Behavioral Sciences

Biology and Behavior

Researchers
Nervous System Organization

Neurons:
Sensory: Afferent, receptors → spinal cord
Interneurons: Between other neurons. Mainly CNS.
Motor: Efferent, CNS → muscles & glands

Reflex Arcs: Interneurons in spinal cord relay info to the source of stimuli while simultaneously routing it to the brain.

Central Nervous System: CNS. Brain and spinal cord.

Peripheral Nervous System: PNS. Nervous tissue and fibers outside CNS
Somatic: Voluntary
Autonomic: Sympathetic = F/F, parasympathetic = R/D.

Influences of Behavior

Neurotransmitters: Released by neurons to carry a signal.

The endocrine system is tied to the nervous system through the hypothalamus and the anterior pituitary, and a few other hormones:

Brain Organization

Hindbrain: Cerebellum, medulla oblongata, reticular formation.

Midbrain: Inferior and superior colliculi.

Forebrain: Thalamus, hypothalamus, basal ganglia, limbic system, cerebral cortex.

Methods: Electroencephalography (EEG). Regional cerebral
Study: blood flow.

Forebrain

Cerebral Cortex: Four lobes
Frontal: Executive function, impulse control, speech, motor.
Parietal: Touch, pressure, temp, pain, spatial processing.
Occipital: Visual
Temporal: Sound, speech perception, memory, emotion.

Cerebral Hemispheres: Left is analytic, language, logic, math. Usually dominant
Right is intuition, creativity, spatial processing.

Development

The nervous system develops through neurulation, in which the notochord stimulates overlying ectoderm to fold over, creating a neural tube topped with neural crest cells

Primitive Reflexes: Exist in infants and should disappear with age.
Rooting Reflex: Turns head toward stimulus.
Moro Reflex: Extends arms, response to falling sensation.
Babinski Reflex: Big toe is extended and other toes fan out in response to brushing on sole of foot.
Grasping Reflex: Grabs anything put into hands.

Developmental Milestones

Sensation and Perception

Definitions

Sensory Receptors: Sensory nerves that respond to stimuli.

Sensory Ganglia: Collection of cell bodies outside the CNS.

Projection Areas: Areas in the brain that analyze sensory input.

Absolute Threshold: The min of stimulus energy that will activate a sensory system.

Threshold of Conscious Perception: The minimum stimulus energy that will create a signal large enough in size and long enough in duration to be brought into awareness.

Difference Threshold: The min difference in magnitude between two stimuli before one can perceive this difference.

Weber’s Law: Just Noticeable Difference (JND) for a stimulus is proportional to the magnitude of the stimulus.

Signal Detection Theory: Refers to the effects of nonsensory factors, such as experiences, motives, and expectations on perception of stimuli. Accounts for response bias.

Adaptation: Refers to a ↓ of or ↑ in sensitivity to a stimulus.

Vision

Cornea: Gathers and filters incoming light.

Iris: Controls size of pupil. Colored part of eye. Divides front of the eye into the anterior & posterior chamber. It contains 2 muscles, the dilator and constrictor pupillae.

Lens: Refracts incoming light to focus it on the retina.

Aqueous Humor: Produced by the ciliary body. Nourishes the eye and gives the eye its shape. Drains through the canal of Schlemm.

Retina: Rods: Detect light / dark. Contain rhodopsin.
Cones: Color. Short / medium / long. Cones are in the fovea, which is part of the macula. Pathway from retina: Rods/Cones → bipolar cells → ganglion cells → optic nerve.

Retinal Disparity: Space between eyes; allows for binocular vision and depth.

Horizontal & Amacrine Cells: Integrates signals from ganglion cells and performs edge-sharpening.

Support: Vitreous on inside. Sclera and choroid on outside.

Processing: Parallel Processing: Color, form, and motion at same time.
Magnocellular Cells: Motion. High temporal resolution.
Parvocellular Cells: Shape. High spatial resolution.

Visual Pathway

eye → optic nerves → optic chiasm → optic tracts → lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) → visual radiations → visual cortex

Hearing

Outer Ear: Pinna (auricle), external auditory canal, tympanic membrane.

Middle Ear: Connected to nasal cavity by Eustachian tube.
Ossicles: Acronym MIS and HAS.
Malleus: Hammer
Incus: Anvil
Stapes: Stirrup. Footplate of stapes rests in the oval window of cochlea.

