Attachment theory provides a useful theoretical framework for understanding how relationships function to facilitate or hinder developmental progress, such as progress in career development. A central tenet of this theory concerns the central role of attachments as enduring emotional bonds of substantial intensity that influence healthy development and participation in satisfying relationships. Regularities in interactions
The influence of postmodernism’s challenge of the “objectivist” position in psychology has been central in the evolution of constructivist therapies. The abandonment of the certainty of modernist positions for the tentative, constructed meanings in the postmodern world has given rise to a number of therapeutic approaches that eschew well-established, contemporary icons in psychology. Objective assessment
Critical race theory (CRT), initially created as a body of legal theory, is an organizing framework useful in understanding human behavior and social processes relevant to racial group categorizations and racial stratification. Critical race theory examines the oppressive dynamics of society to inform individual, group, and social transformation. Rather than embracing a colorblind perspective, CRT
Attribution theory is a prominent and widely researched theory of motivation that was developed by Bernard Weiner and colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles, in the 1970s and 1980s. The focal point of attribution theory is the general human tendency to ask “why” an outcome occurred, especially outcomes that are negative, unusual, or
Careful observers of humans and other organisms noticed long ago that certain variables that should vary as environmental conditions change actually do not vary much within the organism. For example, store shelves remain stocked despite customers buying products. Control theory arose as one explanation for the mechanism that keeps variables stable. Industrial and organizational psychologists
The theory of planned behavior, developed by Icek Ajzen, is a social cognitive theory that has guided a large majority of theory-based research on physical activity. The theory of planned behavior is an extension of the theory of reasoned action developed by Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen in 1975. Since its introduction over 25 years
Attachment Theory Definition An attachment refers to the strong emotional bond that exists between an infant and his or her caretaker. The attachment theory is designed to explain the evolution of that bond, its development, and its implications for human experience and relationships across the life course. Although attachment theory has primarily been a theory
Attribution Theory Definition Attribution theory—or rather, a family of attribution theories—is concerned with the question of how ordinary people explain human behavior. One type of attribution theory emphasizes people’s use of folk psychology to detect and understand internal states such as goals, desires, or intentions. People then use these inferred states to explain the behavior
Balance Theory Definition Balance theory describes the structure of people’s opinions about other individuals and objects as well as the perceived relation between them. The central notion of balance theory is that certain structures between individuals and objects are balanced, whereas other structures are imbalanced, and that balanced structures are generally preferred over imbalanced structures.
The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions was developed to explain why people experience positive emotions. What purpose might be served by fleeting feelings of joy, gratitude, serenity, or love? Did such pleasant states confer adaptive value over the course of human evolution? Within prior theories of emotions, positive emotions posed a puzzle. This was because