Psychology Final Notes
Chapter 10: Human Development
➢ Developmental Psychology: ​study of how behavior changes over our lifespan
➢ Post Hoc Fallacy: ​false assumption that because one event occurred before another
event- it must have caused it.
➢ Bidirectional Influences: ​children's ​experiences ​influence development BUT their
development​ also ​influences​ their ​experiences​.
➢ Cross-sectional Design: ​research design that examines people of different ages at one
single point in time.
➢ Cohort Effect: ​effect observed in a sample of participants that results from individuals in
the sample growing up at the same time
➢ Longitudinal Design: ​research design that examines development in the same group of
people on multiple occasions over time.
➢ Gene-Environment Interactions: ​impact of genes on behaviour depends on the
environment in which behaviour develops.
➢ Genetic Expression: ​some genes are triggered by environmental events.
➢ Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder: ​condition resulting from high levels of prenatal
alcohol exposure. Learning disabilities, physical growth retardations, facial
malformations, behavioural disorders.
Cognitive Development
JEAN PIAGET
➢ Assimilation: ​Piagetian process of absorbing new experiences into current knowledge
structures.
➢ Accommodation: ​Piagetian process of altering a belief to make it more compatible with
experience.
Stages of Development:
1. Sensorimotor (Birth - 2 Years): ​No thought beyond immediate physical experiences.
2. Preoperational (2-7 Years): ​Egocentric/ Unable to perform mental transformations.
3. Concrete Operations (7-11 Years): ​Able to perform mental transformations strictly on
concrete physical objects.
4. Formal Operations (11-Adulthood): ​able to perform hypothetical and abstract
reasoning.
VYGOTSKY
➢ Scaffolding: ​vygotskian learning mechanism in which parents provide initial assistance
in child's learning. Structure is gradually removed as child grows in competency.
➢ Zone of Proximal Development: ​stage when children are receptive to learning a new
skill. Benefit from instruction.
➢ Physical Reasoning: ​Understanding physical worlds (object permanence).
➢ Concepts and Categories: ​categorizing objects by kind. (dogs are dogs no matter what
size).
➢ Theory of Mind: ​ability to reason about what other people know/believe.
Social Transitions in Later Years
1. Biological Age: estimate of a person's age in terms of biological functioning.
2. Psychological Age: a person’s mental attitudes/agility/capacity to deal with stress.
3. Functional Age: a person’s ability to function in society
4. Social Age: whether people behave within social accord- appropriate for their age.
Chapter 9: Intelligence and IQ Testing
➢ Intelligence Test: ​tool designed to measure overall thinking ability.
➢ Abstract Thinking: ​the capacity to understand hypothetical concepts.
➢ Specific Abilities: ​how we perform on a mental task based on specific aspects of talents
due to not enough exposure.
➢ Fluid Intelligence: ​capacity to learn new ways of problem solving (solving a puzzle
we’ve never seen before).
➢ Crystallized Intelligence: ​accumulated knowledge of the world acquired over time
(lasting knowledge + increase with age).
➢ Multiple Intelligence: ​people vary abilities in different domains (frames of mind)
➢ Existential Intelligence: ​ability to grasp deep ideas (psychological + cannot be falsified).
ROBERT STERNBERG
3 Types of Intelligence
1. Analytical​: Ability to reason logically
2. Practical: ​“tacit” ability to solve real world problems
3. Creative: ​ability to come up with effective answers.
Genetic Influences and IQ
➢ Family Studies: ​smart people will be smart within their immediate family + won’t
extend much.
➢ Twin Studies: ​higher correlation between identical than fraternal twins.
➢ Adoption Studies: ​IQ similar to biological parents.
➢ Divergent Thinking: ​capacity to generate many different solutions to a problem.
➢ Convergent Thinking: ​generate the stage best solution to a problem.
Chapter 15: Psychological Disorders
Criteria for Mental Disorders
1. Statistical Rarity: ​Uncommon amongst general society.
2. Subjective Distress: ​mental pain to those afflicted
3. Impairment: ​interfere with people's ability to function within society.
4. Biology Dysfunction: ​result from breakdowns/failures of a psychological system.
Historical Concepts
1. Demonic Model: ​mental illness was attributed to evil spirits taking over the body.
2. Medical Model: ​mental illness was attributed to a physical disorder, requiring medical
treatment.