Inner Ear: Bony Labyrinth: Filled with perilymph.
Membranous Labyrinth: Filled with endolymph.
Membranous labyrinth consists of cochlea (sound), utricle & saccule (linear acceleration) and semicircular canals (rotational acceleration & balance).

Projection Areas: Superior Olive: Localizes sound. Located in brain stem.
Inferior Colliculus: Startle reflex. Also used by both eyes and ears in the vestibulo-ocular reflex which keeps the eyes fixed on a single point as the head rotates.

Auditory Pathway

cochlea → vestibulocochlear nerve → medial geniculate nucleus (MGN) → auditory cortex

Other Senses

Smell: The detection of volatile or aerosolized chemicals by the olfactory chemoreceptors (olfactory nerves) in the olfactory epithelium. Smell info bypasses the thalamus.

Pheromones: Chemicals given off by animals that have an effect on social foraging, and sexual behavior.

Taste: The detection of dissolved compounds by taste buds in papillae. Sweet/sour/salty/bitter/umamai.

Somatosensation: Refers to the four touch modalities: Pressure, vibration, pain, temperature.

Two-Point Threshold: Minimum distance necessary between 2 points of stimulation on the skin such that the points will be felt as two distinct stimuli.

Physiological Zero: The normal temp of skin to which objects are compared to.

Nociceptors: Pain reception. Gate theory of pain. ↓JND for pain.

Kinesthetic Sense: Proprioception

Object Recognition

Top-Down Processing: The recognition of an object by memories and expectations. Little attention to detail. Uses background knowledge.

Bottom-Up Processing: Details → whole. Recognition of objects by feature detection. Not influenced by background knowledge.

Gestalt Principles: Proximity, similarity, continuity, closure. All are governed by the Law of Prägnanz.

Learning and Memory

Learning

Habituation: Becoming used to a stimulus.

Dishabituation: When a 2nd stimulus intervenes causing a resensitization of the original stimulus.

Associative Learning: Pairing together stimuli / responses or behaviors / consequences.

Operant Conditioning: Behavior is changed through the use of consequences.
Reinforcement: Increases likelihood of behavior.
Punishment: Decreases likelihood of behavior.
Schedule: The schedule of reinforcement can be based on an amount of time or a ratio of behavior / reward, and can be either fixed or variable.

Extinction: When a previously reinforced behavior is no longer reinforced, it goes extinct.

Shaping: In operant conditioning, shaping is when behavior that is closer and closer to the target behavior is reinforced.

Classical Conditioning: With repetition, a neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus that produces a conditioned response.

Observational Learning or Modeling: The acquisition of behavior by watching others.

Operant (Instrumental): Experimenter arranges relationship between a stimulus (the reinforcer) and a response. E.g. bar press ⇒ food.

Classical (Pavlovian): Experimenter arranges a relationship between two stimuli (CS and US). E.g. tone ⇒ food.

Memory

Encoding: The process of putting new info into memory. It can be automatic or effortful. Semantic encoding is stronger than both acoustic and visual encoding.

Sensory & Short Term Memory: Transient and based on neurotransmitter activity.

Working Memory: Requires STM, attention, and executive function to manipulate information.

Long Term Memory: Requires elaborate rehearsal and is the result of increased neuronal connectivity.

Semantic Networks: Stores facts. Concepts are linked together based on similar meaning. Certain triggers will activate associated memories.

Retrieval: Recognition of info is stronger than recall. Retrieval is often based on priming interconnected nodes of the semantic network.

Diseases

Interference

Retroactive Interference: New memories make you forget old memories.
Proactive Interference: Old memories interfere with learning new memories.

Human Memory

Sensory Memory: < 1 sec
Short-term Memory: (working memory) < 1 min
Long-term Memory: Life-time
Explicit Memory: Conscious → Declarative Memory → Episodic Memory (Events, experiences) & Semantic Memory (Facts, concepts).
Implicit Memory: Unconscious → Procedural Memory (Skills, tasks).

Cognition, Consciousness, and Language

Cognition

Information Processing Model: The brain encodes, stores, and retrieves info much like a computer.

Piaget’s Stages: Involve schemas and assimilation vs. accommodation.

Problem-Solving

Types: Trial-and-Error, Algorithms

Deductive Reasoning: Form conclusions from rules.
Inductive Reasoning: Form conclusions from evidence.

Mental Set: A pattern of approach for a given problem.

