AP PSYCHOLOGY
in a nutshell
516 Alisha Morash
April 27th, 2012
History and Approaches
Psychology is the science of behavior and mental processes.
Schools of Psychology
 Empiricism- the view that (a)
knowledge comes from
experience via the senses, and
(b) science flourishes through
observation and experiment.
 Structuralism- An early
school of psychology that used
introspection to explore the
elemental structure of the
human mind.
 Functionalism- a school of
psychology that focused on
how mental and behavioral
processes function – how they
enable the organism to adapt,
survive, and flourish.
Current perspectives in psychology
Perspective
Neuroscience
Focus
How the body and brain enable emotions,
memories, and sensory experiences.
Evolutionary
How the natural selection of traits promotes
the perpetuation of one’s genes.
Behavior genetics How much our genes and our environment
influence our individual differences.
Psychodynamic
How behavior springs from unconscious
drives and conflicts.
Behavioral
How we learn observable responses.
Cognitive
Social-cultural
How we encode, process, store, and retrieve
information.
How behavior and thinking vary across
situations and cultures.
Influential people
 Wundt- “Father of Psychology” and introspection
 Watson- Behaviorism
 Titchner- structuralism
 James- Functionalism
 Freud- psychoanalysis, stages of development, defense
mechanisms, and more.
 Bandura- observational learning, social-cognitive theory
 Skinner- operant conditioning
 Pavlov- Classical conditioning
 Piaget- stages of cognitive development
 Kohlberg- moral development
 Asch- conformity
 Binet- I.Q
 Maslow- Hierarchy of needs
 Jung- collective unconscious
 Wertheimer- Gestalt psychology
 Darwin- natural selection
General
Approaches
 Behaviorism: environmental; learning; nurture
 Biological: psychology; genetics; nature
 Cognitive: mental processes
 Psychoanalytical: unconscious; childhood
 Humanistic: freewill; basic goodness
 Multicultural: sociocultural; role of structure
 Gestalt: emphasizes the organization process
in behavior; focuses on problem of perception
Psychiatry- a branch of medicine
dealing with psychological
Natural selection- the
disorders;
practiced
by
physicians
principle that,
among the range ofwho sometimes provide medical
treatments, as well as psychological
inherited trait
variations, those therapy.
 Clinical psychology- a branch
contributing to
of psychology that studies,
reproduction and
assesses, and treats people with
survival will most
psychological disorders.
likely be passed on to

Nature-nurture issue- the longstanding controversy
succeeding
generations.
over the relative contributions that genes and
experience make to the development of
psychological traits and behaviors.
Research Methods
 Basic Research: pure science that aims to increase the
scientific knowledge base.
 Applied research: scientific study that aims to solve
practical problems.
Experiments, observation, surveys,
tests, and case studies are all
methods used to find answers in
psychology.
Factors of research:
-The question to be answered
-independent variable
-dependent variable
-control group
-population & sample
-theory
-hypothesis
-statistical significance
Some Key Terms in Basic
Research
 Hindsight Bias- the tendency to believe (after learning an outcome)
that one would have foreseen it.
 Critical thinking- thinking which discerns hidden values, evaluates
evidence, and assesses conclusions.
 Theory- an explanation using an integrated set of principles that
organizes and predicts observations
 Hypothesis- any testable prediction.
 Replication- repeating the essence of a research study to see
whether the basic finding extends to other circumstances.
 Case Study- an observation technique in which one person is
studied extensively to reveal universal principles.
 Survey-a technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes or
behaviors of people.
 False consensus effect- the tendency to overestimate the extent to
which others share our beliefs and behaviors.
Biological Basis of Behavior
Genetics are believed to be our biological blueprints. While genes are not
the entire reason for our behavior, they do make up a good portion of the
explanation for our behaviors.
The Central Nervous System
 Composed of the brain and spinal cord.
 The CNS is surrounded by bone-skull and
vertebrae.
 Fluid and tissue also insulate the brain and
spinal cord.
THE BRAIN
 The brain works through it’s use of neurons.
 Neurons (nerve cells) have cell bodies and
branching fibers (dendrites). Dendrites receive
information  axon (extensions of neurons) fibers
pass it to more neurons, muscles, & glands
 Axons are insulated by myelin sheath which causes
message sending to speed up.
