Your FREE GRE Psychology Flashcards 2026 – 200+ Cards

Learning by association: a neutral stimulus paired with one that triggers a reflex comes to evoke the response on its own. Pavlov's dogs salivated to a bell.

Learning in which behavior is shaped by its consequences — reinforcement strengthens it, punishment weakens it (Skinner).

Neurotransmitter for reward, motivation, and movement; loss in the substantia nigra causes Parkinson's, and excess activity is linked to schizophrenia.

Neurotransmitter regulating mood, sleep, and appetite; low levels are linked to depression.

Neurotransmitter for memory and muscle activation; its loss is associated with Alzheimer's disease.

The brain's main inhibitory neurotransmitter; it calms neural activity and reduces anxiety.

The brain's main excitatory neurotransmitter; central to learning and memory.

Neurotransmitter for arousal and alertness; drives the fight-or-flight stress response.

The brief electrical impulse traveling down an axon when a neuron fires, following the all-or-none principle.

The fatty insulation around many axons that speeds the conduction of nerve impulses.

The junction between two neurons where a neurotransmitter crosses from the axon terminal to the next dendrite.

A drug or molecule that mimics or boosts the action of a neurotransmitter.

A drug or molecule that blocks the action of a neurotransmitter.

The reabsorption of a neurotransmitter by the neuron that released it; SSRIs block serotonin reuptake.

The branch of the autonomic nervous system that triggers fight-or-flight arousal.

The branch of the autonomic nervous system that calms the body and conserves energy (rest-and-digest).

The brain structure essential for forming new long-term memories.

The brain structure central to fear, aggression, and emotional processing.

The brain structure that coordinates voluntary movement and balance.

The brain region governing homeostasis — hunger, thirst, temperature — and the endocrine system.

The brain's sensory relay station, routing input (except smell) to the cortex.

The brainstem structure controlling vital autonomic functions like heartbeat and breathing.

The cortical lobe that processes visual information.

The cortical lobe that processes hearing and is involved in memory and language.

The cortical lobe that processes touch and spatial awareness.

The cortical lobe handling planning, judgment, voluntary movement, and personality.

A frontal-lobe region for speech production; damage causes nonfluent (expressive) aphasia.

A temporal-lobe region for language comprehension; damage causes fluent (receptive) aphasia.

The band of fibers connecting the two cerebral hemispheres, allowing them to communicate.

Retinal photoreceptors for dim-light and peripheral (black-and-white) vision.

Retinal photoreceptors for color vision and fine detail, concentrated in the fovea.

The body's primary stress hormone, released by the adrenal cortex.

Endogenous neurotransmitters that reduce pain and produce feelings of pleasure.

The negative electrical charge of a neuron at rest, about −70 millivolts.

The brief recovery phase after a neuron fires, during which it cannot fire again.

A neural pathway that produces an automatic response without involving the brain.

A stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers a response (e.g., food).

A previously neutral stimulus that, after pairing, triggers a learned response (e.g., a bell).

Adding a pleasant stimulus to increase a behavior.

Removing an aversive stimulus to increase a behavior — it strengthens, not weakens.

The psychological discomfort of holding contradictory beliefs, which motivates a change in attitude or behavior (Festinger).

The limited-capacity system that holds and manipulates information briefly; Baddeley's model has a central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad.

Memory holding about seven items for roughly 15–30 seconds; expanded by chunking.

Durable memory with effectively unlimited capacity; divided into explicit and implicit.

A very brief, large-capacity store of raw sensory input (iconic for vision, echoic for hearing).

Grouping individual items into larger meaningful units to expand short-term memory capacity.

In Baddeley's model, the attentional system that coordinates the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad.

The component of working memory that holds and rehearses verbal and auditory information.

A mental shortcut that speeds judgment but can cause systematic errors (biases).

Judging the likelihood of an event by how easily examples come to mind.

Judging probability by how closely something matches a prototype, ignoring base rates.

Relying too heavily on the first piece of information when making decisions.

Seeking and favoring information that confirms one's existing beliefs.

The tendency to see an object as usable only in its customary way.

Letting the wording of options (gain vs loss) sway a decision.

Perception guided by prior knowledge, context, and expectations.

Perception that builds from raw sensory data without prior expectations.

The slowed naming of an ink color when the word spells a different color — automatic reading interferes with controlled processing.

