BehSci GR 2

Our Adaptability

Capability to learn new behaviors to help us cope with an ever changing world
-Opran winfrey is a living example of adaptability, overcame tremendous diversity

Learning

-No topic is closer to the heart of psychology than learning
-by learning, we adapt to our environments

Association

-One way to learn is association, or connecting events that occur in a sequence, feeds our habitual behaviors, associative learning
-habits form when we repeat behaviors in a specific context
-it takes about 60 days, or 2 months to form a habit

Process of learning associations

conditioning

Conditioning

-Classical conditioning: learned to associate 2 stimuli with each other, thus to anticipate events, eg lightning with thunder
-Operant conditioning: associate our behavior with their consequences

cognitive learning

acquire mental information that guides our behavior, e.g. observational learning, learning by observing others

difference between classical and operant conditioning

-Classical: forms associations between two stimuli, involves automatic responses
-Operant: associate their own actions with consequences, their behavior operates on the environment to produce a reward or punishment

B.F. Skinner's experiment

-The law of effect: rewarded behavior tends to occur
-The experiment: used an operant chamber, or Skinners Box, with a button or bar that the animal presses to release a reward
-Skinner said that external influence, not internal thoughts and feelings, shape behavior, and that it is separate from neuroscience

Reinforcement

Any event that increases the frequency of a particular response
-Positive Reinforcement: Adds a happy stimuli
-Negative Reinforcement: Removes a negative stimuli, not a punishment
-Primary reinforcers: are unlearned, innate desired
-Secondary reinforcers: are conditioned, learned association with primary reinforcers, like money, good grades, etc
-Immediate vs delayed reinforcers, delayed gratification often lose however

Shaping

Gradually guiding natural behaviors towards a desired behavior, rewarding behaviors that gradually become closer to the desired behavior, or successive approximations
-Shaping can determine what non-verbal cues animals perceive, by shaping them to respond to one and not the other, can know if they can tell the difference

reinforcement schedules

-Continuous reinforcement: reinforce immediately and everytime, learning occurs quickly, but it is also distinguished quickly
-Partial or intermittent reinforcement: Some are reinforced and some are not, learning is slower to appear, but there is a greater resistance to the extinction of that behavior

4 schedules of partial reinforcement

-Fixed ratio: reinforces after a set number of responses, e.g. starbucks reward system
-Variable ratio: reinforce after an unpredictable number of responses, produces high rate of responding, e.g. slot machine
-Fixed Interval: Reinforce after a specific period of time, example of checking mail more often as mail time approaches
-Variable interval: Reinforces the first responses after variable intervals, produces slow, steady responding

reinforcement schedule effects

-response rates are generally higher for ratio schedules than interval schedules
-responding is more consistent for when reinforcement is variable, rather than fixed

punishment

-positive punishment: Administer adverse stimulus
-negative punishment: Withdraw a rewarding stimulus
swift and sure punishment is more effective than severe punishment

problems with punishment

-physical punishment causes drawbacks
-behavior is suppressed, not forgotten
-physical punishment does not replace the unwanted behavior, doesn't provide direction for appropriate behavior
-punishment teaches discrimination among situations, certain responses, and not others will be reinforced
-can teach fear, associated with the person administering the punishment, and can also teach aggression by modeling violence
-a better punishment is a timeout from positive reinforcement

punishment vs reinforcement

-Punishment: what not to do, trains prohibition
-Reinforcement: what to do, trains positive obligation

to build good or reduce bad habits:

-State a realistic goal in measurable terms, share with others
-Decide how, when and where you will work on your goals
-Monitor how often you engage with desired behavior
-Reinforce desired behavior
-reduce the rewards gradually

Social Learning

-learning by observation
-but can't just observe, must observe and also model or imitate
-modeling has very strong effects, especially in children
-when observing someone else receiving an award, our own reward systems are activated
-humans are amazing imitators, and are often over imitators

Mirror Neurons

provide an neutral basis for everyday imitation or observational learning, when one observes something, the mirror neurons send signals to the brain as if one is doing what they are observing,

