Summary AP Psychology ALL Terms/ A comprehensive review of terminology for AP Psychology Definitions.

psychology the science of behavior and mental processes nature-nurture issue the long-standing controversy over the relative contributions that genes and experience make to the development of psychological traits and behaviors natural selection the principle that, among the range of inherited trait variations, those contributing to reproduction and survival will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations neuroscience the perspective of psychological science that deals with how the body and brain create emotions, memories, and sensory experiences evolutionary the perspective of psychological science that deals with how nature selects traits that promote the perpetuation of one's genes behavior genetics the perspective of psychological science that deals with how much our genes, and our environment, influence our individual differences psychodynamic the perspective of psychological science that deals with how behavior springs from unconscious drives and conflicts behavioral the perspective of psychological science that deals with how we learn observable responses cognitive the perspective of psychological science that deals with how we encode, process, store, and retrieve information social-cultural the perspective of psychological science that deals with how behavior and thinking vary across situations and cultures basic research pure science that aims to increase the scientific knowledge base applied research scientific study that aims to solve practical problems clinical psychology a branch of psychology that studies, assesses, and treats people with psychological disorders psychiatry a branch of medicine dealing with psychological disorders, practiced by physicians who sometimes provide medical (for example, drug) treatments as well as psychological therapy hindsight bias (I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon) the tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it critical thinking thinking that does not blindly accept arguments and conclusions. Rather, it examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions theory an explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes and predicts observations hypothesis a testable prediction, often implied by a theory operational definition a statement of the procedures (operations) used to define research variables. For example, intelligence may be operationally defined as what an intelligence test measures replication repeating the essence of a research study, usually with different participants in different situations, to see whether the basic finding generalizes to other participants and circumstances case study an observation technique in which one person is studied in depth in the hope of revealing universal principles survey a technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes or behaviors of people, usually by questioning a representative, random sample of them false consensus effect the tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors population all the cases in a group, from which samples may be drawn for a study random sample a sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion naturalistic observation observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation correlation coefficient a statistical measure of the extent to which two factors vary together, and thus of how well either factor predicts the other scatterplot a graphed cluster of dots, each of which represents the values of two variables. The slope of the points suggests the direction of the relationship between the two variables. The amount of scatter suggests the strength of correlation (little scatter indicates high correlation). illusory correlation the perception of a relationship where none exists experiment a research method in which an investigator manipulates one or more factors (independent variables) to observe the effect on some behavior or mental process (the dependent variable). By random assignment of participants the experimenter controls other relevant factors) placebo an inert substance or condition that may be administered instead of a presumed active agent, such as a drug, to see if it triggers the effects believed to characterize the active agent double-blind procedure an experimental procedure in which both the research participants and the research staff are ignorant (blind) about whether the research participants have received the treatment or a placebo. Commonly used in drug-evaluation studies. placebo effect any effect on behavior caused by a placebo experimental condition the condition of an experiment that exposes participants to the treatment, that is, to one version of the independent variable control condition