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Asylum: institution for people with mental illness.
TREATMENTS
➢ Blood Letting: ​Draining patients blood based on the thought that too much blood causes
mental illness.
➢ Snake Pit:​ frightening the illness out of patients by throwing them into snake pits.
➢ Moral Treatment: ​Approach to mental illness calling for dignity, kindness and respect
for those with mental illness.
➢ Prevalence: ​percentage of people within a population who have a specific mental
disorder.
➢ Comorbidity: ​co-occurrence of two or more diagnosis within the same person
➢ Categorical Model: ​model in which a mental disorder differs from normal functioning in
kind rather than degree.
➢ Dimensional Model: ​mental disorder differs from normal functioning in degree rather
than kind.
Anxiety Related Disorders
➢ Somatic Symptom Disorder: ​illness that suggests an underlying medical illness, but that
are actually psychological in origin.
➢ Generalized Anxiety Disorder: ​an individual's feelings of worry, anxiety, physical
tension, and irritability across many areas of life functioning.
➢ Illness Anxiety Disorder: ​the continual preoccupation that he/she has a serious physical
disease.
➢ Agoraphobia: ​fear of being in a place or situation in which escape is difficult.
➢ Anxiety Sensitivity: ​fear of anxiety-related situations.
Mood Disorders and Conditions
➢ Bipolar Disorder 1: ​presence of one or more manic episode.
➢ Bipolar Disorder 2: ​must experience at least one episode of major depression and one
hypomanic.
➢ Cyclothymic Disorder: ​moods alternate between numerous periods of hypomanic
symptoms and numerous depressive symptoms.
➢ Hypomanic Episode: ​lesser of manic episode.
➢ Disruptive Mood Dysregulation: ​children under 18. Persistent irritability + frequent
episodes of extreme out of control behaviour.
➢ Cognitive Model of Depression: ​theory that depression is caused by negative beliefs +
expectations.
Personality and Dissociative Disorders
➢ Personality Disorder: ​personality traits, appearing first in adolescence, are flexible,
stable, expressed in a wide variety of situations lead to distress or impairment.
➢ Borderline Personality Disorder: ​condition marked by extreme instability in mood,
identity, and impulse control.
➢ Psychopathic Personality: ​condition marked by superficial charm, dishonesty,
manipulativeness, self-centeredness, and risk taking.
➢ Dissociative Disorder: ​disruptions in consciousness, memory, identity, or perception.
➢ Dissociative Fugue: ​sudden, unexpected travel away from home or the workplace,
accompanied by amnesia for significant life events.
Chapter 16: Psychological/ Biological Treatments
➢ Psychotherapy: ​a psychological intervention designed to help people resolve emotional,
behavioural, and interpersonal problems and improve the quality of life.
6 Primary Approaches to Psychoanalysis
1. Free Association: ​lie on couch + say whatever comes to mind without censorship.
2. Interpretation: ​formulate expectations for free association, dreams, emotions, and
behaviours.
3. Dream Analysis: ​interpret the dream to the clients waking life, determine significance,
and form a distinction of the dreams manifest.
4. Resistance: ​try to avoid further confrontation. Bring attention to unconscious resistance.
5. Transference: ​projecting intense/unrealistic feelings + expectations from their past onto
their therapist.
6. Working Through: ​helping clients work through/ process their problems.
Therapies
➢ Humanistic Therapies:​ emphasize development of human potential and the belief that
human nature is basically positive.
➢ Person Centered Therapy: ​therapy centering on the clients goals and ways of solving
problems. (Carl Rogers).
➢ Gestalt Therapy: ​aims to integrate different and sometimes opposing aspects of
personality into a unified sense of self.
➢ Group Therapy:​ treats more that one person at a time composed of peers who share a
similar problem.
➢ Strategic Family Therapy: ​family therapy approach designed to remove barriers to
effect communication.
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Identified Patient: scapegoat with all problems.
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Paradoxical Requests: reverse psychology.
➢ Structured Family Therapy: ​Treatment in which therapists deeply involve themselves
in family activities to change how family members arrange and organize interactions.
➢ Behavioural Therapist: ​focus on specific problem behaviours
➢ Behavioural Assessment Techniques: ​pinpoint environmental causes of the persons
problems, establish specific and measurable treatment goals, and devise therapeutic
procedures.