Functional Fixedness: The tendency to use objects only in the way they are normally utilized. Creates barriers to problem-solving.

Heuristics: “Rules of thumb”

Availability Heuristic: When we make our decisions based on how easily similar instances can be imagined.

Representativeness Heuristic: The tendency to make decisions about actions/events based on our standard representations of the events.

Confirmation Bias: The tendency to focus on information that fits an individual’s beliefs, while rejecting information that goes against those beliefs.

Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences: Linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal.

Consciousness

Alertness: State of being awake and thinking. EEG shows BETA waves when alert or concentrating, ALPHA waves when awake but tired, eyes closed. BETA: ↑freq ↓amp; ALPHA: Synchronous.

Sleep: More info on right

Hypnosis: Individuals appear to be in normal control of their faculties but are in a highly suggestible state. Used for pain control, psychological therapy, memory enhancement.

Meditation: Quieting of the mind. Used for relief of anxiety.

Consciousness-Altering Drugs

Depressants: Alcohol, barbiturates, benzodiazepines. They ↑GABA.

Stimulants: Amphetamines, cocaine, ecstasy. ↑Dopamine, ↑Norepinephrine, ↑Serotonin at synaptic cleft.

Opiates & Opioids: Heroin, morphine, opium, oxycodone & hydrocodone. Can cause death by respiratory depression.

Hallucinogens: LSD, peyote, mescaline, ketamine.

Marijuana: Mediates drug addiction. Includes nucleus accumbens, medial forebrain bundle, and ventral tegmental area. Dopamine is the main neurotransmitter.

Language

Phonology: The actual sound of speech.

Morphology: The building blocks of words.

Semantics: The meaning of words.

Syntax: Rules dictating word order.

Pragmatics: Changes in language delivery depending on context.

Theories of Language:

Whorfian Hypothesis: Linguistic Relativity. The lens by which we view and interpret the world is created by language.

Broca’s Area: Produces speech.

Wernicke’s Area: Language comprehension.

Arcuate Fasciculus: Connects Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area.

Aphasia: Language deficit
Broca’s Aphasia: Difficult to generate speech.
Wernicke’s Aphasia: Lack of comprehension.
Conduction Aphasia: Can’t repeat words.

Sleep

Beta → Alpha → Theta → Delta
BAT-D mnemonic for sequential order of brain waves.

Stage 1: Light sleep. THETA waves.

Stage 2: Slightly deeper. THETA waves, sleep spindles, K complexes. ↓heart rate, ↓respiration, ↓temperature.

Stages 3 & 4: Deep sleep. DELTA waves. Slow-wave sleep (SWS). Most sleep disorders occur during stage 3 & 4 non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. Growth hormone released.

Rapid Eye Movement: REM sleep. The mind appears awake on EEG, but the person is asleep. Eye movements and body paralysis. Mostly BETA waves.

Sleep Cycle: 90 min. Stages: 1-2-3-4-3-2-REM or 1-2-3-4-REM.

Circadian Rhythm: 24 hours. Melatonin triggers sleepiness. Cortisol promotes wakefulness.

Dreaming: Mostly during REM.

Activation-Synthesis Theory: Dreams result from brain activation during REM. Activation in brainstem, synthesis in cortex.

Sleep Disorders:

Alertness

Selective Attention: Allows one to pay attention to particular stimulus while determining if additional stimuli in the background require attention.

Divided Attention: Uses automatic processing to pay attention to multiple activities at one time.

Motivation, Emotion, and Stress

Motivation

Motivation: The purpose, or driving force, behind our actions. Can be extrinsic or intrinsic.

Instincts: Innate, fixed patterns of behavior in response to stimuli.

Instinct Theory: People perform certain behaviors because of their evolutionarily programmed instincts.

Arousal: The state of being awake and reactive to stimuli.

Optimal Arousal Theory: Optimal performance requires optimal arousal. Arousal levels that are too ↑ or too ↓ will impede performance.

Drives: Internal states of tension that beget particular behaviors focused on goals. Primary drives: related to biological processes. Secondary drives: stem from learning.

Drive Reduction Theory: Motivation arises from the desire to eliminate drives, which create uncomfortable internal states.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Physiological, safety and security, love and belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization. Higher needs only produce drives once lower needs are met.

Self-Actualization: Full realization of one’s talents and potential.

Self-Determination Theory: Emphasizes 3 universal needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Incentive Theory: Explains motivation as the desire to pursue rewards and avoid punishments.

