Heredity & Environment
The principle that the inherited traits enabling an organism to survive and reproduce in a particular environment will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations.
Natural Selection
Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.
Inattentional blindness
Research that compares people of different ages at the same point in time.
Cross-sectional study
The tendency for observers, when analyzing others' behaviors, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition.
Fundamental attribution error
The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events that we appraise as threatening or challenging.
Stress
A random error in gene replication that leads to change.
Mutation
A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.
Perceptual set
Research that follows and retests the same people over time.
Longitudinal study
The tendency for those acting in a situation to attribute their behavior to external causes, but for observers to attribute others' behavior to internal causes.
Actor-observer bias
Selye's concept of the body's adaptive response to stress in three phases - alarm, resistance, exhaustion.
General adaptation syndrome (GAS)
The biochemical units of heredity.
Genes
An organized whole. These psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.
Gestalt
Agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm.
Teratogens
A generalized (sometimes accurate but often overgeneralized) belief about a group of people.
Stereotype
Under stress, people (especially women) may nurture themselves and others and bond with and seek support from others.
Tend-and-befriend response
Individuals who developed from a single fertilized egg that split in two, creating two genetically identical organisms.
Identical (monozygotic) twins
A cue to nearby objects' distance, enabled by the brain combining retinal images.
Convergence
Decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation.
Habituation
The tendency for people to believe the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get.
Just-world phenomenon
The hopelessness and passive resignation humans and other animals learn when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.
Learned helplessness
The study of the molecular mechanisms by which environments can influence genetic expression (without a DNA change).
Epigenetics
An illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession.
Phi phenomenon
An optimal period early in the life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development.
Critical period
The tendency to favor our own group.
Ingroup bias
The perception that outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate.
External locus of control