Systematic Desensitization + Exposure Therapies
➢ Flooding
➢ Systematic Desensitization: ​patients are taught to relax as they are gradually exposed to
what they fear in a stepwise manner.
➢ Exposure Therapy:​ confronts patients with what they fear with the goal of reducing that
fear.
➢ Dismantling: ​research procedure for examining the effectiveness of isolated components
of a larger treatment.
➢ Response Prevention: ​technique in which therapists prevents clients from performing
their typical avoidance measures.
Modelling Therapy: Learning by Watching
➢ Participant Modeling: ​technique in which the therapists first models a problematic
situation and then guides the client through steps to cope with it unassisted.
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Assertion Training: designed to help patients with social anxiety.
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Behavioural Rehearsal: client engages in role playing with a therapist to learn and
practice new skills.
Operant Procedures
➢ Token Economy:​ method in which desirable behaviours are rewarded with tokens that
clients can exchange for tangible rewards.
➢ Aversion Therapy: ​treatments that use punishment to decrease the frequency of
understandable behaviours.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapies
➢ Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: ​treatments that attempt to replace maladaptive or
irrational obligations with more adaptive, rational cognitions.
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Rational Emotive (Behavioural) Therapy (RET) + (REBT): cognitive in its emphasis on
changing how we think and act.
Psychopharmacotherapy
-
Use of medications to treat psychological problems
➢ Tardive Dyskinesia (TD): ​a series of side effect of old medications used to treat
schizophrenia. Symptoms include grotesque involuntary movement.
➢ Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): ​patients receive brief electrical pulses to the brain
that produce a seizure to treat serious psychological problems.
➢ Psychosurgery: ​brain surgery to treat psychological disorders- most radical and
controversial of all brain treatments.
Chapter 8: Thinking, Reasoning, Language
Thinking and Reasoning
➢ Thinking: ​any mental activity or processing of information, including learning,
remembering, perceiving, communication, believing, and deciding.
➢ Cognitive Misers: ​we economize mentally in a variety of ways that reduce our mental
effort, but enable us to get things right most of the time.
Heuristics and Biases: Double Edged Swords
➢ Cognitive Biases: ​predispositions and default expectations that we use to interpret our
experiences and that operate in our everyday lives.
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Systematic error in thinking.
➢ Representativeness Heuristic: ​involves judging the probability of one event based on
how prevalent that event has been in past experience. (based on its superficial similarity
to a past event).
➢ Base Rate: ​how common a characteristic or behaviour is in the general population
➢ Availability Heuristic: ​estimates the likelihood of an occurrence based on how easily it
comes to our minds- how available it is in our memories.
➢ Hindsight Bias: ​“I knew it all along” effect. Refers to our tendency to overestimate how
accurately we could have predicted something once we know the outcome.
Top-Down Processing
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Filling in gaps of missing information using our experiences and background knowledge.
➢ Concepts: ​knowledge and ideas about objects, actions, and characteristics that share core
properties.
➢ Chunking: ​memory aid that relies on our ability to organize information into larger units,
expanding the span of detail of our memories.
Decision Making and Problem Solving
➢ Decision Making: ​the process of selecting among a set of alternativeness.
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Framing: how we formulate the question about what we need to decide.
➢ Neuroeconomics: ​field researchers have become interested in how the brain works
making financial decisions.
Problem Solving
-
Generating a cognitive strategy to accomplish a goal.
Approaches to Solving Problems:
1. Algorithms: step-by-step learned procedure to solve a problem.
2. Reasoning from related examples
3. Break down a problem into subproblems.
Obstacles to Problem Solving
1. Tendency to focus on superficial aspects of problems. (The topic of an algebra problem
rather than the problem itself).
2. Mental Sets: phenomenon of becoming stuck in a specific problem solving strategy.
Stops us from creating any alternative.
3. Functional Fixedness: difficulty conceptualizing that an object with a specific purpose
can also be used for different purposes.
How Does Language Work?
➢ Language: ​a system of communication that combines symbols, such as words or gestural
signs, in rule-based ways to create meaning.
