1
Q
What is memory and how does it operate?
A
- Persistence of learning over time
- Operates through storage and retrieval of information and skills
2
Q
What are the processes of memory?
A
- Encode: information gets into brains in a way that allows it to be stored
- Long term potentiation: increase strength of neural signals between nerve cells that fire together
- Cellular consolidation: when neurons fire together a lot, synapses change so presynaptic cell is more likely to stimulate specific postsynaptic cell
- Store: information is held in a way that allows it to be retrieved
Retrieve: produce information in a form similar to what was encoded
- Recognition: identify stimuli that matches stored information when it is presented
- Recall: retrieve information when asked about it, prompted by retrieval cues
- Relearn: measure of how much less work it takes for you to learn information you have previously learned
3
Q
What is the Atkinson-Shriffin model?
A
Effortful processing, involve stores and control processes which shift information
- External event makes its way through attention bottleneck to sensory organs
- Transduction occurs; from sensation into neural impulses (perception) - Sensory memory stores limitless amounts of information for short period of time
- Iconic memory (visual) = ½ to 1 second
- Echoic memory (auditory, hearing) = 5 seconds
- Waiting for attention to be placed to move to short-term memory
- Change blindness: fail to notice difference between photos if not centre of attention - Encode this memory through rehearsal into short term memory
- Short term memory can hold about 7 accurate pieces of information for 20 seconds (has limits to what it can store)
- Some information is forgotten forever - More encoding allows information to enter long term memory
- Use visualization, grouping, and distribution/processing techniques - Long term memory can be retrieved back into short term memory
- Depends of quality of original encoding and strategies used to retrieve information
4
Q
What are the types of rehearsal?
A
- Maintenance rehearsal: prolonging exposure to information by repeating it, does little to facilitate encoding that leads to formation of LTM
- Elaborative rehearsal: prolonging exposure to information by thinking about its meaning, improves encoding
5
Q
What is the serial position effect and why does it occur?
A
- Serial position effect: people recall items from beginning and end
- Proactive interference: process in which information learned occupies memory, leaving less room for new information
- Retroactive interference: recently learned information overshadows older memories
6
Q
What are the techniques to encode memories into LTM?
A
- Spacing effect: distribute studying, don’t drop flashcards as soon as you think you’ve earned it
- Testing: answer questions increases memory
- Deep/semantic processing: think about item’s meaning
- Shallow processing: involves superficial properties of stimulus
- Self reference effect: think of information as how it is useful to you
- Survival processing: relate to survival
- Chunking: create groups within information
- Hierarchies: divide complex information into sub-groups
- Visual cues: link visuals to information
- Method of Loci: use memory palace
- Acronyms: words whose initials represent phrase
- First-letter technique: sentence’s first letters represent information
- Dual coding: information stored in more than 1 form
- Desirable difficulties: harder studying techniques are better
7
Q
What are the types of memories?
A
- Implicit: the ones we aren’t aware of and uses automatic/low-track pathway to encode event straight into long-term memory
- Procedural: learned motor skills
- Conditioned association: learned through conditioning
- Information about space, time, and frequency - Explicit “declarative” memory: the ones we are aware of, uses effortful/high track pathway to encode/recall
- Semantic: general knowledge/facts
- Episodic: specific events
Includes flashbulb memories which are burned in due to emotional state
- Emotions can lead to stronger memory formation even if information is not directly related to emotional event
- Emotions have no influence over accuracy though
8
Q
What are the encoding and retrieval processes for different memories?
A
- Explicit memories
- Encode: hippocampus, sleep (consolidation)
- Retrieval: working memory, frontal lobes - Implicit memories
- Basal ganglia: procedural memory
- Cerebellum: conditioned responses
- Hippocampus: spatial memories
9
Q
How is the working memory model different from the other models?
A
- Holds information not just to rehearse but to process
- Simultaneously moving information using attention, encoding, and retrieval
- Stimuli are encoded in different ways (with vision and then hearing)
10
Q
What are the components of working memory?
A
- Central executive: coordinates attention and exchange of information between storage components
- Phenological loop: stores information as sounds
- Word-length effect: people remember shorter words
- Repeating a phone number again and again (rehearsal) - Visuospatial sketchpad: maintains visual images and spatial layouts
- Feature binding: combining visual features into single unit
- Can retain 4 whole objects
- Eg. can’t read Korean, goes here, if you can understand Korean it may go in the phonological loop - Episodic buffer: combines images and sounds to form story
- 7-10 pieces of information
11
Q
What is the encoding specificity principle? List related principles.
A
- Encoding specificity principle: retrieval is most effective when occurs in same context as encoding
- Context-dependent forgetting: change in environment makes us forget
- Context reinstatement effect: return to original location and memory comes back, strongest for explicit memory
- State-dependent learning: retrieval is more effective when internal state matches state you were in during encoding
- State-dependent memory: stronger for explicit memory
- Mood-dependent learning: if type of mood for encoding and retrieval matched, memory was superior
12
Q
What are the types of amnesia? How do they occur?
A
- Anterograde: inability to form new memories for events occurring after a brain injury
- Eg. removal of temporal lobes and hippocampus cured seizures but caused this - Retrograde: condition in which memory for the events preceding trauma or injury is lost
13
Q
What are the perils of memory and how do we avoid it? Why do they occur?
