Navigating the Mind: Your Ultimate Guide to Mastering the PSYC
140 Final Exam
A Comprehensive Exam Study Guide Latest Updated 2025/2026.
Dispositions - ansInternal factors, such as beliefs, values, personality traits, and abilities, that
guide a person's behaviors
Schemas - ansA knowledge structure consisting of any organized body of stored information
that is used to help in understanding events.
Natural selection - ansAn evolutionary process that molds animals and plants so that traits
that enhance the probability of survival and reproduction are passed on to subsequent
generations.
Parental investment - ansThe evolutionary principle that costs and benefits are associated
with reproduction and the nurturing of offspring. Because these costs and benefits are
different for males and females, one gender will normally value and invest more in each child
than will the other.
Naturalistic fallacy - ansThe claim that the way things are is the way they should be.
Independent (individualistic) culture - ansA culture in which people tend to think of
themselves as distinct social entities, tied to each other by voluntary bonds of affection and
organizational memberships but essentially separate from other people and having attributes
that exist in the absence of any connection to others.
Interdependent (collectivistic) culture - ansA culture in which people tend to think of
themselves as part of a collective, inextricably tied to others in their group and placing less
importance on individual freedom or personal control over their lives.
-Emphasizes interdependent, cooperation, welfare of group over individual members
-Somewhat more common in Asian and Hispanic cultures
Hindsight bias - ansThe tendency to believe that you could have predicted some outcome that
you've learned about—when in fact you couldn't have predicted it accurately
Hypothesis - ansA prediction about what will happen under particular circumstances
-A specific prediction that derives from the theory
Theory - ansA set of related propositions intended to describe some phenomenon or aspect of
the world
Observational research - ansParticipant observation which involves observing some
phenomenon at close range
Archival research - ansLooking at evidence found in archives of various kinds, including
census reports, police records, sports statistics, newspaper articles, and databases containing
ethnographic descriptions of people in various cultures
Surveys - ansThe most common type of study
-Can be conducted using either interviews or written questionnaires
-Participants can be a small collections of students or a large sample of the national
population
Correlational research - ansResearch that involves measuring two or more variables, and
assessing whether or not there is a relationship between them
Experimental research - ansIn social psychology, research that randomly assigns people to
different conditions, or situations, and that enables researchers to make strong inferences
about why a relationship exists or how different situations affect behavior
Third variable - ansA variable, often unmeasured in correlational research, that can be the
true explanation for the relationship between two other variables
Self-selection - ansIn correlational research, the situation in which the participant, rather than
the researcher, determines the participant's level of each variable (for example, whether they
are married or not, or how many hours per day they spend playing video games), thereby
creating the problem that it could be these unknown other properties that are responsible for
the observed relationship.