4 Levels of Analysis:
1. Phoneme: sound of our language.
2. Morphemes: smallest units of meaningful language
3. Syntax: grammatical rules that govern how we compose words into meaningful strings.
4. Extra-Linguistic Information: elements of communication that aren't a part of the content
of language but are crucial to interpreting its meaning. (facial expression/ tone of voice).
➢ Semantics: ​meanings derived from words and sentences.
➢ Dialects: ​Language variation used by a group of people who share geographic proximity
or ethnic background.
➢ Onomatopoeia: ​words that resemble sounds. (Buzz, meow)
➢ Sound Symbolism: ​the fact that certain speech sounds seem to be associated with certain
meanings.
➢ Babbling: ​refers to any intentional vocalization that lacks specific meaning (Babies)
➢ Comprehension Precedes Production: ​children learn to recognize and interpret words
well before they can produce them.
Syntac Development
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The first stage (milestone) in combining words into phrases.
➢ One Word Stage: ​early period of language development when children use single word
phrases to convey an entire thought.
➢ Sign Language: ​language developed by members of a deaf community. Visual over
auditory.
Bilingualism
➢ Bilingual: ​proficient and fluent speaking and comprehending of two distinct languages.
➢ Monolingual: ​those with the understanding of one language.
➢ Metalinguistic: ​awareness of how a language is structured and used. (Bilingual people
have a higher sense for this).
➢ Homesign: ​a system of signs invented by deaf children of hearing parents who receive no
language input.
Critical Periods of Language Learning
★ Young children are better at learning language than older children/ adults.
➢ Critical Period: ​windows of time in development during which an organism must learn
an ability.
➢ Sensitive Period: ​Period during which people are more receptive to learning and can
acquire new knowledge more easily.
★ Less is More Hypothesis: ​children have more limited information processing abilities,
fewer analytic skills, less specific skills about knowledge.
Theoretical Accounts of Language Acquisition
➢ Generativity: ​language is a system that allows us to create an infinite number of
sentences, producing new statements, thoughts, and ideas previously uttered.
➢ Nativist: ​a strong view that says children come into the world with some basic
knowledge of how language works.
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Language Acquisition Device: hypothetical construction in the brain in which nativists
believe knowledge of syntax resides.
➢ Social Pragmatics: ​suggests that specific aspects of social environment structure
language learning.
-
Proposes that children infer what words and sentences mean from context and social
interactions.
➢ General Cognitive Processing: ​proposes that children's ability to learn language results
from general skills that children apply across a variety of activities.
The Relation Between Language and Thought
★ John B Watson: thinking is simply subvocal talking- moving the vocal tract as talking,
but below hearing level.
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This implies that children don't think at all until they develop language.
Linguistic Determinism: We Speak, Therefore We Think
➢ Linguistic Determinism: ​A view that all thought is represented verbally and, as a result,
our language defines our thinking.
-
Language influences thought.
➢ Linguistic Relativity: ​characteristics of language that help shape our thought process.
AKA the Sapir-Worf Hypothesis.
Learning to Read
➢ Whole World Recognition: ​reading strategy that involves identifying common words
based on their appearance without having to sound them out.
➢ Phonetic Decomposition: ​reading strategy that involves sounding out words by drawing
correspondents between printed letters and sound.
Chapter 14: Personality
Personality: What Is It? + How Can We Study It??? :P :/
➢ Fundamental Attribution Error: ​the tendency to attribute too much of others behaviour
to their depositions. Including personalities.
➢ Personality: ​Peoples typical ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
➢ Trait:​ relatively enduring predisposition that influences our behaviour across many
situations.
3 Influences on Personality
1. Genetic Factors: ​personality is linked to biological parents. No matter who raised the
individual.
2. Shared Environment Factors: ​experiences that make individuals within the same
family more alike.
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Parents who give ALL the children more attention will result in more outgoing children.
3. Nonshared Environment Factors: ​experiences that make individuals within the same
family less alike.
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A parent treating one child better than another will result in differing levels of self
esteem.
Cause of Personality: Twin and Adoption Studies
➢ Monozygotic: ​identical twins
➢ Dizygotic: ​Fraternal Twins
➢ Twins Together (environment): ​nonshared environment plays an important role in
personality (?)
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Does not tell us what nonshared environmental influences are.
➢ Twins Apart (genes): ​similarities in identical twins are not just caused by similar
environment (duh lmao)
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Identical twins who are separated have strikingly similar personality traits.