Theory of Mind

Enables empathy, neuralgy sharing someone's experience, ability to enter another's mental state
-we can easily experience the feelings and actions described in fiction novels, because our own brain mirrors

effects of modeling

-prosocial effect: by using behavior modeling to encourage polite social helpful interactions, trainees gain skills faster by observing things done correctly
-Negative effects: abusive children from abusive parents tend to be more aggressive, social media and TV have powerful observational learning tools, violence viewing effect

Ivan Pavlov

-found classical conditioning
-laid the foundation for John Watson
-Instead of regarding thoughts, feelings, and emotions to understand learning, he began to study responses to stimuli in environments
-he earned his Noble prize for work with dogs, experimented with learning in the last 30 years of his life

Behaviorism

the view that psychology should be an objective science and that it should be based on observable behavior

Pavlov's 5 major conditioning processes

acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, discrimination

acquisition

In classical conditioning, the initial stage, when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response.
-conditioning helps animals survive and reproduce and responding to cues that help it find food or mates

extinction

the diminishing of a conditioned response; if the neutral stimulus continually occurs without the unconditioned stimulus, the unconditioned response would occur less and less, dog salivates less and less

Spontaneous Recovery

reappearance of a weakened conditioned response after a pause, if pavlov waited several hours and then sounded the tone again, dogs drooled still, thus extinction is suppressing the conditioned response, not eliminating it

Generalization

-tendency to respond to stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus, dogs salivate at similar tones, still giving the conditioned response
-stimuli related to naturally revolting or morally questionable objects will evoke, by generalization, moral or physical disgust

Discrimination

Respond to certain stimuli, but not to others, the ability to distinguish between the conditioned stimulus, and other irrelevant stimulus

Pavlov's legacy

-classical conditioning is a basic form of learning
-it is almost universal, and can be done to almost every species, all organisms use classical conditioning to adapt to their environment
-break associations from drug cravings
-immune responses
- basis for Watson's work, that humans emotion and behavior, though biologically influenced, are mainly a bundle of conditioned responses

unconditioned stimulus

The stimulus that produces the natural response, the food for the dog

Unconditioned response

The natural response to the unconditioned stimulus, e.g. the dog salivating

Neutral Stimulus

The stimulus that is not initially associated with a response, but becomes a conditioned stimulus after being associated with the unconditioned stimulus, e.g. the tone

Conditioned stimulus

originally irrelevant, neutral stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus, comes to trigger a conditioned response

conditioned response

the conditioned response is the exact same as the unconditioned response, is the response to the conditioned stimulus

What is memory

Memory is learning that persists over time, information that has been stored and acquired, and can be retrieved
-Memory is at the core of what it means to be human, and thus loosing it strikes deep
-we have insane memories, very good at facial recognition, store and recognize over 5000 faces

three measures of retention

-Recall: Retrieving info not in conscious awareness, e.g. fill in the blank, additional rehearsing increases retention, lessens the need for relearning
-Recognition: identifying something previously learned, e.g. multiple choice, recognition learning is quick and vast, we remember far more than we can recall
-Relearning: learn quicker when learning for a second time

Information processing model

-encode: get information into our brains
-store: retain that information
-retrieve: Later take that info back out

Parallel processing

we process both consciously and unconsciously at the same time, much slower and less reliable than a computer, that sequentially processes

connectionism

memory is the product of interconnected neural networks

Atkinson and Shiffrin's memory forming process

first to sensory memory: fleeting, first recorded here
-second to short term memory/working memory, encoded through rehearsal, an active scratch pad for the brain, links new experiences to long term memories, retrieves and processes old info
-third to long term memory, move to be ready for later retrieval, theoretically no capacity or duration limit, our recollection isn't perfect so our brain fills in the gaps, edits the memories

central executive

coordinates your attention and focus, while you integrate new information and long term memory

Explicit memories

-facts and experiences we can consciously know and declare, thus are "declarative"
-encoded through effortful processing

Implicit memories

memory stored behind the scenes, skips the conscious encoding, and is encoded by automatic processing
-examples are procedures for automatic skills, space, time, and frequency
-with practice, automatic processing occurs much easier

Iconic memory

a momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second

echoic memory

a momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds

working memory capacity

working memory is our short term memory processing manager
-capacity of 7 bits
-working memory capacity is our ability to juggle multiple items while processing information
-only lasts about 18 seconds

