PSYC-1000 Final: Definitions of Psychology Terms for the exam

• School: University of Winnipeg
• Department: PSYCHOLOGY
• Course: PSYC-1000
• Professor: Introto Psych

Document Summary

Psychology: scientific study of behaviour and mental processes. Empiricism: view that a) knowledge comes from experience via the senses and b) science flourishes through observation and experiment. Structuralism: an early school of psychology that used introspection to explore the elemental structure of the human mind. Functionalism: a school of psychology that focused on how mental and behavioural processes function how they enable the organism to adapt, survive, and flourish. Humanistic psychology: historically significant perspective that emphasized the growth potential of healthy people; used personalized methods to study personality in hopes of fostering personal growth. Nature-nurture issue: longstanding controversy over the relative contributions that genes and experience make to the development of psychological traits and behaviours. Natural selection: principle that among the range of inherited trait variations those contributing to reproduction and survival will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations. Levels of analysis: differing complementary views, from biological to psychological to socio-cultural, for analyzing any given phenomenon.