Introduction to psychological theories summary
Week 1 -> The Science of Psychology
Psychology -> study of the soul (psyke = soul, logia = study of)
Psychology is a science
- Psychological science is the study, through research of:
o Mind
o Brain
o Behaviour
- Aimed at understanding and predicting
o Behaviour -> actions
 What we do
 The observable tip of the iceberg
o Mind -> mental activity -> not directly observable
 Stuff of thought
 Mental activity
 Perceptual experiences
 Sights
 Smells
 Tastes
 Sounds
 Touches
 Memories, thoughts and feelings
Psychological science –
- Many levels at which you can study psychology
o Groups vs. individuals
o Behavior vs. brain activity
o Nature vs. nurture
- All complementary -> fascinating insights
History of psychology in a nutshell
Early roots:
- Dualism
o Descartes -> 17th century
 Separation of Soul/mind and body
- Nature / nurture debate
- Structuralism
o Complex mental processes can be reduced to simpler processes
 Perception of an orange reduced to colour and shape
 Reaction times
 Introspection
- Functionalism
o Concerned with the adaptive purpose/function of mind and behavior
o Mind is more complex than its elements
First psychologists
- Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) -> physiology -> structuralist
- William James (1842-1910) -> philosophy -> functionalist
- First psychology labs -> 1875/1879 (Leipzig / Harvard)
Evolution
- Focus on the functions of behavior
- The ways behavior helps us to survive and reproduce -> Darwin
Schools of thought:
- Psychoanalytical approach
o Mental processes operate below level of conscious
awareness
o Unconscious drives
o Freud
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Behaviorism
o Inspired by work of Pavlov
o Only observable behavior can be subject of scientific investigation
o Psychology’s focus should be on how environment affects observable
behavior
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Gestalt
o Few basic principles guide visual perception
 Explain how visual input Is grouped into a coherent whole
 Whole is bigger than the sum of its parts
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Humanistic psychology
o Approach focusing on:
 Basic goodness in people
 Achieving goals
 Finding fulfilment
o Positive psychology
o Values, creativity, quality of relationships, gratitude, faith
Cognitivism
o Cognitive revolution
 Exploring mental process
 Influences by the progress in computer science
o Cognitive neuroscience
 Infer how the mind works by looking at behavior
 Neuroimaging has even made the mind observable
The scientific method
Few demonstrations for the scientific method
- Optimism bias
o We tend to think that we are better than others
 Vast majority of drivers rated themselves as better than average
- Deadlier? Sharks or horses?
o Availability Heuristic
 If something is easier to bring to mind/imagine
 If we hear about something more after
 We judge it as more probable
- Birthday paradox
o Difficulty with exponential growth
o Rare events given importance
o Self-identity
Importance:
- Common sense is often “not common”
o Nor can we rely on it to make sense
- Our intuitions and even perceptions are biased
- Scientific method overcomes these problems
Critical thinking and psychology
How to consume psychological science
- With amiable scepticism
Contemporary psychology
What’s new in psychology
- Biology -> evolution
- Big data, computational modeling
- Culture
- Interdisciplinary influences -> closing levels of analysis
Evolution
- Genetic diversity
o Mutation = variation
 Benefits of sexual reproduction
- Environmental pressures
o Evolution has no foresight
- Sexual selection
o Traits that aid in the reproduction of the indivudal
 Bird songs/dance, peacock’s tail, facial features in humans
- Psychology and evolution
o Psychology is about behavior and the brain
o Evolution can provide answers to why questions
 Functionalism
Functionalism
- What is a certain behavioural/physiological feature good for
o Function of:
 Elephants ears
 Wolf’s haul
 Disgust
 Laughter
Evolutionary misconceptions
- Deterministic fallacy
- Naturalistic fallacy
- Fallacy of optimal design
Summary
- Psychological science is the study of mind, brain and behavior
- Common sense is often wrong/biased
- Psychological sciences teaches critical thinking
- Psychology’s schools of thought reflect different perspectives on mind, brain
behavior with roots in structuralism and functionalism
- Psychological science increasingly incorporates insights from biology, evolution and
culture
Week 2 -> Basic processes of Learning
Overview:
- How do we learn?
- How do we learn predictive associations?
- How do consequences of actions shape behavior?
- What do different types of associative learning have in common?
- How do we learn from others?
Learning goals:
- Define classical conditioning and give examples
- Define operant conditioning with examples
- Describe how learning take place through observation
What is learning
- Classic sense -> go to school
- Learning by doing -> together with others – collaborative learning
- Cultural learning
- Children’s games
- Psychological trauma’s
Learning
Enduring change in behavior that results from experience
Non-associative learning:
- Imagine a stimulus that trigger behavior
o Airplane noise annoys you
- Repeated exposure to this stimulus can either
o Decrease behavior
 Habituation -> used to it
o Increase behavior
 Sensitization -> you get even more annoyed
Associative
- World is full of regularities
- Learn connections between things
o Thing that happen close in time
o Behavior that has a predictable outcome
- Reflexes
o Stimulus (S) -> Response (R)
o Nice food -> feel hungry/mouthwatering/craving etc.