Processing strategies

-Chunking: separating items into meaningful chunks
-Mnemonics: creating mental imagery in our minds, painting pictures and associating them in our minds, acronyms
-hierarchies: create an organizational structure to order information in the brain
-spaced practice
-testing effect: repeated self-testing
-We memorize better if the item is meaningful to us or related to our experience

types of processing

shallow processing: encode based on the word's letters
-words sounds is less shallow but still shallow
Deep processing: encode the semantics of a word, its actual meaning

Memory loss

The ability to forget is a blessing, bad memories and old or irrelevant information
-for some people, memory never leaves

processing mistakes

we filter, alter, and lose most of the information we process, we accurately remember very little
-We only encode around 1/10 of the info we process, rest is forgotten, age affects encoding efficiency as well
-if we don't put effort into coding new info, it never forms a memory

Amnesia

-Antero Grade: remember the past, but cannot form new memories, those with this amnesia can be classically conditioned, but without recollection that they have learned anything, lost the ability to form explicit memories, can still automatically process and form implicit, HOW to do something
-Retro grade Amnesia: cannot remember the past

Retrieval Failure

tip-of-the-tongue failure to remember, failure to retrieve that which we encoded

Interference

-Proactive interference: when prior learning disrupts your recall of new information
-Retroactive interference: when new learning disrupts your recall of old information

Positive transfer

previously learned information facilitates the learning of new information

motivated forgetting

forget because there is some benefit to us, recall influence by emotions
-Freud argued for repression, they repress memories that are painful or traumatic for self-preservation

reconsolidation

a process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again, memories constantly are subject to editing
-can easily replace a real memory with a false one
-False memories are easily engrained and can easily become contagious
-examples: explains the vast major of innocent people in jail, why partners overestimate their first impressions, children are particularly susceptible

Misinformation effect

after exposure to subtle misinformation, people tend to misremember

Imagination inflation

imagination, spurred by a false stimuli, causes fake memories to form, falsely causes old memories to change

source amnesia or source misattribution

misattributing memories
-deja vu, familiarity with the stimuli but uncertainty about the memory

Improving memory

rehearse repeatedly, distributed or spaced practice
-testing effect
-production effect: teaching to learn
-make the learning meaningful: personalize it
-activate retrieval cues
-use mnemonics
-minimize interference
-sleep more

cognition

the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
-metacognition: beyond thinking, thinking about thinking, improves cognition

concepts

basic level of cognition, mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas, and people

Prototype

a mental image or best example of a category,
when stimuli doesn't match our prototype, it doesn't fit the typical stereotype

Problem solving skills

-trial and error
-algorithms
-heuristics: simple thinking strategies, e.g. grouping or patterns

insight

an abrupt, true-seeming, and often satisfying solution, burst of activity in right temporal lope

confirmation bias

search for evidence for our opinion rather than against, causes fixation

intuition

our first, automatic unreasoned feelings and thoughts that answer many of our questions

representativeness heuristic

judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information like sample size

availability heuristics

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory, anything that makes information pop into our head, such as recentness, vividness, distinctness, makes them seem more commonplace

Belief perseverance

clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited, caused by motivated reasoning, solution is to consider the opposing arguments

Framing

the way we present an issue sways our decisions and judgments

Intuition

recognition born of experience, is usually adaptive, strongly effects our judgement, sometimes its better not to think
-We have a two track mind, our intuition and our critical thinking, we use both to make desicions

Creativity and aptitude

creativity and aptitude are directly related, creativity increases with inborn aptitude
Five components of creativity:
-expertise "chances favor the prepared mind"
-imaginative thinking skills
-venturesome personality
-intrinsic motivation
-creative enviroment
To build creativity:
-develop you expertise
-allow problems to percolate in the mind
-set aside time for the mind to roam freely
-experience diverse cultures and ways of thinking

Types of thinking

convergent: provide single correct answer
divergent: ability to consider many different solutions

