Behavioral Sciences Flashcards
(230 cards)
A formalized ceremony that usually involves specific material objects, symbolism, and additional mandates on acceptable behavior.
Ritual
A portion of the brainstem that relays information between the cortex and medulla, regulates sleep, and carries some motor and sensory information from the head and neck.
Pons
The investment people make in their society in return for economic or collective rewards.
Social Capital
Self-centered view of the world in which one is not necessarily able to understand the experience of another person; seen in Piaget’s preoperational stage.
Egocentrism
A theory that states that the body will adapt to counteract repeated exposure to stimuli, such as seeing afterimages or ramping up the sympathetic nervous system in response to a depressant.
Opponent-Process Theory
A portion of the cerebrum that is associated with emotion and memory; includes the amygdala and hippocampus.
Limbic System
The phenomenon of a stereotype creating an expectation of a particular group, which creates conditions that lead to confirmation of this stereotype.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
The minimum distance necessary between two points of stimulation on the skin such that the points will be felt as two distinct stimuli.
Two-Point Threshold
Perception of a stimulus below a threshold (usually the threshold of conscious perception).
Subliminal Perception
The nonmaterial culture that represents a group of people; expressed through ideas and concepts.
Symbolic Culture
The ability to tell where one’s body is in space.
Proprioception
In operant conditioning, the process of conditioning a complex behavior by rewarding successive approximations of the behavior.
Shaping
A society in which advancement up the social ladder is based on intellectual talent and achievement.
Meritocracy
The tendency to perform at a different level based on the fact that others are around.
Social Facilitation
A psychotic disorder characterized by gross distortions of reality and disturbances in the content and form of thought, perception, and behavior.
Schizophrenia
The art of searching for and exploiting food resources.
Foraging
Disorders that involve worry, unease, fear, and apprehension about future uncertainties based on real or imagined events that can impair physical and psychological health.
Anxiety Disorders
The changing of behavior of an individual based on a command from someone seeing as an authority figure.
Obedience
A sudden increase in response to a stimulus, usually due to a change in the stimulus or the addition of another stimulus; sometimes called resensitization.
Dishabituation
A cognitive bias in which one focuses on information that supports a given solution, belief, or hypothesis, and ignores evidence against it.
Confirmation Bias
Change in neural connections caused by learning or a response to injury.
Neuroplasticity
The ethical tenet that the physician has a responsibility to act in the patient’s best interest.
Beneficence
The phenomenon of retaining larger amounts of information when the amount of time between sessions of relearning is increased.
Spacing Effect
Emotions that are recognized by all cultures; includes happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, contempt, and surprise.
Universal Emotions