Psychology

Neuroscience/biopsychology

How biological processes influence the mind and behaviour. It includes neuroscience, behaviour genetics, neuropsychology, and evolutionary psychology. All the subfields explore how the mind is connected to biological heritage.

Developmental Psychology

Human growth and development over the lifespan

Cognitive Psychology

Study of human thought and cognition

Social Psychology

Study of social behavior and interaction

Clinical Psychology

Assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental disorders

Abnormal Psychology

Research & Tx (Treatment) of mental disorders

Significant fields of psychology

Neuroscience/biopsychology, developmental, cognitive, social, clinical, abnormal

Psychologists study

How and why humans do what they do. They focus on the individual’s unique experiences and how they act and think

Psychological Schools of Thought

Psychoanalysis, Behaviourism, Cognitive

Psychoanalysis (School of thought)

Focuses on alleviating severe anxieties and tensions by analyzing their root causes usually developed in childhood. It believes that the unconscious mind has more control of personality and behavior and that libido (sex drive) is the primary human motivation. Founded by Sigmud Freud.

Behaviorism (School of Thought)

Developed in response to psychoanalysis with the core belief that the only thing that can be analyzed is behavior. Behaviorists believe that they can predict, control, and modify behavior if they can identify what controls it in the first place. Therapies focus mostly on behavior modification. Founded by B.F. Skinner.

Cognitive/Learning theory (School of Thought)

Studies how people perceive and deal with the environment, how people learn and remember, where memories are stored, and how people make decisions.

Role of Psychology in Treatment and Medicine

Treatment - Investigate problems and offer solutions. Medicine - Exploring how humans acquire values and what role they play

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Most prominent form of CBT combines knowledge from behavioral and cognitive psychology. It focuses on the way people think and act. In CBT, thoughts are how we feel emotionally and physically and influence how one acts in a given situation. It is problem-focused (used for specific problems) and action-oriented (selection of specific strategies by the therapist to help with their problems).

Psychology

The study of thinking and perception (senses).

Psychology plays a role in

Personality development and human behavior and its influencing factors.

First Studies of Psychology

Early Greeks (philosophical interest in mind and behavior)

Early Greeks Approach to Psychology

Thought that human personalities were formed via fluids called “humors”. Combinations and excess of humor were thought to change one’s health and mind.

Humors

Early theory of medical and physical health developed by Early Greeks. Each humor was thought to give off a vapor which would go to the person’s brain, causing different characteristics to form. Combinations and excess of humor were thought to change one’s health and mind.

Four humors

Phlegm - Excess causes sluggishness, dullness, or passiveness.

Sanguine - Excess causes happiness, generosity, and passion

Choler - Excess causes violence, vengefulness, and fiery persona

Melancholy - Excess causes sadness, gloominess, or feelings of laziness

Hippocrates

Considered the father of modern medicine. He studied brain injuries and concluded that brains are the centers of emotion after noting a personality shift in those with brain injuries.

Muslim Psychological Practices

Developed treatments to help those suffering from “diseases of the mind”

Lin Xie’s Psychological Test

Happened in 6th century AD, China. He asked people to draw a square with one hand and a circle with another, which was supposed to test their ability to be distracted.

Renaissance Era’s Significance to Psychology

14th-17th century CE. Saw the fall of feudalism and rise of capitalist market economy. It revived interest in individual personality and led to new ideas of free thinkers, mathematicians, artists, and scientists becoming accessible to the masses.

Scientific Revolution

16th to late 17th century CE. It emphasized abstract reasoning, quantitative thought, and the rise of the experimental scientific method.

The Enlightenment

18th Century CE. Included a range of ideas centered on the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional, government, and separation of church and state (freedom and science focused).

John Locke

Proposed that the human mind receives information based on our senses (ex. Smell, taste, etc.)

Modern Day Psychology

Saw the break of psychology into a separate scientific field from philosophy in the 1860s. Research and experimentation labs began to be set up for understanding human mind and behavior.

Drugs

Any substance that can change a person’s physical or psychological state. There are two types - medicinal and drugs of abuse.