A
- Misinformation effect: incorporating misleading information into memory of event (thinking the crash is violent because of the police’s wording)
- Source amnesia: assign details of memory to wrong source (forgot the reason you thought the crash was violent was because of the police)
- False memories: confusion about an event; occurs if you thought of event often and it is easy to imagine, bringing attention to emotional reaction rather than facts
- False memory syndrome: condition in which identity and relationships of person rest on memories that are traumatic but are false
- Reinconsolidation: hippocampus updates and modifies existing long term memories
- Due to cognitive biases, we believe we have control over the information we encode but we do not
- To prevent this, filter the information you expose yourself to
14
Q
What is associative learning?
A
Process by which behaviour changes as a result of experience
15
Q
What is classical conditioning?
A
- Link 2 stimuli in a way that helps us anticipate an event to which we have a reaction; occurs due to firing of neurons together
- Neutral stimulus becomes conditioned stimulus to elicit conditioned response when paired with unconditioned stimulus
16
Q
What are the processes of classical conditioning?
A
- Acquisition: occurs when neutral stimulus is paired with unconditioned stimulus, becomes conditioned stimulus
- Neutral stimulus needs to consistently appear before unconditioned stimulus - Extinction: diminishing of conditioned response that occurs when conditioned stimulus is presented without unconditioned stimulus
- After a rest period, presenting conditioned stimulus alone often leads to spontaneous recovery
- After a long time, the strength of response decreases - Generalization: tendency to have conditioned response triggered by related stimuli
- Activates brain’s representation of similar items - Discrimination: learned ability to only respond to specific stimuli
- Latent inhibition: frequent experience with stimulus before being paired with unconditioned stimulus makes it less likely that conditioning will occur after a single episode
- Preparedness: biological predisposition to rapidly learn a response to a particular class of stimuli
- Conditioned taste aversion: acquired dislike of food because paired with illness
- Conditioned drug tolerance: processes involved in metabolizing drug will begin with seeing the drug
- Conditioned emotional responses: emotional responses that develop to particular object or situation due to learning
17
Q
What is operant conditioning and what principle does it rely on?
A
- Change behavioural responses due to consequences of actions; occurs due to dopamine-releasing neurons
- Thorndike’s law of effect: feedback from the environment can decrease/increase likelihood of behaviour occurring again
18
Q
What are the types of reinforcement or punishment?
A
- Positive reinforcement: increase behaviour by adding something desirable
- Negative reinforcement: increase behaviour by decreasing something unpleasant
- Avoidance learning: removes possibility stimulus will occur
- Escape learning: response removes stimulus that is already resent - Positive punishment: decrease behaviour by adding something unpleasant
- Negative punishment: decrease behaviour by removing something pleasant
19
Q
What is continuous and partial reinforcement?
A
- Continuous reinforcement: subject acquires desired behaviour right away after a reward
- Partial reinforcement: behaviour takes longer to be acquired but persists without a reward
- Fixed ratio: reinforcement after a constant number of responses, rapid responding near time for reinforcement (fixed number of cars to sell for money)
- Variable ratio: reinforcement after a different number of responses, very consistent responding (changing number of cars to sell for money each day)
- Fixed interval: reinforcing behaviour after same amount of time passes, high rate of consistent responding (pay-check after 2 weeks)
- Variable interval: reinforcing behaviour after a different amount of time passes, very resistant to extinction (pay-check after a random amount of time, pop quiz)
20
Q
What is shaping?
A
Procedure in which specific operant response is created by reinforcing successive approximations of that response
21
Q
How do you make punishments effective?
A
- For punishments to be effective, must occur immediately after behaviour consistently, and frequently, provide explanation for punishment, combine with positive reinforcement
- Punishment by itself inhibits behaviour and fails to provide direction
- Physical punishment teaches kids to respond aggressively to frustration
22
Q
What are the processes of operant conditioning?
A
- Discriminative stimuli: cue that indicates that a response if made will be reinforced
- Eg. parents are in a good mood
- Discrimination: occurs when operant response is made to one stimulus but not another
- Eg. father will lend car but not mother
- Delayed reinforcement: occurs when reward is delayed, less strong
- Reward devaluation: behaviours change if reinforcer loses appeal
23
Q
What is cognitive/latent conditioning?
A
- Learning that involves the individual’s thoughts
- Latent learning: learning that is not directly observable, stored until you need knowledge
- Observational learning: changes in behaviour by watching others, occurs without reinforcement
24
Q
What is cognition?
A
- Cognition: mental activities/processes associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating information
- Human brains balance the need for speed with quality/accuracy which is suitable for most situations but can lead to incorrect outcomes
- Important to organize information to store knowledge over long term
25
What are concepts and categories and prototypes?
- Concepts: mental groupings of similar objects, events, states, ideas, people, derived from prototypes
- Eg. concepts of what a table, chair, human is
- Categories: clusters of related concepts
- Prototypes: mental images of best example of concept within a category
- Allow for classification by resemblance quickly
- Fail us when examples stretch qualities associated with prototype, boundary between categories of concepts is fuzzy, and when examples contradict our prototypes
26
What is categorization? Discuss the types.