 Using action potential (electrical charge) axons are
told to send the information along.
 Axons send info. To the synapse (gap between
sending neuron and receiving cell) in the form of
neurotransmitters (chemical messengers).
Parts and functions
The Nervous System
The Peripheral Nervous System
 The Peripheral Nervous System(PNS)contains only nerves and
connects the brain and spinal cord (CNS) to the rest of the body.
 Cranial nerves in the PNS take impulses to and from the brain
(CNS).
 Spinal nerves take impulses to and away from the spinal cord.
 There are two major subdivisions of the PNS motor pathways:
the somatic and the autonomic.
 Two main components of the PNS:
sensory (afferent) pathways that provide input from the body into
the CNS.
motor (efferent) pathways that carry signals to muscles and glands
(effectors).
Important Neurotransmitters
Neurotransmitter
Job of neurotransmitter
Acetylcholine (ACh)
Begins muscle action, learning,
and memory.
Dopamine
Influences movement, learning,
attention, and emotion.
Serotonin
Affects mood, hunger, sleep,
and arousal.
Norepinephrine
Helps control alertness and
arousal.
GABA (gammaaminobutyric acid)
Major inhibitory
neurotransmitter; contributes
to motor control, vision, and
other cortical functions.
Glutamate
A major excitatory
neurotransmitter; involved in
memory.
Somatic Division
 Consists of peripheral
nerve fibers that send
sensory information to
the central nervous
system AND motor nerve
fibers that project to
skeletal muscle
 Controls functions that
are under conscious
voluntary control such as
skeletal muscles and
sensory neurons of the
skin.
Autonomic Division
 Motor nerves, controls functions of involuntary smooth
muscles, cardiac muscles, and glands.
 Provides almost every organ with a double set of nerves
- the sympathetic and parasympathetic
 Divided into three parts: the sympathetic nervous
system, the parasympathetic nervous system and the
enteric nervous system.
Sympathetic, Parasympathetic,
& Entric
 The sympathetic system activates and prepares the
body for vigorous muscular activity, stress, and
emergencies. Also, responsible for what is known as
fight or flight”.
 the parasympathetic system lowers activity, operates
during normal situations, permits digestion, and
conservation of energy.
 The enteric nervous system is a third division of the
autonomic nervous system that you do not hear much
about. The enteric nervous system is a meshwork of
nerve fibers that innervate the viscera (gastrointestinal
tract, pancreas, gall bladder).
Sensation and Perception
 Sensation is the response made both the sensory
receptors and the nervous system to an environmental
stimulus
 Perception involves only sensory information, no
stimulus necessary. Perception takes the sensory
information, organizes and interprets it. This allows
humans to recognize meaningful objects and events
The five senses
1.Taste
2.Touch
3.Smell
4.Sight
5.hearing
VISION
*things to
know*
 Transduction is the process by which our sensory
systems convert stimulus energy into neural
messages.
 Wavelength is the distance from the peak of one
light or sound wave to the peak of the next.
 Hue is the dimension of color that is determined by
the wavelength of light
 Intensity is the amount of energy n a light or sound
wave.
 Accommodation is the process by which the eye’s
lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on
the retina.
 Acuity is the sharpness of vision.
The Eye
 Pupil- adjustable opening in the center of the eye through
which light enters.
 Iris- a ring of muscle tissue tat forms the colored portion
of the eye around the pupil and controls the size of the
pupil opening.
 Lens- the transparent structure behind the pupil that
changes shape to help focus images on the retina.
 Retina- the light-sensitive inner surface of the eye,
containing the receptor rods and cones plus layers of
neurons that begin processing visual info.
 Cones- receptor cells that are concentrated near the
center of the retina and that function in daylight or in
well-lit conditions.
 Rods- retinal receptors that detect black, white, and
gray; needed for twilight and peripheral vision.
 Optic Nerve- the nerve that carries neural impulses from
the eye to the brain.
 Fovea- the central focal point in the retina, around which
the eye’s cones cluster.
