Psych Unit 3

Behavioral engagement

-Involvement in classroom activities
-Effort on schoolwork

Cognitive engagement

Investment in what you're learning, willingness to invest time and be thoughtful about what you're learning.

Emotional engagement

Positive and negative emotions associated with a topic

Motivations

Psychological drives that propel us in a specific direction

Drive reduction theory

Drives motivate us to act in ways that minimize aversive states. We are motivated to maintain homeostasis.

Yerkes-Dodson Law

Optimal state arousal of stress where we are at our peak performance (too little stress --> boredom too high stress --> anxiety)

Incentive theories

Motivated by positive goals (both extrinsic and intrinsic)

Intrinsic motivation

Motivation for autonomy, mastery, or sense of purpose

Extrinsic motivation

Motivation for compensation, rewards, or to avoid punishment

Primary needs

Physiological needs like food and water

Secondary needs

Psychological needs like need for nurturing and social connections

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

(level 1) Physiological Needs, (level 2) Safety and Security, (level 3) Relationships, Love and Affection, (level 4) Self Esteem, (level 5) Self Actualization

Success expectancy

If i think I can do well I'm more likely to be engaged and put more effort into it

Task Value

The value we associate with the task at hand

2 key predictors of motivation and engagement

Success expectancy and task value

Attainment

I want to engage with this material because it is important to me

Intrinsic

I want to engage with this material because I like it and find it interesting

Utility

I want to engage with this material because it's related to my goals

Self-determination theory

Interested in what predicts intrinsic motivation. Says that autonomy, competence, and relatedness lead to intrinsic motivation

Autonomy

Feeling free from constraints and like we can establish our own path

Competence

Feeling we can accomplish something

Relatedness

Connection and affiliation with other people

Autonomy + competence + relatedness =

Intrinsic motivation (SDT)

Self control

Foregoing immediate temptations in favor of a more desirable reward later. Helps redirect our attention to our key goals

Grit

Hard work towards a challenging long term goal

Polygraph test

Lie detection test that picks up on physiological signals reflective of anxiety (ie does your blood pressure increase, does your breathing speed up, are you sweating)

Controlled Question Test

3 types of questions (relevant questions, control questions, irrelevant questions)

Relevant questions

Have to do with the event you are being questioned about (usually the crime)

Control questions

Usually broad questions, usually have to do with misbehavior in the past (ex. Have you ever betrayed anyone in the past?)

Irrelevant questions

Used to establish a baseline (ex. Is today Monday?)

Guilty Knowledge Test

Multiple choice lie detection test to see if the person can recognize concealed knowledge. Expected to be a larger physiological response when the person hears a correct description.

Happiness

People's sense of how satisfied they are with life

Satisfaction with life scale

Self-report test to determine happiness. Would ask questions that you rate on a scale of 1-10 based on how strongly you agree (ex. I am satisfied with my life)

Correlates of happiness

Longevity, positive social life, flow

Flow

State of optimal experience in which one engages in activities simply for the sake of the activity itself. Typically so immersed that you don't notice outside distractions or how much time has passed

Affective forecasting

Prediction of how we will feel about future emotional events (we are not good at this)

Durability bias

We tend to think that bad and good moods will last longer than they actually do

Hedonic treadmill

Tendency for our moods to adapt to external circumstances

Personality

People's typical ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving

Traits

Relatively enduring predispositions that influence our behavior across many situations

Approaches to studying personality

Nomothetic and idiographic

Nomothetic

Explains personality across individuals

Idiographic

Explains personality within an individual (case studies often take this approach)

Influences on personality

Genetics, shared environments, and non shared environments

Shared environment

Experiences that make individuals within the same family more alike

Nonshared environment

Experiences that make individuals within the same family less alike (ex. being treated differently by caregivers, having different friend groups, different teachers, etc.)

Twin studies

Compare the likelihood that a given behavioral trait is shared among identical and fraternal twins

Adoption studies

Compare the likelihood that a given behavioral trait is shared among biologically related relatives and adopted relatives. Research suggests there is a slightly higher correlation with biological parents than adoptive parents

Reared-together

Identical twins reared together have a stronger correlation than fraternal twins reared together (suggests stronger genetic influence)

Reared apart

Identical twins reared apart have a stronger correlation than fraternal twins reared apart. Identical twins reared apart or reared together have similar correlations (suggests shared environment play little or no role in adult personality)

Psychoanalytic Model

Freud, 3 core assumptions (psychic determinism, symbolic meaning, unconscious motivation)

Psychic determinism

All psychological events have a cause. Unconscious forces lie outside of our awareness (ex. dreams and freudian slips)

