Psychology 101 Jeopardy

Often called the father of psychology, this German researcher opened the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig in 1879.

Who is Wilhelm Wundt?

This early school of psychology used introspection to break conscious experience down into its basic elements.

What is structuralism?

This perspective explains behavior in terms of unconscious drives and childhood experiences, founded by Sigmund Freud.

What is the psychoanalytic perspective?

This perspective, championed by John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner, focuses only on observable behavior rather than mental processes.

What is the behaviorist perspective?

This approach studies how mental processes like memory, perception, and problem solving work, often by comparing the mind to information processing.

What is the cognitive perspective?

This bundle of nerve fibers connects the brain's left and right hemispheres and allows them to communicate.

What is the corpus callosum?

This lobe of the brain, located at the front, governs planning, decision making, and impulse control.

What is the frontal lobe?

This lobe of the brain, at the back of the skull, primarily processes visual information.

What is the occipital lobe?

This almond-shaped structure in the limbic system plays a central role in processing fear and other emotions.

What is the amygdala?

This division of the nervous system connects the central nervous system to the limbs and organs.

What is the peripheral nervous system?

This process converts physical stimuli, such as light or sound waves, into neural signals the brain can interpret.

What is transduction?

This tendency to organize visual elements into groups, such as proximity and similarity, was described by a school of German psychologists.

What is Gestalt psychology?

This phenomenon describes decreased sensitivity to a constant, unchanging stimulus over time.

What is sensory adaptation?

This perceptual principle allows the brain to perceive objects as constant in size, shape, and color despite changes in the sensory input.

What is perceptual constancy?

This term describes the minimum difference between two stimuli that a person can detect at least half the time.

What is the just noticeable difference?

This type of memory storage can hold an essentially unlimited amount of information for years or decades.

What is long-term memory?

This process retrieves information from long-term storage back into conscious awareness.

What is retrieval?

This type of interference occurs when previously learned information disrupts the recall of newly learned information.

What is proactive interference?

This theory holds that forgetting occurs because memory traces fade with disuse over time.

What is decay theory?

This type of long-term memory covers skills and procedures, such as riding a bicycle, and is often retained even after amnesia.

What is procedural memory?

This personality model organizes traits into five broad dimensions, including openness and conscientiousness.

What is the Big Five?

This defense mechanism, described by Freud, involves attributing one's own unacceptable feelings to someone else.

What is projection?

This trait theorist argued personality is best described using a small number of core traits called cardinal, central, and secondary traits.

Who is Gordon Allport?

This humanistic psychologist proposed a hierarchy of needs culminating in self-actualization.

Who is Abraham Maslow?

This personality assessment presents ambiguous inkblots and asks respondents to describe what they see.

What is the Rorschach test?

This tendency to attribute others' behavior to their character while overlooking situational factors is a common bias.

What is the fundamental attribution error?

This phenomenon occurs when people adjust their behavior or beliefs to match a group, even without direct pressure to do so.

What is conformity?

This form of social influence involves following a direct order from an authority figure, as demonstrated in Stanley Milgram's studies.

What is obedience?

This phenomenon describes how the presence of many bystanders can reduce any single person's likelihood of helping in an emergency.

What is the bystander effect?

This 1971 study, in which college students role-played guards and prisoners, showed how quickly ordinary people could adopt abusive roles within a simulated institution.

What is the Stanford Prison Experiment?