AP Psych Unit 5 Terms

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Positive Psychology

• Study of human flourishing

• Promotes strengths, virtues that foster well-being, resilience, and positive emotions

Well-being

• Self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life.

Resilience

• The personal strength that helps people overcome stress, trauma, and adversity.

Gratitude

• An appreciative emotion people experience after receiving a beneficial action from others or recognizing their good fortune.

• Gratitude makes you happier. Appreciate the small and big things in life.

Signature Strengths

• The most prominent and essential character strengths central to one’s identity

• They’re your personal superhero powers.

  • Things you’re naturally good at and that make you feel truly alive.

Virtue

• Quality or characteristic that is beneficial to psychological health and has positive connotations in society

• Ex. wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, transcendence.

  • These are further composed of more traits (ex. zest, curiosity, judgement).

Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG)

• Positive growth following extremely challenging circumstances and crises

  • It can lead to an increased zest for life, personal strength, enhanced relationships, and spiritual growth.

  • PTG is more likely when you have strong relationships and support systems to aid your growth.

• New neurons grow to overcome the old connections you formed.

  • A person who has PTSD maintains the same neurons—the same traumatic connections and thus reliving all of it.

• Not everyone experiences PTG.

• It’s not a linear process

• PTG can coexist with trauma and PTSD; PTG doesn’t mean your trauma disappears completely.

Toxic Positivity

• Belief that one must constantly be positive regardless of the presence of other “negative” emotions or difficult situations.

• There’s nothing wrong with expressing sadness or other “negative” emotions; we are human.

• Ex. “Just think positive! Your circumstances aren’t that bad!”

• Instead, we should practice realistic, healthy positivity.

  • Realize setbacks are part of life.

  • Focus not on artificial happiness but coping skills and resilience.

• If we were always happy, the “specialness” of happiness would disappear.

Neurodevelopmental Disorders

• Disorders that develop in early childhood/from birth and alter thinking, behavior, social, and motor skills.

• Includes Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, and other intellectual disabilities.

• People with neurodevelopmental disorders have struggles with perceiving and processing information. Without good support, they can suffer from communication and functioning troubles.

  • However, they can still succeed and do well in school and beyond.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

• A psychological disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by limitations in communication and social interactions

• Frequently involves rigidly fixated interests and repetitive behaviors.

• Traits:

  • Social Exhausting and Masking

  • Struggling interoception (understanding internal body signals, such as hunger, thirst, bathroom time)

  • Hyperlexia

  • Deep empathy and focus

  • Sensory needs and seeking

  • Coordination challenges.

• Stigmas:

  • Autistic people are unempathetic.

  • Autistic people are always savants (geniuses who excel at a certain topic or skill but struggle in everything else)

Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

• Psychological disorder marked by extreme inattention and/or hyperactivity and impulsivity.

  • There are three types: inattentive, hyperactive-impulsive, and combined.

• Surprisingly, nowadays mothers in their 40’s have the most diagnoses today.

Health Psychology

• Field of psychology specializing in the impact of psychological, behavioral, and cultural factors on health and wellness

Psychoneuroimmunology

• The study of how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes together affect our immune system and health

Stress

• The process in which we perceive and respond to certain stimuli—stressors—that we perceive as threatening or challenging.

Stressors

• The stimuli that induce stress

Approach and Avoidance Motives

• Incentives and drives to approach or avoid a stimulus.

Hypertension

• When blood pressure remains consistently high over time

• Due to stress and flight-fight reactions

Eustress

• Positive stress response that can be psychological, physical, or biochemical

• Can improve focus, productivity, and resilience.

Distress

• Negative stress response which induces fear, dread, anxiety, and burnout.

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

• Selye’s concept of the body's adaptive response to stress in three phases:

• 1) Alarm

  • Encounter threatening stimulus, fight or flight activated.  If threat avoided, stage ends.

  • Your body prepares to fight back by mobilizing resources using the sympathetic nervous system.

• 2) Resistance

  • If the threat is not avoided there's a prolonged state of stress. 

  • Activation of stress cannot be kept up indefinitely.

    • Bodily resources maintain high levels to meet the challenge for a lengthy period of time. However, as time passes, the body’s resources dwindle.

• 3) Exhaustion

  • Energy and strength are used up by maintaining resistance.

  • Can become vulnerable to illness, fatigue & injury.

Tend-and-Befriend Response

• Under stress, people (especially women) may nurture themselves and others (tend) and bond with and seek support from others (befriend).

Walter Cannon

• Identified the role of fight or flight and the sympathetic nervous system in dealing with stress.

