PSYC 102 - MIDTERM

Structuralism

• focused on physiology and location

• where do we physical locate the source of our emotions?

Functionalism

• study of how mental processes enable adaptive human behavior

• what is the function of specific processes

Gestalt

an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.

Behaviorism

• sought to rectify challenges with previous approaches

• behavior is a function of reinforcement

• skinner: psychology cab be explained by reinforcement learning

Chomsky

believed language was innate; developmental theorist, we are born with predispositions (things we like/dislike), uses nativism

Skinner

how positive reinforcement encourages behaviors, uses philosophical empiricism

Nativism

humans have certain skills or behaviors that are inborn

Empiricism

humans are blank slates and we gain data with experiences in our lives

Freudian slip

a verbal mistake that is thought to reveal an unconscious belief, thought, or emotion

transference

to assume that unfamiliar people have the same traits as someone who resembles them

Oedipal complex (Freud)

the child's desire to have sex with its mother and kill its father(an unresolved Oedipal complex can lead to displaced feelings of guilt and shame later in life)

psychodynamic thought

explains a patient's emotions using unconscious patterns of behavior (id, ego, super ego)

Id

unconscious strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification.

ego

mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id's desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.

reality principle

principle by which the ego functions; the satisfaction of the demands of the id only when negative consequences will not result

Superego

the mental system that reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly learned as parents exercise their authority. How we filter out our desires based on the norms

random assignment

assigning participants to experimental and control conditions by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groups

Obedience

A form of compliance that occurs when people follow direct commands, usually from someone in a position of authority

Milgram Experiment

an evil personality is not a pre-requisite to doing evil things, authority assuming responsibility is the main cause

Preventing Future Atrocity

1. dissent: publicly critique authority

2. delegitimize authority: authority is just as human as we are

3. reduce psychological distance: people giving orders should also be doing the orders

4. permit disagreement between authority

5. reduce specialization/compartmentalization of roles

confirmation bias

a tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions

group polarization

tendency for people's attitudes on issues to become more extreme after discussing with like-minded individuals

Social compliance

submission made in reaction to a request (making a decision because someone else told you to)

informational social influence

when we conform to others out of a motivation to behave correctly or gain an accurate understanding of the world (ex: following cultural norms in a foreign country)

reciprocity norms

automatic tendency to help others who have helped us in the past

psychodynamic approaches to personality

approaches that assume that personality is motivated by inner forces and conflicts about which people have little awareness and over which they have no control

humanistic-existential approaches to personality

not how we interact with others but rather how we work towards our goals (gives people unique means as to how they choose to fulfil their lives)

social cognitive approaches to personality

how we act around others and our behaviors in certain situations

trait approaches to personality

measuring everything that the person does, what others say about them, how they act in certain situations

Repression (defense mechanism)

keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious

Rationalization (defense mechanism)

offering self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one's actions

Regression (defense mechanism)

remembering time before the conflict, the person simulates what they were like before they were anxious (ex: age regression)

projection (defense mechanism)

disguising one's own threatening impulses by attributing them to others (ex: I'm not anxious! You are!)

sublimation (defense mechanism)

Id turns the anxiety into something productive, finding other ways to control your urges

displacement (defense mechanism)

turning Id's desires into something unproductive, often socially unacceptable

Identification (defense mechanism)

pretending to be someone who doesn't have these anxieties

reaction formation (defense mechanism)

Exaggerating the expression of the opposite feeling unconsciously to reduce unacceptable or anxiety-inducing thoughts

Big 5 (OCEAN)

Openness to experience
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism

pleasure principle

tendency of the id to strive for immediate gratification

psychological types theory

-adapted by Carl Jung
-neo-freud (emphasizes the unconscious)
-fully rejects biology as an aspect of personality
- theory is interesting but not scientifically rigorous

Briggs and Myers

• added Judging vs Perceiving to the MBTI

• developed letter coding system

acute stress

onset and offset of stress is short

chronic stress

Continuous stressful arousal persisting over time.

direct stress

physical stress (ex: stubbed toe)

indirect stress

comes from what we interpret will happen from the decisions we make (anticipatory vs current)

Transactional Theory of Stress

explains how stressors are perceived and appraised, as well as how people respond to those perceptions and appraisals

primary appraisal

the first step in assessing stress, which involves estimating the severity of a stressor and classifying it as either a threat or a challenge

secondary appraisal

perceptions regarding our ability to cope with an event that follows primary appraisal

anticipatory stress

upcoming or future events that are perceived to be threatening

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

Selye's concept of the body's adaptive response to stress in three phases—alarm, resistance, exhaustion

Eutress

positive form of stress that helps people work under pressure and respond effectively (acute)

Stage 1 of GAS

ALARM

• release epinephrine/norepinephrine, later releases cortisol

• fear/anger, increased attention, heart rate

Stage 2 of GAS

RESISTANCE

• hormones break down cortisol into cortizone

• body is still in alarm mode, but there is apparent homeostasis

Stage 3 of GAS

Exhaustion Stage
- resources are depleted and signs of wear and tear or systematic damage appear
-outward damage

irrational cognitions

-irrational prediction of future self
- I will be able to do this tomorrow

psychological consequences of irrational cognitions

• guilt/shame

• increase in shame

• shame about outcomes

• loss of concentration

Continuum of Social Influence

Demise of Behaviorism

Chomsky's Nativist attack:
- animals are more than blank slates
-If this is so, humans have innate dispositions (unique personalities)