Expectancy-Value Theory: The amount of motivation for a task is based on the expectation of success and the value of that success.

Opponent-Process Theory: Explains motivation for drug use: as drug use increases, the body counteracts its effects, leading to tolerance and uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms.

House Money Effect: After a prior gain, people become more open to assuming risk since the new money is not treated as one’s own.

Gambler’s Fallacy: If something happens more frequently than normal, it will happen less frequently in the future, or vice versa.

Prisoner’s Dilemma: Two people act out of their own self-interest, but if they had cooperated, the result would have been even better.

Stress

Stress: The physiological and cognitive response to challenges or life changes.

Stress Appraisal:

Stressors: Anything that leads to a stress response. Can lead to distress or eustress.

General Adaptation Syndrome: Specific stressors do not have specific responses, they all generate the same general physical stress response.

3 stages of stress: Alarm, resistance, exhaustion.
These involve both the sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine system; release of ACTH leads to ↑Cortisol.

Emotion

Emotion: A state of mind, or feeling, that is subjectively experienced based on circumstances, mood, and relationships.

Three Components of Emotion:

7 Universal Emotions: Happiness, sadness, contempt, surprise, fear, disgust and anger.

James-Lange Theory: Behavioral and physiological actions lead to emotions. Ex: Power posing.

Cannon-Bard Theory: Emotional and physiological responses to a stimulus occur simultaneously. They arise from separate and independent areas of the brain.

Schacter-Singer Theory: Two-factor theory of emotion. Physiological arousal and interpretation of context or “cognitive label” lead to emotion.

Limbic System: Connected with instincts and mood. See appendix for full diagram.

Theories of Emotion

Identity and Personality

Self-Concept & Identity

Self-Concept: The sum of ways we describe ourselves.

Identities: Individual components of our self-concept related to the group to which we belong.

Self-Esteem: The closer our actual self is to our ideal self and our ought self (who others want us to be), the ↑ our self-esteem.

Self-Efficacy: The degree to which we see ourselves as being capable at a given skill or situation.

Learned Helplessness: A state of hopelessness that results from being unable to avoid repeated negative stimuli.

Locus of Control:

Formation of Identity

Freud: Psychosexual stages of personality development based on tensions caused by the libido. Failure at any stage leads to fixation which causes personality disorder.

Erikson: Stages stem from conflicts throughout life.

Kohlberg: Stages based on moral dilemmas. 6 stages in 3 phases. Example: Mr. Heinz dilemma.

Vygotsky: Zone of Proximal Development: The skills that a child has not yet mastered and require a more knowledgeable other to accomplish.

Imitation & Role-Taking: Common ways children learn from others.

Reference Group: The group to which we compare ourselves.

Personality

Psychoanalytic: Personality results from unconscious urges & desires. Perspective: Freud, Jung, Adler, and Horney.

Freud’s Theory:

All three operate, at least in part, in the unconscious.

Jung: Collective unconscious links all humans together. Personality is influenced by archetypes.

Adler & Horney: Unconscious is motivated by social urges.

Humanistic Perspective: Emphasizes the internal feelings of healthy individuals as they strive for happiness and self-realization. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Rogers’s unconditional positive regard flow from the humanistic view of personality.

Type & Trait Theories: Ancient Greek humors, Sheldon’s somatotypes, divisions into Type A and Type B, and Myers-Briggs Type Inventory.

Type Theory: Can identify characteristic behaviors.

Trait Theories:

Social Cognitive Perspective: Individuals react with their environment in a cycle called reciprocal determinism. People mold their environments according to their personality, and those environments in turn shape their thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

Behaviorist Perspective: Our personality develops as a result of operant conditioning. E.g. it is reward and punishment based.

Biological Perspective: Behavior can be explained as a result of genetic expression.

Psychological Disorders

Types of Psych Disorders

Schizophrenia: Prototypical disorder with psychosis.
Positive Symptoms: Add something to behavior, cognition or affect. Such as delusions or hallucinations.
Negative Symptoms: The loss of something. Such as disturbances of affect and avolition.

Depressive Disorders: Include major depressive disorder and seasonal affective disorder.
Major Dep Disorder: At least 1 major depressive episode.
Persistent Dep Disorder: Dysthymia for at least 2 years that doesn’t meet criteria for Major Depressive Disorder.
Seasonal Affective Disorder: Depression occurring in winter.

