PSYC 290 Exam Prep Units 9-10

Insight therapies

verbal, increase insight, possible solutions, greatest improvement in early treatment (13-18 weekly sessions); evaluation is subjective, effects are reasonably durable, equal efficacy as drug therapy

Psychoanalysis - inner conflicts id, ego, superego, defence mechanisms, unconscious; resistance - largely unconscious defence mechanisms; transference - helpful, relationships can be reenacted

Free association - expression of thoughts/feelings

Dream analysis - symbolic meaning

Interpretation - explain inner significance, move slowly, just out of clients reach

Client-centred therapy - Rogers; work together as equals, supportive emotional climate, alleviates incongruence

Group therapy - function as therapists for each other, 4-15 people (8 ideal)

Behavioural therapies

symptoms ARE the problem, insights are not necessary, direct application of learning principles, behaviour is a product of learning, what can be learned can be unlearned; more emphasis on measuring outcomes shows efficacy of most; used to treat phobias, OCD, sexual dysfunction, eating disorders, hyperactivity, etc.

Systematic desensitization - reduce anxiety responses through counterconditioning; as clients conquer imagined stimuli, they may be encouraged to confront real stimuli; weaken the association between the CS and the CR.

Three steps:

- therapist helps the client build an anxiety hierarchy

- training the client in muscle relaxation

- client tries to work thought the hierarchy, learning to remain relaxed by imagining each stimulus

Exposure therapies - clients are confronted with situations that they fear so that they learn that these situations are really harmless; used with the full range of anxiety disorders

Aversion therapy - an aversive stimulus is paired with a stimulus that elicits an undesirable response; creates a conditioned aversion; not widely used, usually one element in a larger program

Social skills training - improve interpersonal skills through modelling, behaviour rehearsal and shaping; depends on the principles of operant conditioning and observational learning

Cognitive-behavioural treatments - use varied combinations of verbal interventions and behaviour modification techniques to help clients change maladaptive patterns of thinking

Cognitive therapy - modelling, systematic monitoring of one's behaviour, behavioural rehearsal; change clients negative thoughts and appraisals and maladaptive beliefs; taught to detect automatic negative thoughts; trained to subject thoughts to reality testing

Beck; according to cognitive therapists depression is caused by errors in thinking; blame personal inadequacies; focus selectively on negative events; make unduly pessimistic projections; draw negative conclusions about their worth as a person

Self-instructional training - develop and use verbal statements that help cope with difficult contexts

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy - meditation-based techniques heighten awareness of dysfunctional changes in mind and body that can be targeted by the cognitive

Biomedical therapies

Drug Therapy:

- produces clear gains, not as effective as advertised, over prescribed, damaging side effects

1) Anti-anxiety - benzodiazepine family, tranquillizers; valium, Xanax; side effects, drug dependence, overdose and withdrawal symptoms

2) Anti-psychotic - schizophrenia and severe mood disorders with delusions; gradually reduce psychotic symptoms including hyperactivity, mental confusion, hallucinations and delusions; decreases activity in the dopamine synapses; work gradually, respond within 1-3 weeks, many unpleasant side effects including muscle tremors, tardive dyskinesia - neurological disorder marked with involuntary writhing and tic-like movements of the mouth, tongue, face, hands, feet; new class called atypical antipsychotic drugs

3) Anti-depressant - before 1987 tricyclics and MAO inhibitors; now use a newer class of SSRI's gains similar to tricyclics but with fewer side effects; work gradually; major depression is improved; may increase risk of suicide in adolescents; newest class is SNRI's that inhibit reuptake at both serotonin and norepinephrine

4) Mood-stabilizing - bipolar disorders; lithium; dangerous side effects if not monitored correctly; number of alternatives have been developed including valproate

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT):

- biomedical treatment where electric shock is used to produce a cortical seizure accompanied by convulsions; electrodes are attached to the skill over the temporal lobes, light anesthesia and drugs to reduce complications, electric current applied to right or both sides for about one second, triggers a brief convulsive seizure, 6-20 treatments over period of a month.

