at the root of
your behaviors and that conflict arises when societal restrictions
are placed on these urges.
Other psychodynamic theories arose, like those of Carl Jung and
Alfred Adler, Margaret Mahler, and famous developmentalists
like Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson, but all made the same basic
assumption: There is a dynamic mind, conscious and
unconscious, that influences the behavior of humans. Elements
of the unconscious psyche interact to produce motives for
behavior and thought processes.
Describe how the following concepts are linked to your
thoughts, feelings and behaviors in your life event:
· The Unconscious – Id, Ego, Superego
· Stages of Psychosexual development – Oral, Anal, Phallic,
Latency, Genital
Oedipus complex, Electra complex, identification, fixation
· Dreams – manifest and latent content
· Defense Mechanisms – repression, regression, displacement,
denial, sublimation, projection. rationalization, reaction
formation
· Inferiority complex
· Collective unconscious
Behavioral
In an attempt to bring scientific method to bear on the
understanding of human behavior, John B. Watson, using ideas

3. he had gleaned from the likes of Ivan Pavlov and others,
decided to declare that psychology should only concern itself
with observable behavior. A science of behavior was built on
only observable behavior. Assumptions about underlying
psychological causes of behavior were not admitted. The
unconscious was declared fictitious and its study, a waste of
time. Serious psychology would focus on observable,
controllable, behavior. The behavioral perspective gained great
momentum in the 20th century because it was a powerful tool in
training, education, and industry. Critics claimed that
behaviorism was dehumanizing. John B. Watson and others
conducted a thorough explication of Classical Conditioning and
B. F. Skinner, responding somewhat to the critics of
behaviorism’s dehumanization, explained and expertly defended
the processes of Operant Conditioning.
Behavioral psychologists believe that external environmental
stimuli influence your behavior and that you can be trained to
act a certain way. Behaviorists like B.F. Skinner don't believe
in free will. They believe that you learn through a system of
reinforcement and punishment in your environment.
The behavioral approach is really effective when you don't care
what someone thinks, as long as you get the desired behavior.
The influence of these theories affects us every day and
throughout our lives, impacting everything from why we follow
the rules of the road when driving to how advertising companies
build campaigns to get us to buy their products.
Describe how the following behavioral concepts/terms are
relevant to your life event
Modules 18 - 20
· Classical conditioning (always involves a reflex)
· unconditioned stimulus
· unconditioned response

4. · neutral stimulus
· conditioned stimulus
· conditioned response
· Generalization,
· Discrimination,
· Extinction
· Spontaneous recovery
· Operant conditioning
· Thorndike’s Law of Effect
· Reinforcers
· positive
· negative
· primary
· secondary
· Reinforcement schedules
· Fixed ratio
· variable ratio
· fixed interval
· variable interval
· Punishers
· positive
· negative
· unintended effects of punishment
· Generalization,
· Discrimination,
· Extinction
· Spontaneous recovery
· Latent learning
· Intrinsic/Extrinsic motivation
· Observational learning/modeling
Cognitive
In contrast to behaviorists, cognitive psychologists believe that
your behavior is determined by your expectations and emotions.

5. Cognitive psychologist Jean Piaget would argue that you
remember things based on what you already know. You also
solve problems based on your memory of past experiences.
So, with this approach, we turn away from people as machines
without free will and delve back into thoughts and feelings.
How you act is based upon internal processes, and there is much
more emphasis upon individuals. From a cognitive perspective,
your expectations of an upcoming party will affect how you feel
and act while you're there and will color your memory of the
night after you return home.
The cognitive perspective developed explanations for human
behavior that suggest that human behavior is at times thoughtful
and can be controlled by thought processes. Indeed, the
cognitive perspective suggests that much of human behavior is
mediated by thought processes like memory and attention, belief
systems, attitudes and language. Cognitivists believe that
humans bring significant conscious processes into the mix and
that much of human behavior is mediated by conscious
processes. Belief systems, value systems, thought processes,
reason and intelligence have a significant impact on why we do
the things we do and act the way we act. The cognitive
perspective suggests that much of human behavior is
significantly influenced by cognitive processes and is thus
amenable to our thoughtful control.
Describe how the following concepts are linked to your
thoughts, beliefs, feelings and behaviors in your life event:
Modules 21 – 23
Memory processes –
· encoding
· storage
· retrieval
· recall vs. recognition

6. · context effects
· mood congruent memory
Stage Model of memory
· sensory memories (iconic, echoic, haptic)
· short-term memory
· long-term memory
Automatic processing vs. Effortful Processing
Rehearsal
Memory Effects
· Spacing Effect
· Next-in-Line Effect
· Serial Position Effect
Types of Encoding
· Semantic
· Visual
· Auditory
Memory Strategies (Mnemonics)
· Chunking
· Hierarchies
Stress & Flashbulb memories
Implicit memories (memory for events)
Explicit memories (memory for actions)
Forgetting
· encoding failure
· memory decay
· retrieval failure
· retroactive interference
· proactive interference
· Misinformation Effect
· Source amnesia
Module 24 – Thinking
concept
prototype

7. algorithm
heuristic
confirmation bias
fixation
representativeness heuristic
availability heuristic
belief perseverance
intuition – benefits and limitations
framing effect
Modules 26 & 27 – Intelligence
emotional intelligence
Savant syndrome
Binet & Simon – mental age
Intelligence test
Aptitude test
Achievement test
Percentage of WAIS scores that fall between 85 and 115
reliability
validity – content validity, predictive validity
mental retardation – characteristics and 4 levels
how do we know that intelligence is hereditary?
why is environment also important?
Flynn effect
Neuroscience/Biological
The biological/neuroscience perspective is a broad scientific
perspective that assumes that human behavior and thought
processes have a biological basis. Biology includes
investigations into biochemistry of behavior associated with
neurotransmitters and hormones, genetics and heritability, and
the psychophysics of sensation and perception. Physiological
psychology, neuroscience, psychoneuroimunology and
psychopharmacology are all part of the biological
perspective. Because the biological perspective relies on