Classical conditioning
o Responding to stimuli
o Creating new reflexes from existing reflexes
 Reflex is simple, automatic, stimulus-response sequence mediated by
the nervous system
 Pair a new stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus triggering an
unconditioned response
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o What kind of stimulus
 a stimulus to be conditioned it must have predictive value
 Precede the unconditioned stimulus
 Signal increased probability
o Repeated pairings
 There must not already be a better predictor
o How long does it last
 Extinction
 Repeated expose to the conditioned stimulus without the
unconditioned stimulus may make the conditioned response
disappear
Conditioning and evolution
- Classic behaviorist view
o Humans and animals start as a blank state -> tabula rasa
 Any stimulus pair leads to conditioning equally easily
- Modern view
o Conditioning occurs most easily for stimulus pairs that are relevant for
survival
o You easily associate a taste with sickness, a conditioned taste aversion
o You less easily associate a sound with sickness
Phobias
- Acquired fear that is out of proportion to the real threat of an object/situation
Addictions
- Addiction and conditioned drug effects
o Relapsing
 Environmental cues trigger cravings
o Drug tolerance
 Why addicts that take drugs in a different setting often overdose
Operant conditioning
o Responding for stimuli
- Law of effect
o Behaviors followed by a satisfying consequence are more likely to be
repeated in the feature
o Behaviors followed by a discomforting consequence are les likely to be
repeated in the future
o Trial and error learning
 If A, then B
- Consequences
o Reinforcement (reward)
 Consequence that increases chance of behavior occurring again
 The addition or subtraction of a stimulus to increase the chance that
the desired behavior is repeated again in the future
 Positive -> adding stimulus to increase probability
o Giving compliments
 Negative -> likelihood of particular behavior is increased
because of removing/avoiding the negative consequence
o Stopping criticism
o Punishment
 Consequence that decreases chance of behavior occurring again
 Positive -> addition of a stimulus decreases the probability
that behavior will occur in future
o Criticism
 Negative -> subtraction/removal of a stimulus decreases
probability of behavior will occur in future
o Stopping with giving compliments
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Less effective than reinforcement
 Results in dislike and resentment -> classical conditioning
 Does not allow to learn the constructive correct behavior
 Meant as punishment may serve as reinforcement
o E.g. Child gets attention for bad behavior
Must be:
o Timely
o certain
Principles of reinforcement shaping
- What if your subject never makes right response
o Reinforce closer and closer responses
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Token economies
Observational learning
- Copy others in many ways
o Contagious yawning
o Instructional dance videos
o Fashion
o Social norms
o Political opinions
o Suicide
o Terrorism
- Modeling
o Imitation of observed behavior
 Bobo doll studies
o Modeling influenced by traits of the model -> attractive, high status,
(somewhat) similar to oneself
o Vicarious learning
 Observe if the behavior is reinforced / punished
Answers quiz:
Smoker -> /
Flash of light -> Conditioned response
CR -> nausea
Slot machine -> Variable ratio
Car -> negative punishment
Summary:
- Learning via classical conditioning by creating new reflexes
- Operant conditioning entails learning about conditions and consequences
- Reinforcement is typically more effective than punishment
- Learning can occur through observational and imitation
Week 3 -> Brain and Behavior
Overview:
- How does the nervous system operate?
- What are the basic brain structures and their functions?
- How does the brain communicate with the body?
- How does the brain change?
- What is the genetic basis of psychological science?
