Pschology Terms

Maslow's Theory

Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs theory is the most widely discussed theory of motivation.

The theory can be summarized as thus:

* Human beings have wants and desires which influence their behaviour, only unsatisfied needs can influence behaviour, satisfied needs cannot.

* Since needs are many, they are arranged in order of importance, from the basic to the complex.

* The person advances to the next level of needs only after the lower level need is at least minimally satisfied.

* The further the progress up the hierarchy, the more individuality, humanness and psychological health a person will show.

Herzberg's Two Factor Theory

Frederick Herzberg's two factor theory, concludes that certain factors in the workplace result in job satisfaction, while others do not, but if absent lead to dissatisfaction.

He distinguished between: motivation and hygiene

* Motivators; (e.g. challenging work, recognition, responsibility) which give positive satisfaction, and

* Hygiene factors; (e.g. status, job security, salary and fringe benefits) which do not motivate if present, but if absent will result in demotivation.

The name Hygiene factors is used because, like hygiene, the presence will not make you healthier, but absence can can cause health deterioration.

The theory is sometimes called the "Motivator-Hygiene Theory."

affective neuroscience The study of how emotional phenomena are executed in the brain.

associationist psychology The view that the mind is filled with ideas that enter by way of the senses and then become associated through principles such as similarity and contrast.

behavioral perspective An approach to psychology that focuses only on observable behavior, and tries to explain it in terms of its relation to environmental events.

behaviorism A school or system of psychology associated with the name of John B. Watson; it defined psychology as the study of behavior and limited the data of psychology to observable activities. In its classical form it was more restrictive than the contemporary behavioral viewpoint in psychology.

behaviorist approach (to personality) Emphasizes the importance of environmental, or situational, determinants of behavior.

biological psychologist A psychologist concerned with the relationship between biological processes and behavior.

case histories Biographies designed for scientific use.

cathartic effect The hypothesized reduction of aggression that follows the vicarious expression of it.

childhood amnesia The inability to recall events from the first years of one's life.

clinical psychologist A psychologist, usually with a Ph.D. or Psy.D. degree, trained in the diagnosis and treatment of emotional or behavioral problems and mental disorders.

cognitive approach (to personality) A general empirical approach and a set of topics related to how people process information about themselves and the world.

cognitive neuroscience An interdisciplinary approach that combines aspects of cognitive psychology and neuroscience to study how mental activities are executed in the brain.

cognitive perspective An approach to psychology that focuses on mental processes such as perceiving, remembering, reasoning, deciding, and problem solving, and tries to explain behavior in terms of these mental processes.

control group In an experiment, the group in which the condition under study is absent.

correlation coefficient An estimate of the degree to which two variables are related.

counseling psychologist A trained psychologist, usually with a Ph.D. or Psy.D. degree, who deals with personal problems not classified as illness, such as academic, social, or vocational problems of students. He or she has skills similar to those of the clinical psychologist but usually works in a nonmedical setting.

cultural psychology An interdisciplinary approach involving psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and other social scientists that is concerned with how an individual's culture influences his or her mental representations and psychological processes.

debriefing The meeting between researcher and participant following a study in which the researcher tells the participant the reasons for keeping them in ignorance-or deceiving them-about the procedures or hypotheses. The researcher also deals with any of the participants' residual emotional reactions so that participants leave with their dignity intact and their appreciation for the research enhanced.

dependent variable A variable that is hypothesized to depend on the value of the independent variable.

developmental psychologist A psychologist whose research interest lies in studying the changes that occur as a function of the growth and development of the organism, in particular the relationship between early and later behavior.

direct observation The observation of a particular phenomenon under study as it occurs naturally.

eclectic approach An approach to looking at topics within psychology using multiple psychological perspectives.

educational psychologist A psychologist whose research interest lies in the application of psychological principles to the education of children and adults in schools.

engineering psychologist A psychologist who specializes in the relationship between people and machines, seeking, for example, to design machines that minimize human error.

evolutionary psychology An area of research that studies how psychological processes have evolved by means of natural selection; those behaviors that aided survival or increased the chance of reproduction have tended to persist through the course of evolutionary history.

experiment The strongest test of hypotheses about cause and effect in which an investigator carefully controls conditions and takes measurements to discover the causal relationships