Occurs based on experiences (schemas), fit to category is determined by comparing to prototype
Classical categorization: create groups of objects according to a certain set of rules by a specific definition
- Does not consider graded membership (some concepts are better category members than others, sentence verification technique)
Semantic network: interconnected set of concepts that form a category (concept map)
- Connections explain why it is easier to identify member of category after seeing a related word
- Priming: activating concept makes connected items more likely to be activated
Hierarchy: structure that moves from general to very specific
- Basic level categories are terms used most often, easy to pronounce, level at which prototypes exist
- Superordinate categories: general categories that are most likely to be used when someone is uncertain about object or wishes to group together examples from basic level
- Subordinate-level category: expert knowledge of basic category
27
What are algorithms?
- Step by step strategy for solving problem
- Methodically leading to 1 specific solution, provided that algorithm is appropriate for problem
- Quality > speed
28
What are heuristics?
- Mental shortcuts that give guidance on how to solve a problem without all the necessary information
- Does not guarantee solutions consistently
- Speed > quality
29
What are the issues with heuristics?
1. Representativeness heuristic: judgement of likelihood based on similarity with particular category
- Conjunction fallacy: mistaken belief that finding a specific member in 2 overlapping categories is more likely than finding a member in one of the larger, general categories
2. Availability heuristic: judgement of frequency of event based on how easily we can think of examples
30
What are the types of biases?
- Confirmation bias: tendency to search for information which confirms our current explanations, disregarding contradictory evidence
- Solution: try to falsify your hypothesis instead of confirming
- Belief perseverance: evaluating evidence and only accepting ones that confirms beliefs
- Fixation: tendency to get stuck in 1 way of thinking because of how we understand concepts
- Mental set: cognitive obstacle that occurs when individual attempts to apply routine solution to a new type of problem
- Functional fixedness: sees object that could potentially solve problem but can only think of it as its most obvious function
- Anchoring effect: when individual attempts to solve problem using previous knowledge to anchor response within a range
- Eg. asking someone “what percentage of countries did this, is it less than 10%” anchors the response range near 10%
- Framing effect: people are much risk-averse when question is framed in terms of potential possesses
- Overconfidence: tendency to be more confident about our thinking than correct
- Occurs due to speed, reducing uncertainty about reality by using biases, and to gain power
31
What is language and why is it good? Discuss linguistic determinism and the bilingual advantage.
- Usage of symbols to represent, transmit, and store meaning
- Important for allowing society to progress by learning from previous mistakes with communication
- Linguistic determinism: idea that specific language determines how we think
- Bilingual advantage: people who are bilingual have greater number of synapses and greater executive control
32
What is motivation?
Need that energizes behaviour and directs it to a goal, combination of physiological and psychological processes
33
What is an instinct?
- Fixed pattern of behaviour observed across all members of species
- Not acquired by learning, rooted in genes
- Does not involve cognition, however this matter is blurry because even from birth humans are learning
34
What is a drive?
- Aroused state related to a need (survival) not being met
| - Shared among all members of the species
35
Discuss the pushes of motivation and the pulls.
Push:
- Drive Reduction Theory: we are motivated to restore homeostasis when drive emerges
- Need = drive = drive-reducing behaviour
Negative reinforcement except for sex
- Cognitive perspective: what we perceive as a need, we have have cognition and go with the behaviour that we expect will satisfy need
Pull:
- Incentive: reward that increases likelihood of behaviour
- Positive reinforcement, attracts (pulls) to reward
- Allows for learned response-reward pairings
- Works together with drives/needs (push) to motivate individual
- Sometimes conflict with needs and we must regulate our behaviour
- Pleasure request must be delayed in order to function in society (norms)
36
What are the other factors that motivate us other than pushes and pulls?
1. Increasing/decreasing arousal level to obtain an optimal level of arousal motivates us to do certain things that may not seem rational
- Root of best discoveries of humans
2. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization needs motivate us
- Order is fixed when is reality system does not have such a structure
- Does not apply to non-Western family-centred settings
3. Flow: state of experience where person, totally absorbed in what is going on, feels tremendous amounts of exhilaration, control, and enjoyment
- Made my Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Occurs when people push their boundaries to balance high skill and high challenge
- Typically in activities that involve motor/thinking skills
4. Self-determined perspective: balance 3 needs as opposed to maximizing any:
- Autonomy: feeling that we are causal agents of our behaviour and goals
- If none, may become amotivational
- If you want to encourage behaviour, give them ways to do it
- Competence: people need to gain mastery of tasks/skills
- Relatedness: people need to experience sense of belonging/attachment to others
5. Affiliation motivation: desire to be around other people as often as possible (need to belong)
- Married couples are shown to be better off in terms of mental and physiological health
- Social exclusion is associated with activation of same areas of brain linked to physical pain; physical pain can also trigger social pain (same brain system)
- Evolutionary reason is that pain teaches us to change our behaviour to survive
6. Achievement motivation: drive to perform at high levels and to accomplish significant goals
- Intrinsic motivation (mastery): process of being internally motivated to overcome challenges
- Overjustification effect: give someone a reward, intrinsic motivation and frequency decreases (due to low autonomy)
- Extrinsic motivation (performance): motivation geared towards gaining rewards or public recognition, or avoiding embarrassment
- Can be internalized and become intrinsic
- Approach goal: enjoyable and pleasant incentive person is drawn towards (pull)
- Avoidance goal: attempt to avoid unpleasant outcome (push)
- Self efficacy: individual’s belief they will be able to complete a task
37
Discuss hunger as motivation.
