AP Psychology Exam Review

AP Psychology Exam Review 2024

AP Psychology Exam Review Breakdown of Question Categories: 2-4% history – (prologue) 6-8% methods and approaches – (chapter 1) 8-10% biological bases of behavior – (chapter 2, 3, 14) 7-9% sensation and perception – (chapter 5, 6) 2-4% states of consciousness – (chapter 7) 7-9% learning – (chapter 8) 8-10% cognition – (chapter 9, 10) 7-9% motivation and emotion – (chapter 12, 13) 7-9% developmental psychology – (chapter 4) 6-8% personality – (chapter 15) 5-7% testing and individual differences – (chapter 11) 7-9% abnormal psychology – (chapter 16) 5-7% treatment of psychological disorders – (chapter 17) 7-9% social psychology – (chapter 18) __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Famous People to Know Frances Galton: maintained that personality and ability depend almost entirely on genetic inheritance (human traits are inherited) Charles Darwin: theory of evolution, survival of the fittest-origin of the species William Wundt: introspection-psychology became the scientific study of conscious experience (rather than science); father of modern or scientific psychology; structuralism was the approach and introspection was the methodology John Watson: founder of behaviorism; generalization; applied classical conditioning skills to advertising; most famous for Little Albert experiment, where he first trained Albert to be afraid of rats and then to generalize his fear to all small, white animals Alfred Adler: Neo-Freudian; believed that childhood social, not sexual, tensions are crucial for personality formation; believed that people are primarily searching or self-esteem and achieving the ideal self Carl Jung: disciple of Freud who extended his theories; believed in a collective unconscious as well as a personal unconscious that is aware of ancient archetypes which we inherit from our ancestors and we see in myths (young warrior, wise man of the village, loving mother, etc.); coined the terms introversion and extroversion Gordon Allport: three levels of traits-- 1. cardinal trait- dominant trait that characterizes your life, 2. central trait- common to all people, 3. secondary trait- surfaces in some situations and not in others Albert Ellis: father of Rational Emotive Therapy, which focuses on altering client’s patterns of irrational thinking to reduce maladaptive behavior and emotion (like, “if I fail the AP exam my life will come to an end”) Albert Maslow: humanist psychologist who said we have a series of needs which must be met; you can’t achieve the top level, selfactualization, unless the previous levels have been achieved; from bottom to top the levels are physiological needs, safety, belonging, self-esteem, self-actualization; lower needs dominate and individual’s motivation as long as they are unsatisfied Carl Rogers: humanistic psychologist who believed in unconditional positive regard; people will naturally strive for selfactualization and high self-esteem, unless society taints them; reflected back clients thoughts so that they developed a selfawareness or their feelings; client-centered therapy B.F. Skinner: operant conditioning-- techniques to manipulate the consequences of an organism’s behavior in order to observe the effects of subsequent behavior; Skinner box; believed psychology was not scientific enough; wanted it to be believed everyone is born tableau rosa (blank slate); NOT concerned with unconscious or cause, only behavior Ivan Pavlov: father of classical conditioning-- an unconditional stimulus naturally elicits a reflexive behavior called an unconditional response, but with repeated pairings with a neutral stimulus, the neutral stimulus will elicit the response Noam Chomsky: believed there are an infinite number of sentences in a language and that humans have an inborn native ability to develop language; words and concepts are learned but the brain is hardwired for grammar and language Jean Piaget: four-state theory of cognitive development-- sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational; two basic processes (assimilation and accommodation) work in tandem to achieve cognitive growth Erik Erikson: people evolve through 8 states over the life span; each state is marked by psychological crisis that involves confronting “who am I” Lawrence Kohlberg: his theory states that there are 3 levels of moral reasoning (pre-conventional, conventional, post-conventional) and each level can be divided into 2 stages Carol Gilligan: maintained the Kohlberg’s work was developed only observing boys and overlooked potential differences between the habitual moral judgment of men and women Hans Eysenck: personality is determined to a large extent by genes; used the terms extroversion and introversion S. Schacter: believed that to experience emotions one must be physically aroused and must then label the arousal Mary Cover Jones: systemic desensitization; maintained that fear could be unlearned; Little Peter experiment Benjamin Whorf: his hypothesis is that language determines the way we think Robert Sternberg: triarchic theory of intelligence- [1] academic problem-solving intelligence [2] practical intelligence [3] creative intelligence Howard Gardner: theory of multiple intelligences Albert Bandura: observational learning- allows you to profit immediately from the mistakes and successes of others; his experiment had adult models punching BoBo dolls and then observed children whom watched begin to exhibit many of the same behaviors; social learning theory E.L. Thorndike: law of effect-the principle that behavior followed by favorable consequences becomes more likely and vice versa Alfred Binet: general I.Q. tests Lewis Terman: revised Binet’s I.Q. test and established norms for American children David Weschler: established an intelligence test especially for adults (Weschler Intelligence Test for Adults) Charles Spearman: found that specific mental talents were highly correlated; concluded that all cognitive abilities showed a common core which he labeled “g” for general ability H. Rorschach: developed one of the first projective tests, the Inkblot Test; subject reads the inkblots and projects to the observer aspects of their personality Philip Zimbardo: conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment; studied the power of social roles to influence peoples behavior; proved people’s behavior depends to a large extent on the roles they are asked to play; experiment had to be stopped because it got out of control David Rosenhan: conducted a hospital experiment to test the diagnosis that hospitals make on patients; wanted to see the impact of behavior on being a patient; proved that once you are diagnosed with a disorder, your care would not be very good in a mental hospital setting S. Asch: study of conformity; experiment had a subject unaware of his situation to test if he would conform if all the members of a group gave an obviously incorrect answer Stanley Milgram: conducted a study on obedience when he had a subject shock a patient to the extent that they would be seriously injuring the patient Harry Harlow: studied theory of attachment in infant Rhesus monkeys; also experimented on the effects of social isolation in young monkeys and observed that they become severely emotionally disturbed and never recover fully William Sheldon: theory that linked personality to physique on the grounds that both are governed by genetic endowment; endomorphic (large), mesomorphic (average), ectomorphic (skinny) Sigmund Freud: psychoanalytical theory that focuses on the unconscious; id, ego, superego; believed innate drives for sex and aggression are the primary motives for our behavior and personalities Karen Horney: criticized Freud; said that personality is continually molded by current fears and impulses rather than being determined solely by childhood experiences; saw humans as craving love and social interaction to drive their needs Martin Seligman: learned helplessness is the giving up reaction that occurs from the experience that whatever you do you cannot