Indi Diff - W4L1 - Beliefs, preferences, and identity

Explain Ellis’ ABC framework

A = Activating experience (ex. didn’t get Cansbridge fellowship)

B = Belief about why said experience happened (ex. believe that it was part of God’s plan; positively reframed)

C = Consequences about our beliefs (ex. don’t let it get to me, change courses and try other thing)

How do irrational beliefs develop

• People start with relatively rational beliefs

• Negative experiences then lead to avoidance of situations and development of irrational beliefs (ex. you mess up during a speech and then start to think you must be a bad speaker, therefore avoiding public speaking entirely)

• The belief system is what changes the way people experience consequences (positive or negative) that people experience in relation to the experience (ex. someone could fumble their speech but took it as a learning opportunity to try harder next time)

Explain how the ABC ties into repeated experiences

• If you lose your job once you may attribute it to ext causes (ex. my boss is a bad person)

• If it happens again, you may start to think that it was because of smth that you’re the problem

This showcases how the same person can react differently based on learned experience

Explain '“must-urbatory” thinking (Ellis)

Ellis thought that people run into unresolvable emotional consequences when they think things MUST happen a certain way. It comes from:

• ignoring positives, exaggerating negatives and overgeneralizing

Name a few of Ellis’ 12 MUST instantiations and explain what it is

List of 12 assumptions that people commonly say MUST happen

• I MUST be loved by others

• People who act badly MUST be condemned

• I MUST be good at everything I try

Why did Ellis use the weird sexual wordplay (i.e., musterbation)

• He understands that shock breaks normal behaviour and makes beliefs feel less inevitable 

• It states that irrational beliefs are self-soothing compulsions (similar to musturbation)

• it’s a poke at Freud who seemed to care so much about sex

Explain the 3 different types of musterbations

1. Awfulising 

• Belief that a negative element of smth is the worst thing that could possibly happen

2. Low frustration tolerance 

• When a person believes they can't deal with some difficulty/frustration that comes with it (ex. I can't cope, I must have an easier situation) 

3. Damnation 

• Condemning yourself, others or the world in general. Taking blame and making it extreme. (ex. You must not treat me this way, therefore you’re an awful person OR  I’m a terrible person, I don’t deserve anything. 

• This can be countered by acceptance

Explain how musturbations create individual diffs

• Diff people do different levels of musterbations 

• Ellis thought that irrational beliefs/musterbations are adopted, reversible and very plastic (meaning they change often) (meaning they vary within a person as well and they are NOT permanently fixed)

Explain interpersonal attraction according to Hartz

• Hartz says that desirable features for a significant other include beauty, wisdom, success, 

• People differ in exactly what they are looking for in a partner because they themselves are different people

List the 5 different hypotheses for how humans choose partners

1. Similarity

2. Ideal partner

3. Repulsion

4. Optimal similarity

5. Optimal outbreeding

Similarity hypothesis

We’re attracted to people who are similar to us because

• they are easier to understand and predict

• they validate often share our viewpoints and therefore are more likely to like us back

Ideal partner hypothesis

We have a checklist of characteristics/standards for our “ideal partner”

• we compare potential partners to that checklist

Repulsion hypothesis

Differences in people push others away and whoever is left, we will like them (this one lwky stupid because that makes it seem like we would be searching for an exact replica of ourselves)

Optimal dissimilarity hypothesis

We look for people who are just different enough to keep it interesting

Optimal outbreeding hypothesis

• centred on biology

• we avoid too similar (inbreeding) OR too different (leading to lower survival rates because of suboptimal traits)

Explain the concept of “fatal attraction”

Overtime, our interpretations of of our partners traits may shift

• nice → too nice (they nv