The Ear
how it works
Outer ear sends sound through auditory
canaleardrum vibratesmiddle ear
transmits vibrations through a three bone
pistoncochlea vibrates fluid that fills the
tubevibration ripples the basilar
membraneadjacent nerve fibres send
sound to auditory cortex.
Hammer, stirrup, and anvil are the three tiny bones
which compose the piston.
Sense of touch
 Our sense of touch is a mix of at least four skin senses:
pressure, warmth, cold, and pain.
 There is no simple relationship between what we feel at a
given spot and the type of specialized nerve ending found
there.
 Gate-Control Theory: the spinal cord contains a
neurological “gate” that blocks pain signals or allows them
to pass on to the brain.
 The brain is most sensitive to unexpected stimulation
 The brain creates pain; pain producing brain activity may be
triggered with or without sensory input.
Sense of Taste
 Taste is a chemical sense.
 Each little bump on the top and sides
of your tongue has 200+ taste buds.
 Taste receptors replace themselves
every week or two.
 Aging decreases the amount of taste
receptors we have.
 People with no tongue still taste using
buds in the roof and back of their
mouths.
Sensory Interaction- the principle that
one sense may influence another, s when
the smell of food influences its taste.
Sense of smell
Smell cont’d
 Smell is a chemical sense
 Olfactory receptor cells respond selectively to various
aromas
 Opposite to light, which is separated into a spectra of
colors, scent cannot be separated into more elemental
odors.
 Odor molecules come in many shapes and sizes.
Kinesthesis- the system for sensing the position and
movement of individual body parts.
Vestibular sense- The sense of body movement and
position, including the sense of balance.
Key terms in perception
 Selective Attention- the focusing of conscious awareness
on a particular stimulus, as in the cocktail party effect.
 Visual capture- the tendency for vision to dominate the
other senses.
 Gestalt- an organized, meaningful whole.
 Figure-ground- the organization of the visual field into
objects that stand out from their surroundings.
 Grouping- the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into
coherent groups.
 Depth perception- the ability to see objects in three
dimensions although the images that strike the retina are
two-dimensional.
 Visual Cliff- a laboratory device for testing depth
perception in infants and young animals.
 Phi Phenomenon- an illusion of movement created when
two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in succession.
 Parapsychology- the study of paranormal phenomena,
including ESP and psychokinesis.
Sates of Consciousness
 Consciousness- our awareness of ourselves and our
environments.
 The regular alpha waves of an awake, relaxed state are
quite different from the slower, larger delta waves of
deep stage 4 sleep. Although the rapid REM sleep waves
resemble the near-waking Stage 1 sleep waves, the bod
is more aroused during REM sleep than during stage 1
sleep.
Biological Rhythms
 Biological rhythms- periodic physiological fluctuations.
 Annual cycles, twenty-eight day cycles, twenty-four-hour
cycles, and Ninety-minute cycles are what make up our
living schedules.
 Circadian rhythm- the biological clock; regular bodily
functions that occur in a 24-hour period.
Learning-
a relatively permanent change in an
organism’s behavior due to experience.
 Associative learning- learning
that certain events occur
together.
 Classical conditioning- a type
of learning in which an organism
comes to associate stimuli.
 Behaviorism- the view that
psychology (1) should be an
objective science that (2) studies
behavior without reference to
mental processes.
 Acquisition- the initial stage in
classical conditioning.
 Extinction- The diminishing of a
conditioned response.
 Spontaneous recovery- the
reappearance, after a rest period,
of an extinguished conditioned
response.
 Generalization- the tendency,
once a response has been
conditioned, for stimuli similar to
the conditioned stimulus to elicit
similar responses.
Pavlov’s Dog Experiment
How to change behavior
Operant Conditioning
Description
Positive reinforcement
Add a desirable stimulus
Negative reinforcement
Remove an aversive stimulus
Cognition- the mental activities associated with
thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
 Enables us to make decisions, solve problems, and
understand concepts
 Prototypes are a mental image or best example of a
category.
 Heuristics are simple thinking strategies that often allow
us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently.
 Insight is a sudden, novel realization of the solution to a
problem.
 Artificial Intelligence is the science of designing and
programming computer systems to do intelligent things.