• Additionally, the endocrine system plays a role in stress responses by secreting cortisol, a stress hormone.

Hans Selye

• Hans Selye discovered that the adaptive response of the body is generic to any type of stressor and responses will be similar to both physical and psychological sources of stress.

Coronary Heart Disease

• The clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle

• Leading cause of death in many developed countries, like the U.S..

Type A

• Friedman and Rosenman's term for competitive, hard driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people.

Type B

• Friedman and Rosenman’s term for easygoing, relaxed people.

Problem-Focused Coping

• Attempting to alleviate stress directly — by changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor.

Emotion-Focused-Coping

• Attempting to alleviate stress by avoiding or ignoring a stressor and attending to emotional needs related to our stress reaction.

• Generally worse solution than problem-focused coping.

Coping

•  Alleviating stress using emotional, cognitive, or behavioral methods.

External Locus of Control

•  Thee perception that outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate.

Internal Locus of Control

• The perception that we control our own fate.

Self Control

• The ability to control impulses and delay short-term gratification for greater long-term rewards. 

Psychological Disorder

• A disturbance in people’s thoughts, emotions, or behaviors that causes distress or suffering, and impairs their daily lives. 

• Dysfunctional - interfering with the ability to conduct daily activities in a constructive way

• Distressful - The person and others feel pain and discomfort associated with emotions, thoughts, or behaviors

• Deviant - goes against the norm of behavior (may be abnormal in one culture, normal in another)

  • NOT deviant as in bad or misbehaving.

• Note: people who are mentally ill are more likely to be victims than abusers; their mental illness doesn’t make them evil

Dyslexia

• Learning disorder that affects reading accuracy, fluency and comprehension

  • Difficulty with left-right directionality, organization, working memory, and speech.

• Can co-occur with other learning disorders

• Can cause lots of problems in school if gone untreated and unmanaged; those who cope with it and get support can succeed

• Dyslexic kids use parts of their brain nearly five times more than normal children—they often come home from school exhausted from trying to understand everything.

Medical Model

• The concept that diseases – in this case, psychological disorders – have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and, in most cases cured, often through treatment in a hospital.

Diathesis-Stress Model

• The concept that genetic predispositions (diathesis) combine with environmental stressors (stress) to influence psychological disorder.

Epigenetics

• “Above” or “in addition” to (epi) genetics; the study of the molecular mechanisms by which environments can influence genetic expression (without a DNA change).

DSM-5-TR

• The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth edition, Text Revision; a widely used system for classifying psychological disorders.

• Critics of the DSM have faulted it for casting too wide a net and for labels being subjective and increasing negative stigma. 

The International Classification of Diseases (ICD)

• A system used by the World Health Organization (WHO) to classify both physical and mental diseases

Dysgraphia

• Learning disorder that affects writing ability (handwriting, spelling, organization)

• Can come in conjunction with dyslexia

• Technology can help aid these students (ex. keyboards where you just have to press letters).

Dyscalculia

• Learning disorder that affects numerical understanding, calculations, and math reasoning.

• Mental math, memorizing math facts, time management, and others can be debilitated.

• Not as many resources and support for people with dyscalculia exist as there is for dyslexia.

• People with dyscalculia can still excel in math-related fields (ex. Bill Gates).

Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders

• Group of disorders characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking or speech, disorganized or unusual motor behavior, and negative symptoms (such as diminished emotional expression)

• Includes schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorder

• ~80% heritability rate

Psychotic Disorders

• A group of disorders marked by irrational ideas, distorted perceptions, and a loss of contact with reality.

• Psychosis alone is NOT a disorder.

Delusion

• A false belief, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders.

• Schizophrenic people have a hard time differentiating between these and reality.

Schizophrenia

• Anywhere from 176 to 413 genes might be associated with schizophrenia.

• ~80% heritability rate

• People with schizophrenia often have a hard time differentiating between reality and their internal world

• ~20 million people suffer from schizophrenia

  • It is mostly men who are diagnosed

  • Onset occurs as young people enter adulthood

• Some symptoms, like hallucinations and confusing people, can overlap with dementia (but they have different reasons for why they exist).

• Traits are characterized as positive (present) and negative (absent)—positive/negative does NOT mean good or bad.

  • Ex. positive symptoms include delusions, jumbled speech, hallucinations, and inappropriate or excessive emotional responses.

  • Ex. negative symptoms include a lack of emotional facial expressions, catatonia, a lack of movement, diminished emotions, and low empathy

• Chronic Schizophrenia

  • Symptoms appear by late adolescence or early adulthood

  • Can worsen with age

  • Longer onset and harder to spot because symptoms are so spaced out.

