Short Answer Question Topics

motivation and emotion - drives (in drive reduction theory) and factors that increase drive strength

→ need → drive → response → goal → need reduction →

• elements of needs

  • internal deficiency: something lacking in the body

  • biological motive: food, water, sleep

  • innate: born needing them

  • push behvaiour: actions motivated by the need to reduce internal tension caused by unmet needs

• needs cause a psychological drive to emerge

• characteristics of psychological drives

  • aroused motivated state or bodily tension

  • psychological desire (conscious)

  • motivated to get relief from tension

• factors that increase drive strength:

  • prolonged absence of need satisfaction

  • intensity of the need

• drives prompt response: an action or series of actions directed toward a goal to reduce drive

• last step is need reduction

• components of need reduction

  • psychological drive reduced

  • motivation for response toward goal reduced

motivation and emotional - 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

• study showed that participants left alone in a room chose to do something surprising rather than doing nothing (gave themselves electric shocks instead of doing nothing)

  • fun and thrilling meets the need for stimulation

• arousal theory: we are motivated to keep arousal at an optimal level

  • arousal: bodily arousal of autonomic nervous system (sympathetic) including heart rate, respiration, adrenaline boosts

• how do stimulus motives help to maintain optimal arousal levels?

  • if your arousal levels are bored, you’ll seek stimulation

  • when arousal levels are too high, you’ll want to reduce stimulation and relax

• stimulus motives would have helped ancestors survive and reproduce (curiosity and exploration can lead to discovery)

motivation and emotion - emotional attributions/appraisals

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

• why is a hostile attribution bias and what does it lead to?

  • assumes others’ actions involve hostile intent

  • leads to reactive aggression

• emotional appraisals: conscious or unconscious evaluations of personal meaning of an emotional event

• questions about meaning of an event addressed by emotional appraisals:

  • significance for well-being? e.g. importance, threatening, good/bad

personality - classifying personality traits

• personality traits: differences among individuals in their thoughts, feelings and behaviour that are stable over a variety of situations and a fairly long period of time

• lexical approach: first step used to find a small set of personality traits can provide a complete description of the key aspects of our personalities

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

• source traits: small set of basic/underlying traits

• surface traits: specific traits that correlate with one another

• big 5: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism/Emotionality

• HEXACO: Honesty/humility, Emotionality/neuroticism, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness to experience

• personality inventories: standardized questionnaires, likert scales, self-report info

• MMPI-2: used to measure problematic personality traits that are relevant to clinical psychology and psychiatry, on 10 clinical scales

personality - 3 personality structures in psychoanalytic theory (id, ego, superego)

• id: generates unconscious, innate drives to aid in survival and operates on the pleasure principle and immediate gratification (impulsive, irrational)

  • pleasure principle: seeks pleasure, wants to avoid pain

  • eros, libido, thanatos

• superego: operates according to moral principles that come from internalized values (acts as our conscience)

  • influences behaviour through guilt (violating morals) and pride (satisfying morals)

• ego: moral principles of superego and immediate gratification of id often conflict, so ego mediates this intrapsychic conflict

  • follows reality principle: delays gratification of id for practical concerns

  • ego must satisfy life instincts of id because they satisfy life instincts

  • ego must minimize guilt from superego, must find a balance

  • employs unconscious defence mechanisms to manage conflict and manage anxiety

    • recieves alerts in the form of anxiety:

    • moral anxiety: desires of id conflict with moral standards of superego

    • neurotic anxiety: ego cannot gratify id drives due to reality principle

personality - projective measures

• Projective measures of personality require respondents to describe ambiguous stimuli like the inkblot above from the Rorschach test, instead of answering direct questions.