Bipolar and Related Disorders:
Bipolar I: At least one manic episode.
Bipolar II: At least one hypomanic episode & at least one major depressive episode.
Cyclothymic Disorder: Hypomanic episodes with dysthymia.

Anxiety Disorders: Generalized anxiety disorder, phobias, social anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, and panic disorder.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:
Obsessions: Persistent, intrusive thoughts & impulses.
Compulsions: Repetitive tasks that relieve tension but cause impairment in a person’s life.

Body Dysmorphic Disorder: Unrealistic negative evaluation of one’s appearance.

PTSD: Intrusive symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares. Avoidance symptoms, negative cognitive symptoms & arousal symptoms.

Dissociative Disorders:
Dissociative Amnesia: Can’t recall past experiences.
Dissociative Fugue: Assumption of a new identity.
Dissociative Identity Disorder: Multiple personalities.
Depersonalization / Derealization Disorder: Feeling detached from the mind and body, or environment.

Somatic Symptom & Related Disorders: Involve significant bodily symptoms.
Somatic Symptom Disorder: “Somatoform disorder”. A somatic symptom causes disproportionate concern.
Illness Anxiety Disorder: Preoccupation with thoughts about having or coming down with illness.
Conversion Disorder: Associated with prior trauma, involves unexplained symptoms resulting in loss of body function.
Hypochondriasis: “Illness Anxiety Disorder”. One strongly believes he or she has a serious illness despite few or no symptoms.

Personality Disorders: Patterns of inflexible, maladaptive behavior that cause distress or impaired function.
Cluster A: “weird” – Paranoid, schizotypal, schizoid.
Cluster B: “wild” – antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic.
Cluster C: “worried” – avoidant, dependent, OC.

Understanding Psych Disorders

Behaviorist Approach: Classical and operant conditioning shapes the disorder.
Biomedical Approach: Takes into account only physical and medical causes.
Biopsychosocial Approach: Considers relative contributions of biological, psychological, and social components.
Psychodynamic Approach: Related to Freud’s psychoanalysis.
DSM-5: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition. Categorizes mental disorders based on symptoms.

Biological Basis

Schizophrenia: Genetic factors, birth trauma, marijuana use, family history.

Depression: ↑glucocorticoids, ↓norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine.

Bipolar Disorders: Norepinephrine and serotonin. Also heritable.

Alzheimer’s: Genetic factors, brain atrophy, ↓acetylcholine, senile plaques of β-amyloid.

Parkinson’s: Bradykinesia, resting tremor, pill-rolling tremor, masklike facies, cogwheel rigidity, and a shuffling gait. ↓dopamine.

Social Processes, Attitudes, and Behavior

Group Psychology

Social Facilitation: Describes the tendency of people to perform at a different level when others are around.

Deindividuation: A loss of self-awareness in large groups.

Bystander Effect: When in a group, individuals are less likely to respond to a person in need.

Peer Pressure: The social influence placed on individuals by others they consider equals.

Social Loafing: An individual does not pull his or her weight in a group setting.

Polarization: The tendency toward making decisions in a group that are more extreme.

Groupthink: The tendency for groups to make decisions based on ideas and solutions that arise within the group without considering outside ideas.

Culture: The beliefs, ideas, behaviors, actions, and characteristics of a group or society.

Assimilation: The process by which an immigrant or minority takes up elements of mainstream culture. Assimilation is a specific type of socialization. To experience assimilation, a person must first have their own culture, then absorb elements of a new culture.

Multiculturalism: The encouragement of multiple cultures within a community to enhance diversity.

Subcultures: A group of people within a culture that distinguish themselves from the primary culture.

Attitudes & Behavior

Attitudes: Tendencies toward expression of positive or negative feelings or evaluations of something. Attitude has 3 components: Affective, behavioral, and cognitive.

Functional Attitudes Theory: States that there are four functional areas of attitudes: knowledge, ego expression, adaptability, and ego defense.

Learning Theory: States that attitudes are developed through forms of learning: direct contact, direct interaction, direct instruction, and conditioning.

Elaboration Likelihood Model: States that attitudes are formed and changed through different routes of information processing based on degree of elaboration: central route processing, peripheral route processing.

Social Cognitive Theory: States that attitudes are formed through watching others, personal factors, and the environment. People change their behavior or attitudes based on observation.

