person psych 3

**Two Aspects of the Brain that Can Be Examined with Technology**

Anatomy and Biochemistry

Anatomy

functions of parts of the brain

Biochemistry

effects of neurotransmitters and hormones on brain processes

**Divisions of the Nervous System**

__**Central Nervous System**__

__Peripheral Nervous System__

Central Nervous system

brain and spinal cord

peripheral Nervous System

__nerves that are extended throughout__

somatic and autonomic nervous system

Somatic nervous system

controls voluntary muscles (e.g., walking, talking)

**Autonomic Nervous System**

controls involuntary muscles (e.g., heart, glands)

**Sympathetic nervous system**

Expends energy; “fight or flight” or freeze

**Parasympathetic**

Conserves energy; rest, relaxation, and recovery

**The Amygdala**

•Links perceptions and thoughts with emotional meaning

•Role in negative emotions

•Role in positive emotions

•Role in assessing whether a stimulus is threatening or rewarding

•Relevant traits: anxiety, fearfulness, sociability, sexuality

•Relevant for motivation

Whitman murders at University of Texas in 1966

**The Frontal Lobes and the Neocortex**

Higher cognitive functions

The frontal lobes and emotion

Pleasant emotions (left) and unpleasant emotions (right)

Approach (left) and withdrawal or avoidance (right)

Inhibition of reactions to unpleasant stimuli (left)

Emotional stability (left) and neuroticism (right)

Propensity to get angry (left)

•Case studies

Phineas Gage

Elliott

**The Anterior Cingulate**

\-Helps moderate emotion

\-Too much activity= no good

•Controlling emotional responses and behavior impulses

•Chronic overactivity may result in neuroticism

**Brain Systems**

Nearly everything in the brain is connected to everything else

•Systems and circuits may be more important than discrete areas

Neural context effect

Neural context effect

it is important to look at more than one area of the brain to understand complex processes

**The Biochemistry of Personality**

\-Neurons communicate with **neurotransmitters**

\-**Hormones** stimulate or inhibit neural activity

\-About 60 chemicals transmit information in the brain and body

neurotransmitters vs. hormones

just carries info vs. can change the info

**Neurons**

Individual nerve cells, responsible for transmitting information

__**D**__**endrites**

•__detect chemical messages (*neurotransmitters*) from other nerve cells

__**A**__**xon**

Carries electrical impulses (*action potentials)* __a__way from the cell body, to neighboring neurons

**synapses**

Connections between neurons are called

axons and dendrites

Two branches off the cell body of a neuron

**Communication Between Neurons**

**Excitatory neurotransmitters**

**Inhibitory neurotransmitters**

**Excitatory neurotransmitters**

*increase* likelihood that connecting neuron will fire

**Inhibitory neurotransmitters**

*decrease* likelihood that connecting neuron will fire

**Neurotransmitters**

dopamine

**Serotonin**

Dopamine

•Involved in responding to rewards and approaching attractive objects and people

•Related to sociability, general activity level, novelty seeking, exploration

•Big Five: associated with extraversion and openness

•Parkinson’s disease (too low)- tremors in the muscles

•Bipolar disorder and impulsivity (too high)

**Serotonin**

•Role in inhibition of behavioral impulses

•Big Five: associated with __conscientiousness__, __agreeableness__, and __emotional stability__

•__Anxiety__ and __depression__ (too low) anger issues, over sensitive

•Antidepressants work by increasing serotonin levels; may have positive effects on personality

**Hormones**

**Epinephrine and Norepinephrine**

**Oxytocin “love hormone”**

**Cortisol**

**Testosterone**

**Epinephrine and Norepinephrine**

•Released in response to stress to create *fight-or-flight response*

•Females might have different initial, automatic response to stress

*Tend-and-befriend*

tend-and-befriend

*women instead of fight and flight, try to calm people down and try to unite as a group “safety in numbers”*

**Oxytocin**

**love hormone**

•Role in mother-child bonding, romantic attachment, and sexual response

•Decreases fearfulness

•Increases perceptions of trustworthiness and attractiveness in others

•Facilitates approach behaviors

**Cortisol**

•Released in response to stress

•Chronically high levels in people with severe stress, anxiety, and depression

•Low levels related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and sensation seeking

