Psychology and sociology

20 important questions on Psychology and sociology

On what focuses evolutionary psychology?

On the underlying (ultimate) reason why people do certain things

What does positive selection need to drive evolution?

1. The trait needs to be beneficial
2. The trait need to be heritable

Theory of natural selection

A theory that helps us understand the characteristics and behaviors of all living organisms. The question was: what adaptive function might behavior serve?
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In what 4 categories can you divide the answer of a question?

1. Proximate mechanism (triggers of the behavior)
2. Development (how does the behavior come about in a life)
3. Adaptive function (what adaptive problem does it solve)
4. Evolutionary history (how did the behavior arise)

What are the two interventions?

1. Biomedical health interventions (vaccinating)
2. Gender transformatory initiatives (raising programs for women)

What benefits come from incorporating an evolutionary perspective?

1. Consumer researchers with a key to unlock hypothesis about behavior that might have never been generated
2. Can help explain a build on well-established behavioral phenomena

What are two limitations of evolutionary benefits?

1. Has difficulty explaining certain phenomena
2. We lack detailed knowledge of many selection pressures that humans faced over the millions of years

What are the three categories of the self-determination theory?

1. Autonomy: desire to self-direct
2. Compentence: desire to feel capable and effective
3. Relatedness: feeling connected to and cared about by others

When does the principle agent problem arise?

When someone receives a task (agent) from someone else (principle). If the agent wants to do something different there is a problem

Piaget's theory of cognitive development

Explains how a child constructs a mental model of the world. He disagreed that intelligence was a fixed trait

What serve as the building blocks for human thought and behavior?

Concepts and categories

What are 2 rules when you want to classify something?

1. Assimilation: you add something to an existing group
2. Accommodation: make a distinction between two things

Sensorimotor stage (birth-2)

The infant knows movements. They learn about the world through basic things. Things exist if they can see them or not. Actions have consequences

Formal operational stage (12-up)

Young adults begin to think abstractly and reason with problems. They think about moral, philosophical issues

Kolhberg's theory of moral development

States that we progress through three levels of moral thinking that build on our cognitive development

What can teachers do to motivate students?

1. Let the students pick (autonomy)
2. Focus on the learning process and not the grades (competence)
3. Study together with other students (relatedness)

What are the two sorts attributions?

1. Internal: causes lie within the person
2. External: causes lie within the situation

Fundamental attribution theory

We contribute different things to others than to ourselves

Explain fundamental attribution theory

Yourself + negative= situation
other person+ negative= personality
yourself + positive= personality
other person + positive= situation

A reference group

A group to which another group is compared

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