Program
- Nervous system and brain system
o Basic concepts
o Class activity
- Brain-body link, brain change and genetics
o Basic concepts
o More in depth
o Future/recent developments, practical and ethical implications
- Practice questions
The human nervous system
Working of then nervous system
System of interconnected neurons
- Neurons
o Cell that connect with each other in the nervous system
o Operate through electrical impulses
o Communicate with other neurons through chemical signals
o Form neural networks
- 3 phases of neural communication
1. Reception
a. Chemical signals are received from neighboring neurons
2. Integration
a. Incoming signals are assessed -> in cell body
3. Transmission
a. These signals are passed on to other receiving neurons
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Neurons: Several functions and types
o Sensory neurons
 Detect info from the physical world
 Pass that info to the brain
 Through spinal cord
 Somatosensory nerves
 Provide information from skin and muscles
o Motor neurons
 Direct muscles to contract or relax
 Thereby produce movement
 Work together with sensory neurons to control movement
 Brain to muscle to move -> motor neurons
 Muscle to brain to give feedback -> sensory neurons
 Adjustments in movement -> motor neurons
o Interneurons
 Communicate within local or short-distance circuits
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Dendrites
o Branchlike extensions of the neuron that detect information from other
neurons
Cell body
o Site in the neuron where information from thousands of other neurons is
collected and integrated
Axon
o A long, narrow outgrowth of a neuron by which information is conducted
from the cell body to the terminal buttons
o Longest from spinal cord to big toe
Terminal buttons
o At the end of axons, small nodules that release chemical signals from the
neuron into the synapse
Synapse
o The gap between the terminal buttons of a ‘sending’ neuron and the
dendrites of a ‘receiving’ neuron
 The site at which chemical communication occurs between neurons
Right order
o Synapse, dendrites, cell body, axon, terminal buttons, synapse
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Brain: specialized functions
- Gall and Spurzheim -> Phrenology
o Brain operates through functional localization
- If a person used a particular mental function more than other mental functions
o Part of the brain where the emphasized function was performed would grow
o Produce a bump in the overlying skull
- By carefully feeling the skull, one could describe the personality of the individual
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Prenology -> outdated
o Skull shape does not describes one’s personality
However
o Strong scientific evidence that brain regions perform specialized functions
 Broca’s area
Modern techniques
o Many newly developed techniques to study the brain
Cerebral cortex
- Outer layer of brain tissue
o Most noticeable feature of the forebrain
- Functions: complex mental activity
o All thoughts
o Perceptions
o Complex behaviours
- Cerebral cortex
o + subcortical structure
o = forebrain
- 2 hemispheres
o Left
o Right
- 4 lobes
o Occipital
 Process visual information
 Primary visual cortex
o Parietal
 Recognize touch
 Process touch
 Receive spatial information
o Temporal
 Specialized for hearing
 Primary auditory cortex
o Frontal
 Planning complex tasks, moving
 Prefrontal cortex
Left brain and right brain people
- Nonsense
- Left hemisphere
o Better with language
- Right hemisphere
o Spatial relationships
- Work together closely
Below cerebral cortex -> insula pictures
- Insular cortex
o Taste & disgust
o Awareness of bodily states related to emotions
o Pain
 Empathy for other’s pain
- Also below cerebral cortex:
o Subcortical structures
 Functions
 Many aspects of emotion and motivation
 Thalamus
 Gateway to the brain
o Receives almost all incoming sensory info
 Smell directly to cortex
o Organizes info
o Relays info to cerebral cortex
o Filters info
 During sleep
 Hypothalamus (hypo = low = below thalamus)
 Regulation of bodily functions
o Temperature
o Rhythms
o Blood Pressure
o Glucose levels
 Also influences basic motivated behaviors
o Thirst and hunger
o Aggression
o Sexual desire
 Crucial to survival
 Hippocampus
 Function
o Formation of memories
 With each new experience
o Creates new connections within cerebral cortex
 Important for navigation
o Memory of arrangement of objects and places in space
 Amygdala
 Functions
o Learning about biologically relevant stimuli
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o Processing emotional info that aids survival
 Fear
o Emotional meaning of facial expressions
o Intense memories of emotional experiences
Basal ganglia
 Functions
o Movement planning
o Movement production
Brain structures and their functions
- Spinal cord
o Coordination of reflexes
o Carries information
 Sensory info to the brain
 Motor signals away from the brain
- Brain stem -> extension of spinal cord
o Survival functions
 Heart rate
 Breathing
 Swallowing
 Vomiting
 Urination
 Orgasm
o Structures
 Medulla oblongata
 Reticular formation
 Pons
 Midbrain
- Cerebellum -> back of brain stem
o Motor functions
 Coordinated movement
 Balance
 Motor learning
 Motor memory
o ‘trained’ by the rest of the nervous system
 Operates independently
 Unconsciously
Brain-body link, brain change and body
Basic concepts genetics & heritability
Order from large to small
- Chromosome – DNA - Gene
Behavioural genetics -> definitions:
- Genome
o Master blueprint for entire organisms
o Provides the option, environment determines which option is taken
- Genotype
o Internal genetic code
o Together with environment genotype affects phenotype
- Phenotype
o Observable characteristics of an individual
o Physical appearance, personality, behaviour
How to study genetic heritability
- Adoption studies
o Relation adoptive children – adoptive parents / siblings
 Influence of environment (no shared genes)
o Relation adoptive children – biological parents / sibling
 Influence of genes (no shared environment)
o Heritability of temperament
 Temperament of child
 Sociality, activity level, emotionality
 Comparison with temperaments of
 Adoptive parents vs biological parents
o Problem of selective placement
 Placing adoptive children with adoptive relatives who are similar to
biological relatives can increase similarity between children and their
adoptive relatives
 Not in practice
- Twin studies
o Monozygotic / identical twins
 Same genes
 Same environment
 Differences due to non-shared environmental factors
o Dizygotic / fraternal twins
 50% same genes
 Same environment
o Differences between MZ and DZ must be due to half the genes
o Equal environments assumption
 Environments experience by identical twins are no more similar to
each other than the environments experienced by fraternal twins
 same
Week 4 -> Thinking, language and intelligence
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What is thought?