Not good for heart if too high, can maybe shrink the brain is too high

**Testosterone**

•Concentration in men is about 10x higher than in women

•Link with aggression is complex- but not everyone with high testosterone is agressive

•Fatherhood temporarily lowers testosterone

•Levels in men lower after marriage and rise after divorce

•Also related to aggression and sexuality in women

•Related to many other behaviors

•Levels increase for fans of winning sports teams

**Biology: Cause and Effect**

•Understanding the brain can help us understand behavior, but understanding behavior can also help us understand the brain

**Behavioral Genetics**

Examines how genes influence broad patterns of behavior and show how personality traits that differ from people are passed down from parents and shared by relatives

**Heritability Studies**

compares similarity in personality in people who are and are not related, as well as people who are related in different degrees (twin example)

Assumption of heritability studies

traits and behaviors are influenced by genes should be more similar among more closely related people

what we have learned from heritability studies?

* we have learned that genes matter
* family matters (family environment)
* shared family environment

Shared family environment

certain developed outcomes are affected by growing up in the household you were raised in.

gene-environment interactions

Genes gives you the chances of being something, but the environments decide whether the chances take action

genes do not cause personality or behavior, just lays out the blue print. It is our environment that determines if we follow through on that blue print.

niche picking

Niche picking

We tend to pick environments that support our mannerisms and behavioral traits

**Epigenetics**

Experience affects biology

idea that it can turn on and off genes

The mice’s are different because what the mother ate during both (utero)

Lack of nutrition in first trimester affects development way after birth (adulthood)

**The Future of Behavior Genetics**

•Focus on how genes and the environment interact

Genes have important influences on personality but are not predestination (not predestined to be a certain way) a reason: there are a lot of different genes that contribute to any one trait

•Understanding genetic predispositions could possibly help people find environments likely to lead to good outcomes

Evolutionary personality Psychology

Adress how patterns of behaviors that characterize all humans may have originated because of survival value

Altruism

doing something that doesn’t directly benefit you, but helps someone else.

inclusive fitness

the theory that we keep people related to us safe so that they could possibly pass down our genetic material through them

Sociometer theory

humans are social beings, so self esteem is a psychological mechanism to help gage the degree to which other people accepts us.

survival purpose for depression

if we are experiencing pain, the pain lets us know something is wrong in our life that needs to get fixed.

Evolutionary psychology accounts for individual differences in three basic ways

Behavioral patterns evolve as reactions to particular environmental experiences

Several possible behavioral strategies evolve

Some behaviors may be *frequency dependent*

frequency dependent

there are certain behaviors that are less common in society because it would be less adaptive for everyone to have them e.g. psychopaths. Society would not benefit from it

start

genes only determine how we ----- according to evolution perspective.

Freud

Used free association- word vomit

developed the talking cure

Believed first step in studying psychology is trying to understand own mind.

Influenced by his patients (most clients were women)

Psychic determinism

\
Idea that everything happening in a persons mind has a specific cause that can be identified.

Miracles, free will, and random accidents do not exist (everything happens for a reason in your mind)

unconscious mind influences day to day.

Internal structure

The mind is made up separate parts that function independently and can conflict with each other

Id: irrational and emotional

Ego: rational

Superego: moral

modern research backs up that there are separate functions in the brain. Freud wasn’t that off

Four key ideas of Psychoanalysis

Psychic determinism

Internal structure

Psychic conflict

Mental energy

Psychic conflict

Compromise formation

The ego’s main job is resolve conflict

Id and superego are battle out for two extremes.

used in modern psychoanalytic thought

Mental energy

libido

amount of energy available at any given moment is fixed and finite (it is not unlimited)

Freud argued you can free up libido with psychoanalysis for other things

Victorians thought it was crude, and scientist thought it wasn’t scientific

Psychoanalysis, Life and death

Two fundamental motives: life and death

Libido: life drive or sexual drive ( It could creation like making a difference in the world)

Thanatos: death drive- account for destructive activity such as war and the fact that everyone dies in the end

Freuds stage theory of Psychosexual development

Oral, anal, phallic, and genital

focuses on the psychic energy and how it is used

Oral psychosexual development

birth to 18 months

Physical focus: mouth, lips, and tongue

Psychological theme: dependency, passivity

Only the Id exist

Fixation= sucking thumb, chewing pencil tops over eating.

