A. Beckingham
Psych12
Chatelech Secondary School
Review: Psychology
A. DEFINITION
1. Psychology: The scientific study of mental processes and behavior
B. TWO MAJOR DIVISIONS
1. Applied psychology
a. Mental testing
i. Applications?
b. Mental health care
i. Applications?
c. Education
i. Applications?
d. Work
i. Applications?
e. Military and intelligence
i. Applications?
f. Health, well-being, and social change
2. Research psychology (an academic discipline)
a. Controlled experiments
i. Psychologist is interfering somehow with the participants in order to
study the results
 Examples?
b. Neurological studies
i. Using EEGs – electroencephalography
c. Animal studies
i. Psychologists are interested in patterns of behavious and not just in
humans!
d. Qualitative and descriptive research
i. Observation, interviews, participant observation (researcher as
participant)
ii. Jane Goodall living with chimpanzees
iii. “Qualitative research is descriptive research that is focused on
observing and describing events as they occur, with the goal of
capturing all of the richness of everyday behavior and with the hope
of discovering and understanding phenomena that might have been
missed if only more cursory examinations have been made.” –
Wikipedia
C. FOUR MAJOR THEMES
1. Personality
What makes personality?
A. Beckingham
Psych12
Chatelech Secondary School
Poster activity in groups
 Design and graphic and some words that describe how your
group perceptualizes personality and what are the key factors
to someone’s personality
 Venn diagram, bubble graph, comic, etc.
a. Definition:
ii. Personality: enduring patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion
iii. Personality: the pattern of thoughts, feelings, social adjustments, and
behaviors consistently exhibited over time that strongly influences
one's expectations, self-perceptions, values, and attitudes
iv.
Personality Trait: enduring personal characteristics that are revealed
in a particular pattern of behaviour in a variety of situations.
 Three assumptions
 Relatively stable over time; differ amoungst
individuals; influence behaviour
b. Five Factor Model – Lewis Goldberg (one of many trait theory models)
v.
Openness to experience
vi.
Conscientiousness
vii. Extroversion
viii.
Agreeableness
ix.
Neuroticism (emotionality)
c. Trait models have been criticized as being purely descriptive and offering
little explanation of the underlying causes of personality
d. Type theory – Jung Typology
e. Personality:
x.
predicts human reactions to other people, problems, and stress
xi.
Personality not stable until 30, then fixed; personality constructs of
children are referred to as temperament
xii. originates from the Latin persona, which means mask.
f. Tests
xiii.
Projective: assume personality is primarily unconscious; respons to
ambiguous stimuli; e.g., the Roschach Test (ink blot)
xiv.
Objective: assume personality is consciously accessible; issues: false
reporting
2. Unconscious mind
a. A part of the psyche outside the awareness of the individual which
nevertheless influences thoughts and behavior
i. E.g. Freudian slip
A. Beckingham
Psych12
Chatelech Secondary School
ii.
E.g. cognitive psychology discusses the “filter” model of attention;
information processing below the threshold of consciousness
iii. E.g. division between explicit and implicit memory
b. A hallmark of early psychological study
c. Application: An example of this was done by Bargh et al. in 1996. Subjects
were implicitly primed with words related to the stereotype of elderly
people (example: Florida, forgetful, wrinkle). While the words did not
explicitly mention speed or slowness, those who were primed with these
words walked more slowly upon exiting the testing booth than those who
were primed with neutral stimuli.
3. Motivation – what drives us; the whys of behaviour
Begin by discussing/asking what motivates us; in pairs come up with a list.
a. Intention; similar to the concept of will; instinct
b. We do not observe a motive; rather, we infer that one exists
c. Three major components:
i. Activation: the decision to do something
ii. Persistence: continued effort towards a goal despite obstacles
iii. Intensity: the concentration and vigor applied
 E.g. someone might coast through a course, another might
work really hard
d. Theories of motivation
i. Drive theory: basic biological drives are the major motivation of our
behaviour.
 What are our basic drives?
 Increasing and decreasing drive as it is neglected or met
ii. Instinct theory: behavior motivated by instincts which are fixed and
inborn
 E.g. Freud suggested that instinctual sexual and aggressive
drives are the major motivation of our behavior.
iii. Rational motivation: we are inherently rational and this drives our
behavior
iv.
Incentive theory: connected to reinforcements; positive or negative
reinforcements act as incentives (or disincentives for certain types of
behavior)
v.
Many others
 Study of 6,000 participants determined 16 basic desires:
 Acceptance, the need for approval
 Curiosity, the need to learn
A. Beckingham
Psych12
Chatelech Secondary School
 Eating, the need for food
 Family, the need to raise children
 Honor, the need to be loyal to the traditional values of
one's clan/ethnic group
 Idealism, the need for social justice
 Independence, the need for individuality
 Order, the need for organized, stable, predictable
environments
 Physical activity, the need for exercise
 Power, the need for influence of will
 Romance, the need for sex and for beauty
 Saving, the need to collect
 Social contact, the need for friends (peer
relationships)
 Social status, the need for social standing/importance
 Tranquility, the need to be safe
 Vengeance, the need to strike back and to compete
e. Practical Applications
i. Workplace motivation
ii. Drug use and abuse
iii. Education
iv.