1. Physiological drives
- Stomach contractions
- Hypothalamus (lateral stimulates, ventromedial tells us to stop)
- Taste preferences
- Sociocultural influences (how much we eat)
- Glucostats detecting signals of hunger, insulin circulates glucose
- Cholecystokinin released by neurons expands intestines to signal satiation
- Orbitofrontal cortex judges reward of food
2. Psychological drives
- Eat while you can, receptors crave fat
- Sucrose stimulate release of dopamine in nucleus accumbens
- Stress stimulates ghrelin to need energy
- Unit bias: tendency to assume portion is appropriate amount of consume
- Social facilitation: eating more due to more time spent socializing
- Impression management: control behaviour so others will see them in certain way
- Minimal eating norm: eat small amounts to be polite
- Modelling: eating whatever others are eating
- Reproduction suppression hypothesis: females who believe they have low levels of social support are more likely to diet
38
What is an emotion and what is the function?
Behaviour with 3 components:
- Conscious experience of labelling the emotion
- Accompanying patterns or neural activity and physical arousal
- Expressive, observable behavioural expression
- Manages pushes and pulls of motivation
- Can be the cause of motivated action
- If you change your feeling about a task, you change how motivated you are about it
- Can evaluate our ever changing motivational states
- Reflect how satisfied or frustrated we are of our motivation
39
What is the brain physiology with regards to emotions?
1. Initial response
- Amygdala in temporal lobes fire when we perceive stimuli to be emotionally arousing
- Amygdala’s projections to other brain structures lead to observable behaviours (emotional responses)
2. Autonomic response
- Perceives a threat and prepares body to respond
- Sympathetic nervous system recruits energy for response
- Parasympathetic nervous system preserves energy and calms you down in response is not necessary
3. Emotional response
- Increase in activity in brain areas related to planning movements and regions of spinal cord
- This is for coordination of nervous system so muscles move appropriately in response to stimuli
4. Emotional regulation
- Frontal lobes receive information from amygdala and sensory areas and devices if instinctive response is the best one
- If necessary to use energy, amygdala and autonomic nervous system influence frontal lobes to generate appropriate behaviour
- If not necessary to use energy, frontal lobes send feedback that reduces intensity of initial response to avoid depleting body’s resources
40
What are the theories of emotions?
1. James-Lange (perception = arousal = emotion)
- Our emotions follow the responses of our physiological reactions to a stimuli
- Different emotions have different bodily arousal signatures
- Facial feedback hypothesis: emotional expressions can influence our emotion
- DEBUNKED: increased heart rate can’t be distinguished for fear or for joy
2. Cannon-Bard (perception = arousal + emotion)
- Simultaneous body response and cognitive experience to a stimuli
- Doesn’t explain where emotions are coming from
3. Schacter-Singer (perception = arousal = label = emotion)
- Emotions are result of physiological response and cognitive appraisal of stimuli (label)
- 2 factor theory of emotion
- Eg. when people understood they are given adrenaline, reported smaller emotional reactions (heart rate due to drug = not fear)
4. Lazarus
- Emotions involve the some top-down cognitive functions in the prefrontal cortex
- Almost automatic due to rehearsal
5. Robert Zajonc & LeDoux
- Emotions without cognitive appraisal, skip conscious thought
- Automatic response occurs through bottom-up track in brain
41
How do we regulate our emotions?
Our emotions provide us useful information but can be inappropriate for the situation
1. Awareness monitoring
- Recognize the emotions you experience and understand them
- Demonstrates emotional intelligence
2. Apprisal
- Changing how you view a situation will change how you feel about it
- Will result in different motivational outcomes
- Note that hormones are slower to affect your system so it may take time to change physiological states
3. Coping strategies
- Problem focused: direct, solution to problem
- Emotional focused: change how you feel about it (mindfulness)
- Aim to strengthen attention, build self-awareness
42
What are the types of emotions?
1. Basic: anger, disgust, fear (closed mouth), happiness, sadness, surprise (open mouth)
- Expressed the same way in all cultures
- Emotional dialects: variation in how common emotions are expressed
- Display rules: unwritten expectations we have regarding when it is appropriate to show emotion, varies from cultures
2. Arousal/+/-: relaxed, sad, enthusiastic, fear/anger
43
What is the catharsis myth?
- Reduce anger by acting aggressively to release it (venting, blowing off steam)
- In reality, venting is counterproductive as it teaches us bad ways to cope with anger and leads to feelings of guilt
- Use different ways to regulate emotions
44
What is personality? What are the approaches?
- An individual’s characteristic pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours persisting over time and across situations
- Idiographic approach: detailed descriptions of specific person
- Nomothetic approach: examine personality in large groups of behaviour
- Puts together cognitive functions (learning, memory, emotions, motivation) to make the person
45
Discuss Dr Phil and why his approach to personality is problematic. What is the Barnum effect?