Adult character type

what a fixation looks like for someone in a stage

Victory is reaching the final (genital) stage with as much libido intact as possible

Psychosexual development

If we are under stress, Psychosexual development states we can retreat to an earlier stage. What is this called

regression

Anal stage

18 months to 3 years

physical focus: anus and orans of elimination (peeing and pooping")

Psychological theme: Self-control and obedience.

development of the ego

Adult character type: overcontrolled versus under controlled

Phallic stage

3 .5 to 7 years

Physical focus: sexual organs

Basic task: coming to terms with psychical sex differences and their implications

development of morality, conscientious, and superego; development in sexuality

Adult character type: rigid moral code verses lack of moral code; asexual versus promiscuous

Latency

7 years to puberty

psychological theme: learning and cognitive development

concentrate on learning tasks of childhood, so they hold off sexuality things for learning.

Genital stage

Puberty on

This staged is not passed through but obtained

Physical focus: genitals, sexuality in the context of a mature relationship

focus on creation and enhancement of life

Psychological theme: maturity

Achievement: psychologically well adjusted and balanced

Mental health: the ability “to love and to work”

Secondary process thinking

Rational, practical, and prudent(the ego)

able to delay or redirect gratification

how conscious part of the ego thinks

develops second; less important role

primary process thinking

The way the unconscious mind operates

Does not contain the idea of “no”

Goal is immediate gratification ( the id)

Seen during delirium and dreams, and sometimes in individuals with psychosis

Levels of consciousness

Conscious mind- least important

preconscious mind- we are not aware of currently: but we could be (what shirt did I wear for dance last week)

Unconsious mind- most important

difficult to bring to surface

Parapraxes (Freudian slips)

Forgetting (repression)

Slips (often in speech but also in action- you left your bag at your friends house because you wanted to see them again)

More likely when a person is tired

repression

unconsciously keeping unpleasant Info from entering your conscious mind

Denial

refusing to believe something that makes you anxious

reaction formation

replacing an unwanted impulse with it’s opposite

rationalization

to justify why they did something shameful

displacement

taking something out on someone

sublimation

taking a unacceptable impulse and turning it into a more acceptable outlet

projection

there is something you do not like about yourself so you make yourself believe others share these qualities

Regression

retreating to an earlier stage of development

strength of psychoanalytic vs. weakness

Focuses on ideas that are underemphasized or ignored elsewhere vs. cannot be proven false

there is sexism in psychoanalytic

males are considered to be the norm

Females are considered as aberrations or deviations from male model

Neo-Freudian psychology

used the same methods as Freud (case studies introspection)

Less emphasis on unconscious mental processes and more emphasis on conscious thought

Less emphasis on instinctual drive and mental life, more emphasis on interpersonal relationships as our source of psychological difficulties

Alfred Adler

Thought freud focused too much on sex

more importance on social interest

organ inferiority

masculine protest

two terms that root from Alerian thought: inferiority complex and life style

social intreset

desire to relate positively and productively with other people

organ inferiority

idea that people want to succeed as adults to compensate for a childhood weakness

Masculine protest

desire of an adult to become powerful

Carl Jung

he made

collective unconscious

archetypes

persona

Amina

animus

Collective unconscious

memories and ideas that all humans share that reside in the unconsious

Archetypes

basic images stored in collective unconscious

(earth mother, hero, devil, supreme being)

\

Persona

social mask

Anima

Ideal female for men

Animus

ideal male for female

Karen Horney

Disagreed with penis envy, and said that women just wish to be as free as men

Believed that adult behavior is often based on efforts to overcome basic anxiety.

Neurotic needs

basic anxiety

fear of being alone and helpless in a hostile world

neurotic needs

needs people feel that are not realistic or truly desirable (life partner that fixes your problems)

Erickson

He was all about conscious conflict

his view on development differed from Freuds because he thought development continues pass childhood and goes well into old age

According to Horney, why do women envy men?

men have more freedom

focused on conscious social conflicts; focused on the location of mental energy

erkisons theory of development------ where as frueds--------

crying

Evolution psych thinks ------ is a way to elicit social support