PSYC 1F90 Short Answer

What is the fundamental attribution error? Include definitions of attributions, internal attribution, and external attribution.

Attributions: Psychological process of determining why people act as they do.

 

Internal attribution: Explaining a person's behaviour as being the product of their personality.

 

External attribution: Explaining a person's behaviour as being the product of their situation.

 

Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to attribute the behaviour of others to internal causes without regard for external influences.

What is the actor-observer bias?

We are more likely to ascribe our own behaviour to external causes and the behaviour of others to internal causes.

What are self-serving attributions?

Allow us to see ourselves in a positive light. A positive outcome will be explained in terms of internal causes. A negative outcome will be explained in terms of external causes.

What is self-handicapping?

Placing obstacles in the way of your success to protect your self-esteem from possible future failure. Creates plausible excuses for poor performance.

What is conformity?

When we change our behaviours or opinions to be in agreement with other people.

What is compliance?

Bending to the requests of another person who has little or no authority over you (ex. Sales person convincing you to sign up for a new phone plan).

What is the foot-in-the-door effect?

• A person who complies with a small request is more likely to comply with a larger demand later.

• Relies on our motivation to feel like consistent people.

What is lowballing?

• You get a person committed to act, then, once they are committed, make the terms less desirable.

• The initial request seems small and manageable.

• Once the person commits, additional requirements are revealed.

• People tend to stick with their commitment despite the increased demands.

• Also relies on wanting to feel consistent

What is the door in the face effect?

People are more likely to comply with a moderate request after they have first refused a much larger request.

What are factors involved in attraction?

Familiarity: We prefer people who are familiar.

Similarity: We prefer people who are similar to us. Shared attributes validate our own ideas and attitudes. Shared attributes imply additional favorable information about the other person.

Physical attractiveness: We are attracted to people we find physically attractive.

• The Halo Effect: This cognitive bias occurs when we attribute positive qualities like intelligence, kindness, success, and morality to physically attractive individuals.

Reciprocity: We prefer people who reciprocate liking. Knowing that you are liked boosts your self-esteem. If we believe or know someone likes us, we expect that person to treat us well. Believing someone likes us changes the way we treat them.

What is prejudice?

A negative attitude towards a group of people.

What is the scapegoat theory of prejudice?

Prejudice is the result of displaced frustration and/or fear.

How can we reduce prejudice?

Intergroup contact: personal contact between members of different groups

• Exposure to individuating information: details about a person that help you recognize their unique individuality

• Recognition of commonalities: similarities between you and the other person

What is organized psychology?

• Studies organizations to create structures and cultures that will improve performance

• To create workplaces where people will do their best work

What is industrial psychology?

• Studies jobs to identify the necessary skills needed for success

• How to select the best people for a job

What is job analysis?

A detailed description of the skills, knowledge and activities required by a particular job

What is a task orientated job analysis?

Identifying the duties and tasks required to do a job

What is a worker orientated job analysis?

Identifying knowledge, expertise, and personality required to do a job

What are critical incidents?

• Situations which a competent employee must be able to cope with

• Critical incidents reveal behaviours important for success on a job

• e.g. a pilot should be able to remain calm during emergency situations

What is Theory X leadership?

• Workers must be goaded into being productive because they are only motivated by extrinsic factors like money

• Improving work efficiency, maximum output at lowest cost

• Task orientation

• Based on Fredrick Taylor's Scientific Management approach

  • A management approach with a sole emphasis on worker efficiency

  • Workers every movement is monitored and documented to ensure they are doing their job as quickly and efficiently as possible

What is Theory Y leadership?

• Workers enjoy work and accept responsibility; workers are motivated by challenging work

• Person orientation rather than task orientation

• Maximize psychological efficiency

• Originates from Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

  • Maslow: people have a positive, self-enhancing need for personal growth

  • McGregor: managers should see people as having the need for growth at work. Theory Y leaders will treat people as industrious, creative beings who enjoy challenging work

What is transformational leadership?

Leaders who transform employees to exceed expectations and look beyond self-interest to help the organization to better compete

Dimension:	Summary/Description:
Idealized influence	Serving as a role model for followers
Inspirational motivation	The ability to inspire and motivate followers Change the meaning of work Provide vision
Intellectual stimulation	The leader challenges followers to be innovative and creative, appeals to intellectual ability
Individualized consideration	Demonstrate genuine concern for the needs and feelings of followers

What is a social dilemma?

Situations in which individuals face a choice between self-interest and the interest of the group.

• The most beneficial individual action, if chosen by most people, has harmful effects for the collective

• The dilemma is whether you act in the interest of yourself or the group

What is the tragedy of the commons?

A social dilemma in which individuals, each acting in their immediate self-interest, overuse a scarce group resource.

How can social norms be used to encourage sustainable behaviours?

Social Norms: Widely accepted standard for appropriate behaviour within the group.