8. scientific methods, its scope of investigation is limited to
variables that can be controlled. Research methods are
quantitative and seek to produce findings that can be replicated
and that are generalizable across populations.
Practical outcomes of biological psychology include the
booming trade in psychopharmaceuticals, an understanding of
mental illness that provides viable remedies for certain very
serious disorders, and diagnostic brain scanning tools that are at
the leading edge of neuroscience.
Biopsychologists look at how your nervous system, hormones
and genetic makeup affect your behavior.
Biological psychologists explore the connection between
yourmental states and your brain, nerves and hormones to
explore how your thoughts, moods and actions are shaped.
So what does that mean? It means that for the biological
approach, you are the sum of your parts. You think the way you
do because of the way your brain is built and because of your
body's needs. All of your choices are based on your physical
body. The biological approach attempts to understand the
healthy brain, but it also examines the mind and body to figure
out how disorders like schizophrenia develop from genetic
roots.
Describe how the nervous systems, neurotransmitters, brain
structures are linked to your thoughts, feelings and behaviors in
your life event
Module 3
Neurons (parts and functions)
dendrites –
action potential (neural impulse) -
terminal axon branches –
reuptake -

9. A neuron is like a _______. It either fires or it doesn’t fire. It
can’t fire faster or slower or stronger or weaker.
motor neurons -
sensory neurons -
interneurons (and location of them) -
If your hand touches a hot steering wheel ________ neurons
carry the message to the _____.
Your brain then uses _______ neurons to sends the message to
your hand to move it.
If you hand touches fire, it triggers a ________, so the
_________ will intercept the message from the sensory neurons
and loop it directly back to the _________ neurons so you will
move your hand really fast.
Neurotransmitters and diseases they are linked with
acetylcholine (Ach) -
serotonin -
dopamine -
Organization of nervous systems
sympathetic -
parasympathetic –
(lion story)
Endocrine System – Pituitary gland
Module 4
Cerebellum
Lobes of cerebral cortex and their function
frontal –
parietal -
occipital –
temporal -
Left hemisphere vs right hemisphere (which is the verbal side,
which is the non-verbal side?)
Corpus callosum
Split-brain patients
Sensory cortex is most critical for our sense of __________
(e.g., hearing, vision, touch) and the _______ (which body part)

10. takes up the most brain tissue on it.
Plasticity – definition & example
Evolutionary
Our bodies evolved over eons, slowly calibrating to the African
savanna on which 98 percent of our ancestors lived and died.
So, too, did our brains. Evolutionary psychology postulates that
the mind is shaped by pressure to survive and reproduce. We
jealously guard romantic partners and cherish our closest
relatives above all others, lest we fail to pass on our genes. Men
try to have as many children as they can, while women try to
find a partner with good resources to have the best chance of
them surviving. We easily acquire language, which is critical
for cooperation and hence survival. Evolutionary psychology
acknowledges these forces but stresses the ultimate (and largely
unconscious) gene's eye view of behavior.
The evolutionary perspective explains human behavior and
thought process as resulting from evolutionary processes. The
underlying assumption of biological evolution is survival of the
species. Human behavior is understood in the light of the
question: how does this behavior result from processes that
support the survival of the species?
Describe how your life event reflects thoughts, feelings and
behaviors that have helped our species adapt, survive and
flourish in our environment
Behavior Genetics
In 2003, with the completion of the thirteen year-long Human
Genome Project, scientists started a new area for research.
After sequencing nearly every gene in the human body, they
have new tools and information to learn more about humans
than ever before.

11. These new tools have led to great demand for behavioral
geneticists, who work to decipher the intricate ways that the
environment and genes interact to influence human behavior and
cause disease. A couple of decades ago, twin sets and large
families were the only way to explore the role of genes in such
complex human traits as intelligence. Today, researchers also
have silicon chips and powerful sequencing machinery that
allow them to conduct sophisticated searches for the multitude
of genetic variants that may influence a single trait. They can
even look at the human epigenome, the network of chemical
tags that control gene expression.
Many behavioral geneticists hope to learn more about the
complex relationship between genes and addiction. But
researchers are also trying to answer questions related to
development, personality, cognition, language acquisition,
music ability and much more. Behavioral geneticists also search
for genetic variants linked to such complex diseases as
Alzheimer's, childhood obesity, Type 2 diabetes and
schizophrenia.
Describe the interaction of your genetics and your environment
on your thoughts, beliefs, emotions and behaviors regarding
your life event
Social-Cultural
The social/cultural perspective in psychology suggests that
human behavior is influenced by social context (who is around
you), environmental cues, social pressures and cultural
influences. Anyone who has attended a football game will
recognize that human behavior is susceptible to influence of the
crowd mentality. We are all shaped by the context of our
environment and influenced by the perception of authority in
our social order. Social psychologists suggest that these forces
are very powerful and explain a great deal about the causes of
human behavior and thought processes.

12. Describe how your cultural aspects influence your thoughts,
beliefs, emotions and behaviors about your life event.
Cultural Aspects
· religion
· language
· gender
· sexual orientation
· socioeconomic status
· family environment
· neighborhood
· state
· region of the country
· country
· race/ethnicity