• reasoning: projection of unconscious thoughts/desires and a way to get around defensiveness in getting personality info

• rorschach test scored with computer that reflects part of figure used and content

• validity: you can distinguish people with thought disorders, but less evidence for personality traits

• thematic apperception test: show people an ambiguous social situation and ask them what’s happening and record their response

personality - social learning theories: psychological situation and reinforcement value

• social learning theories: 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 behaviour

• psychological situation: how the person defines or interprets a situation

• reinforcement value: the subjective value that reinforcement has for a particular person

personality - carl rogers’s self-theory

• self theory: views personality as the product of one’s self-concept

• 3 aspects of self: self-image, ideal self, true self

  • self-image: subjective perceptions of who you think you are

  • ideal self: person who you would like to be

  • true self: person you actually are

• incongruence: discrepancy between self image and true/ideal self; leads to low self-esteem, anxiety, and defensiveness

• congruence: selves are aligned

• development of incongruence:

  • conditional positive regard from parents

  • decreases positive self-regard

  • conditions of worth

• development of congruence:

  • unconditional positive regard from parents

  • organismic valuing

  • self-actualization

psychological disorders - theoretical criteria for defining and assessing psychological disorders

• mental disorder: clinically significant psychological dysfunction within individual associated with distress, impaired functioning and isn’t typical/culturally expected

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

• clinically significant: Is the disturbance severe enough to require clinical assistance e.g., treatment

• nonconformity with social/cultural norms e.g., antisocial personality disorder

  • can be problematic, e.g., homosexuality used to be considered violation of norms

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

  • limitations: sometimes normal, not always present in mental disorders

• maladaptive behaviour: impaired functioning - social/occupational

• statistical abnormality: thoughts, emotions or behaviour that have a statistically extreme level of frequency or duration may suggest clinical significance

  • MMPI-2

  • helps diagnose intellectual disabilities

• medical model: currently the dominant approach in clinical practice to distinguishing psychological disorders from normal functioning. It conceptualizes abnormal psychological experiences as diseases.

  • classifies disorders by symptoms

  • diagnoses based on symptoms

  • critique: comorbidity and stigma

psychological disorders - classical and operant conditioning of anxiety disorders

• classical conditioning: involuntary, innate responses

• little albert example

  • unconditioned stimulus: loud noise

  • unconditioned response: fear

  • neutral stimulus: rat

  • conditioned stimulus: rat and other animals

  • conditioned response: fear

• stimulus generalization: occurs when conditioned fears generalize to objects or situations similar to those present when classical conditioning took place

• operant conditioning: learning process that can explain the maintenance of anxiety disorders like Specific Phobias. The role of negative reinforcement is particularly important

  • 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.

psychological disorders - helplessness theory (pessimistic explanatory style) of depression

• helplessness theory: How a person thinks about or interprets negative/stressful life events affects how likely they are to develop depression.

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

• pessimistic attributions:

  • internal attributions: assume that a problem was caused by personal failings (i.e., it’s your fault)

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

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

• study: University students who were not yet diagnosed with depression completed questionnaires to assess their pessimistic explanatory style, and then they were followed up 2.5 years later to see whether it affected the likelihood of a future diagnosis of depression.

  • results: 17% developed depression years later

psychological disorders - stress-vulnerability model

• stress vulnerability model: shows how stress is more likely to result in a disorder when individuals have a pre-existing psychological or biological vulnerability.

  • Genetic factors or differences in brain function are examples of biological vulnerability.

  • A pessimistic explanatory style is an example of a psychological vulnerability

• Greater risk 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

psychological disorders - dopamine hypothesis re: schizophrenia

• dopamine hypothesis: suggested that abnormalities related to dopamine play a role in the development of Schizophrenia

  • states that neurons using dopamine neurotransmitters are too active.