- Dr. Phil draws on poor concept of personality which is that everyone has a trait that defines them regardless of situation
- Sums up complex problems with one simple answer
- Disregards the social environment
- Barnum effect: easy for people to be convinced that personality profile describes them well
46
What is psychoanalysis? How is it measured?
Freud thought that personality emerges from efforts of our ego (reality principle) to resolve tension between our id (pleasure principle) and superego (morality principle)
Measured using projective tests (Rorschach/ink blobs, TAT/plates with images)
Problem: can’t assess validity because it is measuring unconscious or reliability, because different therapists will come up with different explanations
47
What are the criticisms for psychoanalysis?
- Unfalsifiability (defense mechanisms allow you to argue that you are correct)
- Unrepresentative sampling
- Biased observations
- Post facto explanations (you are fixated or repressing), does not make predictions
48
What are the defence mechanisms for psychoanalysis?
Characterized by the use of defense mechanisms employed by ego to cope with anxiety due to conflicts between id and superego
1. Repression
2. Denial (refusing to acknowledge)
3. Rationalization
4. Displacement (transforming impulse into neutral behaviour)
5. Identification (assume characteristics of more powerful person to reduce anxiety)
6. Projection (attributing qualities to others)
7. Reaction formation (altering an impulse that one finds unacceptable into its opposite)
8. Sublimation (transforming unacceptable impulses into socially acceptable alternatives)
49
What are Freud's psychosexual stages of personality development?
- Oral: fixation represents lack of self-confidence, leaving person dependent on others
- Anal: fixation leads to anal retentive adults (rigid) or anal repulsive adults (disorganized)
- Phallic: must resolve healthy relationship with parents or jealousy and preoccupation with sex/competition
- Latency: calm
- Genital: if not fixated on other stages, express adult personality
50
What is a trait?
- Enduring quality that makes person act a certain way (Allport)
- Used factor analysis to see which traits cluster together
51
What is the big 5?
1. Openness: flexibility, nonconformity
- Linked to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (intelligence, creativity)
2. Conscientiousness: self-discipline, careful pursuit of goals
- Linked to frontal gyrus in prefrontal cortex (working memory)
3. Extraversion: sociability
- Linked to medial orbitofrontal cortex (rewards) and less in amygdala (fear)
4. Agreeableness: helpful, trusting, friendliness
- Linked to left temporal lobe (interpreting other’s actions) and posterior cingulate cortex (empathy)
5. Neuroticism: anxiety, emotional instability
- Linked to smaller dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (control emotions), smaller hippocampus (control thinking)
52
What are the 3 sets of factors that predict violence and prejudice?
1. HEXACO: Big 5 + honesty/humility
2. Dark Triad: predicts those that will cause harm to others
3. Machiavellianism: tendency to use others
- Psychopathy: tendency to having shallow emotional responses
- Narcissism: egotistical
4. Right wing authoritarianism:
- Obeying authority
- See things as black and white
53
How are personality traits assessed?
Assessed using personality inventories/quizzes which predict behaviour over long period of time, NOT one situation
1. Myers-Brigg
- Where you focus your attention (extraversion, introversion)
- Way you take in information (sensing/present moment, intuition/big picture)
- Way you make decisions (thinking, feeling)
- How you deal with outer world (judgement, perception/spontaneous)
2. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
- Driven by statistics
- Reverse coded items: if you say no you score high on a dimension
- Validity: detect with clients are exaggerating (faking bad) or downplaying (faking good) psychological symptoms
- Supplemental scales
3. NEO Personality Inventory
- Neuroticism, extraversion, openness
4. NEO-PI-R
- Big 5
54
What is the socio-cognitive approach to personality?
- To predict 1 instance of behavior
- Situation shapes how our traits are expressed
- State: physical or psychological engagement that influences behaviour (location, association, activities, emotion)
- In long term memory, schemas/expectations/perceptions stored are used to interpret situations and understand world to influence how self acts
- Reciprocal determinism: personality, thoughts, social information reinforce/cause each other over time (Bandura)
- Self esteem: value of self, shown to buffer inflammatory responses to acute stress
- Can lead to overconfidence; instead of how you feel about yourself consider improving yourself
55
What is analytical psychology?
- Role of unconscious archetypes in personality development, give you insight
- Personal unconscious: experiences in life
- Collective unconscious: separate realm of unconscious that holds memories of ancestral past
56
What is social psychological?
- The study of how people influence each other’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviours
- Occurs through their actual, imagined, or anticipated presence
- Decisions are made implicitly (eg. mimicry)
- Evolutionary reason: humans need to form social groups in order to survive and dominate chunks of the environment
57
What are social norms and roles?
Social norms: unwritten guidelines to how to behave in social contexts
- Good social skills come with an awareness of social conventions/cues
- Govern most of our behaviour, can be implicitly
Social roles: more specific sets of expectations for how someone in specific position should behave
- Eg. Stanford Prison Study; what they might do takes back seat to what society expects of someone in that role
58
What is social loafing and when does it occur?
- Individual puts less effort into working on a task with others
- Low efficacy belief, believing one’s contributions are not important to the group, not caring about the group’s outcome, feeling others aren’t trying hard
59
What is social facilitation?