Medicinal drugs

Any drug used to treat or prevent an illness or discomfort

Drugs of Abuse

Changes how the brain works in unhealthy ways. It alters the mind with no medical benefit whatsoever.

How Drugs Enter the Body

Implanted pumps, inhalation, injection, transdermal patches (patches of medicine to allow entry into the bloodstream), ingestion, and topical application (ex. lotion)

Substance Use Disorder

Brain disorder that stems from one’s physical dependence on drugs. It activates the brain’s reward system and causes addicts to keep “chasing the high”, eventually resulting in a cycle of abuse that is hard to escape.

Symptoms of Substance Use Disorder

Loss of interest in schoolwork, dramatic change in appearance, change of friends, unexplained mood swings, absences from school, change in eating habits, excessive secretiveness or lying, and a need for money

Commonly abused drugs

Marijuana, Inhalant, Club/designer drug, and Anabolic Steroids

Marijuana

The fried flowers and leaves of the Cannabis Sativa (cannabis plant) that is smoked or mixed with food for intoxicating effects.

Inhalants

Drug that is inhaled as a vapor.

Club/Designer drug

Made to closely resemble a common legal drug in use and effect.

Anabolic Steroid

A synthetic version of the male hormone testosterone that is used to rapidly accelerate muscle development.

Three Ways Illegal Drugs Affect your body

Effect the function of the brain, Danger to your health, and drug dependence and substance use disorder.

Types of Drugs of Abuse

Stimulants, Depressants, Opiates, and Hallucinogens

Stimulants

Temporarily increases one’s alertness and energy. Includes Amphetamines, Methamphetamines, Cocaine, Crack, Caffeine, Nicotine, Ritalin (ADHD).

Depressants

Causes relaxation and sleepiness. Includes Rohypnol (forget pill), Ketamine (tranquilizer), and DXM (cough syrup). Commonly used in bars to drug people, causing them to completely fall unconscious.

Effects of Depressants

Relaxation and sleepiness, slow breathing, reduced brain activity, loss of coordination, disorientation, and memory loss.

Opiates

Highly addictive drugs that are used as pain relievers, anesthetics, and sedatives. While they can be heavily abused (ex. Heroin, Morphine, Opium, and Codeine), they also have lots of value in the medical field, able to reduce pain and other unpleasant symptoms.

Effects of Abusing Opiates

Highly Addictive, Withdrawal, Cramps, Vomiting, Muscle pain, Shakes, Panic attacks, and Chills

Hallucinogens

Drugs that distort perceptions, causing one to see or hear things that aren’t real. Includes LSD and mushrooms.

Effects of Hallucinogens

Extreme anxiety, fear, and paranoia.

The “Big 3” Research Methods

Observation, Case studies, Surveys

Observation (Research Method)

Uses close observation of animal/human behavior. There are two types - natural and laboratory. The morals of an experiment may have an impact on the quality of the results.

Natural Observation

Research views people in their natural environment. This leads to greater ecological validity, a term used to describe the extent to which research can be used in real-life scenarios)

Laboratory Observation

Lab observations are often more meaningful than results in natural observation because of the ability to easily control experiment variables. They are less time-consuming and cheaper than naturalistic methods.

Case Studies (Research Method)

Involves an in-depth study of a group of people or an individual. They are useful for creating testable hypotheses and studying rare social phenomena. Some drawbacks include interviewer biases, atypical participants, and the ability to make accurate predictions (should not be used to determine cause or effect).

Surveys (Research Method)

Participants answer questions administered through interviews or questionnaires. After participants answer the questions, researchers describe the responses given. An effective survey must be well-constructed and easy for anyone to understand.

John Nash (Beautiful Mind)

A mathematician who had schizophrenia and struggled to cope with it for much of his life. He met his wife Alicia who helped him cope with his disease by caring for him, eventually causing him to undergo a massive transformation where he could talk to others and ignore his hallucinations.

Schizophrenia (Symptoms)

Hallucinations, Paranoia, Poor hygiene, Irrational behaviour, Break from reality, and Violent episodes.

What does Virginia “Ginny” Fuchs struggle with?

OCD

What contributes to the stigma surrounding mental illness?