• Acute Schizophrenia

  • Symptoms can happen at any age

  • Occurs as a result of a severe traumatic incident

  • Shorter onset; once treated, can be coped with

• Risk Factors

  • Low birth weight

  • Maternal diabetes

  • Older paternal age

  • Oxygen deprivation

  • Famine

  • Extreme stress

  • Mid-pregnancy exposure to the flu virus

Dopamine Hypothesis of Schizophrenia

• Theory that suggests that the disorder is caused by abnormal dopamine levels in the brain.

Affective vs. Non-affective

• Affective as a suffix denotes having a mood disorder.

  • Ex. “schizo-affective” indicates both schizophrenia AND a mood disorder.

    • Just schizophrenia would be no mood.

Depressive Disorders

• Group of disorders characterized by a persistent and enduring sense of sadness, irritability and emptiness.

  • Remember that it’s normal to feel sad, especially after adversity, but these are disorders because these periods are prolonged and disrupts the person’s life.

• Consists of major depressive disorder, persistent depressive disorder, and “smiling” depression.

• In depression, frontal lobe activity is higher whereas limbic system (emotional nervous system) activity is reduced

  • Serotonin is reduced during depression

• Depressants, like alcohol, will exacerbate depression.

Bipolar Disorders

• Group of disorders in which people oscillate between heavy lows and manic highs.

• Consists of bipolar I and II disorder.

• In mania, the frontal lobe shows decreased activity while the limbic system is higher (think: during mania, you’re not using rational thought); the opposite is true for depressed periods.

• Norepinephrine is reduced during mania, and serotonin is reduced during depression

• ~85% heritability rate

Major Depressive Disorder

• A disorder in which a person experiences five or more symptoms lasting two or more weeks

• ~40% heritability rate

Persistent Depressive Disorder

• A disorder in which a person experiences depressed moods very frequently for at least two years.

• Formerly called dysthymia.

Smiling Depressive Disorder

• A disorder characterized with symptoms the same as other depressive disorders, but the person experiencing it appears completely normal and happy on the outside and in social situations (masking).

  • When they’re alone, they feel immensely depressed and show that.

• Much harder to spot and thus people may not see the warning signs for suicide.

Rumination

• Compulsive fretting; overthinking problems and their causes.

Mania

• Hyperactive, wildly optimistic state.

  • Frequently characterized by poor judgement, hyper sociality and sexuality, impulsivity, racing thoughts, and a loss of sleep.

• One end of the spectrum of emotions bipolar people experience.

Bipolar I Disorder

• Most severe form of bipolar.

• Extreme oscillations between high and low states.

  • High states can lead to extremely risky actions (ex. depleting bank account, attempting life-threatening things, dropping everything and going to another country)

  • Low states are the polar opposite. You feel like you want to just rot in your bed.

• Criteria: At least one full manic episode that lasts at least a week or results in hospitalization.

• Mania (severe) + Depression (optional)

Bipolar II Disorder

• Less severe form of bipolar where people oscillate between depression and milder hypomania.

  • People with this can also have in-between

• Not as manic as Bipolar I, but symptoms still affect the person.

• Lexi from the modern romance episodes/

• Criteria: Must have had at least one major depressive episode.

• Hypomania (milder) + Major Depression (required)

How does explanatory style affect depression?

• People who suffer from depression tend to have pessimistic explanatory styles, which in turn contribute to their depression

  • This involves lots of self-doubt, self-blame, guilt, self-hatred, and even suicidal ideations.

• Stable vs. Temporary

  • Stable: NOT stable as in mentally stable, stable means “unchanging”. In this case, a rigid way of thinking.

  • Temporary: Stage in which the person recognizes the fleetingness of their pain.

• Global vs. Specific

  • Global: Overgeneralizing and jumping to conclusions; believing the problem is the end of the world

  • Specific: “While I miss my partner, I have supportive family and friends”

• Internal vs, External

  • Internal: Attributing the cause to within only

  • External: Attributing the cause perhaps within but also to other factors; rational and fair judgement

Vicious Cycle

• Stressful experiences → Negative explanatory style → Depressed Mood → Cognitive and behavioral changes.

Anxiety Disorders

• Group of disorders characterized by excessive fear and anxiety followed by maladaptive behaviors to reduce anxiety.

• Anxiety is human and normal, but it is a disorder when it becomes unmanageable and disrupts one’s life.

• Negative reinforcement is bad—constantly taking away stressors and “rewarding” anxiety can actually perpetuate anxiety.