Just for laughs
Language
 Phoneme- in a spoken language, the smallest distinctive
sound unit.
 Morpheme- in a language, the smallest unit that carries
meaning.
 Linguistic Determinism- Whorf’s hypothesis that
language determines the way we think.
 Thinking is merely talking to yourself.
 Words shape our thoughts
Animals have their own
language
Motivation
*Instinct is a complex behavior that is rigidly
patterned throughout a species and is unlearned.
Drives and incentives
 The drive-reduction theory states that a physiological
need creates an aroused tension state that motivates an
organism to satisfy a need.
 An incentive is a positive or negative environmental
stimulus that motivates behavior.
 As our hunger diminishes, our eating behavior changes.
 Basal Metabolic Rate- the body’s resting rate of energy
expenditure.
 Anorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder in which a
normal-weight person diets and becomes significantly
underweight
 Bulimia Nervosa- an eating disorder characterized by
episodes of overeating.
Sex is a motivation
 The pleasure of sex is our genes’ way of preserving and
spreading themselves.
 Sexual response cycle identified four stages- initial
excitement phase, the plateau phase, the orgasm, the
resolution.
 Men reach point (sometimes minute long, other times
days long) in which another orgasm is unachievable, this
is known as the refractory period.
 Biology is a necessary, but not sufficient explanation of
human sexual behavior.
 Sexual orientation- an enduring sexual attraction toward
members of either one’s own sex or the opposite sex.
 Adult women’s sexual drive and interests are more
flexible and varying than adult men’s- a phenomenon
Baumeister calls the gender difference in “erotic
plasticity”.
 “Homosexuality is something you are born with…” is an
increasing American public opinion.
Emotions
are a mix of
physiological activation, expressive
behaviors and conscious experience.
Schachter proposed a two-factor theory, in which
emotions have two ingredients: physical arousal
and cognitive label.
 Our emotional reactions can be quicker than our
interpretations of a situation; we therefore feel some
emotions before we think.
 Likes, dislikes, and fears involve no conscious thinking.
 Moods such as depression and complex feelings such as
hatred and love are greatly affected by our
interpretations, memories, and expectations.
 We read anger and fear from the eyes, happiness from
the mouth.
 Women generally surpass men at reading people’s
emotional cues.
 Females are more likely to express empathy.
 Hard-to-control facial muscles may reveal signs of
emotions you are trying to conceal.
 Fear of injury can protect us from harm.
 Catharsis is emotional release.
 Feel-good, do-good phenomenon is people’s tendency to
be helpful when already in a good mood.
 Subjective well-being is self-perceived happiness or
satisfaction with life.
Developmental
Psychology
 Prenatal development begins when the mother
releases a matured egg. Next, male’s sperm releases
digestive enzymes that decay the outer layer of the
egg, enabling the sperm to penetrate it. Once the
sperm fully enters the egg, the nucleus of both cells
fuse together, becoming one. From conception to the
end of the second week, the developing human is
known as the zygote. At two weeks the baby becomes known as the embryo,
this is when both the arms and legs begin to grow, also, the spine is visible.
Finally, from about two months to birth, the child is referred to as the fetus.
During the fetal stage, facial features, hands, and feet are formed.
Teratogens are chemicals and viruses that may be found within the nursing
mother during pregnancy. If these agents reach the embryo or fetus at any
time, they can and will cause developmental harm. Teratogens have the
ability to damage the child permanently. For example, if the mother is a
heroin addict during her pregnancy, the child will be born a heroin addict.
 Piaget believed that the mind was developed in stages.
These stages are accumulated through schemas (mental
molds we pour our experiences into), assimilation (form
new interpretations based on personal knowledge), and
accommodating our previous interpretations with newly
provided information. Piaget believed in cognition, which
is all of the activities associated with thinking, knowing,
remembering, and communicating. He believed in the
four stages
 The early-development of self-concept includes a
sense of identity, god confidence, selfawareness, and self-recognition. Through the
words of self-concept, most children have a
stable self-image by their eighth year of life.
Self-concept shows three parenting styles and
their effects in children.
 Authoritarian- provides the child with rules,
consequences, and repercussions.
 Permissive- submit to their children’s beckoning
call; lack demand and punishment.