Social and Medical judgment

OCD (symptoms)

Includes anxiety, repetitive unwanted thoughts, and compulsive behaviours. Those with OCD may spend lots of money out of fear that what they can’t clean is “contaminated” and therefore cannot be used.

Dr. Francis Willius

A doctor who attempted to treat King George III’s mental illness by using ineffective and dangerous methods, such as starving and chaining him. His “treatments” were radical at the time as they were based on the fact that the mind was a physical thing, and that treatments should not be solely based on religion.

“Brain on fire”

A non-medical term used to describe how hormones and chemicals cause certain parts of the brain to fire more, leading to feelings of “burning” in the brain.

Are schizophrenia treatments more or less effective later in life?

Less

Hypnosis

A way to treat mental illness by “tapping” into the unconscious mind. Drawbacks included it's unscientificness and the patient’s lack of knowledge about the treatment.

Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud’s treatment of mental illness. He used brain and dream analysis to draw conclusions about the unconscious mind.

Exposure therapy

Slowly exposing someone to something that they have been avoiding for much of their life. It is shown to be an effective treatment, especially with CBT.

Students with Psychosis

A community that pushes the stigma against mental illness.

America’s largest “mental health facilities” are

Jails.

Relationship between prisons and mental illness

Society viewed those with mental illnesses as mad, causing people with mental illnesses to be treated as criminals.

Dorthea Dix

Pioneered moral treatments for those with mental illness in asylums.

Moral Treatment

Used a “batwing” formation for the building and used large windows and hallways to allow for socialization and sunlight, which were believed to be a cure for mental illness at the time. Unfortunately, a lack of conformity and the civil war caused mental hospitals to be overstaffed and under-resourced, causing a fall in the moral treatment in asylums for a long time.

Pellagra

A mental illness that stems from a Vitamin B Deficiency. It wasn’t known to have a physical treatment in the era of moral treatment, causing an overrepresentation of those with pellagra in mental institutions.

Experimental Therapies in 20th Century Asylums

Chemically induced seizures, hot boxes, chemically induced comas, wet shock, wet wrap, hydrotherapy, fever therapy, and Malaria treatment.

Eugenics program

A theory that categorized the mentally ill as “deficient” or inferior. This led to patients' consent being taken away, causing them to be considered “less than human”.

Lobotomy

A medical procedure that involved cutting out a part of the brain called the frontal lobe. Women tended to be lobotomized more than men because it was believed to make them better housewives.

Thorazine

The first anti-psychosis medication that calmed patients down during surgery. This led scientists to discover that a lack of a chemical called dopamine was responsible for mental illnesses.

Pros and Cons of anti-psychosis medication

Pro - Massive reduction of hospitalizations and deinstitutionalization, allowing patients to return to their normal lives.
Con - People may struggle to find a place in society after leaving the “social net”.

Community Health Act

A program that allowed greater support for treating mental illness and reform to mental hospitals.

Nature Vs. Nurture’s role in mental illness

Certain genes can turn on or off, causing changes in the biology of a person. Someone’s genetics at birth may cause certain genetics that causes mental illness to be turned on or off.

Racism in Mental Illness Diagnoses in the 1800s

Racist beliefs caused African-Americans to be labelled mentally ill 10x more than whites, resulting in racist censuses of those with mental illnesses.

PTSD

Mental illness caused by a particularly emotionally traumatizing event. It was stigmatized by society as something that could be “shaken off” as a short-term illness and was originally given names like shell shock, combat hysteria, and battle fatigue.

DSM

Stands for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It standardized and categorized mental illnesses into about 100 different categories. Today, all diagnoses are made via the DSM, and if something does not exist in the DSM it is not considered a mental illness.

Robert Spitzer

Established algorithms for diagnosing mental disorders. His methods would greatly improve accuracy in a time of subjectiveness in diagnoses, allowing for a major step in the right direction for reliability.

“White” matter

The part of the brain where neurons can carry information from one neuron to the next.

