Sometimes in psychology experiments, groups of participants are required to take the same test more than once. In some cases, performance can change from the first instance of testing and the next simply due to repeating the activity. In psychology…
Self-efficacy refers to your belief in your ability to succeed in certain situations. Your sense of self-efficacy has a major influence on how you approach challenges and goals. When confronted with a challenge, do you believe that you can succeed or…
Intrinsic motivation involves a driving force behind behavior that emerges from within rather than as a result of external reward. In other words, it is a type of motivation that involves doing things because you find them naturally satisfying, or doing…
Definition: In Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, accommodation refers to the process by which people alter their existing schemas or create new schemas as a result of new learning. This is part of the adaptation process. Old schemas may be…
Random selection refers to a process that researchers use to pick participants for a study. When using this method, every single member of a population has an equal chance of being chosen as a subject. This process is an important…
Expectancy effects refer to changes in behavior that occur simply because the participant believes that his or her behavior should change. In other words, people sometimes change how they act in certain situations simply because they think that their behavior…
Why do some people choose to give up their time, money, or even safety to help other people? According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 30 percent of adults in the United States spend some time volunteering to help others…
Random assignment involves using procedures that rely on chance to assign participants to groups. Doing this means that every single participant in a study has an equal opportunity to be assigned to any group. For example, in a psychology experiment,…
Stimulus generalization occurs when an organism responds to a stimulus in the same way that it responds to a similar stimulus. This occurs during the classical conditioning process. For example, imagine that a dog has been conditioned to run to…
Acquisition refers to an early stage of the learning process during which time a response is first established. At this point in learning, the subject will begin displaying the behavior when a stimulus is presented, so we can then say…