Socialization

Socialization: The process of internalizing the social norms and values expected in one’s society.

Sanctions:
Positive: A reward for a certain behavior.
Negative: A punishment for a certain behavior.

Formal Sanction: An official reward or punishment.
Informal Sanction: A sanction that is not enforced or punished by an authority but that occurs in everyday interactions with other people. Ex: Asking someone to lower their voice in a movie theater.

Norms: Determine the boundaries of acceptable behavior within a society.

Mores: Informal norms with major importance for society and, if broken, can result in severe sanctions. Ex: Drug abuse is not socially acceptable. “Right / Wrong”

Folkways: Informal norms that are less significant, yet they still shape our everyday behavior. Ex: Holding a door open for someone. “Right / Rude”

Taboos: Considered unacceptable by almost every culture (like cannibalism or incest).

Stigma: The extreme disapproval or dislike of a person or group based on perceived differences from the rest of society.

Deviance: Violation of norms, rules, or expectations in a society.

Differential Association Theory: Deviance can be learned through our interactions with others. People commit crimes, at least in part, because of their associations with other people.

Conformity: Changing beliefs or behaviors in order to fit into a group or society.

Compliance: When individuals change their behavior based on the requests of others.

Obedience: A change in behavior based on a command from someone seen as an authority figure.

Social Interaction

Elements of Social Interaction

Status: A position in society used to classify individuals.

Ascribed Status: Involuntarily assigned to an individual based on race, gender, ethnicity, etc.

Achieved Status: Voluntarily earned by an individual.

Master Status: The status by which an individual is primarily identified.

Role: A set of beliefs, values, and norms that define the expectations of a certain status in a social situation.

Role Performance: Refers to carrying out behaviors of a given role.

Role Partner: Another individual who helps define a specific role within the relationship.

Role Set: A set of all roles that are associated with a status.

Role Conflict: Difficulty managing MULTIPLE roles.

Role Strain: Difficulty managing JUST ONE role.

Groups: 2 or more people with similar characteristics that share a sense of unity.

Peer Group: A self-selected group formed around shared interests.

Family Group: Group to which you are born, adopted or married.

Kinship:
Affinal Kinship: Individuals that are related by choice. E.g. marriage.
Consanguineous Kinship: Related through blood.

In-Group: The group you are in.

Out-Group: Group you compete with or oppose.

Reference Group: Group you compare yourself to.

Primary Group: Those that contain strong emotional bonds.

Secondary Group: Often temporary. Contain weaker bonds overall.

Gemeinschaft: Community

Gesellschaft: Society

Groupthink: Occurs when members begin to conform to one another’s views and ignore outside perspectives.

Network: An observable pattern of social relationships between individuals or groups.

Organization: A group with identifiable membership that engages in certain action to achieve a common purpose.

Bureaucracy: A rational system of administration, discipline, and control. Max Weber gave it six defining characteristics.

Iron Law of Oligarchy: Democratic or bureaucratic systems naturally shift to being ruled by an elite group.

Sect: A religious group that arose from a split from a larger religion.

Self-Preservation and Interacting w/ Others

Basic Model of Expressing Emotions: States that there are universal emotions and expressions that can be understood across cultures.

Social Construction Model of Expressing Emotion: States that emotions are solely based on the situational context of social interactions.

Display Rules: Unspoken rules that govern the expression of emotions.

Impression Management: Refers to the maintenance of a public image, which is accomplished through various strategies: Flattery, boasting, managing appearances, ingratiation, aligning actions, alter-casting.

Dramaturgical Approach: People create images of themselves in the same way that actors perform a role in front of an audience.
Front Stage: Where you are seen by an audience.
Back Stage: You are not in front of the audience.

Verbal Communication: Communicating through spoken, written, or signed words.

Nonverbal Communication: Communicating through means other than the use of words. Examples: Body language, prosody, gestures.

Animal Communication: Takes place not only between nonhuman animals, but between humans and other animals as well. Animals use body language, facial expressions, visual displays, scents, and vocalizations to communicate.

Weber’s Ideal Bureaucracy

Social Thinking

Social Behavior

Interpersonal Attraction: Is what makes people like each other. Influenced by physical attractiveness, similarity of thoughts and physical traits, self-disclosure, reciprocity, & proximity.

Aggression: A physical, verbal, or nonverbal behavior with the intention to cause harm or increase social dominance.