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Identical twins apart are about as similar as identical twins together.
Birth Order
1. First Born: ​Strive towards achievement
2. Middle Borns: ​strive toward diplomacy/empathy
3. Last Born: ​Risk takers
This makes no sense but imma still write it lol
Environmental Approach on Personality
➢ Nomothetic Approach: ​scientific approach that seeks out general principles specific to
one individual.
➢ Idiographic Approach: ​scientific approach that focuses on identifying the unique
configuration of characteristics and life history experiences with a person.
Behaviour Genetic Studies
➢ Researchers using twin/adoption studies have found that genes influence a variety of
behaviours associated with personality:
1. Divorce
2. Religiosity
3. Tendency to watch TV
➢ Molecular Genetic Study: ​investigation that allows researchers to pinpoint genes
associated with specific personality traits.
-
These studies rest on two premises:
1. Genes code for proteins that in turn influence the functioning of the neurotransmitter such
as dopamine and serotonin.
2. The functioning of many neurotransmitters is associated with certain personality traits.
-
People with low levels of serotonin actively tend to be more impulsive/aggressive than
others.
Psychoanalytic Theory: Freud and His Followers
➢ Researchers sought to explain development and the workings of personality with 3 key
questions:
1. How do our personalities develop?
2. What are the driving forces in our personalities? (what makes us think?)
3. What accounts for individual differences in personality?
Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality
➢ Psychic Determinism: ​The assumption that all psychological events have a cause.
➢ Symbolic Meaning: ​For Freudians, no action is without an underlying meaning. All are
attributable to proceeding mental causes.
➢ Unconscious Motivation: ​According to Freud, we often never know why we do what we
do. Although we make up explanations for ourselves after the fact.
ID, Ego, Superego.
➢ All dreams are wish fulfillments- expressions of the ID’s impulses.
Defence Mechanisms
-
Unconscious maneuvers intended to minimize anxiety.
➢ Repression: ​motivated forgetting of emotionally threatening memories or impulses.
➢ Denial: ​Motivated forgetting of distressing experiences.
➢ Regression: ​psychologically returning to a younger, safer time.
➢ Reaction-Formation: ​transforming an anxiety producing experience into its opposite.
➢ Projection: ​unconscious attribution of our negative qualities onto others.
➢ Displacement: ​directing an impulse from a socially unacceptable target into a more
acceptable one.
➢ Rationalization: ​providing reasonable sounding explanations for unreasonable actions or
behaviours.
➢ Intellectualization: ​avoiding emotions associated with anxiety provoking experiences by
focusing on abstract and impersonal thoughts.
➢ Sublimation: ​transforming a socially unacceptable impulse into a socially accepted goal.
Freud’s Psychosexual Development Stages
Idk why we even study this pedophile but thats none of my business
1. Oral (Birth-12/18 Months): ​infants obtain sexual pleasure from oral stuff like sucking
and drinking.
2. Anal (18 Months- 3 Years): ​focuses on toilet training
3. Phallic (3-6 Years): ​children develop powerful attraction for opposite sex parent + want
to eliminate same sex parent.
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Oedipus Complex (Boys): conflict during phallic stage in which boys fall romantically in
love with their mothers and want to eliminate fathers out of competition. (can't beat em
join em)
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Electra Complex (Girls): conflict during phallic stage in which girls love their fathers
romantically and want to eliminate their mothers out of competition.
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Penis Envy: girls wish to possess a penis and feel inferior without it (missing organ).
4. Latency (6-12 Years): ​sexual impulses are submerged into the unconscious.
5. Genital (12-on): ​sexual impulses awaken + typically mature into romantic attractions
towards others.
Freud’s Followers
-
Place less emphasis on sexual drive, more emphasis on social drive.
-
More optimistic concerning personality development throughout a lifespan.
➢ Style of Life: ​each person's distinctive way of achieving psychology. (Adler).
➢ Inferiority Complex: ​feelings of low self esteem that can lead to overcompensation for
such feelings.
CARL JUNG
★ Termed Freud’s “unconscious” to be the “personal unconscious”.
➢ Collective Unconscious: ​According to Jung our shared storehouse of members that
ancestors have passed down to us across generations. Contains archetypes.