Better recall of the first (primacy) and last (recency) items in a list.

The tendency to remember incomplete or interrupted tasks better than completed ones.

The process of getting information into memory.

The process of getting information back out of memory.

When old learning disrupts the recall of new information.

When new learning disrupts the recall of older information.

A step-by-step procedure that guarantees a correct solution, though it can be slow.

The tendency to approach a problem in a way that worked before, even when unhelpful.

Remembering to perform an intended action in the future.

Long-term memory for facts and general knowledge.

Long-term memory for specific personal experiences and events.

Implicit long-term memory for skills and how to do things.

The idea that thinking of one concept primes related concepts in a semantic network.

Chomsky's proposal that humans share an innate, biologically based capacity for language.

The smallest distinctive sound unit in a language.

The smallest unit of meaning in a language.

The ability to reason and solve novel problems, independent of acquired knowledge.

Accumulated knowledge and skills built up over a lifetime.

Charles Spearman's general intelligence factor underlying performance across mental tasks.

Howard Gardner's theory of several distinct intelligences (linguistic, spatial, musical, etc.).

Overestimating dispositional causes and underestimating situational ones when explaining others' behavior.

The more people present at an emergency, the less likely any one helps, due to diffusion of responsibility (Latané & Darley).

Adjusting behavior or beliefs to match a group standard, demonstrated in Asch's line studies.

Following the orders of an authority figure; Milgram found ~65% obeyed to the maximum shock.

When a group's desire for harmony overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives.

Crediting successes to oneself and blaming failures on the situation.

Improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others.

Reduced individual effort when working in a group than when working alone.

The reduced sense of personal accountability when others are present.

Favoring the group one belongs to over out-groups.

Perceiving members of another group as more alike than they really are.

Evaluating one's own abilities and opinions by comparing with others, especially similar ones (Festinger).

Festinger's theory that holding conflicting beliefs creates discomfort that motivates attitude change.

Zimbardo's study showing how assigned social roles can drive cruel behavior.

A study in which participants gave obviously wrong answers to match a unanimous majority.

Milgram's demonstration that ordinary people will obey an authority's order to harm a stranger.

Sherif's study showing superordinate goals reduce intergroup conflict.

Shared aims that require cooperation between groups and reduce conflict.

Gaining compliance with a large request by first securing a small one.

Gaining compliance by first making a large request that is refused, then a smaller one.

Persuasion through careful evaluation of strong arguments (Elaboration Likelihood Model).

Persuasion through surface cues like attractiveness rather than argument quality.

Increased liking for stimuli simply from repeated exposure.

When an expectation prompts behavior that makes the expectation come true.

Attributing our own behavior to the situation but others' behavior to disposition.

The belief that people get what they deserve, which can lead to blaming victims.

The loss of self-awareness and restraint in groups, often promoting impulsive behavior.

A generalized belief about the members of a social group.

A negative attitude toward a group and its members.

Unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its members.

Sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational — four invariant stages of cognitive development.

Understanding that objects exist when out of sight; develops in the sensorimotor stage.

Understanding that quantity stays the same despite changes in shape; mastered in the concrete operational stage.

Piaget's first stage (birth–2): learning through senses and movement; object permanence emerges.

Piaget's second stage (2–7): symbolic thought and language, but egocentric and lacking conservation.

Piaget's third stage (7–11): logical thought about concrete events; conservation and reversibility.

Piaget's fourth stage (11+): abstract and hypothetical reasoning.

The preoperational child's difficulty taking another person's point of view.

Vygotsky's gap between what a learner can do alone and with guidance.

Temporary guidance from a more knowledgeable other that is withdrawn as the learner improves (Vygotsky).

The enduring emotional bond between a child and caregiver.

Studies showing infant monkeys preferred a cloth 'comfort' mother over a wire one with food.

Ainsworth's procedure classifying infant attachment as secure, avoidant, or anxious-ambivalent.

An attachment style in which the child uses the caregiver as a safe base and is comforted on reunion.

Eight lifespan stages, each a crisis such as trust vs mistrust or identity vs role confusion.

Erikson's adolescent stage centered on forming a stable sense of self.

Preconventional, conventional, and postconventional levels of moral reasoning.

Kohlberg's earliest level: judging right and wrong by rewards and punishments.

Kohlberg's highest level: reasoning from abstract ethical principles.

