Psychology #3 Exam

Sex

The biologically influenced characteristics by which people define males and females

1 in 5,000 births have

Indistinguishable (ambiguably) genitalia

Gender

The socially influenced characterized by which people define men and women

Sexual orientation

Enduring sexual attraction toward members of one’s own sex, the other sex, or both sexes

Exclusively homosexual

• 3-4% in men

• 2% in women

Actively bisexual

Reported by fewer than 1%

U.S. report some same-sex sexual contact during their lives

• 6% of men

• 17% of women

Women’s sexual orientation

• Tends to be less strongly felt and potentially more fluid

• Sexual activity level also varies more

What causes one’s sexual orientation

• Secular- there is no consensus; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation

• Regardless of what causes sexual orientation, a good starting point is that everyone has a choice over their sexual behavior (Theme 4: we are responsible, limited agents)

• There is a lack of evidence for environmental causes of homosexuality

Homosexuality is NOT linked with

• Problems in parent-child relationships

• Fear or hatred of the other sex

• Childhood sexual victimization

Biological origins of sexual orientations

• Same-sex attraction in other species

• Gay-straight brain differences

• Genetic influences

• Prenatal influences

Same-sex attraction in other species

• Same-sex behavior has been observed in several hundred species

  • Swans, penguins, grizzlies, gorillas, monkeys, flamingos, and owls

Gay-straight brain differences

Gay-straight brain differs where one hypothalamic cell cluster is smaller in women and gay men than in straight men

Genetic influences

• Shared sexual orientation is higher among identical twins than among fraternal twins

• Sexual attraction in fruit flies can be genetically manipulated

Prenatal influences

• Altered prenatal hormone exposure may lead to homosexuality in humans and other animals

• Male homosexuality often appears to be transmitted from the mother’s side of the family

• Men with several older biological brothers are more likely to be gay, possibly due to a material immune-system reaction

Social psychologists

• Use scientific methods to study how people think about, influence, and relate to one another

• Study the social influences that explain why the same person will act differently in different situations

Social Psychology is the field of study opposite to

Personality psychology

Personality psychology

Focuses on how internal individual factors influence behavior

Social psychology

Focuses on the power of the situation

Instead, the situation ends up being a better predictor of behavior

Individual factors are NOT what cause our behavior

3 Core Concepts of Social Psychology

• Fundamental Attribution Error

• Cognitive Dissonance

• Central Motives

3 Core Studies of Social Psychology

• Asch

• Milgram

• Zimbardo

Fundamental Attribution Error

• Committed by underestimating the influence of the situation and overestimating the effects of stable, enduring traits for other people’s errors

  • Is a stable and bi-directional error

  • Example: Assuming someone who cuts you off in traffic is a rude person, rather than considering they may be rushing due to an emergency

• Through social identities people associate themselves with certain groups and contrast ourselves with others

Ingroup

“Us”

• People with whom we share a common identity

Outgroup

“Them”

• Those perceived as different or apart from our group

Ingroup Bias

Favoring of our own group

Cognitive Dissonance Theory (boring psych theory)

The theory that people experience discomfort (dissonance) when they hold two conflicting beliefs or when their actions contradict their values, leading them to change their attitudes or behaviors to reduce the discomfort

• Example: A person who smokes but knows it is harmful may justify their behavior by saying, "It helps me relax."

Solomon Asch's experiments: Conformity & Social Norms

He experiments on conformity showed that people fear being “oddballs” and will often conform with other group members, even though they do not agree with the group’s decision

• A psychological study where participants were placed in a group and asked to identify the length of a line but were deliberately misled by other group members (confederates) who gave obviously wrong answers, testing how much individuals would conform to the group opinion even when it was clearly incorrect

Conformity

Adjusting our behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard

Central motivations

• Normative social influence

• Informational social influence

Normative social influence

Influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval

• Conforming to avoid rejection or to gain social approval

Informational social influence

Influence resulting from one’s willingness to accept others’ opinions as new information

• Conforming because we want to be accurate/correct

People are most likely to adjust their behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard when

• They are made to feel incompetent or insecure

• Their group has at least 3 people

• Everyone else agrees

• They admire the groups’ status and attractiveness

• They have not already committed to another response

• They know they are being observed

• Their culture encourages respect for social standards

Stanley Milgram's experiment

Were intended to see how people would respond to outright commands

• Research participants became “teachers” to supposedly random “learners” and believed they were subjecting them to escalating levels of electric shock

A Role

Is a set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave

Role playing affects attitudes

• At first, your behavior in a new role may feel phony, as though you are acting, but eventually, these new ways of acting become a part of you

• Zimbardo study

Philip Zimbardo‘s Stanford Prison simulation study

Controversial, but showed the power of the situation and of role playing

• While some initial role-playing occurred on the first day, the second day marked a significant shift in behavior as participants fully embraced their assigned identities

Lessons from the obedience studies

• Strong social influences can make people conform to falsehoods or capitulate to cruelty

• Ordinary people are corrupted by evil situations

Memory

Any indication that learning has persisted over time

• It is our ability to store and retrieve information

2 Major purposes of memory

1. Memory is different than we intuitively think

2. You are probably studying wrong

• Memories are construction 
  

3 Parts to Memory

• Encoding

• Storage

• Retrieaval

Dual Track Encoding

• Some information is automatically processed

  • However, new or usual information requires attention and effort

Automatic Processing

We process an enormous amount of information effortlessly, such as the following:

• Space: We automatically encode the place of a picture on a page

• Time: We unintentionally note the general time that events take place

• Frequency: You effortlessly keep track of things that happen to you

Effortful Encoding

A lot of information that hits our brains will be lost forever

• Which is why you have to take notes on this slide

Encoding Issues

• Next-inline Effect

• Serial Position Effect

• Spacing Effect

Next-in-line Effect

When you are so anxious about being next that you cannot remember what the person just before you in line says, but you can recall what other people around you say

• Example: In a group where everyone is introducing themselves, you might struggle to remember the name of the person who spoke right before or after you because you were focused on your own introduction

Serial Position Effect

When your recall is better for the first and last items on a list, but poor for middle items

Memory hacks based on encoding/storage

• Spacing effect

• Testing effect

Spacing Effect

Encoding is more effective when it is spread over time

• Distributed practice

• Massed practice

Distributed practice

Produces better long-term retention that is achieved by study or practice is spread out over time

Massed practice

Produces speedy short-term learning and feelings of confidence, but those who learn quickly also forget quickly

Testing Effect

You have to clear out your working memory before, so you can be sure that new information has reached your long-term storage!

• Repeated self–testing does more than access learning, it improves it

Storage: Maintaining memories over time

• Sensory memory

• Short-term memory/Working memory

• Long-term memory

Sensory Memory

Storage that holds sensory information for a few seconds or less

• Iconic Memory

• Echoic Memory

Iconic memory

Fast-decaying store of visual information

Echoic memory

Fast-decaying store of auditory information

Short-Term Memory (STM)/Working Memory

• Storage that holds non-sensory information for more than a few seconds but less than a minute; can hold about 7 items (+/-2)

• Primarily involves the prefrontal cortex

  • A 1959 experiment showed how quickly short-term memory fades without rehearsal. On a test for memory of three-letter strings, research highly accurate when tested a few seconds after exposure to each string, but if the test was delayed another 15 seconds, people barely recalled the strings at all

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

• Storage that holds information for hours, days, weeks, or years; no known capacity

• Primarily involves the hippocampus

• In contrast to both sensory and STM, LTM has no known capacity limits

• People can recall items from LTM memory even if they haven’t thought of them for years

  • Researchers have found that even 50 years after graduation, people can accurately recognize about 90% of their high school classmates from yearbook photographs

Retrieval Cues

Memories do not sit in a single place in your brain

• They are held in storage by a web of associations

• These associations are like anchors that help retrieve memory

Priming

To retrieve a specific memory from the web of associations, you must first activate one of the strands that leads to it

• Context Effects

• Moody & Memories

Context Effects

Scuba divers recall more words underwater if they learned the list underwater, while they recall more words on land if they learned that list on land

Moody & Memories

We usually recall experiences that are consistent with our current mood

• Emotions, or moods, serve a retrieval cues

Main improving memory strategies

Every brain is different, some trial and error to figure out what works best for you is normal

• Study repeatedly in shorter bursts to boost long-term recall

• Spend more time rehearsing or actively thinking about the material (as opposed to passively reading it)

• Turn off the music and get the screens out of reach!

• Plan your retrieval cues

Retrieval cue examples

• Make material personally meaningful

• Use mnemonic devices and planned retrieval cues

  • Method of Loci (memory palace): a memorization technique that uses familiar spaces to recall information

  • Make up a story

  • Chunks- acronyms or hierarchies

Hierarchy

Complex information broken down into broad concepts and further subdivided into categories and subcategories

Emotion

A response of the whole organism involving:

1. Bodily arousal (heart pounding)

2. Expressive behavior (tears, smiling)

3. Conscious experience (both thoughts and feelings)

Emotions are adaptive responses that support survival

Why do we have emotions

Corollary Izard

Isolated ten basic emotions that include physiology and expressive behavior

The 10 basic emotions

• Joy

• Interest-excitement

• Surprise

• Sadness

• Shame

• Anger

• Disgust

• Guilt

• Contempt

• Fear

Naturally occurring infant emotions

• Joy

• Anger

• Interest

• Disgust

• Surprise

• Sadness

• Fear

Gender & Emotion

• Men and women do not appear to differ in the amount of emotion they feel

• People tend to attribute female emotionality to disposition and male emotionality to circumstance

Women

• Tend to read emotional cues more easily and to be more empathetic

• Express more emotion with their faces

Theories of emotion

• James-Lange theory

• Cannon-Bard theory

• Two-factor theory

James-Lange Theory

• Arousal comes before emotion

• Experience of emotion is caused by our physiological response

  • EX: Bear -> Specific physiological state -> Experience of fear

Cannon-Bard Theory

• Arousal and emotion happen at the same time

• Emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers (1) physiological response and (2) the subjective experience of emotion

• Human body responses run parallel to the cognitive responses rather than causing them

  • EX: Bear -> Specific physiological state AND Experience of fear

Two-factor Theory

• Schachter-Singer’s theory that to experience emotion, one must (1) be physically aroused and (2) cognitively label the arousal

• Emotions have two ingredients: Physical arousal and Cognitive appraisal

  • EX: Bear -> General physiological arousal -> Experience of fear

Fast & Slow pathways of fear

According to Joseph LeDoux, information about a stimulus takes two routes simultaneously:

Fast Pathway of Fear

Goes from the thalamus directly to the amygdala

Slow Pathway of Fear

Goes from the thalamus to the cortex and then to the amygdala

Emotional Regulation

The use of cognitive and behavioral strategies to understand and influence one’s emotional experience