➢ Archetypes: ​cross-culturally universal symbols, which explain similarities across people
in their emotional reactions.
-
Include: mother, goddess, hero, mandela. (difficult to falsify).
KAREN HORNEY
★ First major feminist personality theories.
-
Took aim to Freud’s gender-biased theories (Penis Envy)
Behavioural + Social Learning Theories of Personality
➢ Radical Behaviourists: ​personalities are bundles of habits acquired by classical and
operant conditioning.
-
Overt: observable
-
Covert: not observable
➢ Social Learning Theorists: ​(aka cognitive theorists) theorists who emphasize thinking as
a cause of personality.
➢ Reciprocal Determinism: ​tendency for people to mutually influence each others
behaviour.
Humanistic Models of Personality
➢ Self Actualization: ​drive to develop our innate potential to the fullest possible extent.
ROGER
★ Believed that we could achieve our full potential for emotional fulfillment if only society
allowed it.
Roger’s Model of Personality:
1. Organism: innate blueprint. Innately positive. (Kind of similar to Freud’s ID).
2. Self: Self concept. Set of beliefs as to who we are.
3. Conditions of Worth: expectations we place upon ourselves.
MASLOW
Maslow’s Characteristics of Self Actualized People:
1. Creative, spontaneous, accepting of themselves and others.
2. Focus on intellectual issues + have few friends.
-
He thought Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, etc reached self actualization.
➢ Peak Experiences: ​transcendent moments of intense excitement and tranquility marked
by a profound sense of connection to the world.
Trait Models of Personality: Consistency in Behaviour
Identifying Traits
➢ Factor Analysis: ​Statistical technique that analyzes the correlations among responses on
personality inventories and other measures.
- 6 Different Variables to Factor Analysis:
1. Sociability
2. Popularity
3. Liveliness
4. Risk Taking
5. Sensation Seeking
6. Impulsivity
Big 5 Method of Personality
➢ The Big 5: ​consists of 5 traits that have surfaced repeatedly in factor analysis of
personality measures.
1. Openness to Experience: intellectually curious/ unconventional
2. Conscientiousness: careful/ responsible
3. Extroversion: social/ lively
4. Agreeableness: sociable/ easy to get along with.
5. Neuroticism: tense/ moody
OCEAN
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Uncovered while using a ​lexical approach ​to personality.
➢ Lexical Approach: ​proposes that the most crucial features of personality are embedded
in our language.
➢ Implicit Personality Theories: ​intuitive ideas concerning personality traits and their
associations with behaviour.
Personality Assessment
- Offers us the promise of detecting individual differences in personality in a scientifically
rigorous fashion.
➢ Physiognomy: ​(18-19 Century) claimed to detect people's personality traits from their
facial characteristics.
➢ Structured Personality Tests: ​typically paper and pencil tests consisting of questions
that respondents answer in fixed ways (true/false or multiple choice).
★ Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): ​widely used structured
personality test designed to assess symptoms of mental disorders.
-
Was revised and is now known as ​MMPI-2​ which consists of 567 true-false items.
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MMPI L Scale: lie scale. Consisting of items assessing the denial of trivial faults.
➢ Face Validity: ​refers to the extent to which respondents can tell what the items are
measuring.
➢ Impression Management: ​making ourselves seem better than we are (to others).
➢ Malingering: ​Making ourselves seem/ appear psychologically disturbed (faking a mental
health disorder for personal gain).
➢ Rational/ Theoretical Method of Test Construction: ​approach to building tests that
require test developers to begin with a clear-cut-conceptualization of a trait and write
items to assess that conceptualization.
Projective Tests
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Tests consisting of ambiguous stimuli that examinees must interpret/ make sense of.
➢ Projective Hypothesis: ​hypothesis that in the process of interpreting ambiguous stimuli,
examinees project aspects of their personality onto the stimulus.
➢ Rorschach Inkblot Test: ​projective test consisting of 10 symmetrical inkblots.
➢ Thematic Apperception Tests (TAT): ​projective test requiring examinees to tell a story
in response to ambiguous pictures.
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Object Relations: perceptions of others such as whether people see others as helpful or
harmful.
➢ Human Figure Drawings: ​require the patient to draw people. Doctor will interpret
“signs” found in the drawings.
➢ Graphology: ​psychological interpretation of handwriting.