- Occurs when one’s performance is affected by the presence of others
- The greater the skills and the easier the task, the more this occurs
60
What is the Bystander effect and why does it occur?
- Presence of other people actually reduces likelihood of helping behaviour
- Diffusion of responsibility: no single individual is personally responsible
- Pluralistic ignorance: no one believes, but everyone thinks others believe
61
Why does conformity occur?
1. Informational influence: to get information
- When situation is ambiguous, people accept information from others to provide a basis for correct perceptions/attitudes/beliefs
2. Normative influence: to fulfill our need to belong
- Under actual or assumed surveillance, based on a need for social approval
62
What did Sherif, Asch and Goldman find in their studies about conformity?
SHERIF:
- When people are alone, their subjective results are all over the place of whether the dot is moving (autokinetic effect)
- When placed in groups, groups change their opinion until they come to middle consensus
ASCH:
- People will agree with an incorrect answer as to whether the lines matched because they were afraid of being ridiculed by others
- Some people internalized the incorrect choice due to cognitive dissonance
- Low conformity if less people gave the wrong answer
- If one confederate gave the correct answer, the group’s power was shattered
GOLDMAN:
- Conformity can influence eating (an innate physiological need)
- Process is symmetrical (norms can increase/decrease eating) but some are asymmetrical (norms about alcohol on campus increase drinking but don’t decrease it)
63
What is groupthink and when is it likely to occur?
- Stifling of diversity that occurs when individuals are focusing on agreeing with the group
- Apply social pressure to conform
- Group becomes overconfident
- More likely to occur if there is a larger group, more females, friends/family in the group, task is unclear, others conform first, and response are made anonymously, when there is a leader, and when members are similar
64
What is cognitive dissonance? Discuss Festiger's study.
- Inconsistencies between thoughts and behaviours create unpleasant state of arousal
- Results from threat to people’s sense of themselves as moral and rational
- Motivates efforts to resolve inconsistencies
FESTIGER:
- Participants that lied for $1 believed that the task was fun to maintain self-image because $1 is very cheap
- Participants that lied for $20 did not do the same thing because $20 is a lot of money
65
What is attribution? Discuss the theories.
- A conclusion about the cause of another’s observed behaviour
- Situational attribution: factors outside the person are causing the action
- Dispositional attribution: person’s stable enduring personality are causing the action
- Fundamental attribution error: we overestimate dispositional influences and underestimate situational influences on another’s behaviour
- More likely to respond negatively to others
- Actor-observer effect: when we explain our own behaviour we underestimate dispositional influences and overestimate situational experiences
- Contributes to maintain high self esteem
66
What are attitudes and the components?
Evaluation of a person/place/object/event/behaviour to understand them
Affective: emotions to the target
Behavioural: actions that result to the target
Cognitive: knowledge about the target
67
Do attitudes determine behaviour?
- Attitudes do not necessary determine behaviour
- People are seen as hypocrites if they do not act according to their private beliefs, but humans have acquired through social learning that behaviour must be according to the situation
- Can influence behaviour if attitude is stable, easily recalled, specific to the behaviour, external influences align with the attitude (perceived social norms accept the behaviour)
68
What is persuasion? Discuss the routes.
Direct attempt to change attitude to change behaviour
1. Central route: change attitude with good reasoning, only works if recipient already have attention and motivation
- Construal level theory: describes how information affects us differently depending on our psychological distance from information
- Attitude inoculation: expose people to weak counter argument then regute that argument to strengthen attitudes
- Processing fluency: ease at which information is processed decreases negative emotions
- Elaboration likelihood model: when audiences care about the issue and they have the cognitive resources available to understand, they will be persuaded by the facts
2. Peripheral route: change attitudes through feelings and superficial associations, do not need to have attention and motivation
- Get interested in the product
- Attractiveness of person delivering message, authority, social validation (“best seller”)
69
What is compliance? Discuss the tactics.
Changing behaviour and allowing social needs to change attitude
1. Foot-in-the-door: make small request that will be accepted and follow it with a larger request
- Works through our need to be consistent with ourselves to avoid cognitive dissonance (fulfill commitment)
- We underestimate power of social forces on behaviour because to acknowledge it threatens our sense of control = we change our attitude
- Avoid agreeing to the small request in the first place
2. Bait-and-switch: bait with attractive offer, but bait is not available and gets switched
- Avoid by being willing to change commitment when you are in front of the bait and it is not there
70
Discuss marketing techniques.
- Social marketing: application of marketing techniques to promote adoption of behaviours that improve well being of society
- Fear based messages: contain vivid information, but runs the risk of backfiring because consumers reject message to avoid facing risk
- Best used in combination with instructions on how to avoid negative outcomes
- Brand marketing: ad is not trying to convince you but rather want you to take identity of brand
- Under-detected; persists over time
71
What is abnormal psychology?
Patterns of thoughts/feelings/behaviour that result in symptoms that are deviant from the norm, distressful to the person, and cause dysfunctional actions
72
Why classify disorders?