How do we make decisions and solve problems?
How do we understand intelligence -> self study
How is language learned and organized?
Thinking
Basic concepts
Definitions of thought
- Cognition
o Mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge and comprehension
through thinking and experience
- Thinking
o The mental manipulation of representations of knowledge about the world
Thinking
- Allows us to:
o Take information
o Consider it
o Use this to:
 Build models of the world
 Set goals
 Plan our actions accordingly
Two types of mental representations
- Analogical representations
o Concrete representations
o Have some of the physical characteristics of objects
o Usually images
o Are analogous to the objects
- Symbolic representations
o Abstract representations
o Usually words, numbers, ideas
o Do not correspond to physical features of objects or ideas
o Sometimes symbols can be analogical representations
Thinking should be efficient
- We can hold a limited amount of knowledge in memory
o Need for efficient thinking
- Our brain takes shortcuts
o Illusionists make use of this to ‘trick our mind’
- Solution: Categorization
o Grouping things based on shared properties
Efficient thinking:
- Concepts
o Category, or class, of related items
 Consist of mental representations of those items
o How do people form concepts
 Prototype model
 Concept represented by 1 best example of the category
 Exemplar model
 Concept represented by combining representations of all
exemplars one has ever encountered
 Fuzzy, experience-based representation of concept
- Schemas
o Cognitive structures that help us perceive, organize, understand, and process
information
 Organize useful info about environments
 Culture shapes what we view as normal or appropriate
o Efficient on short term
 Quick judgments and decisions with little effort
o May have negative consequences later
 Schemas learned at young age affect behavior when older
Definition of decision making
- Attempting to select the best alternative among several options based on important
criteria
- Often involves heuristics
o Shortcuts for thinking
 Rules of thumb or informal guidelines
o Used to reduce the amount of thinking needed to make decisions
Anchoring
- Tendency to rely on the first piece of info encountered or info that comes most
quickly to mind -> adjust away from that
Heuristic thinking
- Often occurs unconsciously
o allows us to free up some cognitive resources
- Can be adaptive
o Quick -> often reasonably good decision
- Can also result in biases
o May lead to errors
o Faulty decisions
o Erroneous beliefs
o False predictions
- Quick and dirty
Definition of problem solving
- Finding a way around an obstacle to move towards a goal
- Several ways to overcome obstacles
- Restructuring
o New way of representing a problem
 Ideally aids its solution
- Mental sets
o Problem solving strategies that have worked in the past
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Functional fixedness
o Only using thing what they are meant for
o Not innovative -> bottle of water as doorstopper
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Thinking outside of the box
Broader view -> link to some questions
Choice overload
- Not consistently replicated in all circumstances
- Four key factors facilitate choice overload
o Choice set complexity
 More options = choice overload
 With higher levels of choice set complexity
 Example:
 Absence of one dominant option
 Multiple attractive options
 Non-alignability of attributes
o Attributes describing one option are absent for another
option
o Decision task difficulty
 More options = choice overload
 With higher levels of decision task difficulty
 Example:
 Deciding under time pressure
 Having to justify your choice to others
 Choosing between options escribed by multiple characteristics
 Random presentation of choice options
o Preference uncertainty
 More options = choice overload
 With higher levels of preference uncertainty
 For example:
 No strong pre-existing preferences
o Unfamiliarity with the choice sets
o Lacking expertise or in-depth background
o Don’t understand benefits of choice options
o Can’t prioritize benefits when trading off pros and cons
o Decision goal
 More options = choice overload
 With more prominent, effort-minimizing goal
 Example:
 Explicit goal of making a choice
o Select 1 option, e.g. buy
 Not goal of merely considering available alternatives
o Browsing without actual immediate consequences
Language
Basic concepts
What is language?