Symbolic meaning

No action is meaningless, everything is attributable to some mental cause even if we don't know them. Dreams show us unconscious urges hidden behind symbols

Unconscious motivation

We don't necessarily understand why we do what we do. Much of our motivation is outside our consciousness

model of personality structure

According to Freud, personality is made of three elements (id, ego, superego)

Id

primitive impulses, based on pleasure and immediate gratification (ex. sexual drives)

Superego

Sense of morality, right vs wrong

Ego

Decision maker. Mediates between Id and Superego. Operates based on reality not morals or impulses

Dreams

Freud believed these were wish fulfillments or expressions of the id's urges. "Royal road to the unconscious mind"

Defense mechanisms

Unconscious protective behaviors that aim to reduce anxiety. (ex repression)

Repression

Forgetting something we want to forget because it brings unhappy memories and pain

Denial

Refusing to acknowledge current events in our lives (ex. someone with a drinking problem denying it's a problem)

Regression

Going back to a psychologically safer period of time (ex. resuming thumb sucking for comfort)

Erogenous zone

Sexually arousing zone of the body. Each one of Freud's stages is associated with one.

Determinism

Idea that patterns of rewards and punishments lead to our personality

Behavioral Models

Contingencies we see in our environment play a role in our personality (Ex. determinism)

Social Learning

Focuses on thinking as a role that adds to our personality, but not the only factor (Ex. reciprocal determinism)

Reciprocal determinism

Interactment of behavior, cognitive factors, and situational factors.

Humanistic

Embraces the idea of free will and rejects the idea of determinism, proposes self-actualization

Self actualization

Developing to one's fullest potential

Carl Rogers

Believed we could all achieve self actualization if society allowed it, but we internalize the standards set by our parents or society or other and it prevents us from reaching our true potential

Self actualized people

Tend to focus on real world problems in their thinking
Tend to be creative, spontaneous, and self-confident
Tend to have a few deep friendships rather than a number of superficial ones (according to Maslow's studies)

3 principles of interpersonal attraction

Proximity , Similarity, Reciprocity

Proximity

Often our closest friends are those who are close in location to you (Police Trainee study)

Similarity

Having things in common, online dating platforms often rest on this

Reciprocity

Give and take, deeper than superficial

Lexical approach

Language as a window into the important aspects of personality

Factor analysis

Statistical analysis used to identify higher order factors through analyzing associations among variables

Openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism

Big 5 Model of Personality

Openness to experience

Conventional, uncreative ←→ Inventiveness, curiosity

Conscientiousness

Carelessness, disorganized ←→ Dependable, self-disciplined

Extraversion

Quiet reserved ←→ Outgoing, enthusiastic

Agreeableness

Critical, quarrelsome ←→ Sympathetic, warm

Neuroticism

Calm, emotionally stable ←→ Anxious, easily upset

Temperament

Innate traits that influence how one thinks, behaves, and reacts with the environment

Openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, Activity

The Little 6 (characterize youth personality)

Cumulative continuity principle

Personality becomes increasingly stable over adulthood

Maturity principle

Increases in conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability across adulthood

Disruption principle

Dips in some aspects of personality from childhood to adolescence.

Correlates of adult personality

Conscientiousness

Correlates of youth personality

Biological, social, and health factors

Structured personality tests

Questions are answered in a fixed way (either true false or rating agreement on scale of 1-5)

Approaches to test construction

Empirical method and rational/theoretical method

Empirical method

Identifying a group of people who typify the personality trait you are trying to measure
Data-based
Criterion group is the group of people with the personality trait
Determine items that best distinguish one group from another
Doesn't really matter what the question is asking about as long as it distinguishes the two groups (low in face validity)

Face validity

The degree to which a given variable seems valid on the surface (does it look like it's measuring what it is supposed to measure?)

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

MMPI. Empirical model personality test that assesses symptoms of psychological disorders. True false format, validity scales, high reliability and validity.

California Psychological Inventory

CPI. Empirical model personality test that assesses personality in the typical range. Has high reliability and validity.

Rationally/theoretically constructed

Start with the idea of the personality trait we are interested in and from the idea construct test (Ex. TIPI and NEO Personality Inventory)

Projective tests

Personality tests that use ambiguous stimuli and reactions to them in order to infer aspects of personality. Low in reliability and validity. (Ex. thematic apperception test, human figure drawing, graphology, Rorschach inkblot Test)

Rorschach inkblot Test

Participants are shown symmetrical inkblots and asked to report what it looks like. Personality is analyzed based on response.