➢ PT Barnum Effect: ​tendency of people to accept high base rate descriptions as accurate.
Chapter 13: Social Psychology
➢ Social Psychology: ​the study of how people influence others behaviours, beliefs, and
attitudes- for both bad and good.
Humans as a Social Species
★ Social psychology is extremely important due to how innately social the human species
is.
★ Need to Belong Theory: ​Mark Leary (1995). Humans have a biologically based need for
intrapersonal connections.
★ An evolutionary perspective on social behaviour leads us to one crucial conclusion:
conformity, obedience, + many other forms of social influence become maladaptive only
when they’re blind or unquestioning.
➢ Mass Hysteria: ​Outbreak of irrational behaviour that is spread by social cognition.
(contagious).
-
Collective Delusions: many people simultaneously come to be convinced if bizzare
things that are false. (Ex: flying saucers).
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Urban Legends: false stories that have been repeated so many times that people believe
them to be true.
Fundamental Attribution Error
➢ Attribution​: process of assigning causes to behaviour.
➢ Fundamental Attribution Error: ​(Lee Ross) tendency to overestimate the impact of
dispositional influences on other people's behaviour.
-
Dispositional Influences: encouraging characteristics.
Social Influences: Conformity + Obedience
➢ Conformity: ​tendency of people to alter their behaviours as a result of group pressure.
ARCH STUDIES
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Study of perceptual judgments.
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8 participants who were told to answer incorrectly to try to see if it would influence the
unknowing participant to change his answer to conform with the group.
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​Unamity: ​if all confederates gave the wrong answer, the participant was more likely to
conform.
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Difference In the Wrong Answer: ​having another person not conforming in the group
made it easier for the participant to not conform as well.
-
Size: ​the size of the majority made a difference.
➢ Deindividualization: ​the tendency of people to engage in atypical behaviour when
stripped of their usual identities
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Stanford Prison Experiment (Philip Zimbardo).
➢ Groupthink: ​an emphasis on group unanimity at the expense of critical thinking.
- Symptoms
1. Group invulnerability
2. Group unanimity
3. Unquestioned belief of the groups moral correctness
4. Conformity pressure
5. Stereotyping of the out-group
6. Self-censorship
7. Mindguards (stifle disagreement)
➢ Cults: ​groups that exhibit intense and unquestioning devotion to a single cause.
➢ Obedience: ​adherence to instructions from those of higher authority.
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Milgram’s shock experiment
Helping/ Harming Others: Prosocial Behaviour and Aggression
➢ Pluralistic Ignorance: ​error of assuming that no one in a group perceiving things as we
do.
➢ Diffusion of Responsibility: ​reduction in feelings of personal responsibility in the
presence of others.
➢ Social Loafing: ​phenomenon whereby individuals become less productive in groups.
➢ Altruism: ​helping others for unselfish reasons.
➢ Enlightenment Effect: ​Learning about psychological research can change real-world
behaviour for the better.
➢ Aggression: ​behaviour intended to harm others; either verbally or physically.
- Situational Influences of Aggression:
1. Interpersonal provocation
2. Frustration
3. Media influences
4. Aggressive cues
5. Arousal
6. alcohol/drugs
7. temperature
➢ Relational Aggression: ​form of indirect aggression. Spreading rumors, gossiping, etc.
Attitudes/ Persuasion: Changing Minds
➢ Attitude: ​belief that includes an emotional component.
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Cognitive Dissonance Theory: we alter our attitudes by observing our behaviours.
➢ Self-Perception Theory: ​theory that we acquire our attitudes by observing our
behaviors.
➢ Impression Management Theory: ​theory that we don’t really change our attitudes, but
report that we have so that our behaviours appear consistent with our attitudes.
Persuasion: Human Salespeople
- Dual​ ​Process Model
1. Central Route: evaluate the merits of persuasive arguments carefully and thoughtfully.
2. Peripheral Route: respond to persuasive arguments on the basis of snap judgements.
➢ Foot-In-Door Technique: ​persuasive technique involving making a small request before
making a bigger one.
➢ Door-In-Face Technique: ​persuasive technique involving making an unreasonably large
request before making the small request we’re hoping to have granted.
➢ Lowball Technique: ​persuasive technique in which the seller starts by quoting a low
sales price before the “add on’s”
➢ Implicit Egotism Effect: ​the finding that we’re more positively disposed towards people,
places, or things that resemble us.