- A system of communication using sounds and/or symbols
o According to grammatical rules
- Syntax
o System of rules that govern:
 How words are combined into phrases
 How phrases are combined to make sentences
- Semantics
o The study of the system of meanings that underlie words, phrases and
sentences
Language development
- As the brain develops, so does the ability to speak and form sentences
- Language develops in an orderly way
o Some variation in the rate at which language develops
o Overall stages of language development are remarkably similar across
individuals
Joint attention
- Early interactions with caregivers
o Basis for language acquisition
o Parent looks at an object when saying a new name
 Child assigns the name to the object
o Parent looks at something else when saying the new name
 Child does not assign the name to the object
Development
- Language understanding
o Newborns
 Listening preferences
 Influenced by mother’s language during pregnancy
o Subsequent stages
 Learning sounds of their own languages
 Loosing ability to distinguish own language’s non-relevant
sounds
 Learning meanings of their own language
- Speaking
o Babies
 Babbling
o Toddlers 18-24 months
 Telegraphic speech
 Tendency for toddlers to speak:
o Using rudimentary mini-sentences
 Roughly 2 words
 Missing words and grammatical marking
 Follow al logical syntax
 Convey a wealth of meaning
o Adults
 Employing full vocabulary of +- 60,000 words
 Without working very hard at it
- Sign language
o Deaf babies
 Exposed to signed language from birth
 Acquire signed language on identical timetable as hearing babies
acquire spoken languages
o Social and cultural influences
 Environment influences which languages people acquire
 Which accent within languages
- Reading
o Looking at letters grouped into words
 Automatically derive meaning from groupings
 Even if they are misspelled
o Effortless for most adults
 Needs to be learned
o Dyslexia
 Learners struggle to figure out
 Which symbols are letters
 Which letters are clumped into words
 Which words combine into sentences
Intelligence -> in book
Week 5 -> motivation and emotions
Theories of motivation
- Satisfaction of needs
- Drive reduction
- Incentives
- Optimal level of arousal
- Pleasure principle
Emotion
Basic concepts
Definitions of emotions
Mood
- Diffuse, long-lasting emotional state
- Does not have an identifiable object or trigger
Emotion
- Definition
o , specific negative or positive response
o To environmental events or internal thoughts
- 3 components
o Physiological process
 Heart beating fast, sweating
o Behavioral response
 Eyes and mouth opening wide
o Feeling based on:
 Cognitive appraisal of the situation
 Interpretation of bodily states
 E.g. I’m scared!
Classifying emotions:
- Primary emotions
o Innate
o Evolutionarily adaptive
o Universal -> shared across cultures
o Examples:
 Anger
 Fear
 Sadness
 Disgust
 Happiness
 Surprise
 Contempt
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Secondary emotions
o Blends of primary emotions
o Examples
 Guilt
 Shame
 Love
 Bitterness
 Jealousy
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Circumplex model
o Another system for classifying emotions
o Emotions plotted along two continuums
 Valence
 How negative or positive
emotions are
 Arousal
 How arousing emotions are
Feeling specific emotions
- How do people come to experience certain emotion
o How do peple know which emotion they feel
- 3 theories -> exam content
o James- Lange
 Emotions are result of perceiving our bodily responses to a stimulus
 Stimulus -> bodily response -> emotion
o Cannon-Bard
 Stimulus triggers bodily response and emotion at same time
 Stimulus -> bodily response + emotion
o Schachter-Singer
 Stimulus trigger a bodily response, apply label and then emotion
 Stimulus -> bodily response -> label it -> emotion
Lie detection
Functions of emotions
- Emotions have a communicative function
o Genuine
o Deception
- No absolute measure of autonomic arousal can indicate presence/absence of a lie
o Each person’s arousal level is different
- Differences between control questions and critical questions
- Differences in autonomic reactions to critical questions
o Compared to control questions
o Indicate arousal
- Arousal may indicate nervousness from lying
o Or due to general nervousness
 And so falsely indicate that the person is lying
Polygraph
- Electronic lie detection instrument
o Assesses the body’s physiological response to questions
o Records numerous aspects of arousal
 Breathing rate, heart rate, skin conductance
- Use is highly conventional
o Often not allowed as evidence in court
o Used by FBI / CIA etc.
- How valid is it?