Language Acquisition

• language is acquired too quickly for the explanation of behaviorism to be true

• language used too creatively to be considered as behaviorism

• Chomsky concluded that Skinner's radical behaviorist proposals must be abandoned to understand human society

overconfidence effect

the tendency to be overly sure of what we know

Scientific Psychology

perception, thought, behavior, intellectual endeavors and experiementation

clinical psychology

medical examination, psychotherapy, psychiatry, clinical practice

Pseudoscience

makes claims that are supposedly based on rigorous science and fact but are not supported by reliable verifiable scientific evidence

Research Psychology

how does normative human behavior unfold ?

Philosophical Empiricism

Our experiences make us who we are
- implies taht all humans are the same and can be adapted for any lifestyle

Challenges rectified by behaviorism

1. lack of empirical data, especially reliable and replicable patterns of data (high degree of experimental control)

• introspection or self reporting one's own thoughts

Behaviorism in the Cold War

Americans believed that the communists "learned" the wrong things
- tried to use Skinner's ideas to get communists to "unlearn" their beliefs

Project Bluebird and MK-ULTRA

psychological experiments banned in America for ethical reasons

• goal was to wipe the slate clean

• used repeated tapes, hypnotic drugs and sensory deprivation

• conducted by Cameron but redone by Hebb under more ethical grounds

informational influence

in the future people will consistently adhere to the new behavior ( we believe that others know better)

normative influence

in the future, people will adhere to the new behaviors but only in public or when they believe they perceive the norm accurately (we want to get along with others)

Social Impact Theory

when we should expct to observe normative influence

1. strength: how valued is your membership in the group

2. Immediacy: how subjectively close are group members to you?

3. number: how many are in the group?

Moderators of Informational Influence

• Ambiguity of decision

• Importance of decision

• Crises (emotional rapidly unfolding events)

• expertise of others ( perceiving others to know more than you)

Conformity

changing our perceptions, beliefs or behaviors in ways that are consistent with group norms (not initiated by a request)

Compliance

behavior elicited by a direct request

• narrative ( a reason)

• reciprocity -consistency

door-in-the-face technique

outrageous request first then a moderate one

• second request now seems very small

• you now feel selfish for saying not he first time

consistency mechanism

agreeing to requests can shift our perception of self

foot-in-the-door technique

small request follwed bya larger one

• consistency: person sees themself as a helper

• small request is not too trivial

low-balling technique

• compliance strategy

• secure an agreement but then reveal hidden costs

• exploits consistency (you don't want to back out now because then you would be inconsistent)

• commitment (all the efforts you put in are now down the drain if you say no)

Milgram's shock machine

• Psychiatrists thought 0.1% would obey, Milgram thought 3% would obey

• 65% obeyed in the results

Best case scenario for Shock Machine

• mild authority

• everyday citizens

• victims are in group members

• victims recruited from same town

• no explicit punishment for disobedience

Cognitive Revolution

a shift in psychology from the behaviorist's stimulus-response relationships to an approach whose main thrust was to understand the operation of the mind
- Chomsky's ideas start to refute the extreme ends of behaviorism

name of the game study

different results from changing the name of the game (game is the same though)

• studied if personality or situation better predicts behavior

• compassionate names led to more team work

• more independent names led to more competitiveness

fundamental attribution error

the tendency for observers, when analyzing another's behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition

internal attribution

the inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person, such as attitude, character, or personality

external attribution

attributing the cause of a person's behavior to an external event or situation in the environment

Correlation

relationship between independent and dependent variable

temporal precedence

causes must precede effects

• independent variable precedes dependent variable

• manipulate---> measure

Eliminating Confounds

independent is the only variable impacting the dependent variable

Preventing confounds

• experimental control, extraneous variables are held constant

• randomization: randomly assign participants to conditions

counfounds

variable that the researcher manipulates that is not directly related to the hypothesis

• must covary with independent variable (when IV is there, confound is there. When IV is not there, Confound is not there)

• confounds must cause change in dependent variable

Storytelling

• storytelling/interpretation matters -it can be unintentional (conscious self doesn't mean to create stories)

• it can be illogical (we can be overconfident in our stories)

• examples: attributions. stereotypes, impressions, scripts, selfhood...

dissonance theory

When someone acts in a way that is inconsistent with his/her self-concept, feelings of discomfort or internal dissonance result

emotion-focused coping

a type of coping in which people try to prevent having an emotional response to a stressor

problem-focused coping

Attempting to alleviate stress directly by changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor. Challenging the stressor head on

social facillitation theory

improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others
(only when you are confident in your ability)

autokinetic influence

small light is still but others see it as moving

Deindividuation

when an individual seems to lose himself or herself in the group's identity

post-decision dissonance

dissonance aroused after making a decision, typically reduced by enhancing the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and devaluating the rejected alternatives

effort justification

the tendency to reduce dissonance by justifying the time, effort, or money devoted to something that turned out to be unpleasant or disappointing

implicit attitudes

attitudes that exist outside of conscious awareness