Gilligan's critique that Kohlberg's model underweighted care and relationships.

A window in development when a skill is most readily acquired.

A decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated presentation.

A child's biologically based, early-appearing style of emotional reactivity.

Fitting new information into existing mental schemas (Piaget).

Changing existing schemas to incorporate new information (Piaget).

A mental framework that organizes and interprets information.

The understanding that others have beliefs and intentions different from one's own.

Heightened self-focus in adolescence (the imaginary audience and personal fable).

Committing to an identity (often a parent's) without exploring alternatives (Marcia).

Early two-word utterances that convey meaning with content words (e.g., 'want cookie').

The American Psychiatric Association's standard classification of mental disorders and their diagnostic criteria.

A structured, present-focused therapy that changes distorted thoughts and behaviors (Beck, Ellis).

A behavioral therapy pairing relaxation with a hierarchy of feared situations to treat phobias.

Freud's therapy aimed at surfacing unconscious conflict through free association and dream analysis.

In psychodynamic therapy, redirecting feelings about important people onto the therapist.

Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism — the trait model of personality.

In Freud's model, the unconscious source of basic drives operating on the pleasure principle.

In Freud's model, the reality-oriented mediator between the id and superego.

In Freud's model, the internalized moral standards and conscience.

An unconscious strategy (e.g., repression, projection) that reduces anxiety from conflict.

The defense mechanism of pushing threatening thoughts out of awareness.

Attributing one's own unacceptable impulses to someone else.

A five-level motivation model from physiological needs up to self-actualization.

Realizing one's full potential — the top of Maslow's hierarchy.

Rogers's attitude of full acceptance, central to client-centered therapy.

Rogers's humanistic therapy emphasizing empathy, genuineness, and acceptance.

Linehan's therapy combining acceptance and change skills; first developed for borderline personality disorder.

A mood disorder marked by persistent sadness, loss of interest, and related symptoms.

A mood disorder alternating between depressive and manic episodes.

Chronic, excessive worry across many areas of life.

Intrusive obsessions and compulsive rituals performed to reduce anxiety.

A psychotic disorder with delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized thought.

Added experiences in schizophrenia such as hallucinations and delusions.

Reductions in schizophrenia such as flat affect and social withdrawal.

Loss of sensory or motor function with no identifiable medical cause.

A disorder marked by instability in mood and relationships, often involving 'splitting.'

Viewing people or situations as all good or all bad, common in borderline personality disorder.

A pattern of disregard for others' rights and a lack of remorse.

An intense, irrational fear of a specific object or situation.

Post-traumatic stress disorder: flashbacks, hyperarousal, and avoidance after trauma.

The consistency of a measurement — whether it gives the same result on repeated use.

The degree to which a test measures what it claims to measure.

A false positive — rejecting a true null hypothesis; its probability is alpha.

A false negative — failing to reject a false null hypothesis; its probability is beta.

An extraneous variable that varies with the independent variable, offering a rival explanation.

The variable a researcher manipulates in an experiment.

The outcome a researcher measures in an experiment.

Placing participants into conditions by chance to equalize groups and allow causal inference.

A design in which neither participants nor researchers know group assignments, controlling bias.

Improvement from an inactive treatment due to the participant's expectations.

A value from −1 to +1 indicating the direction and strength of a relationship.

Correlation shows variables relate; only a controlled experiment can establish cause.

The arithmetic average; sensitive to outliers.

The middle value of an ordered data set; resists outliers.

The most frequently occurring value in a data set.

A measure of how spread out data are around the mean.

A symmetric, bell-shaped distribution where mean, median, and mode coincide.

A distribution with a long right tail; the mean exceeds the median.

A distribution with a long left tail; the mean is below the median.

Analysis of Variance — a test comparing the means of three or more groups.

A test comparing the means of two groups.

The probability of obtaining results as extreme as observed if the null hypothesis were true.

A result unlikely to be due to chance, conventionally p < .05.

The default claim that there is no effect or no difference.

Consistency of scores when the same test is given to the same people at two times.

Agreement among different observers scoring the same behavior.

The degree to which a test's items measure the same construct (e.g., Cronbach's alpha).

Whether a test measures the theoretical trait it intends to.

Whether findings generalize to other settings, people, and times.

Whether a study can confidently attribute results to the independent variable.

Comparing different age groups at one point in time.

Following the same participants over an extended period.