Business
v.
Games
4. Development
a. Focusing (mainly) on the development of the human mind through the
lifespan
b. May focus on cognitive, affective, moral, social, or neural development
c. Concerned with times of rapid change
i. Such as? (adolescence and old age)
D. MAJOR SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT
1. Biological (physiological; neuropsychological)
a. The study of the biological substrates of behavior and mental processes
b. Key areas of study: comparative psychology – comparison to animals;
perception – where physical mechanisms meet mental processing
2. Behavioural
a. Human behavior is the main area of study
b. Often begins with tests on mammals
i. Why?
c. Key areas
i. Classical conditioning
 Stimulus-response
A. Beckingham
Psych12
Chatelech Secondary School
ii.
 Little albert
 dog salivation – Pavlov
Operant conditioning
 Reinforcement/punishment to perform an action
 Skinner box – shock vs food
 Slot machines
3. Cognitive
a. Studies cognition – the mental process underlying mental activity.
b. key areas:
i. perception, attention, reasoning, thinking, problem solving, memory,
learning, language, and emotion
c. interdisciplinary (cognitive science)
i. involving people such as: cognitive psychologists, cognitive
neuroscientists, researchers in AI, linguists, human-computer
interaction, logicians, and social scientists.
d. Interesting topic of study: cognitive bias, or irrational thought
i. Examples
 Availability heuristic – the tendency to overestimate the
likelihood of events with greater “availability” in memory,
which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or
how unusual or emotionally charged they may be
 Backfire effect – when people react to disconfirming evidence
by strengthening their beliefs
 Why slander is so powerful
4. Social
a. Study of how humans think about each other and how they relate to each
other
b. Intrapersonal phenomena
i. Attitudes
 Learned, global evaluations of a person, object, place, or issue
that influence thought and action
ii. Persuasion
 An active method of influence that attempts to guide people
toward the adoption of an attitude, idea, or behaviour by
rational or emotive means
iii. Social cognition
 How people perceive, think about, and remember information
about others
iv.
Self-concept
A. Beckingham
Psych12
Chatelech Secondary School

Refers to the whole sum of beliefs people have about
themselves
c. Interpersonal
i. Social Influence
 Three main areas
 Conformity
 Compliance
 Obedience
ii. Group Dynamics
 Norms
 Implicit rules and expectations
 Roles
 Implicit rules and expectations for specific members
within the group
 Relations
 Patterns of liking within the group; differences in
prestige or status.
5. Psychoanalysis
a. Founder: Sigmund Freud (1920s)
b. Two things:
i. Began as a personality theory
 Draw the personality iceberg
ii. Therapeutic practice
c. Basic tenets
i. Development determined by often forgotten events in early childhood
ii. Human attitude, mannerism, experience, and thought is largely
influenced by irrational drives that are rooted in the unconscious
iii. Conflicts between the conscious and unconscious (or with repressed
material) result in mental or emotional disturbance
iv.
Material in the unconscious is freed, and brought into the conscious
mind, through methods such as: free association, dreams, fantasies
6. Humanistic theories
a. The American Association for Humanistic Psychology, formed in 1963,
declared:
“
Humanistic psychology is primarily an orientation toward the whole of
psychology rather than a distinct area or school. It stands for respect for
the worth of persons, respect for differences of approach, openmindedness as to acceptable methods, and interest in exploration of new
A. Beckingham
Psych12
Chatelech Secondary School
b.
c.
d.
e.
aspects of human behavior. As a "third force" in contemporary psychology,
it is concerned with topics having little place in existing theories and
systems: e.g., love, creativity, self, growth, organism, basic needgratification, self-actualization, higher values, being, becoming, spontaneity,
play, humor, affection, naturalness, warmth, ego-transcendence, objectivity,
autonomy, responsibility, meaning, fair-play, transcendental experience,
peak experience, courage, and related concepts.
“
Formed in the 1950s in response to the limitations of psychoanalysis and
behaviourism; sought a more holistic approach
Interested in looking at the ‘whole person’ (not just one part)
i. Topics of interest:
 Creativity, free will, and positive human potential
Key thinker: Abraham Maslow
i. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
 Physiological: physical requirements for human survival;
metabolic requirements: air, food, water; element protection:
clothing, shelter; species survival: sexual instinct and sexual
competition.
 Safety: personal security; financial security; health and wellbeing; safety net against accidents/illness, etc.
 Love/belonging: an interpersonal need; belongingness; need to
love and be loved (both sexually and non-sexually) by others
 Esteem: need to feel respected; accepted and valued by others
 Self-actualization: “what a man can be, he must be;” realization
of full potential and creativity
Goal of therapy: help client develop a stronger, healthier self of self (selfactualization)
i. Insight based – therapists attempt to provide insight about the client’s
inner conflict
ii. Non-pathological – looks beyond the medical model of psychology
iii. Encourages self-awareness; mindfullness