• Can be used to encourage pro-environmental behaviours

Describe Social Norms Marketing

Communicating social norms through marketing materials, like flyers and ads.

• A message documenting the high incidence of some desirable behaviour is disseminated through an ad

• The message can be conveyed via publicity events, t-shirts, posters, student newspapers, doorhangers, and email.

Describe Personalized Normative Feedback

A persuasion technique that seeks to change behaviour by providing people with personalized information about themselves as well as their peers.

• e.g. "you consume more energy than 80% of your neighbours"

Drives (in drive reduction theory) and factors that increase drive strength

Characteristics of Drives	Notes
Aroused motivated state or bodily tension	Hunger or thirst, for example.
Psychological desire	Conscious desire that makes you want to engage in a certain behaviour
Motivate relief from tension	Want to get rid of something uncomfortable

A ‘drive’ is a state of arousal or discomfort that is triggered by a person’s physiological or biological needs, such as hunger, thirst, and the need for warmth.

Factors that increase drive strength are the “push” of internal needs and the “pull” of an external incentive.

Stimulus motives and arousal theory

Stimulus motives reflect an innate need to seek stimulation and information. They are an internal influence that pushes behaviour involving curiosity, activity, and exploration. They are an innate need.

Arousal theory states that we are motivated to keep arousal at an optimal level. Arousal refers here to bodily arousal of the autonomic nervous system (e.g., sympathetic nervous system), including heart rate, respiration, adrenaline boosts and so on.

Emotional attributions/appraisals

Attributions explain why something happened. The same experience can result in different emotions depending on how we interpret the reason for something happening.

Emotional appraisals are another kind of emotional cognition, described by Richard Lazarus, which involve conscious or unconscious evaluations of the personal meaning of an emotional event.

Classifying personality - Lexical Approach

• Participants rate how well they are described by the adjectives

• This provides a comprehensive list that covers essential aspects of personality

Classifying personality - Factor Analysis

Factor analysis is a statistical technique that places specific personality traits into a small number of general categories, depending on how the traits correlate with one another.

• Introverted vs. extroverted

• Stable vs. unstable

• Used to develop the Big-5 and HEXACO models

Personality Inventories

Characteristic of Personality Inventories	Explanation
Standardized questionnaires	Ask the questions in the same way for all respondents
Likert scales	Rate the accuracy by which your personality is captured on a scale from 1-5. Summed to calculate factor score.
Self-report or other-report inventories	Rate your own personality or rate someone else's personality.

• MMPI-2 for example provides a statistical basis for deciding whether a person’s score on a given clinical scale is unusually high and therefore needing clinical attention

The Id

• Generates unconscious, innate drives

• Eros is a drive that operates according to the pleasure principle (pursues goals that give pleasure and avoid pain)

• Demands immediate gratification; no regard for morals or consequences

Superego

• Operates according to moral principles (internalized social and cultural values)

• Acts as our conscience

• Feel guilt if you desire something that violates morals

• Feel pride if you do something you know is morally right

Ego

• Mediates intrapsychic conflicts between the Id and Superego

• Follows the reality principle: delays gratification of Id to avoid punishment and negative consequences

• Must satisfy life instincts of the Id: finds an appropriate way to satisfy the Id without consequences

• Must minimize guilt from Superego: strike a balance to gratify the desires of the Id.

Projective Measures

Requires respondents to describe ambiguous stimuli like the inkblot above from the Rorschach test, instead of answering direct questions

• People project their unconscious thoughts and desires onto the image

• Also a storytelling procedure, where patient interprets an image

Social Learning Theory: Cognitive Behaviorism

Personality is not just due to our history of reinforcement and punishment in a situation, but how we interpret the situation. Because people can interpret the same situation differently, we need to know how they perceive the situation to predict behavior.

Psychological situation	How the person defines or interprets a situation.
Reinforcement value	The subjective value that reinforcement has for a particular person.

Reciprocal Determinism

Personality traits affect the situations we get ourselves into and how we react to them, which in turn influences learning that shapes our personality.

Reciprocal Determinism Mechanism	Example
People with different personalities may choose to get involved in different situations.	Extroverts are more likely to go to parties than introverts.
Personalities affect how we are treated by others.	Extroverted people are more sociable, and more likely to have people talking with them and having a good time.
Personalities affect how we interpret and react to events.	Introverts might be more hurt by someone rolling their eyes when they are trying to be funny, discouraging them from being social in the future.