Attachment: An emotional bond to another person. Usually refers to the bond between a child and caregiver.

Secure Attachment: Requires a consistent caregiver. Child shows a strong preference for the caregiver compared to strangers.

Avoidant Attachment: Occurs when a caregiver has little or no response to a distressed child. Child shows no preference for the caregiver compared to strangers.

Ambivalent Attachment: Occurs when a caregiver has an inconsistent response to a child’s distress, sometimes responding appropriately, sometimes neglectful. Child will become distressed when caregiver leaves and is ambivalent when he or she returns.

Disorganized Attachment: Occurs when a caregiver is erratic or abusive; the child shows no clear pattern of behavior in response to the caregiver’s absence or presence.

Social Support: The perception or reality that one is cared for by a social network.

Emotional Support: Listening to, affirming, and empathizing with someone’s feelings.

Esteem Support: Affirms the qualities and skills of the person.

Material Support: Providing physical or monetary support.

Informational Support: Providing useful information to a person.

Network Support: Providing a sense to belonging to a person.

Foraging: Searching for and exploiting food resources.

Mating System: Describes the way in which a group is organized in terms of sexual behavior.

Monogamy: Exclusive mating relationships.

Polygamy: One member of a sex having multiple exclusive relationships with members of the opposite sex.
Polygyny: Male with multiple females.
Polyandry: Female with multiple males.

Promiscuity: No exclusivity.

Mate Choice: (Intersexual selection). The selection of a mate based on attraction and traits.

Altruism: A helping behavior in which the person’s intent is to benefit someone else at some cost to him or herself.

Game Theory: Attempts to explain decision making between individuals as if they are participating in a game.

Inclusive Fitness: A measure of an organism’s success in the population based on how well it propagates ITS OWN genes. Inclusive fitness also includes the ability of those offspring to then support others.

Social Perception & Behavior

Social Perception: (Social cognition). The way by which we generate impressions about people in our social environment. It contains a perceiver, target and situation.

Social Capital: The practice of developing and maintaining relationships that form social networks willing to help each other.

Implicit Personality Theory: When we look at somebody for the first time, we pick up on one of their characteristics. We then take that characteristic and assume other traits about the person based off of that one characteristic we first picked up on.

Cognitive Biases: Primacy effect, recency effect, reliance on central traits, halo effect, just-world hypothesis, self-serving bias.

Attribution Theory: Focuses on the tendency for individuals to infer the causes of other people’s behavior.

Dispositional: Internal. Causes of a behavior are internal.

Situational: External. Surroundings or context cause behavior.

Correspondent Inference Theory: Focuses on the intentionality of a person’s behavior. When someone unexpectedly does something that either helps or hurts us, we form a dispositional attribution; we correlate the action to the person’s personality.

Fundamental Attribution Error: The bias toward making dispositional attributions rather than situational attributions in regard to the actions of others.

Attribution Substitution: Occurs when individuals must make judgments that are complex but instead substitute a simpler solution or heuristic.

Actor-Observer Bias: Tendency to attribute your own actions to external causes and others’ actions to dispositional causes.

Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

Stereotypes: Cognitive. Occur when attitudes and impressions are made based on limited and superficial information.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: When stereotypes lead to expectations and those expectations create conditions that lead to confirmation of the stereotype.

Stereotype Threat: Concern or anxiety about confirming a negative stereotype about one’s social group.

Prejudice: Affective. An irrational positive or negative attitude toward a person, group, or thing prior to an actual experience.

Ethnocentrism: Refers to the practice of making judgments about other cultures based on the values and beliefs of one’s own culture.

Cultural Relativism: Refers to the recognition that social groups and cultures should be studied on their own terms.

Discrimination: Behavioral. When prejudicial attitudes cause individuals of a particular group to be treated differently from others.

Social Structure and Demographics

Sociology: Theories & Institutions

Functionalism: Focuses on the function of each part of society.
Manifest Functions: Deliberate actions that serve to help a given system.
Latent Functions: Unexpected, unintended, or unrecognized consequences of manifest actions.

Conflict Theory: Based on the works of Karl Marx. Conflict Theory focuses on how power differentials are created and contribute to maintaining social order. It explains how groups compete for resources to attain power or superiority.

Conflict Sociology: The study of the way that distinct groups compete for resources.

Symbolic Interactionism: The study of the ways individuals interact through a shared understanding of words, gestures, and other symbols. The “meaning” of social symbols.