 Authoritative- provides rules, consequences,
and repercussions, along with lenience,
understanding, and open discussion.
 During the years of adolescence, teenagers strive to find
themselves. These are the years when feelings of
alienation from parents feel the most extreme. As
teenagers, social approval is imperative. Teens struggle
between forming a sense of self, person identity and
gaining popularity. From around the time of puberty, we
as humans become able to form formal operations and
have moral feelings. If a young girl is well prepared for
her menarche, she is more likely to be independent from
her parents as she grows up than if she had no idea
what her menarche was. Furthermore, it is considered
that once a teenager gains a full sense of identity, they
are ready to be involved in a close, intimate relationship.
 Menarche- A girls first menstrual period
 During adult development there two main factors, work
and family. Work is important because it involves all
activities which make a person feel productive. Whether
lucrative or not, when a person comes home from work,
they are positive they did something useful with their
time. Family is important because as we age, we feel the
need for love. Based on basic social standards, we
associate love with families. Being productive at work
and coming home to the love of your family are the two
vital ingredients to being a happy and successful adult.
 As we age, it becomes hard to accept our aging and
coming to pass. Once you have hit then age of 65,
psychologists say that you have entered the hardest
point in your life. This is the point when one begins to
feel regret and remorse about all of the things they
missed out on or neglected to do as they aged.
Personality is said to be the characteristic patterns of
thinking, acting, and feeling
Freud believed that personality was made up of three
parts: Id, superego, and ego. Id is the unconscious part of
the mind which works towards satisfying basic needs,
want, and desire; organized, instinctual role. Superego is
the component of personality which works toward
upholding moral standards; the critical, moralizing role.
Ego is the realistic component of personality which works
to find a balance between the wants of Id and the
standards of the Superego. Freud believed that these
components created the basic structure of personality.
Video about id, superego, and ego
Psychologists believed these characteristics
are necessary in order to create a
personality.
 Albert Bandura described the social-cognitive
perspective. He said personal control may be learned, as
well as helplessness, and optimism. Personality is the
learned response to the interactions between people and
their interactions. This enables us to correlate our
behaviors with our achievements.
 Self-esteem and self-pride are a humans feelings of selfworth. It is a person’s expression of pride. Through
confident behavior.
 Non-conscious information processing is highlighted by
the contemporary research done by psychologists. This
research discovered terror management theory. This is
the state when a human is mainly motivated by fear of
mortality.
video on learning
Testing and Standarization
 Aptitude tests are tests designed to predict a
person’s future performance.
 Achievement tests are tests designed to assess
what a person has learned.
 Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale is the most
widely used intelligence test.
 Standardization is the defining of meaningful
scores by comparison with the performance of a
pretested group.
 Reliability is the extent to which a test yields
consistent results.
 Validity is the extent to which a test measures or
predicts what it is supposed to.
 Criterion is the behavior that a test is designed to
predict.
Normal Curve-
the symmetrical bell-shapes
curve that describes the distribution of many physical and
psychological attributes.
Level
Degrees of Mental
Retardation
Typical
Intelligence
Scores
Percentage of
Persons with
retardation
Adaptations
to Demands
of Life
Mild
50-70
85%
Up to 6th grade
education; may
learn vocational
skills w/t
assistance
Moderate
35-49
10%
Up to 2nd grade
education
Severe
20-34
3-4%
May learn to
talk and
perform simple
tasks
Profound
Below 20
1-2%
Require
constant aid
and supervision
Abnormal Psychology
 Psychological disorders are classified by atypical, disturbing, maladaptive, and
unjustifiable behaviors. There is however a very fine line. One may be considered
atypical in one culture, while not in another, hence the need for disturbing,
maladaptive, and unjustified behaviors as well.
 The Medical Model of Psychological disorders is described as a medical way to
diagnose mental illness (sickness) and treat it through therapy. This treatment
will be given in hospital and asylums. The bio-psycho-social perspective model is
offered by critics as the effects of the internal illness within the brain, in mixture with
the effects of the person’s environment and their personal growth. It is somewhat
like nurture vs. nature.