• mixed evidence

  • support:

    • Antipsychotic drugs are dopamine antagonists (when you take it, it reduces activity of neurons that are driven by dopamine)

    • Amphetamines, dopamine agonists, increase symptoms in people with schizophrenia

  • anti:

    • Traditional anti-psychotic medications don’t reduce negative symptoms

    • Newer anti-psychotic medications primarily affect other neurotransmitters

  • current view: Link between dopamine and schizophrenia is more complicated than was initially thought

therapy - psychoanalytic techniques

• psychoanalysis: theoretical basis for psychoanalysis is Freud’s theory that personality and problems relating to personality stem from intrapsychic conflicts between the id, ego and superego

techniques:

• free association: Client speaks in a stream of consciousness, saying whatever comes to mind without censorship

• interpretation: Looking for clues in conflicts between the id, ego and superego and making interpretations about them

• dream analysis: Provide important clues about forbidden thoughts and desires. Dreams had both manifest and latent content – the latent is hidden, symbolic meaning

• 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: Happens when client reacts and responds to psychoanalyst as if they were someone else – someone they have/had a close personal relationship with. E.g., the psychoanalyst reminds the client to be on time, and the client gets overly angry as if they were reacting to their parent

therapy - qualities of client-centered therapist

• client-centered therapy: self-understanding and self-acceptance

qualities of client-centered therapist

• unconditional positive regard: Respect and acceptance; 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

therapy - exposure therapy for specific phobia

• exposure therapy: based on classical conditioning, and is widely used to treat phobias and conditioned fears, including those in specific phobias, social anxiety disorder, PTSD, and Agoraphobia

• goal of exposure therapy: extinguish conditioned fear by breaking association between CS and UCS

• techniques:

  • safe exposure: Promote safe exposure instead of avoidance (which is negatively reinforcing)

  • fear hierarchy: Rank feared situations from least to most frightening and encourage gradual exposure

  • imaginal/VR exposure: Practice before real-life exposure

  • relaxation or coping skills: Help client to stay calm in exposure situation

  • therapist support: Positive reinforcement; modeling; reality test assumptions

• how do conditioned fears change after exposure therapy?

  • you change the association to something positive e.g., social situations change from fear to relaxation

therapy - cognitive restructuring (in cognitive therapy)

• cognitive therapy: directive and active form of therapy that seeks to replace negative thoughts with more realistic and constructive ones. Recognizes that depression isn’t just from stressful events, but because of overly negative thoughts about these events

cognitive restructuring techniques

• identify automatic negative thoughts

  • recognizing cognitive errors:

    • blaming yourself

    • selective attention to negative events

    • pessimism about future

    • negative conclusions about personal worth

• reality test automatic thoughts

  • identify why they are thinking this way

• replace with realistic, constructive thoughts

  • replace with more positive thoughts

therapy - evidence that psychotherapy is effective overall

• through meta-analysis: statistical technique for calculating the average treatment effect for a given kind of therapy across many treatment outcome studies

  • meta analysis says psychotherapy is effective in general

  • average psychotherapy clients in treatment group achieve better outcomes than 80% of control group participants

  • treatment groups improve more quickly with less risk of relapse

  • more effective for specific problems like phobias, less effective for things like anxiety and depression

  • qualifications of trained therapists do not influence effectiveness

     

clinical mental health professionals - differences in the tasks performed by the various clinical mental health professions

• regulated health professionals: generally regulated by a professional college that provides oversight; they’re given protected titles

• registered clinical psychologists: diagnosis, psychological, psychoeducational and neuropsychological assessments, psychotherapy, research

• psychiatrists: medical training, diagnosis, prescribe meds, treat physical health problems, psychotherapy

• social workers: case management, connect clients with community resources, psychotherapy

• counselors: focus on stressful life events, provide advice/info/support on short-term basis, psychotherapy

• registered psychotherapist: psychotherapy

social thinking and social influence - what is the fundamental attribution error?