o Goal
 Determine persons level of emotionality
 Indicated by autonomic arousal
 When confronted with certain info
o Core assumption
 Lying is stressful for most people
 Autonomic arousal higher when people are lying than when they are
telling the truth
- Problems
o Numerous problems to uncover deception
o Serious drawback
 Innocent people often falsely classified as deceptive
o Most people who fail the tests
 Actually tell the truth
 Simply anxious about taking the test
o Polygraph cannot tell whether response is due to:
 Lying
 Nervousness
 Anything else arousing
o Pretty easy to pass using countermeasures
 Counting backward by sevens
 Pressing your feet to the floor during critical questions
o Investigator has to make subjective judgment
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Polygraph does not state if someone is lying
Its whether pattern of arousal indicates deception
Judgment often influenced by beliefs about the person
 Confirmation bias
o Beliefs influence judgment
o Can develop tunnel vision
Lie detection 2.0
- Researchers are seeking new strategies to uncover deception
o Differences in brain activity
 When lying vs. telling truth
o Numerous studies using EEG and fMRI
o Activation of various brain regions
 Genuine deception
 Simply reflects other cognitive processes
 Currently unknown
- Team of neuroscience experts
o Several methodological problems with fMRI research to detect deception
o Also ethical issues
 Privacy
Motivation
Definitions concerning motivation
Need
- State of biological or social deficienc
Drive
- A psychological state that, by creating arousal, motivates an organism to satisfy a
need
Motivation
- A process that energizes, guides, and maintains behavior toward a goa
Two types of motivation
- Extrinsic
o Motivation to perform an activity because of the external goals toward which
that activity is directed
 Working to receive a paycheck
- Intrinsic
o Motivation to perform an activity because of the value of pleasure associated
with that activity
 Rather than for an apparent goal or purpose
 Reading a good book, listening to music
Need hierarchy
- Maslow
o People are driven by many needs
o Arranged into a need hierarchy
Week 6 -> Social Psychology
Social psychology
- The psychology of how we view one another and are influenced by one another
o Impressions of self/others
o Social behaviour (cooperation)
o Groups
Impression formation
- Other people’s appearances and behaviours are observable
o We infer their attitudes and personality traits based on their behaviours
o Although our cognitions are limited and biased
Forming impressions of other people
- “Human beings are naïve psychologists”
- Consistent mistakes / biases
o Not using full mental resources
o Limited information about an event
o Unconscious motives for reaching particular conclusions
Attribution
- Actions are observable -> thoughts are not
- We naturally make judgements about others’ personalities on the basis of their
behaviour
- Fundamental attribution error
o Tendency to overemphasize personality traits and underestimate situation
o How fundamental?
 In eastern cultures, more emphasis on situation, but still favouring
personal information in attributions about others
Actor/observer discrepancy
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Other people
o Bad things
 Characteristics of that person
 E.g. bad attitude, careless, clumsy, not paying attention
o Good things
 Characteristic of the situation
 Right time right place
 Got lucky etc.
Ourselves
o Other way around
 Good things
 Characteristics of ourselves
o Careful, skilful, paying attention etc.
 Bad things
 Characteristics of situation
o Wrong place wrong time, bad luck, slippery etc.
Self
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Self-esteem
o Meter to inform us how accepted/rejected we are
o Reflect the level of acceptance or rejection we believe we can expect from
others
o Driven by a fundamental need to belong
Social comparison
o Self-concept varies depending on the reference group
o People identify themselves largely in terms of the ways in which they
perceive themselves to be different from those around them
Stereotypes
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Beliefs, attitudes and attributions associated with members of particular groups
o Explicit stereotypes
 Beliefs you consciously hold
 Images and associations with a particular group
 Self-report measures of explicit stereotypes
 Can lead to prejudice and discrimination
o Implicit
Summarize:
o Good
 Quick decision making
 Identification and response
 Saves effort
o Bad
 Biased information
 Discrimination, prejudice
 Stereotype threat
 Can influence performance negatively
The power of groups
-
Humans often act differently when in groups than on their own
Mere presence is enough
o Participants asked to change into a
unfamiliar/familiar jacket and pair of
shoes -> second it took
Effect of being observed
- Facilitation -> If you’re good at something -> enhances performance
o Put on your shoes
- Interference -> If you’re bad at something -> weakens performance
o First driving lessons
Obedience
- Milgram’s experiments
o How far would you go to obey an authority
Why conform to a group
- Informational influence
o Other people are doing it therefore they have information I don’t, and I
should do it too
- Normative influence
o Other people are doing it, and I don’t want to look different
- We are social animals
o Cooperation helps survival
 Breaking norms can lead to social exclusion
o Regulatory function
 Not so useful and even harmful when norms are out of date,
inappropriate or unfamiliar
 Prejudice
 Culture clash
Bystander effect and anonymity
- Responsibility decreases by increasing the number of people involved
Compliance
- Foot in the door
o If you agree to a small request, more likely to comply to larger request
- Door in the face
o If you refuse a large request, more likely to comply with smaller request
- Low bailing
o When you agree to buy product for a price, likely to comply with a request to
pay more for the product
Intergroup prejudice
- Tendency to categorize others as us versus them
- Social identification
Interpersonal attraction
Proximity
- Interaction with people who are physically close are less ‘costly
o Time/money/energy
Similarity
- Byrne’s law
o Attraction to a stranger is a function of the proportion of similar attitudes
o No real evidence for ‘opposites attract’
Physical attractiveness
- Main predictor in intention to ask someone out again (same for male and female)
o Sexually dimorphic features
 Facial width
 Masculine / dominant faces
 Neoteny (youthfulness) -> retention of immature features
o Symmetry
o Averageness
 If a lot of faces are mixed -> outcomes is quite pretty
 Familiarity
Attractiveness bias
- Can influence decision not romance related
- What is beautiful is good stereotype
- Attractive people are seen as
o Moral intelligent
o Trustworthy
o Competent
o Sociable etc.