 DSM-IV is aims to classify, diagnose, and predict the course of mental
illnesses. The problem with this is that it causes biased opinions and views towards a
person. It may be better to view specific symptoms, as oppose to categorizing
schizophrenia and other disorders which may can misconceptions. Also, these
categories may skew the interpretation and perception of symptoms.
Anxiety Disorders
 Symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorder
include, however are not limited to: one being continually jittery and tense, always worried
about bad things happening, muscular tension, agitation, sleeplessness, twitching eyelids,
trembling, perspiration, fidgeting, inability to identify and fix cause, avoidance, diarrhea,
obsession, compulsion, ordering, cleaning, and hoarding.
 The development of anxiety disorders in both learning and biological senses can be
conditioned or learned. They may result from reoccurrence, post-traumatic stress disorder.
They may also be associated with specific cues, reinforcement, and observation. Also, they
may be biologically inherited from ancestors, based on survival instincts, or result from
habitual behaviors.
 Major depressive disorder is described as the result of signs of
depression lasing more than two weeks without any pin pointed
cause. Bipolar disorder is described as episodes between
depressive and manic episodes.
 The development of mood disorders is shown through
inactiveness and lack of motivation. Causing sensitivity to
negative outcomes, expectance of the worst. Women are more
susceptible to these disorders. Also, they are often caused by
elongated stress.
 Characteristics and causes of dissociative identity disorder
include different mannerisms, different voices, different
personalities, denial of other personalities, a sense of
separation from the body, trauma, overwhelming emotion, and
a need to control their own behavior in every situation.
 The symptoms of Schizophrenia include disorganized
thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate
emotions, as well as actions. There are several
subtypes of Schizophrenia: paranoid, disorganized,
catatonic, undifferentiated, and residual. Paranoid is
when the ill person is preoccupied with delusions or
hallucinations, often with themes of persecution or
grandiosity. Disorganized consists of speech or
behavior, or flat or inappropriate emotion. The
catatonic type of schizophrenia includes immobility (or
excessive, purposeless movement), extreme
negativism, and/or parrot-like repeating of another’s
speech or movement. Undifferentiated schizophrenia
includes many varied symptoms and residual
schizophrenia consists of withdrawal after
hallucinations and delusions have disappeared.
Schizophrenia is created by many factors. From
genetic influences, to brain abnormalities and
environmental factors, schizophrenia is formed in
conjunction with all of these.
Schizophrenia- A Call for Hope and Recovery
 Personality disorders are enduring, maladaptive patterns of
behavior that impair social functioning. For society, the most
troubling of these is the remorseless and fearless antisocial
personality. Antisocial personality disorder is a personality
disorder in which the person (usually a man) exhibits a lack of
conscience for wrongdoing, even toward friends and family
members. They may become ruthless and aggressive or clever
con artists at times.
 One in every six Americans suffers from clinically significant
mental disorders. Further studies in Australia and Britain
have shown similar results. It appears as though most people
who develop mental illnesses/disorders show at least their
first symptoms by the age of 24. However, for antisocial
personality disorders, the median age for symptoms to arise
is between eight and ten years old.
Treatments and Therapies
 Psychoanalysis aims to make an awareness of emotions,
memories and thoughts which have been repressed for
years. The main goal is to make the patient gain insight
into themselves. Through resistance, interpretation, and
clarification the client should become better. However,
this has been criticized as it is a lengthy process, taking
years to complete. Over the years, this process becomes
expensive and generally fails unless the client has
immense amounts of faith and belief in the program.
 Humanistic therapies emphasis the self-potential of each
individual client. The method of active listening is used in
concert with a genuine, accepting, as well as empathetic
demeanor in an attempt to improve the patient’s selfawareness and self-acceptance. The point is to bring the ill
to a place where they may look positively at the present
and future with conscious thoughts while giving
responsibility to their actions. This promotes growth.
 The assumptions of behavior therapy are that
counterconditioning; classical conditioning will eliminate
unwanted behaviors. Through progressive relaxation and
virtual reality exposure therapy a positive response will be
gained for a negative stimulus.