Carl Roger’s Self Theory

• Personality problems result from incongruence, big differences between different versions of the self:

  • Self-image: Subjective perceptions of who you think you are

  • Ideal self: Person you would like to be

  • True self: Person you actually are

Congruence develops when:

• your parents love you and accept you for who you are

• you can be yourself as you go through life (organismic valuing)

• self-image fits with true self and ideal self because you can naturally be yourself (self-actualization)

Incongruence develops when:

• parents love is conditional

• you don’t think of yourself as good, lovable, and worthwhile

• you have to pretend to be someone you’re not to meet parents expectations

Criteria for defining psychological disorders

• Psychological dysfunction: disturbance in thoughts, emotions, or behaviour due to psychological or biological systems not functioning properly

• Social nonconformity: failure to conform to societal norms or standards for acceptable conduct

• Subjective discomfort: private feelings of pain, unhappiness, or emotional distress

• Maladaptive behaviour: impairments in social and occupational functioning

• Statistical abnormality: thoughts, emotions or behaviour have a statistically extreme level of frequency or duration (MMPI-2)

Conditioning of Anxiety Disorders (Little Albert)

Classical: Stimulus generalization occurs when conditioned fears generalize to objects or situations similar to those present when classical conditioning took place.

Operant: Negative reinforcement occurs when a response is followed by an end to discomfort or by the removal of an unpleasant event, which makes the response likely to be repeated because it provides relief.

Helplessness theory of Depression

• People are more likely to develop a mood disorder if they have an automatic, pessimistic explanatory style

  • Internal attributions: assume that a problem was caused by personal failings

  • Stable attributions: assume that a problem is permanent and unlikely to change, rather than temporary

  • Global attributions: assume that a problem will affect a wide range of situations

Stress-vulnerability model

• Greater risk of a disorder when there is a pre-existing vulnerability and high levels of stress

• The vulnerability or stress on its own may not result in a disorder

Dopamine Hypothesis: Schizophrenia

• Neurons using dopamine neurotransmitters are too active

  • Antipsychotic drugs are dopamine antagonists

  • Dopamine agonists increase symptoms in people with schizophrenia (e.g. cocaine)

Psychoanalytic techniques

Technique	Explanation
Free Association	Client speaks in a stream of consciousness, saying whatever comes to mind without censorship.
Interpretation (3 specific kinds of interpretation discussed below in table)	Directive technique, looking for clues about these conflicts, something that reveals itself when the client is doing free association
Dream Analysis	Freud says that dreams are the royal road to the unconscious. Manifest versus latent content (hidden symbolic meaning about unconscious conflict)
Analysis of Resistance	Occurs when the client seems reluctant to continue with a topic of free association. This is thought to be a sign of an unconscious conflict that the client does not want to confront consciously.
Transference	When client starts speaking to or treating the psychoanalyst as if they are someone they had a close relationship with Ex. Psychoanalyst says that they have been late and it's important to show up on time, if client gets angry that might be a sign that they are angry at someone else

Client-centered therapy

Technique	Meaning/Purpose
Unconditional positive regard	Respect and acceptant; non-judgmental and warm therapeutic environment; fosters self-acceptance.
Being authentic and genuine	Model self-acceptance to foster congruence
Empathy	Try to understand the meaning of events from the client’s perspective

Exposure therapy

• Breaking association between conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus

Technique or Goal	Explanation
Safe exposure	Instead of avoidance. Confront the situation and feel safe doing so.
Fear hierarchy	Rank feared situations from least to most frightening and encourage gradual exposure.
Imaginal/virtual reality exposure	Practice before real-life exposure (using simulations, imagination, virtual reality)
Relaxation or coping skills	Help client to stay calm in exposure situation
Therapist support	Positive reinforcement; modeling; reality testing

Cognitive restructuring (cognitive therapy)

• Directive and active for of therapy to replace negative thoughts with more realistic and constructive ones

Cognitive Restructuring Technique	Explanation
Identify automatic negative thoughts	About events in their life that make them more likely to become depressed Blaming yourself Selective attention to negative events Pessimism about future Negative conclusions about personal worth
Reality test automatic thoughts	What evidence supports their conclusions, and is there another way to look at the situation. Usually makes people realize that there is not much evidence supporting their conclusions.
Replace with realistic, constructive thoughts	Can make the person feel better. Find evidence against their negative thoughts.

Evidence the psychotherapy is effective

	No Treatment or Waitlist Control Group	Drug/Attention Placebo or Alternative Treatment Control Groups
Control natural improvement?	Yes	Yes
Control placebo effects?	No	Yes
Reason?	Passage of time applies to treatment and control group	Non-specific aspects causing expected benefits of therapy in treatment and control group

• Meta-analysis shows that the average psychotherapy client in the treatment control achieves better outcomes that 80% of individuals in control groups

Differences in mental health professions

Profession	Tasks
Registered Clinical Psychologists	Diagnosis Psychological, psychoeducational, and neuropsychological assessments Psychotherapy Research
Psychiatrists	Diagnosis Prescribe medication Psychotherapy
Social Workers	Case management Psychotherapy
Counsellors	Provide short term advice, information, and support Psychotherapy
Registered Psychotherapists	Psychotherapy