Memory attention failure

when you dont pay attention, information from sensory memory isn't encoded in short term memory

memory encoding failure

when the process from short term to long term isn't accurate, misses details, is biased, is shallow

memory storage decay

memories stored in long term decay or change over time

survivor bias

Believing something based on a couple exceptions, lottery tickets winner say to keep buying lottery tickets

Human factors

application of psychological science to design environments that fit the capabilities and limitations of human users
-There are biomechanical limits to our actions and motor speed, strength and accuracy, ability to visually perceive, to process auditory information
-use study of human factors to redesign, reduce errors and injuries, reduce information processing errors
-has a strong connection to engineering, often called engineering factors, like ergonomics

Industrial-Organizational psychology (I-O Psych)

workers performance and output, the organizational structure, training, performance feedback, job selection
-Humans factors specialists are meant to address the needs of a specific population

Human Centered Design

4 Key aspects:
-centered on people and their context
-solve the right problems
-understand that everything is a complex interconnected system
-do small interventions, iterative work, prototype, test, and refine the loop
To go above user centered design:
-dehumanizing idea of "users", instead put humans, people first in design

attribution theory

attribute behavior to enduring traits, to peoples disposition versus situational attribution, attribute to the environment
-We tend to intrinsically think that behavior is more dispositional than situational
-attribution is why people behave the way they do

Attitudes

attitudes pre-dispose our reactions to objects, people, and events, what we feel affects our reactions
-we strongly stand for what we believe in, but we also strongly believe in what we stand for, thus our attitudes follow our behaviors
-if we are forced to act against our beliefs, our attitudes tend to change

foot-in-the-door phenomenon

the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request, doing becomes believing

cognitive dissonance

the theory that when actions and attitudes don't coincide, we bring our attitudes in line with our actions, conduct sculpts character

persuasion

peripheral route persuasion: uses attention getting cues to trigger speedy, emotion based judgements
-central route persuasion: offers evidence and arguments that aim to trigger central thinking

cultural influences

culture consists of behaviors, ideas, and values shared by a group of people, ensuring division of labor and preservation of innovation, culture dictates almost everything in our life
-Collectivist "we" vs individualist "i"
tight cultures, obey social norms, loose cultures, norms with wide variability

conformity

aka social contagion, we have a natural inclination to copy emotions, drives empathy, which creates mood linkage among groups
-we are more likely to conform when:
-we feel incompetent
-groups of more than three
-the rest of the group agrees
-we admire the groups status or attractiveness
normative social influence: to gain social approval
informational social influence: accept other's opinions about reality

Obedience

Stanley milgrams experiments that used electric shocks to assist "learning", level of obedience is shocking
obedience is higher when:
-people giving orders are close, perceived as a legitimate authority
-authority is supported by a powerful or prestigious institution
-victim is depersonalized, in another room
-no role models for defiance
obedience usually wins over kindness, those who resisted did so early

minority influence

power of one or two individuals to sway a minority

social facilitation

others presence strengthens the most likely response, people observing amplify reactions, whether good or bad

social loafing

diminishing effort on tasks done in groups vs individually

Deindividualism

the process of losing one's sense of personal identity, which makes it easier to behave in ways inconsistent with one's normal values, thrives online with cyberbullying, online trolls, mobs, concerts, worship, etc

group polarization

beliefs and attitudes grow in strength as we discuss them with likeminded people

Group think

the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives

prejudice

pre-judgement, comes with negative emotions, hostility or fear, stereotypes, discrimination, microaggressions
-prejudice can be implicit or explicit
ABCs
-Affect: negative feelings towards members
-Behavior: discrimination, violent acts
-Cognition: stereotypes, generalizations

Study prejudice by

-testing for unconscious group associations
-considering unconscious patronizations, catering to other race
-monitoring reflexive body actions

implicit prejudice

fatigue amplifies racial bias, because it increases automatic responses
-subtle examples of implicit bias
-colorism
-criminal stereotypes
-medical care disparities

roots of prejudice

-just world phenomenon: people get what they deserve
-blame the victim dynamic: disposition, not circumstance, accounts for their misfortune
-we have a natural tendency to be prejudiced against strangers
-scapegoat theory: find someone to blame when something goes wrong, therefore blame entire people groups
-hindsight bias amplifies victim blaming, they got what they deserve