Microsociology: The study of expressions, symbolic gestures, and other small, individual components of a society.

Social Constructionism: Explores the ways in which individuals and groups make decisions to agree upon a given social reality. The “value” they place on certain social constructs. Social constructionism focuses on altering that constructed view.

Rational Choice Theory: States that individuals will make decisions that maximize benefit and minimize harm. Expectancy Theory applies rational choice theory within groups.

Feminist Theory: Explores the ways in which one gender can be subordinated.

Social Institutions: Well-established social structures that dictate certain patterns of behavior or relationships.
4 Tenets of Medicine: Beneficence, nonmaleficence, respect for autonomy, and justice.

Demographics

Demographics: Statistics of populations. Most common are ageism, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and immigration.

Fertility Rate: Average number of children born to a woman during her lifetime in a population.

Birth & Mortality: Usually measured as the number of births or deaths per rate: 1000 people per year.

Migration: The movement of people from one location to another.

Ethnic Migrants: Ethnic groups emigrating to more industrialized countries tend to have ↑fertility and ↓mortality compared to the industrialized nation’s population.

Demographic Transition: A model used to represent drops in birth and death rates as a result of industrialization.

Social Movements: Organized to either promote (proactive) or resist (reactive) social change.

Globalization: The process of integrating a global economy with free trade and tapping of foreign labor markets.

Urbanization: The process of dense areas of population creating a pull for migration.

Culture

Culture: Encompasses the lifestyle of a group of people.

Material Culture: Refers to the physical objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture.

Symbolic Culture: Includes the ideas associated with a cultural group.

Cultural Lag: The idea that material culture changes more quickly than symbolic culture.

Language: Spoken or written symbols combined into a system.

Value: What a person deems important in life.

Belief: Something a person considers to be true.

Ritual: Formal ceremonial behavior usually includes symbolism.

Norms: Societal rules that define the boundaries of acceptable behavior.

Social Stratification
Social Class

Social Stratification: The system by which society ranks categories of people into a hierarchy.

Functionalism: States that social stratification is necessary and results from the need for those with special intelligence, knowledge, and skills to be a part of the most important professions and occupations. A harmonious equilibrium.

Socioeconomic Status:
Ascribed Status: Involuntary, derives from clearly identifiable characteristics such as age and gender.
Achieved Status: Acquired through direct, individual efforts.

Social Class: A category of people with shared socioeconomic characteristics.

Prestige: Respect and importance tied to specific occupations or associations.

Power: The capacity to influence people.

Anomie: Lack of social norms, or the breakdown of social bonds between individuals and society.

Strain Theory: Focuses on how anomic conditions can lead to deviance, and in turn reinforce social stratification.

Social Capital: Benefits provided by social networks. Or, the investment people make in their society in return for rewards.

Meritocracy: Advancement up the social ladder is based on intellectual talent and achievement.

Social Mobility: Allows one to acquire higher-level employment opportunities by achieving required credentials and experience.

Poverty: In the USA, the poverty line is determined by the government’s calculation of the minimum income required for the necessities of life.
Absolute: When one can’t acquire basic life necessities.
Relative: When one is poor in comparison to a larger population. Ex: “Anyone who earns less than 60% of the median income is poor.” It is relative to the population, not based a hard number value.

Relative Deprivation Theory: People seek to acquire something that others possess and which they believe they should have too. They are not necessarily poor, but they may perceive that they are lacking resources or money. It is all relative.

Social Reproduction: The passing on of social inequality, especially poverty, from one generation to the next.

Social Exclusion: A sense of powerlessness when individuals feel alienated from society.

Spatial Inequality: Social stratification across territories.

Globalization: Integrating one’s economy to include foreign societies. Has led to increased poverty as production shifts to cheaper labor markets.

Epidemiology and Disparities

Incidence: The # of new cases of a disease per population at risk.

Prevalence: The # of cases of a disease per population.

Mortality: Deaths caused by a given disease.

Ethnic Migrants: Ethnic groups emigrating to more industrialized countries tend to have ↑fertility and ↓overall mortality compared to the industrialized nation’s population.

Morbidity: The burden or degree of illness associated with a given disease.

Affordable Care Act (ACA): Attempts to increase health insurance coverage rates and reduce the cost of health care.

Medicare: Covers people greater than 65 years old, those with end-stage renal disease, and those with ALS.

Medicaid: Covers patients in significant financial need.