 Operant conditioning is used in therapy to train patients on
how to behave, what to feel, etc. This is criticized because it
seems as though the client will be dependent on such
treatments once they are removed and thrown into the real
world. Also, this seems a bit unethical and sometimes
unpractical as well. The therapist punishes unwanted
behaviors hoping to replace them with desirable ones. Using
a token economy, the patient is giving a reward system, a
reason to be good.
 Preventive mental health programs argue that psychological
disorders could be prevented. Their aim is to change
oppressive, esteem-destroying environments into more
benevolent, nurturing environments that foster individual
growth and self-confidence.
 Cognitive therapies assume that thinking colors our
feelings. In terms of depression, the therapist will teach
new, more constructive ways of thinking. With gentle
questioning which discovers irrationalities, the therapist
encourages the ill-minded to be positive and optimistic
about their life.
 Group therapy encourages thoughts the sick are not alone.
This allows patients to know and understand that there are
people just like them, going through the same thing. It
encourages hope and faith. Family therapy shows the client
that they are not alone. Given that everyone lives and
grows in relation to other people, we need our relatives.
Also, in terms of family commitment it opens the eyes on
individuals to see that they all love each other equally.
Psychopharmacology
 Common forms of drug therapy include psychopharmacology,
antipsychotic drugs, antianxiety drugs, as well as
antidepressant drugs. Psychopharmacology is the study of the
effects of drugs on mind and behavior. Antipsychotic drugs,
such as chlorpromazine, dampen the responsiveness to
irrelevant stimuli (give the most help to schizophrenia patients
with positive symptoms. Antianxiety drugs, such as Xanax or
valium, depress central nervous system activity. Antidepressant
drugs calm people down from a state of anxiety, they
sometimes lift people up from a state of depression.
 Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) is a biomedical therapy
for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric
current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized
patient. Psychosurgery is surgery that removes or
destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior.
Both ECT and psychosurgery are used in the treatment
of psychological disorders to ultimately “get rid of” the
disease. Electroconvulsive therapy was generally used as
a last resort for severely depressed patients, while
lobotomy was extremely popular. Psychosurgery was
often used to alleviate on specific problem.
Social Psychology
 In social behavior, attribution is vital. The attribution
found in such situations explains specific actions that
would not have otherwise been performed. Attribution
shapes our behavior and makes it almost irresistible to
follow the pack. The dangers of fundamental attribution
error apply when we place too much emphasis on the
wrong things. Attributions to individual’s dispositions or
to their situations have real consequences.
 When the outside environment has an influence on what
we do and say become minimal and attitude is
specifically relevant to behavior, attitude has a strong
effect on our actions. We are keenly aware of our
attitudes. However, when our own personal insecurities,
observed behaviors, and group influences always tend to
sway our attitudes.
 The foot-in-the-door phenomenon is the tendency for
people who have first agreed to small requests to
comply later with a larger request. The cognitive
dissonance theory is often affected by role playing on
attitude because it prescribes “norms” which often cause
a person to feel phony. After extended periods of time
playing the part, we become the phony that we feel
 Milgram took 1,000 people and tricked them. He
gathered pairs of people ate Yale University and had
them pick positions from a hat, one being the teacher
and one being the learner in each situation. He gave the
teacher word pairs that he/she was to teach the student.
In each case, if the student gave the wrong answer, the
teacher was to flick a switch sending a shock to the
student. With each wrong answer, each shock became
stronger, eventually leaving the student in loud,
excruciating pain. This experiment showed that most
people were willing to give into their authority figure and
send the shock to the innocent students, despite their
better judgment. Most attempted to resist giving the
shock, but Milgram was just so persuasive.
Milgram Redone
 We tend to conform to skewed judgments
and accuracy.
 Normative Social Influence is when we
conform for approval.
 Informational Social Influence is when
we conform to those who have
information which we do not yet possess.
 Once we begin to conform, we begin to
do things which we would not have
previously done; we do things out of the
usual.
 Experiments and studies have shown that
people are more likely to conform to
informative high points than to normative
high points.
 Deindividuation occurs when group participation causes
aroused and anonymous feelings.
 Social facilitation occurs with simple or well-learned
tasks, but not with unlearned or difficult tasks.
 Social loafing occurs when individuality is wanted.
Bibliography
 Download the Microsoft file below for the works cited
page.
 Bibliography