Love
-
-
Passionate versus companionate love
o Passionate love associated with dopamine reward system
o Companionate love based on trust, respect and intimacy
Attachment theory
o Attachment style as an adult related to childhood attachment to parents
Findings from psychological science can benefit your relationship
- 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative
o Increases chance for a stable relationship
o Seeking opportunities for positive feeling and interactions
 Try to understand partner’s perspective
 Be affectionate
 Show you care
 Spend quality time together
 Maintain trust
 Learn how to handle conflict
Week 7-> Psychological disorders and treatment
Clinical psychology
- Applied field to assess, understand and treat psychological conditions in clinical
practice
What is normal?
- Abnormal?
o Deviation from statistical norms?
 IQ scores?
o Deviation from social norms?
 Homosexuality?
o Violence? Breaking the law?
o Maladaptive behaviour?
 Disorder interferes with at least one aspect
 Work, social relations, self-care
o Distress and impairment?
 Yes but
 Chronic
 How distressing a syndrome bust be to be considered clinically
significant
- Normal?
o No clear and fixed line between abnormal and normal
o Categorial vs. Dimensional approach
Prevalence
- Psychological disorders account for the greatest
proportion of disability in developed countries,
surpassing cancer and heart disease76y
Psychology Student Syndrome
- Diagnosis
o Mental disorder – a syndrome
 Significant detriment
 Distress or impairment of functioning
 Derives from an internal source
 Not subject to voluntary control
o Problems with diagnosis
 Confusion of serious disorders with normal problems
 Depression after a loss of significant other
 The illusion of objectivity and universality
 Cultural differences and biases
 Labels and self-fulfilling prophecies
 Mad, crazy, nutcase
 Comorbidity -> can overlap
- Overdiagnosis
o After the DSM-IV was published, bipolar disorder
in children increased x40
 Higher reliability with every new issue
o Tendencies towards a change
 People are adaptive, complex being operating in complex systems
 May not fully understand reasons & process of psychological
disorders
 Calling disruption a disorder = individualizing the problem
 Systematic approach needed
Psychological suffering is real
- Regardless of the diagnosis issues, the very real suffering of individuals is a fact and
needs to be dealt with
Research domain criteria (RdoC)
- Domains of functioning
o E.g. anxiety, attention, social processes
- Considered across levels of analysis
o Genes
o Cells
o Circuits
o Behaviour
o Self-report
- Guides research on underlying biological and psychosocial causes of disorders
Diathesis-stress model
Explanations:
- Biological
o Brain is involved in all mental disorders
- Psychodynamic
o Unconscious conflict
- Humanistic
o Inner potential and others’ perception
- Cognitive
o Automatic negative thought
- Behavioural
o Maladaptive behaviours
- Evolutionary
o Costs of variation
Disorders covered today
- Disturbances in emotion
- Disruption in thought
- Involve maladaptive behaviour
- Others
o Personality disorders
o Eating disorders
o Sexual disorders
o Adjustment disorders
o Dissociative disorders
o Substance-related disorders
o Sleep disorders
o Impulse control disorders
Anxiety
- Feeling of apprehension, uncertainty, fear and increased arousal
o In reaction to threat (either real or imagined)
- Evolutionarily useful
o Signal for danger
 Snakes, spiders, heights, bloods, strangers
- Extremes of normal anxiety
o Excessive & inappropriate
- Common
o 15-20% lifetime prevalence
Generalised anxiety disorder
- General worry, about various things, not specific for object/situation
o For extended periods > 6 months
- May result in physical distress
o High pulse
o Increased respiration
o Need to urinate frequently
o Muscle tension
o Lack of sleep
o Problems with digestion
Phobias
- Exaggerated and unreasonable fear of specific activity or object
- Social phobia
o Fear of being evaluated/judged by others
- Specific phobias
o Fear related to an non-social object or situation
o Common:
 Darkness -> nyctophobia
 Heights -> acrophobia
 Pain -> Algophobia
 Thunderstorms -> astraphobia
 Enclosed spaces -> claustrophobia
 Water -> hydrophobia
 Fire -> Pyrophobia
 Animals -> zoophobia
o Atypical:
 Fear of fog -> nebulaphobia
 Fear of cats -> ailurophobia
 Fear of bubbles -> ebulliophobia
 Fear of buttons -> koumpounophobia
Disturbances in emotion
- Depression
o Prolonged disturbances in
 Emotion
 Excessive sadness
 Behaviour
 Loss in interest
 Cognition
 Thoughts of hopelessness
 Body function
 Fatigue, loss of appetite
o Depressed individuals
 Believe their situation is uncontrollable
 Less illusion of control & optimism bias
 Tendency to ruminate
 May explain some sex difference
 Overwork, unrealistic societal expectations,
lack of structural and financial support
o Evolutionary advantage
 May have been helpful
 Save energy
o During winter
o Resources scarce
 Promoting realistic thinking
 Signal one’s need for h elp
- Bipolar disorder
o Periods of depressions with periods of Mania
o Mania
 Excessive euphoria
 Excessive energy, high verbal activity, sexual arousal, risky
behaviour
Disruption in thought
- Schizophrenia
o Split mind
 Not the same as multiple personality disorder
o Symptoms vary
 All are associated with fundamental disturbances in cognition,
emotion or behaviour
o Symptoms
 Positive
 Indicate presence of abnormal behaviours and cognitions
 Disorganised speech and thought
 Delusions of persecution, control and grandeur
 Hallucinations
o All senses can be involved
 Negative
 Indicate absence of normal behaviours and cognitions
 Flat affect
o Showing little or no emotion
 Poverty of speech
 Loss of pleasure
 Slow body movement
 Commonalities
 Deficits in information processing
o Lower working memory capacity and speed
 Both when having episodes and when in
remission
 Neuroanatomical
o Dopamine
 Overactivity in basal ganglia & underactivity in
prefrontal cortex
o Enlarged ventricles and reduction in grey matter
Disorders involving maladaptive behaviour
- Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
o Obsessions
 Repetitive, persistent thoughts
 Did I close the door when I left home?
