To gain understanding of psychology definition and basic psychology concepts is essential to our advancement, there are many psychological concepts, I will be explaining five concepts that I have gained knowledge on during this semester first I will define the concept and I will apply it to a real life situation and how it is relevant to the situation, the five concepts I will be discussion are Groupthink, False Memories, Classical Conditioning, Phobias, Latent Learning.
According to Allpsych.com the definition of Groupthink is the tendency for members of a cohesive group to reach decisions without weighing all the facts, especially those contradicting the majority opinion, a good example of this would be a group of teenagers wanting to go out on a school night, and one person suggests a weekend but he is left reserved and goes along anyways, although the one individual does not want to go out on a school night he does not want to conflict, and goes anyways this would be an example of group thinking which is pretty much the de individualization of one person due to them being part of the group.
According to dictionary.com false memory syndrome is a psychological condition in which a person believes that he or she remembers events that have not actually occurred, during a traumatic incident such as rape or a murder someone observing it might fall victim to false memory syndrome to the witnesses description this has happened in many cases and some have even wrongly jailed innocent people.
According to thefreedictionary.com Classical Conditioning is a process of behavior by which a subject comes to respond in a desired manner to a previously neutral stimulus that has been repeatedly presented along with an unconditioned stimulus that elicits the desired response, an example would be such as a fear of tunnels can be developed from many different sources. For example while a child rides in a car through a dilapidated tunnel, his mother makes jokes about the bridge collapsing and all of them being buried alive, the mother finds this funny and so decides to do it whenever they pass through a tunnel. Years after, the child grows up to be afraid to drive through tunnels in this case the fear of one tunnel generalized to all tunnels which now evoke fear.
According to the Britannica.com encyclopedia, Phobia an extreme, irrational fear of a specific object or situation. A phobia is classified as a type of anxiety disorder, since anxiety is a chief symptom experienced by the sufferer. Phobias are thought to be learned emotional responses. It is generally held that phobias occur when fear produced by an original threatening situation is transferred to other similar situations, with the original fear often repressed or forgotten. So for example if you fear of tight spaces also known as cluster phobia, it may prevent you from joining an elevator which is an irrational fear, if you allow your fear to run your life then it becomes irrational.
According to alleydog.com Latent learning is the type of learning that occurs, but you don’t really see it until there is some reinforcement or incentive to demonstrate it, a great example of latent learning is when you watch your friend drive you to school, and as time passes you learn the way to school, but have no reason to show that you can drive yourself to school, but one day your friend falls ill and you have to drive yourself to school for the first time, if you can get yourself to school through the same route than you are demonstrating latent learning.
In conclusion Groupthink can be a good or bad thing as de individualization occurs, false memory occurs most often occurs during traumatizing events and can effect someone life, classical conditioning, can be used for positive reactions or negative reactions, Phobias can affect one’s life dramatically, and latent learning can come in handy in a time of need.
Works Cited
"classical conditioning." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. 2003. Houghton Mifflin Company 11 Dec. 2012
False-memory Syndrome." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
"Latent Learning." Defined. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
"Phobia (psychology)." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
"Psychology Dictionary (G) at AllPsych Online." Psychology Dictionary (G) at AllPsych Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.