Therapeutic effects and risks

- treat depression in patients that don't respond to medication; improvement is seen

- relapse rates are high, 64% within 6 months

- risks: memory loss, impaired attention, cognitive deficits; assert that these are mild and temporary while some maintain that they ware significant and sometimes permanent; very controversial

Newer Techniques

1) Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) - temporarily enhance or depress activity in a specific area of the brain; magnetic coil is mounted on a paddle; held over specific areas to increase or decrease activity to discrete regions of the cortex; well-tolerated, minimal side effects

2) Deep brain stimulation (DBS) - thin electrode is surgically implanted into brain; connected to a pulse generator so that currents can be delivered to the brain tissue; currently exploring treatment values

Factors in person perception

- Social schemas: ideas about categories of social events and people; helps effeciently store info

- Stereotypes

- Self-fullfilling propecy

- Priming

- Illusory correlation: people see what they want to see

- Memory processes: selectively recalling facts

Attributions

inferences people draw about the causes of events, others behavior, and their own behavior

Internal - personal dispositions, traits, abilities, feelings

External - situational demands, environmental constaints

Weiner's theory of attribution

- focuses on stability of the causes underlying behaviour

- creating four categories: internal-stable, external-stable, internal-unstable, external-unstable

Attributional bias and cultural variations

Actor-observer bias: takes more thought and effort to explain behaviour in terms of situational factors; actors favour external attributions for their behaviour, whereas observers are more likely to explain the same behaviour with internal attributions

Defensive attribution: blame victims for their misfortune so that one feels less likely to be victimized in a similar way

Self-serving bias - attribute one's success to personal factors and one's failure to situational factors; prevalent in Western society

Self-effacing bias - tendency to attribute their successes to help they received from others or to the ease of the task

Cultural

- Individualism: putting personal goals ahead of group goals; defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group memberships

- Collectivism: putting group goals ahead of personal goals; defining one's identity in terms of the groups one belongs to; less prone to fundamental attribution error

Three key factors in attraction

1) physical attractiveness - "matching hypothesis": people of equal attractiveness are likely to select each other as partners; greater mating success; married couples are similar in attractiveness

2) similarity - race, religion, social class, personality, education, etc; operates in friendships and romantic relationships

3) attitude alignment

Attachment

- infants fall into three attachment categories:

secure, anxious-ambivalent, avoidant

- romantic relationships follow the same attachment style as infancy; people relive their early bonding with their parents in adult romantic relationships

- Hazan and Shaver: adult love relationships can be grouped into categories that parallel infant attachment styles

- Secure adults: 56%; trusting, least worried about abandonment

- Anxious-ambivalent adults: 20%; volatile, jealousy, expectations of rejection

- Avoidant adults: 24%; lacking intimacy and trust

Attachment anxiety: worry about abandonment, doubts about their lovability

Attachment avoidance: feel uncomfortable with closeness and intimacy

Excessive reassurance seeking - persistently ask for assurances that one is worthy of love

Love and romantic attraction

Passionate love: complete absorption in another; tender sexual feelings; agony and ecstasy of intense emotion

Companionate love: warm, trusting, tolerant affection for another whose life is deeply intertwined with one's own.

Robert Sternberg: three facets: passionate, intimacy, commitment

- subdivides companionate love into:

intimacy: warmth, closeness, sharing in a relationship

commitment: intent to maintain a relationship in spite of the difficulties and costs that may arise

Cultural variations

- mate preferences are similar however variations exist in the emphasis of marriage for love; 18th century Western invention; ultimate individualism expression

- Eastern countries feel romantic love is less important for marriage; cultures can clash

Internet and close relationships

- heavy internet users are more alone; could be lured into dangerous situations

- helps those with social anxieties

- internet relationships are just as intimate as face to face ones and sometimes even closer

- power of similarity; successful dating sites

Attitudes

positive or negative evaluations of objects or thought; vary along dimensions of:

- strength (firmly held, durable over time, impact behaviour)

- accessibility (how often one thinks of it, how quickly it comes to mind, correlated to strength)

- ambivalence (conflicted evaluations)

Components:

- cognitive: beliefs, ideas

- affective: emotions, feelings

- behavioural: predispositions to act

Relationship between attitudes and behaviour:

- dependant on factors of strength, accessibility and ambivalence

- strong attitudes that are highly accessible and have been stable over time, tend to be predictive of behaviour

- attitudes are often measured in a general, global way that isn't likely to predict specific behaviours (protecting environment, donating $100 to David Suzuki)

- behaviour depends on situational constraints

Implicit attitudes: covert, subtle automatic responses, little conscious control

Explicit attitudes: conscious, and can readily describe; can be relevant in a variety of situations; consumer products, smoking, drinking, etc; central issue in the study of prejudice; culture promotes negative stereotypes that can seep into unconscious and contaminate our reactions to others; Implicit Association Test

- attitudes do not predict behaviour; both are affected by social influences; alter our behaviour and keep us from uttering our true opinions

- measuring people's expressed attitudes, which may not be the same as their true attitudes. If attitudes do not reliably predict behaviour, does a relationship exist between the two? Persuasive evidence suggests that a relationship does exist, but in reverse order; that is, behaviour(s) may determine our attitudes. For example, finding ourselves in certain roles that demand new behaviours may change our attitudes. We can also observe that saying becomes believing.