o Compulsions
 Repetitive, ritualised behaviour
 If I don’t dress and undress in specific pattern, my husband will
die in a car accident
o Know thoughts are unreasonable
 But if not done, fear and anxiety increase
o Commonly associated with death and disease, resulting in compulsive
checking and cleaning
- Eating disorder
- Addiction
Disorders linked to trauma
- Post-traumatic stress disorder
o PTSD is explicitly linked to extremely stressful situations
 War, sexual assault, accidents, natural disasters
 Repeated exposure more likely to lead to PTSD
o Flashbacks uncontrollably mentally replaying/re-experiencing the event
o Sleeplessness, high arousal, guilt, irritability and depression
- Dissociative disorders
- Borderline personality disorder
- Panic disorder
o Panic is a feeling of helpless terror
 Rapid breathing, dizziness, sweating, nausea, an chest pain
o Panic attacks
 Inappropriate/unpredictable panic
 At least two attacks followed by one month of excessive worry
and life-constraining changes in behaviour
 May be an acquired tendency to interpret physiological arousal as
catastrophic
Treatment
Biological treatment
- Medication
o Usually works by increasing or decreasing neurotransmitter levels at the
synapse
o Types:
 Antipsychotic
 Treat positive symptoms of schizophrenia
o Blocking dopamine
o Increasing serotonin
 Antidepressant
 Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs)
 Tricyclic antidepressants
o Both increase norepinephrine and serotonin
 Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)
o Only increase serotonin
 Anti-anxiety
 Tranquilizers
o Aimed at anxiety disorders
 Increases GABA and inhibits excitation of
neurons
 Famous names
o Valium, Xanax
-
o Effectiveness
 Widely used
 However their effectiveness is controversial
 Publication bias
 Dropout rates (50-60%)
 Side effects and addiction
 Treating the symptom but not the cause
 Placebo effect
Electroconvulsive therapy
o Patients are unconscious, muscle relaxants to avoid pain
o Remarkably effective to treat severe depression
o Can lead to memory loss
 Unclear why
Psychodynamic
- Partly based on the ideas of Freud
- Aims to bring hidden impulses and memories to the surface and solving them
- Free associations
- Dream analysis
- Resistance
o Resisting/subverting therapy
- Transference/countertransference
o Expression of feeling toward the therapist that actually represent others
Humanistic therapy
- Emphasis on self-discovery
- Client does the analysis
- Therapist validates client’s thoughts, provides empathy and unconditional positive
regard
Cognitive and behavioural therapy
- Cognitive therapy
o Changing automatic negative thoughts (ANTs)
 Habits and patterns of thought create our reality
o Cognitive restructuring
o Often more confrontational than other therapies
 Therapist in a role of a teacher or consultant
o Be aware of the risk of blaming the victim
- Behaviour therapy
o Focuses on the maladaptive behaviour
o Classical conditioning
 Aversion therapy
 Exposure therapy
o Operant conditioning
 Contingency management
- Exposure therapy
o Gradual exposure to unpleasant stimuli in safe situations
o Typically used for phobias, but also for other anxiety disorders
o Exposure can be:
 Imagined
 Experienced
 Virtually
 In vivo -> real life
New developments
- Mindfulness
- ACT -> acceptance and commitment therapy
- Positive psychology
- Community-based psychological first aid
Common factors in therapies
- Support
o Someone is listening to me
- Learning
o I am learning about myself and new behaviours and cognitions
- Action/motivation
o The above learning is encourage by the situation