PSYC1030H Exam 3

social-pain equals

pain-pain

just like physical pain, social pain is

adaptive

social separation as infants leads to

social pain, crying, parental care

as a species humans are altricial

born helpless and requiring significant parental care

this drug reduces both social and physical pain

Tylenol

hunting and gathering success for humans is

often dependent on groups

being cast out from one’s social group has negative implications

like death, especially for animals

an adaptation of humans is

our desire to understand the behaviors of others

naive psychology

how people naturally interpret each other’s behavior

attribution theory

the theory that we can explain someone’s behavior by crediting either their stable enduring traits (disposition) or the situation at hand

logical model for attribution

1) does this person regularly behave this way in this situation?

2) do many people regularly behave this way in this situation?

3) does this specific person behave like this in many situations?

fundamental attribution error

when people overestimate personality factors or underestimate situational factors

dual process model of persuasion

• central route: utilizes basic thinking and reasoning of the argument by

  interested parties, persuasion is obtained through actual content of the

  message

• peripheral route: cues unrelated to the message determine how successful

  the persuader is (“gut reaction”)

foot-in-the-door (ex: Anakin Skywalker)

• People are more likely to agree to bigger requests after smaller ones

• This works best in smaller increments, starting with more innocuous ones

door-in-the-face

• If someone asks you for a HUGE request that’s super unreasonable, you’re highly unlikely to oblige

• BUT, if they follow-up this request up with a smaller one, you’re much more likely to oblige than had they simply started with this one

stanford prison experiment

• Decided whether each participant would be a prisoner or guard based on a coin flip

• “Prisoners” were “arrested” by real police officers

• Quickly “guards” began behaving inhumanely, no physical harm but would place prisoners in solitary confinement, refuse food, verbally assault them

• Initially the study was to last for two weeks, but ended after six day

The power of a given social situation can easily

override personality characteristics

cognitive dissonance theory

• When our thoughts, feelings, actions, or behaviors go counter to what we believe we feel discomfort, or dissonance

• Like other drives, such as hunger, the presence of cognitive dissonance drives us to resolve the contradiction

• In order to avoid dissonance, people may:

  •Avoid dissonant information

  •Firm up an attitude to be consistent with the action

  •Change attitude to justify action (insufficient justification effect

milgram experiment (electric shocks)

2/3 of participants went to the full voltage, all went to at least 300

milgram experiment implications

• People are especially likely to conform to the

  demands of authority figures

• Especially true if the figure is in near proximity,

  or is associated with an especially prominent

  institution (Yale University)

• Helps explain why seemingly rational, good

  people act in unkind ways

  •Germany, 1930’s

marshmallow test of self-control

children are bad at this bc of their lack of developed executive functions

self-control ego depletion

•Self control is a limited resource

•Essentially like a muscle, if you self control once, you’ll

be less able to do it immediately after

•Also like a muscle, if one self controls in smaller ways

over and over, they will generally be better at self

control over time

neural see-saw + social brain network

our brains default to think about social situations

prefrontal cortex

decision making, reasoning, social behaviors

insula

risk-reward behaviors, pain pathways, sensory and emotional processing

amygdala

processing emotions, especially fear, pain, rage

PFC “the decider”

Main functions:

•Focusing on tasks

•Considering potential strategies andchoosing one

•Self-discipline and willpower

•Recognizing patterns and organizing things into categories

•Reasoning and explaining

dorsal

up

ventral

down

anterior

front

posterier

back

lateral

side

medial

center

vmPFC

ventromedial prefrontal cortex

dlPFC

dorsolateral PFC

vlPFC

ventrolateral PFC

vmPFC

• emotional reactions, intuition (faster)

• Connections to emotional areas: amygdala, insula, etc.

• Responsible for incorporating emotion into decisions

• Damage >> Cold, detached

dlPFC

• true logic and reasoning (slower)

• Responsible for inhibiting impulses, thinking out solutions

• Damage >> Overly emotional, impulsive

trolley problem

• save the most people - dlPFC

• active killing is always wrong - vmPFC (gut reaction)

contemplating actions

means > ends, more immediate actions, vmPFC, more deontological (morality of actions is judged based on principles, not consequences)

contemplating outcomes

ends > means, more long-term impacts of actions, dlPFC, more utilitarian

moral dumbfounding

• strong moral opinions without knowing why

• vmPFC has already come to a conclusion without dlPFC weighing in

cognitive load

distracting the dlPFC with stress or a separate task

historical views of personality

• humors

  • phlegm, bile, blood

• earth, wind, fire

• freud (id, ego, superego)

personality

Your characteristic and chronic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving

personality is a set of

traits

behavior is a combo of

traits and the state that is occurring

trait

A relatively stable predisposition to behave in a certain way (part nature, part nurture)

state

temporary way of thinking, feeling, or behaving that depends on a person's situation and motives at a particular time

fundamental attribution error

Disproportionately assigning another person’s behavior to their TRAITS instead of the STATE

OCEAN

Openness to experience

Conscientiousness

Extraversion

Agreeableness

Neuroticism

biological basis of personality

• About ~%40 heritable

• E, C, A: Prefrontal

• N: Broadly distributed

• O: Unknown

• This research is young

social-cognitive perspective of personality

• reciprocal determinism; behavior is determined by cognitive and situational factors

• Taking into account both context and enduring personality traits

locus of control

Expanded on Bandura’s theories of personality, that there are different perspectives of how one can control their life

internal locus of control

life events are dictated by personal choice and actio

external locus of control

life events are controlled by factors outside of the individual

Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory - MMPI

• Often used by clinical psychologists to test personality, diagnostic test

• Many, many questions, some of which are asked only to be sure you answer consistently

• Also has many subscales, but doesn’t test personality disorders particularly well

• Also a version for adolescent

millon personality test

• More precise measure of personality

  characteristics

• Clinicians may administer the Millon following the results of the MMPI

• Diagnostic for personality disorders

deterministic fallacy

best vs worse possible selves motivate us

Forer/Barnum Effect

• individuals give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that are supposedly tailored to them, yet are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people

• Myers-Briggs

sensitivity

the ability of a test to correctly identify those with the condition (true positive rate

specificity

the ability of the test to correctly identify those without the disease (true negative rate)

There are two broad dimensions along which affect varies

• Arousal (activation/deactivation)

• Valence (positive/negative

William James’ Peripheral Feedback theory

Emotions are psychological interpretations of automatically trigger, physiological processes that occur response to emotionally salient stimuli

Cannon-Bard Theory

argues that the physiological and experiential aspects of emotions occur at the same time, but they are separate

stages of emotion

• Immediate attentional shifts

• Emotional appraisal

• Cognitive reappraisal

• Meta-cognitive processing

amygdala “low road”

• Coordinates brain structures to pay attention to highly salient stimuli in the environment

• Amygdala is made up of multiple sub-nuclei