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

• internal attributions: explaining a person’s behaviour as being the product of their personality

• external attributions: explaining a person’s behaviour as being the product of their situation

social thinking and social influence - what is the actor-observer bias?

actor-observer bias: we are more likely to ascribe our own behaviour to external causes and the behaviour of others to internal causes

• internal attributions: explaining a person’s behaviour as being the product of their personality

• external attributions: explaining a person’s behaviour as being the product of their situation

social thinking and social influence - what are self-serving attributions?

self-serving attributions: we like 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

• internal attributions: explaining a person’s behaviour as being the product of their personality

• external attributions: explaining a person’s behaviour as being the product of their situation

social thinking and social influence - what is self-handicapping?

self-handicapping: placing obstacles in the way of your success to protect your self-esteem from possible future failure – creating plausible external excuses for poor performance

social thinking and social influence - what is conformity?

conformity: when we change our behaviours to be in agreement with other people

• e.g., Solomon Aschs study of conformity where 75% of participants conformed to the actors in the group who gave the obvious wrong answer

  • when no actors were involved, nobody answered incorrectly

social thinking and social influence - what is compliance?

compliance: bending to the requests of another person who has little or no authority over you

• foot-in-the-door effect: A person who complies with a small request is more likely to comply with a larger demand later

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

• door-in-the-face effect: People are more likely to comply with a moderate request after they have first refused a much larger request

prosocial and antisocial behaviour - what are the factors involved in attraction?

• familiarity: we prefer people who are familiar

  • repeated exposure enhances liking

• similarity: we prefer people who are similar to us

  • shared attributes validate our own ideas

  • shared attributes imply additional favourable info about the person

• physical attractiveness: we are attracted to people we find physically attractive

  • evolutionary psychology, reproduction

  • the halo effect

• reciprocity: we prefer people who reciprocate liking

  • knowing someone likes you boosts your self-esteem, leads you to like them

prosocial and antisocial behaviour - what is prejudice?

prejudice: negative attitude towards a group of people

• 3 components of prejudice:

  • beliefs: stereotypes about a group

  • emotions: feelings about a group

  • actions: discriminatory behaviour

prosocial and antisocial behaviour - what is the scapegoat theory of prejudice?

scapegoat theory of prejudice: prejudice is the result of displaced frustration and/or fear

prosocial and antisocial behaviour - how can we reduce prejudice?

• based on robbers study where 11 year old boys were recruited to join a summer camp and were split into 2 groups: rattlers and the eagles

  • stage 1: only do activities with own group

  • stage 2: engage in competitive sports for prizes

  • stage 3: mere contact (groups spend time together)

  • stage 4: positive contact (equal status, common goals)

• after positive contact, hostility between groups declined and friendships formed

• 3 conditions for positive contact:

  • equal status

  • common goals

  • opportunity for friendship

• friendships reduce prejudice by providing understanding and recognition of commonalities

IO psychology - what is organizational psychology?

organizational psychology: studies organizations to create structures and cultures that will improve performance

IO psychology - what is industrial psychology

industrial psychology: studies jobs to identify the necessary skills needed for success, finding talent

IO psychology - what is job analysis?

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

IO psychology - what is theory X leadership?

• belief workers must be guided into being productive because they are only motivated by extrinsic factors like money

• improving work efficiency, max output at lowest cost

• task oriented

• based on Taylor’s scientific management approach which emphasizes worker efficiency

IO psychology - what is theory Y leadership?

• workers enjoy work and accept responsibility

• workers are motivated by challenging work

• person oriented

• maximize psychological efficiency

• originates from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (self-actualization and growth)

IO psychology - what is transformational leadership?

transformational leadership: leaders who transform employees to exceed expectations and look beyond self-interest to help the organization to better compete

• key dimensions

  • idealized influence: serve as role model

  • inspirational motivation: motivate and inspire followers

  • intellectual stimulation: challenges followers to be creative

  • individualized consideration: demonstrates genuine concern for needs and feelings of followers

environmental psychology - what is a social dilemma?

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

• 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

environmental psychology - what is the tragedy of the commons?

tragedy of the commons: social dilemma where individuals, acting in their own self-interest, deplete a shared resource, ultimately harming the collective good, even though they may not intend to

environmental psychology - how can social norms be used to encourage sustainable behaviours?

• social norms marketing: communicating social norms through marketing materials, like flyers and ads

  • e.g. handing flyers, based on environment some littered the flyer and others did not

• 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. california houses received personalized normative feedback of energy use which shaped their consumption (increase or decrease)