psych final exam

Attributions

judgments about the causes of our own and other people’s behaviour and outcomes

→ did i get an A on my midterm because I worked hard or because it was easy?

Personal attributions 

People’s behaviour is caused by their characteristics 

→ criticise someone because they’re mean

Situational attributions

Aspects of the situation provoke behaviour

→ criticise someone because they provoked you

3 criteria to determine attribution

1. consistency (does this belief stay the same over time?)

2. distinctiveness (is it specific or general?)

3. consensus (do other people agree?)

Fundamental Attribution Error

tendency to underestimate the impact of the situation and overestimate the role of personal factors when explaining other people’s behaviour

Self serving bias

making relatively more personal attributions for successes and more situational attributions for failures

• Blame others for your losses

Primacy effect

tendency to attach more importance to the initial information that we learn about a person

→ new info has to work harder to change our minds

Self fulfilling prophecy

when people’s erroneous expectations lead them to act in a way that brings about the expected behaviours, thereby confirming the original impression

→ expect someone to be mean, you treat them poorly, they’re mean in response

Attitude

positive or negative evaluative reaction toward a stimulus, such as a person, action, object, or concept 

Theory of planned behaviour

intention to engage in a behaviour is the strongest with a positive attitude toward that behaviour, when our perceptions of what other people think we should do support our attitudes, and when we believe we’re in control of our behaviour

Conditions of attitudes predicting behavior

1. when counteracting situations are weak

   1. people act differently when threatened

2. when we’re aware of our attitudes and how strong they are

3. general attitudes are better at predicting general behaviour

4. specific attitudes are better at predicting specific behaviour

Cognitive dissonance 

people strive to maintain consistent beliefs and actions

inconsistency causes dissonance (change cognitions)

Self perception theory

the theory that we make inferences about our own attitudes by observing how we behave

• Observe how you’ve acted and infer how you must have felt to have behaved this way

Communicator credibility

How believable the communicator is

• Trustworthy + expertise

Central route to persuasion

people think carefully about a message and are influenced because they find the arguments compelling

Peripheral route to persuasion

people do not scrutinize a message and are influenced by other factors like a speaker’s attractiveness or a message’s emotional appeal

Social facilitation

an increased tendency to perform one’s dominant response in the mere presence of others

Informational social influence

following the opinions or behaviour of other people because we believe they have accurate knowledge and what they are doing is “right”

Normative social influence

conformity motivated by gaining social acceptance and avoiding social rejection

Factors that influence destructive obedience (shock test)

1. victim isn’t in sight

2. authority figure is close and credible

3. when someone else does the dirty work

4. personal characteristics

Norm of reciprocity

Expectation that when other people treat us well, we should respond kindly

Door in the face technique

Large request to make you reject it so that the smaller request is more reasonable

Foot in the door technique

Comply with a smaller request to get you to later comply with a bigger one

Lowballing

Commit to the action by describing it as small, and then before you actually act, they increase the cost

• Say the car is 8000 but you actually need to pay 400 more

Deindividuation

Loss of individuality that leads to disinhibited behaviour

• Riots from sports fans

Social loafing 

people put in less work in a group

• task has no meaning

• group means nothing

• group work isn’t monitored

• all male groups

Group polarisation

“average” opinion of group members is more extreme when like-minded people discuss an issue

Group think

the tendency of group members to suspend critical thinking because they are motivated to seek agreement

• high stress to make a decision

• no outside input

Social comparison

the act of comparing one’s personal attributes, abilities, and opinions to those of other people

Mere exposure effect

the tendency to evaluate a stimulus more favourably after repeated exposure to it

Matching effect

in romantic relationships, the tendency for partners to have a similar level of physical attractiveness

Social exchange theory

social relationship can best be described in terms of exchanges of rewards and costs between the two partners

factors for love

1. propinquity (physical proximity)

2. exposure (builds lust/attachment)

3. emotions

4. attractiveness

faturous love

passion + commitment

companionate love

intimacy + commitment

romantic love

intimacy + passion

sternberg’s love triangle

consumate love = intimacy, commitment, passion

Cognitive arousal model of love

passionate love has cognitive and physiological components

Transfer of excitation

a misinterpretation of your state of arousal that occurs when arousal actually is caused by one source, but you attribute it to another source

Realistic conflict theory

competition for limited resources fosters prejudice

Social identity theory

prejudice stems from a need to enhance our self-esteem

Stereotype threat (claude steel)

stereotypes create a fear and self-consciousness among stereotyped group members that they will “live up” to other people’s stereotypes

Equal status contract

prejudice goes down with:

(1) engage in sustained close contact

(2) have equal status

(3) work to achieve a common goal that requires cooperation

(4) are supported by broader social norms

Empathy altruism hypothesis

pure altruism does exist, and that it is produced by empathy

Negative state relief model

high empathy causes us to feel distress when we learn of others’ suffering, so that by helping them we reduce our own personal distress

Just world hypothesis

people get what they deserve and deserve what they get

Frustration aggression hypothesis

frustration leads to aggression

Catharsis

the discharge of aggressive energy and temporary reduction of the impulse to aggress argued to occur through performing an act of aggression