- Increases reliability/consistency between diagnoses
- Create shorthand for referring to list of symptoms
- Keep track of cases occurring over time (funding) and study similar cases which helps improve practice
- Guide treatment choices by predicting outcomes of treatment
- Justify payment for treatment (insurance will only pay if you have diagnosis)
73
What is "normal"?
1. What do most people think? (averages)
- Can backfire as the average can be unhealthy
2. What should people think? (morals)
- Science says that people should exercise, gives you a different perspective because not everyone does it
3. What do most people expect you to think? (expectations)
- Used in the context of treating a client
- How do their parents think they should behave?
NOTE: whether a behaviour varies from the norm depends on the context
- Culture groups vary in what is acceptable in the situation
- What is acceptable may change over time as values in society change (eg. homosexuality)
74
Discuss the diagnostic and statistical manual.
- DSM-IV-TR (used the longest) or DSM-V (2013, controversial) by the American Psychiatric Association are the versions used
Uses 3 main criteria in which to base classification/groupings:
- Type and number of symptoms
- Aetiology (causes) of the symptoms
- Prognosis (what is the likely outcome of treatment, changes depending on situation)
- NOT severity of symptoms
75
What are the critics of DSM?
- Border between disorder and normal is often blurry, not clear cut as it seems
- Border between diagnoses is blurry especially when considering comorbidities (disorders that tend to go together)
- Decisions about what is abnormal are shaped by cultural norms
- Diagnostic labels direct how patients view themselves and how others view them (liberating or stigmatizing, take on identity)
76
What are the critics of DSM-V?
- Pharmaceutical companies had more input = more creation of disorders?
- More disorders pathologize normal behaviour (eg. disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (kid throwing tantrum) or bereavement (depression linked to loss of someone))
- Combines diagnosis criteria that are better off separate (eg. putting initial substance abuse and long time abusers together)
- Treatment and thinking would be different
- Vague criteria that don't have consensus along clinicians (interrater reliability is low; different clinicians disagree at how symptoms are treated)
77
Why diagnose disorders?
- Disorders are seen as pathologies with a cause that can be treated (medical model)
- Aims to identify most probable aetiology of symptoms (per exclusionem)
- Aetiology guides choice of treatment
78
What are the 5 axes of DSM-IV-R?
1. Axis I: all diagnostic categories except mental retardation and personality disorder
- Typically shorter term prognosis
- Can probably address with psychotherapy treatment and medication treatment combination
2. Axis II: is a personality disorder or mental retardation present?
- After all the other factors are rules out, look at genetic/lifelong psychological disorder
3. Axis III: is a general medical condition also present?
- If you rule out social problems, look at physical conditions
4. Axis IV: are psychosocial or environmental problems also present?
- Look at social/physical environment
- Eg. someone with depression in an abusive work environment; treatment of this client will be to fix the environment
5. Axis V: what is the global assessment of this person’s function?
- Can this person look after themselves and other people?
- Is this person experiencing dysfunctionality?
79
Discuss mental health worldwide.
- Men suffer more in lifetime, equal for past year
- Most common are mood, anxiety, substance use
- Substance use is a men’s problem
- On campus, anxiety disorders is more prevalent than mood but substance abuse is really low
- 450 million in the world struggling, probably underestimate
80
What are anxiety disorders and the factors?
Characterized by a permanent and irrational (no objective reason) fear that typically brings people to avoid certain situations, people, and/or objects
1. Conditioning/learning
- Classical conditioning: acquiring anxious responses, result is phobia or generalized anxiety (eg. Little Albert generalized fear to anything fluffy)
- Operant conditioning: negative reinforcement motivates anxious avoidant responses
- Explains how anxious responses are maintained
- Eg. anxious dog running away and hiding from thunder, stress about thunder goes away which reinforces action
2. Cognitive appraisal
- Mistaken appraisals (not objectively assessing situation) and rumination (worried thoughts)
- These types of cognitions appear repeatedly and automatically (practicing)
- Can be acquired through direct and observational learning
- Eg. fear of calling customer service because as a child would constantly see parent throw a tantrum calling customer service because it was a stressful experience
3. Personality (eg. neuroticism)
- Doesn’t consider interactions with social environment
- Leaves little room for solutions if we assume it’s all genetics (not a hopeful perspective)
81
What are the types of anxiety disorders?
1. Generalized anxiety disorder: persistent and uncontrollable apprehension
- Started off as a specific response but got generalized to wide range of things (free floating fear)
- Activation of autonomic system to wide range of stimuli
2. Phobias: uncontrollable, intense and irrational desire to avoid specific thing
3. Obsessive compulsive disorder
- Dysfunction: time and mental energy spend on obsessions and compulsions interfere with everyday life
- Distress: frustrated due to lack of control
82
What are mood disorders and the factors?
Cluster of disorders for which a disturbance of the person’s mood is assumed to be the underlying cause
1. Brain cell communications (neurotransmitters)
- Less norepinephrine (arousal) during depressive episodes, less concentration to change how they think of situation
- Reduced serotonin activity with symptoms
2. Social-cognitive explanations
- Stressful event = temporary = specific = externalize = resilience
- Stressful event = stable = global = internalized = depression
- Personal attributions: it’s my fault
- Stable attributions: this will never get better
- Global attributions: expanding impact of negative event into overall life
- When you internalize situation, you practice self-blame and get good at pessimism
- Stressful experience = negative explanatory style = depressed mood = cognitive and behavioural changes = stressful experience
83
What is major depression disorder?
- Symptoms: depressed mood, loss of interest in pleasurable things, somatic (physical) symptoms
- Feeling of ostracism (stigma) will not get them to get better quicker
- May pass on its own depending on cause
- Linked to limbic system (emotions, processing) and dorsal end of frontal cortex (concentration, thoughts)
- Serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine
- Risk factor includes low socioeconomic households
84
What are substance use disorders and how do they work?
Disorders in which the need for obtaining a substance and/or its frequent use creates dysfunction (loss of control, impairment in daily functioning and continued use of substance even with consequences, physical and emotional adaptation)
- Psychoactive substances must be able to cross blood-brain barrier
- Affect areas of brain linked to dopamine
- Neuroadaptation: with time, brain adapts to repeated/continuous presence of substance which leads to greater tolerance
- Facilitated by biological factors (genetics), psychological factors (expectations) and social factors (peer group, watching TV)
Opponent process theory: competition between 2 different processes
- First, substance produces hedonic state (affective pleasure)
- Positive reinforcement motivates search for experience
- Opponent processes will change body to adjust to presence of substance (tolerance)
- First hedonic state will decrease in value with repeated exposure (higher dose is needed)
- Withdrawal will occur if you do not have it which can be fatal if body adjusts a lot (alcohol)
- Arousal state motivates you to seek substance (negative reinforcement)
85
What are the forms of treatment?
1. Psychotherapy: an interactive experience with a trained professional
- Goal: understanding and changing dysfunctional habitual patterns of behaviour, thinking, and/or emotions
2. Biomedical therapy: the use of medications and other procedures acting on the body to reduce the symptoms of mental disorders
- Goal: address neurophysiological changes
86
What are the common biomedical therapies?
1. Medication (direct)
- Alter process associated with specific neurotransmitters
- Antidepressant drugs: elevate mood
- Monoamine oxidase inhibitors: deactivate enzyme that breaks down serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine at synaptic clefts of nerve cells
- Tricyclic antidepressants: work by blocking reuptake of serotonin and norepinephrine
- Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors: block reuptake of serotonin (eg. Prozac)
- Antianxiety drugs: affect activity of GABA by blocking receptors (slow emergence of anxious responses)
2. Change habits that impact biological components (indirect)
- Good life habits including thinking (changing negative thoughts can improve mood and alter activation of brain patterns)
- Require more effort but just as important
3. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)
- Passes electrical current through brain to induce mild seizure that disrupts severe depression in some people
4. Repeated transcranial magnetic stimulation
- Magnet moves oxygen/glucose to stimulate specific areas of brain
5. Psychosurgery (eg. microsurgery, focal lesions)
- Alter physically a portion of the brain
- Used in cases of more medically-associated disorders (eg. severe seizures)
87
What are the common psychotherapeutic therapies?
1. Behavioural therapies (change disorder, not thoughts, most effective)
- Systematic desensitization: begin with tiny reminder of feared situation, keep increasing exposure intensity as person learns to cope with previous level with classical conditioning (coupled with relaxation), good for phobias
- Counterconditioning: link new positive responses to previously aversive stimuli
- Aversive conditioning: replace positive response to stimulus with punishment
- Operant conditioning therapy: making sure desired behaviours are rewarded and problematic behaviours are not rewarded (or punished), requires monitoring to identify stimuli that triggers response, can include DRO
2. Cognitive therapies (change problematic thought patterns, not the actual events, involve homework)
- Aaron Beck: depression is worsened with catastrophizing (interpreting current events as signs of worst possible outcome), raise awareness by questioning without judgement to see the cognitive error, change faulty cognitive process through exercises
- Cognitive behavioural therapy: works to change both cognitions and behaviours that are part of a disorder, most common
- Eg. OCD: change compulsion to wash hands using DRO, change obsessive thoughts by education and awareness of actual effects of germs
- Cognitive restructuring: learning to challenge negative thought patterns
- Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy: combining mindfulness meditation with standard CBT
- Decentering: take step back from normal consciousness and observe oneself more objectively
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What are some alternative less used psychotherapeutic therapies?
1. Insight therapies: dialogue between client and therapist for purposes of gaining awareness of psychological problems (psychodynamic therapies)
- Free association: encouraged to talk and write without censorship
- Dream analysis: understand unconscious by examining details of what happens (manifest) to gain insight to true meaning (latent)
- Resistance: client wishes to avoid unconscious material and engages in strategies to keep information out of conscious awareness
- Transference: psychoanalytic process whereby clients direct emotional experiences to therapist
2. Object relations therapy: focuses on early childhood experiences influencing later life
3. Interpersonal psychotherapy: therapist acts as participant observer by interacting with client to understand any unrealistic expectations client may have to daily relationships
4. Humanistic-existential psychotherapy: emphasize individual strength and positive perspectives
- Phenomenological approach: addresses clients’ feelings and thoughts as they unfold with empathetic listening
- Client centred therapy: focuses on individual’s abilities to solve own problems and reach full potential with encouragement of therapist
VPSYC
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