Process of persuasion

1) source: sends communication; most successful with high credibility; expertise and trustworthiness; likeability (physical attractiveness, similarity)

2) receiver: person to whom message is sent; forewarning reduces impact, stronger attitudes are more resistant to change, resistance can promote resistance

3) message: information transmitted by the source; one-sided argument vs two-sided argument (more effective); concentrate on strong arguments; persuasive messages that arouse fear; truth effect or validity effect repeating a statement causes it to be perceived as true

- Mere exposure effect: repeated exposures to a stimulus promotes greater liking of the stimulus

4) channel: the medium in which the message is sent

Cognitive dissonance

related cognitions contradict each other; creates an unpleasant state of tension (psychological and physiological) that motivates people to alter their cognitions in order to reduce the tension; people come to believe their own lies

Effort justification

evaluating a particular task or activity more favourably when it involves something that is difficult or unpleasant; most likely when there are no obvious reasons for performing the task; because expending effort to perform a useless or unenjoyable task, or experiencing unpleasant consequences in doing so, is cognitively inconsistent, people are assumed to shift their evaluations of the task in a positive direction to restore consistency

Self-perception theory

critics of dissonance theory; findings were due to self-perception; people often infer their attitudes from their behaviour; occurs mostly when people don't have well-defined attitudes towards the issue at hand

Attitude change

classical conditioning: creates the affective (emotional) component of attitude; evaluative conditioning transfers the emotion attached to a UCS to a new CS; advertisers use this method

operant conditioning: when an attitude is openly expressed, agreement can be a reinforcer and disagreement can be a form of punishment

observational learning; opinions of others likely to sway attitudes

Elaboration likelihood model

two basic routes to persuasion

1) Central route: carefully ponder content and logic of persuasive messages

2) Peripheral route: non-message factors, attractiveness and credibility of source, conditioned emotional responses

Asch and conformity

classic experiments, most widely replicated studies in social psychology

- if participants agree with the accomplices (obviously wrong answer) then are conforming

- group size and group unanimity are key determinants

- conformity increased rapidly as group size increased from 2 to 4; little conformity when pitted against 1

- group size made little difference if one accomplice broke away from the others

Normative influence - when people conform to social norms for fear of social consequence; being liked

Informational influence - when people look to others for guidance on how to behave in ambiguous situations; being right

Milgram's study on obedience

most famous and controversial experiments; effects of punishment on learning; ordered to shock subject in larger voltages despite protest from subject; came to an end when participant refused to continue

- 65% administered all 30 levels of shock; despite considerable distress

- 20 variations; obedience remained high even as various aspects were changed

- if authority figure was called away and orders were given by ordinary person, obedience dropped to 20%

- situational factors exert great influence over behaviour

Controversy

- findings are counter to human intuition; can't be applied to real-world

- subjects expected to obey orders

- ethics; extensive deception could undermine trust and cause severe stress and emotional scars

Bystander effect

the tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present

Causes:

- people look around to see what others think, hesitation suggests there is no real need for help

- diffusion of responsibility: someone else will help, reduced sense of responsibility

Group productivity and decision making

Producitivity declines in larger groups

- reduced efficiency; loss of coordination

- social loafing; reduction in effort

Decision making

- risky shift: groups arrived at riskier decisions than individuals

- group polarization: group discussion strengthens a group's dominant point of view and produces a shift toward a more extreme decision in that direction

- groupthink: members of a cohesive group emphasize concurrence at the expense of critical thinking in arriving at a decision; major blunders; suspend critical judgement; censors dissent; us vs them; confirmation bias; individuals often fail to share information unique to them; more likely when there is high group cohensiveness, in isolation, when power structure is dominate by a strong, decisive leader, when group is under stress to make a major decision

- group cohensiveness - strength of the liking relationships linking group members

Social neuroscience

- topics include theory of mind, aggression, social cognition, self and self-judgement, etc.

- most researched topic is ethnic relations; prejudice and stereotyping; implicit and explicit evalations

- heightened activation of amygdala

Prejudice and discrimination

Prejudice - negative attitude held toward members of a group; includes beliefs, emotions, behavioural dispositions

Discrimination - behaving differently, usually unfairly, toward the members of a group

Social influence tactics

1) Foot in the door technique

2) Reciprocity norm: pay it forward

3) Low ball technique: getting someone to commit to an attractive proposal before it's hidden costs are revealed