Social Science Research Guidelines

Protect participants from long-term physical or mental harm
Obtain informed consent from all participants
Respect individual privacy
Deception MUST be approved by an independent panel
All experiments involving humans must be reviewed to ensure the benefits outweigh the risks.
Asch Experiment

Milgram Experiment

An experiment where people were told to “shock” others using a device even to the point of death. The person was not allowed to see the other person being shocked and heard increasingly painful screams. Even when the shocker was told that the person had a heart condition, many did not stop. It showed the ability to conform under pressure from authorities of a higher power.

Kitty Genovese and the Bystander Experiment

In a situation requiring immediate, urgent action, there is a less likely chance to help the more people are involved. (Refer to Sociology flashcards for more in-depth definition)

Zimbardo Prison Experiment

Volunteers became “guards” or “prisoners”. The guards were given all the power in the “prison”, and although thought to be normal people, became brutal and sadistic. Meanwhile, the prisoners were stripped of all identity and became distraught, having nervous breakdowns. It showed the ability of anyone to become evil if the right situation presented itself.

Marshmallow experiment

Based on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's beliefs and conducted by Walter Mischel. In this experiment, children aged 4 to 6 were given a marshmallow and were left alone. Those who went for 15 minutes or longer were given a second marshmallow and were shown to have better academic results.

Carlsberg Social Experiment

140 Carlsberg representatives dressed as motorcycle bikers filled a theatre to test what an unknowing couple would do under intimidation. Those who decided to sit were given a reward of beer.

Robbers Cave Experiment

A controversial 1954 experiment which involved pre-teen boys to see how they would work together to solve conflicts. The group of boys was told to bond with each other, but the counsellors split them up as much as they could, causing them to show hostility towards each other. Upon introducing a common conflict, they ended up working together, showing how adversity and conflict bring even the worst people together.

The Ape and the Child

Conducted by Winthrop Kellog where he put his 10-month-old son Donald with a 7-month-old ape. Eventually, Donald adopted the ape’s behaviour, which caused Kellog to separate the two. This experiment showed how easily humans learn and how it's easier to emulate animals than humans.

“Beneficial” Brainwashing

Conducted by Dr. Cameron. He believed that forcing a new pattern of thinking could be a cure for schizophrenia. He injected his patients with barbiturates and forced them to listen to the same audio containing new instructions for them. The patients were then driven to an unfamiliar location and executed the exact instructions given to them without being told. This was believed to be beneficial at the time and was heavily funded by the CIA.

Brown Eye/Blue Eye Class Division Experiment

Conducted by Jane Elliot. She split the class into two groups - the brown-eye and blue-eye groups. She gave the blue eyes superior treatment, causing them to immediately do better and even bully the brown eyes. The brown eyes began to struggle academically and lose a sense of identity. When the roles switched, the same results happened. It showed the fast effects of negative conditioning.

“Monster” Test/Experiment

Conducted in 1939 by Wendell Johnson. He selected 22 orphans and split them randomly into 2 groups, each of them having some sort of speech condition. One group was constantly reminded of their mistakes, while the other group was given positive therapy. The group with positive treatment had greater speech fluency while the other group’s condition worsened. It showed the impacts of positive and negative re-enforcement.

Bobo Doll Experiment

Conducted by Albert Bandura. He had adults yell and beat a doll named “Bobo” while the children watched, causing them to replicate the adult’s behaviours of abuse. This experiment showed the ability of children to learn heavily from what their environment presents.

Chronic depression

A period of substantial change in mood, thinking, behaviours, activities, and self-preception. It is a severe despondency or dejection felt over a long time (usually weeks or months) accompanied by severe feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy. It can also involve the “absence” of mood.

Mild Depression

Usually comes with feelings of a “depressed mood” for a couple of days or even a week. Mild depression usually coincides with stressful or sad life events. It is normal and is usually not a cause for concern.

Most depressions affected groups

Young people (teens) aged 15-24, high school students, those abusing substances, and women who have mood and anxiety disorders

Mental Health and Physical Health are

Closely related to one another. People with chronic pain or health conditions have a higher chance of developing a mental health disorder.

SES and Mental Health

The lower the SES (socioeconomic status) of a person, the higher chance that they have to develop a mental illness.