Psychophysiology is the branch of psychology that is concerned with the physiological bases of psychological processes. While psychophysiology was a general broad field of research in the 1960s and 1970s, it has now become quite specialized, and has branched into subspecializations such as social psychophysiology, cardiovascular psychophysiology, cognitive psychophysiology, and cognitive neuroscience.
Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and its variation among individuals. It is a scientific study which aims to show how people are individually different due to psychological forces. Its areas of focus include:
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort experienced by a person who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. This discomfort is triggered by a situation in which a person’s belief clashes with new evidence perceived by the person. When confronted with facts that contradict beliefs, ideals, and values, people will find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.
In psychology, an attribution bias or attributional bias is a cognitive bias that refers to the systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and others' behaviors. People constantly make attributions regarding the cause of their own and others' behaviors; however, attributions do not always accurately reflect reality. Rather than operating as objective perceivers, people are prone to perceptual errors that lead to biased interpretations of their social world.
Trait ascription bias is the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior and mood while viewing others as much more predictable in their personal traits across different situations. More specifically, it is a tendency to describe one's own behaviour in terms of situational factors while preferring to describe another's behaviour by ascribing fixed dispositions to their personality. This may occur because peoples' own internal states are more readily observable and available to them than those of others.
Arousal is the physiological and psychological state of being awoken or of sense organs stimulated to a point of perception. It involves activation of the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) in the brain, which mediates wakefulness, the autonomic nervous system, and the endocrine system, leading to increased heart rate and blood pressure and a condition of sensory alertness, mobility, and readiness to respond.
Self-efficacy is an individual's belief in their innate ability to achieve goals. Albert Bandura defines it as a personal judgment of "how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations". Expectations of self-efficacy determine whether an individual will be able to exhibit coping behavior and how long effort will be sustained in the face of obstacles. Individuals who have high self-efficacy will exert sufficient effort that, if well executed, leads to successful outcomes, whereas those with low self-efficacy are likely to cease effort early and fail. Psychologists have studied self-efficacy from several perspectives, noting various paths in the development of self-efficacy; the dynamics of self-efficacy, and lack thereof, in many different settings; interactions between self-efficacy and self-concept; and habits of attribution that contribute to, or detract from, self-efficacy. Kathy Kolbe adds, "Belief in innate abilities means valuing one's particular set of conative strengths. It also involves determination and perseverance to overcome obstacles that would interfere with utilizing those innate abilities to achieve goals."
Delayed gratification, or deferred gratification, describes the process that the subject undergoes when the subject resists the temptation of an immediate reward in preference for a later reward. Generally, delayed gratification is associated with resisting a smaller but more immediate reward in order to receive a larger or more enduring reward later. A growing body of literature has linked the ability to delay gratification to a host of other positive outcomes, including academic success, physical health, psychological health, and social competence.
Personality pathology refers to enduring patterns of cognition, emotion, and behavior that negatively affect a person's adaptation. In psychiatry and clinical psychology, it is characterized by adaptive inflexibility, vicious cycles of maladaptive behavior, and emotional instability under stress. In the United States and elsewhere, personality disorders are diagnosed categorically on Axis II of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association.
Appraisal theory is the theory in psychology that emotions are extracted from our evaluations of events that cause specific reactions in different people. Essentially, our appraisal of a situation causes an emotional, or affective, response that is going to be based on that appraisal. An example of this is going on a first date. If the date is perceived as positive, one might feel happiness, joy, giddiness, excitement, and/or anticipation, because they have appraised this event as one that could have positive long-term effects, i.e. starting a new relationship, engagement, or even marriage. On the other hand, if the date is perceived negatively, then our emotions, as a result, might include dejection, sadness, emptiness, or fear. Reasoning and understanding of one's emotional reaction becomes important for future appraisals as well. The important aspect of the appraisal theory is that it accounts for individual variability in emotional reactions to the same event.
Dispositional affect, similar to mood, is a personality trait or overall tendency to respond to situations in stable, predictable ways. This trait is expressed by the tendency to see things in a positive or negative way. People with high positive affectivity tend to perceive things through "pink lens" while people with high negative affectivity tend to perceive things through "black lens". The level of dispositional affect affects the sensations and behavior immediately and most of the time in unconscious ways, and its effect can be prolonged. Research shows that there is a correlation between dispositional affect and important aspects in psychology and social science, such as personality, culture, decision making, negotiation, psychological resilience and coping with stressful life events. That is why this topic is important both in social psychology research and organizational psychology research.
Behavioral theories of depression explain the etiology of depression based on the behavioural sciences, and they form the basis for behavioral therapies for depression.
Situational strength is defined as cues provided by environmental forces regarding the desirability of potential behaviors. Situational strength is said to result in psychological pressure on the individual to engage in and/or refrain from particular behaviors. A consequence of this psychological pressure to act in a certain way is the likelihood that despite an individual's personality, they will act in a certain manner. As such, when strong situations exist, the relationship between personality variables and behaviors is reduced, because no matter what the personality of the individual is, they will act in a way dictated by the situation. When weak situations exist, there is less structure and more ambiguity with respect to what behaviors to perform. In sum, situations have the ability to restrict the expression of individual differences in terms of actual behaviors.
Wediko Children's Services is a non-profit organization that provides therapeutic and educational services to children with serious emotional and behavioral problems and their families. It was founded in 1934.
The Stanford marshmallow experiment was a series of studies on delayed gratification in the late 1960s and early 1970s led by psychologist Walter Mischel, then a professor at Stanford University. In these studies, a child was offered a choice between one small reward provided immediately or two small rewards if they waited for a short period, approximately 15 minutes, during which the tester left the room and then returned. In follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index (BMI), and other life measures. A replication attempt with a more diverse sample population over 10 times larger than the original study failed to support the original study's conclusions and suggested that economic background rather than willpower explained the results.
The person–situation debate in personality psychology refers to the controversy concerning whether the person or the situation is more influential in determining a person's behavior. Personality trait psychologists believe that people have consistent personalities that guide their behaviors across situations. Situationists, opponents of the trait approach, argue that people are not consistent enough from situation to situation to be characterized by broad personality traits.