➢ Name-Letter Effect: ​people seem to gravitate to places that are similar to their names.
Prejudice and Discrimination
➢ Prejudice: ​drawing negative conclusions about a person, group of people, or situation
prior to evaluating the evidence.
➢ Stereotypes: ​a belief (positive or negative) about a groups characteristics that we apply
to most members of that group.
➢ Illusory Correlation: ​indicates perception of an erroneous association between a
minority group and a given characteristic.
➢ Ultimate Attribution Error: ​assumption that behaviours among individual members of
a group are due to their internal dispositions.
Nature of Prejudice
➢ Adaptive Conservatism: ​evolutionary principle that creates a predisposition toward
distressing anyone/anything unfamiliar/different
➢ In-Group Bias: ​tendency to favour individuals within our group over those from outside
our group.
➢ Out-Group Homogeneity: ​tendency to view all individuals outside our group as highly
similar.
➢ Discrimination: ​negative behaviour toward members of out groups
➢ Scapegoat Hypothesis: ​claim that prejudice arises from a need to blame other groups for
our misfortunes.
➢ Just-World Hypothesis: ​claim that our attributions and behaviours are shaped by a
deep-seeded assumption that the world is fair and all things happen for a reason.
➢ Conformity: ​some prejudiced attitudes and behaviours stem from conformity to social
norms
➢ Explicit Prejudice: ​unfounded negative belief of which we’re aware regarding the
characteristics of an out-group
➢ Jigsaw Classroom: ​educational approach designed to minimize prejudice by requiring
all children to make independent contributions to a shared product.
Chapter 12: Stress, Coping, Health
What is Stress?
➢ Stress: ​tension, discomfort, or physical symptoms that arise when a situation, called a
stressor strains our ability to cope effectively.
➢ Primary Appraisal: ​initial decision regarding whether an event is harmful.
➢ Secondary Appraisal: ​perceptions regarding our ability to cope with an event that
follows primary appraisal.
➢ Problem Focussed Coping: ​coping strategy by which we problem solve and tackle life's
challenges head on.
➢ Emotion Focussed Coping: ​coping strategy that features a positive outlook on feelings
or situations accompanied by behaviours that reduce painful emotions.
➢ Corticosteroid: ​stress hormone that activates the body and prepares us to respond to
stressful situations.
➢ Hassle: ​Minor annoyance or nuisance that strains our ability to cope.
➢ General Adaptation Syndrome: ​stress response pattern proposed by Hans Selye that
consists of 3 stages
1. Alarm
2. Resistance
3. Exhaustion
➢ Tend and Befriend: ​reaction that mobilizes people to nurture (tend) or seek social
support (befriend) under stress.
➢ Immune System: ​our bodies defence system
➢ Psychoneuroimmunology: ​study of the relationship between the immune system and the
central nervous system.
➢ Peptic Ulcer: ​inflamed area in the gastrointestinal tract that can cause pain, nausea, and
loss of appetite.
➢ Psychophysiological: ​illness such as asthma and ulcers in which emotions and stress are
contributing factors
➢ Biopsychosocial Perspective: ​the view that an illness or medical condition is the product
of the interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors.
➢ Type A Personality: ​describes people who are competitive, driven, hostile, and
ambitious.
Coping with Stress
➢ Social Support: ​encompasses interpersonal reactions with people, groups, and the larger
community.
➢ Hardness: ​set of attitudes marked by a sense of control over events.
➢ Spirituality: ​search for the sacred which may or may not extend to belief in God.
Promoting Good Health And Less Stress
➢ Healthy Psychology: ​field of psychology that integrates behavioural sciences with
medicine.
➢ Aerobic Exercise: ​promotes use of oxygen in the body.
➢ Alternative Medicine: ​health care practices and products used in place of conventional
medicine.
➢ Complementary Medicine: ​health care practices and products used together with
conventional medicine.
➢ Biofeedback: ​feedback by a device that provides almost an immediate output of a
biological function, such as a heart rate or skin temperature.
➢ Meditation: ​a variety of practices that train attention and awareness.
➢ Homeopathic Medicine: ​remedies that feature a small dose of an illness-inducing
substance to activate the body's own natural defences.