Psychic energy

made by instinctual drives and presses for direct or indirect release

-- build up of sexual drives can result in sex or fantasies

CONSCIOUS MIND

Mental events we are aware of

Thoughts, feelings, images, memories

ID

Operates according to pleasure pricnple

ego

Conscious level

trying to satisfy both ID and supergo

Reality principle

superego

Moral arm of personality

Society’s ideals anad values

Reward and punishment controls

Morals over realism

Pleasure Principle

the drive for instant need gratification that is characteristic of the id

reality principle

Act in a rational fashion to satisfy its needs

“What can I realistically and safely do to satisfy my needs”

Displacement

An unacceptable or dangerous impulse is repressed, and then directed at a safer substitute target

Intellectualization

The emotion connected with an upsetting event is repressed, and the situation is dealt with as an intellectually interesting event

reaction formation

An anxiety-arousing impulse is repressed, and its psychic energy finds release in an exaggerated expression of the opposite behaviour.

sublimation

A repressed impulse is released in the form of a socially acceptable or even admired behaviour. One of the most mature defence mechanisms

oral fixation (0-2)

weaning

anal fixation (2-3)

toilet training

phallic stage (4-6)

resolving oedipus complex

latency (7-puberty)

developing social relationships

genital stage (puberty onward)

developing mature social and sexual relationships

Analytic Theory

humans have a collective unconscious that consists of memories accumulated throughout the entire history of the human race

Object relations

the images or mental representations that people form of themselves and other people as a result of early experience with caregivers

• People who have troubles with forming/maintaining intimate relationships ten to mentally represent themselves and others negatively

Personal constructs

in George Kelly’s personality theory, the cognitive categories used to sort events and make comparisons among people and events

The self

in Rogers’s theory, an organized, consistent set of perceptions and beliefs about oneself

Self concept

beliefs and perceptions about oneself

Self consistency

an absence of conflict among self-perceptions

Unconditional positive regard

a communicated attitude of total and unconditional acceptance of another person that conveys the person’s intrinsic worth

Conditions of worth

internalized standards of self-worth fostered by conditional positive regard from others

Fully functioning persons

Rogers’s term for self-actualized people who are free from unrealistic conditions of worth and who show congruence, spontaneity, creativity, and a desire to develop further

big 5 factors

openness, agreeability, neuroticism, extraversion, conscientiousness

Social cognitive theory

Bandura and Mischel emphasizes the role of social learning, cognitive processes, and self-regulation

Reciprocal determinism

2 way causal relations between people, behaviour, environment

Internal-external locus of control

Rotter’s generalized expectancy that one’s outcomes are under personal versus external control

self efficacy

we perform the necessary behaviours to produce a desired outcome

Remote behaviour sampling

researchers and clinicians collect samples of behaviour from respondents as they live their daily lives

Rational approach

test items are made up on the basis of a theorist’s conception of a construct

Empirical approach

items (regardless of their content) are chosen that differentiate between two groups that are known to differ on a particular personality variable

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

compared psych patients with regular

Projective tests

ambiguous stimuli that show the internal characteristics of the person

stress process

stressor, intervening factors, stress reaction

general adaptation syndrome

Body’s reaction to stress:

alarm

resistence (adapt)

exhaustion (can’t handle it any more)

cortisol

converts protein to sugar

increase blood flow + heart rate (sympathetic nervous system)

Anterior pituitary + adrenal cortex

PTSD treatment

• Remove from traumatic situation

• Educate survivors and family

• Zoloft

• Exposure therapy

• Coping training

vulnerability

1. social support

2. hardiness

   1. commitment (to keep trying)

   2. control (feel it)

   3. challenge (not a threat)

3. coping self efficacy (you can handle it)

4. problem focused coping

5. emotion focused coping

Motivational interviewing

Focus on where you are ad where you want to be 

Allows clients to drawn own conclusions about change

→ “maybe I should do xyz”

Multimodal Treatment

• Aversion therapy

• Relaxation training

• Self monitoring

• Coping skills training

• Family counselling

• Positive reinforcement

3Ds of Abnormal behaviour

distress, dysfunction, deviance

Medieval European Demonological Model of Abnormality

bind women and throw them into the water (impurities float to the surface)

she floats = she’s evil

she sinks = oopsies she was pure

General paresis

advanced stages by mental deterioration and bizarre behaviour, resulted from massive brain deterioration caused by the sexually transmitted disease syphilis

Vulnerability Stress model

predisposition to be vulnerable to a disorder

• Genotype

• Over or under activity of a neurotransmitters system

• Hair trigger autonomic nervous system 

• Hormones

• Personality factor (pessimism or low self esteem)

• Previous environmental factors (trauma, poverty)

reliability

The degree that clinicians agree highly in their diagnostic decisions

validity

diagnostic categories should accurately capture the essential features of the various disorders

helps differentiate disorders

Dimensional System

Relevant behaviours are rated along a severity measure

• Based on the assumption that psych disorders are different in terms of the degree of behaviour, not the actual kind of behaviour 

  • Within a certain limit, this behaviour is normal. Past that, it’s abnormal

• Reflects that there is overlap in symptoms for different disorders

  • Same underlying factors!

Rosenhan Study

sometimes you find what you’re looking for

we can overdiagnose

Competency

Defendant’s state of mind at the time of the hearing (not when the crime was committed)

• Too disturbed to understand the nature of the legal proceedings will result in institutionalization until fit

insanity

State of mind during the crime

“Not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder”