Areas - principles Flashcards
(15 cards)
Social area principles
Our behaviour is the result of perceived or actual presence of others
So we need to investigate the social context behaviour occurs in
Diffusion of responsibility
When individuals feels less responsible for taking action in an emergency situation because there are bystanders present, under the assumption the other will take action
Destructive obedience
Compliance to an authority that orders actions against ones own principles, and leads to harm against others
Developmental area principles
There are clear and identifiable behavioural changes that occur in people’s life
Childhood experiences affect behaviour
Moral development
Construction of a system of beliefs about what behaviour is considered right or wrong which changes as children develop new cognitive skills such as empathy
External influences on children’s behaviour
Investigates how the environment a child is raised in impacts their behaviour, through learnt responses
How forms of parenting and teaching (receiving rewards) or the adult role models they are surrounded by impacts determines behaviour
Cognitive area principles
Our mind processes information like a computer where it is inputted, processed, stored and later retrieved
Our behaviour is driven by internal mental processes like memory and attention so we need to study these processes to understand behaviour
Inattentional blindness
When someone doesn’t seem to notice something that is sustained in their field of vision because they were focused on a different task
Schema theory
Mental representations we have about the world that influence how we process information inputted
To reconstruct our memory of an event based on this information
Biological area principles
Behaviour is explained by physiological processes within the brain and nervous system
So psychology should study these processes using various technology eg structural MRI to investigate the brain
Delay of gratification
The ability to resist temptation of an appealing stimuli in favour of a greater reward instead
Lateralisation of function
One hemisphere of the brain has a specific function relative to the other hemisphere
Individual differences area principles
Focus on differences in behaviour between people instead of trends for how everyone acts
Specific consideration of abnormal psychology and possessing disorders and what is considered the norm
How can we construct instruments to measure the extent someone differs
Psychometric testing
The design of instruments to measure how people differ psychologically through analysing their habitual behaviour or through the completion of tests
Understanding disorders
to define what is counted as abnormal based on a clinically recognised set of symptoms shown sufficiently for a specific period of time