  • It can remove anxiety in the short term (ex. a teacher allowing you to skip presenting because of your anxiety), but it can inhibit you in the long term.

• Includes social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and others.

Social Anxiety Disorder

• Anxiety disorder characterized by fear and avoidance of social situations.

• Extreme anticipatory anxiety about social interactions snd performance situations

• Ex. Heavily dreading group speaking, a recital, fear of eating in public, selective mutism

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

• Anxiety disorder characterized by a non-specific, constant state of anxiety

• A person with this will be constantly tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal.

Panic Disorder

• Anxiety disorder characterized by unpredictable, short episodes of intense dread in which a person may experience terror, chest pain, choking, or other frightening sensations.

  • Followed by fear about when the next attack may happen.

• Its symptoms can resemble the severity of heart attacks—there are instances in which ER patients show up for a heart attack only to find out it was a panic attack

• Call for help—it is better to be safe than sorry.

Ataque de Nervios

• Found among Latinos

• Characterized by shaking, uncontrollable shouting or crying, a sense of rising heat, loss of control, and verbal/physical aggression, followed by fainting or seizure-like episodes

Panic Attack vs. Anxiety Attack

Panic Attack: Out of completely nowhere. It just suddenly happens.

Anxiety Attack: Something triggering occurs to induce anxiety and then it happens.

Agoraphobia

• Fear or avoidance of situations because you may have a panic attack and will be unable to escape.

• It’s not just that they’re scared of public situations—they’re scared they cannot escape or be safe if they have a panic attack.

Specific Phobia/Phobic Disorder

• An anxiety disorder marked by a persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object, activity, or situation. 

  • Some fears are natural and “reasonable” (ex. poisonous animals).

• Ex. acrophobia (heights), arachnophobia (spider).

• Gradual exposure therapy is the only real solution. Hiding away will only prolong the fear.

Systematic Desensitization

• Listing in order occurrences pertaining to a phobia from least anxiety-inducing to most

• Then, after accomplishing each step, you pair it with something calming and rewarding (classical conditioning), and move on to the next one.

• This is to help with exposure therapy to overcome phobias.

Gradual Exposure vs. Flooding

• Gradual Exposure:

  • Encompasses strategies like systematic desensitization.

  • Gradual, step-by-step relearning to form new neural connections.

  • Paired with comfort

• Flooding:

  • Sudden, jarring exposure

  • Unhelpful and could actually exacerbate fear.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

• A disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts (obsessions), actions (compulsions), or both.

• Obsessions include concerns, like with dirtiness, misfortunes, symmetry

• Compulsions include actions to address these concerns, like constant hand-washing or other complex and consistent routines.

• Anyone can have compulsive tendencies, but this is when it is a full-on disorder that disrupts one’s life.

  • The brain activity of an OCD person and a neurotypical person is vastly different.

• Genetic variations can be linked to some anxiety disorders and OCD.

Hoarding Disorder

• A persistent difficulty parting with possessions, regardless of value.

• Can lead to people amassing large amounts of items in their homes.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

• A disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, hyper-vigilance, avoidance of triggers, social withdrawal, and other symptoms that lingers for 4 weeks or more after a traumatic experience.

• Hyper-vigilance: A constant, elevated state of alertness and arousal

• Flashback: When one “goes back” to a past, traumatic memory; feels like it is the present

• Hostility: Negative, aggressive state towards others.

• People can heal from trauma and experience post-traumatic growth.

Trauma Disorders

• A group of disorders in which exposure to a traumatic or stressful event is followed by psychological distress.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Treatment

• Most effective therapy for PTSD.

• Consists of combining eye movements and precise instructions to reframe past traumatic memories.

• Bilateral stimulation is utilized to help patients re-access traumatic memories to turn them into just memories.

How do classical conditioning and anxiety disorders overlap?

• Via classical conditioning, fear can be linked with formerly neutral stimuli

  • Moreover, when one experiences trauma, they can undergo stimulus generalization—they will not just avoid the specific stimulus that triggers them, but in general anything related to said stimuli.

• Compulsive behaviors are reinforced negatively.

  • Ex. In a person with OCD’s brain, if they wash their hands, they remove anxiety, thus creating negative reinforcement.

Dissociative Disorders

• Controversial group of disorders characterized by disruptions in normal consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, perception, and behavior.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

• Rare dissociative disorder in which a person exhibits two or more alternating identities

• Formerly called multiple personality disorder

• More of a trauma disorder as it stems from repeated, immense trauma rather than a personality disorder.

  • It arises from a past event or abuse being so traumatic that the person blocks it out by unconsciously creating new “people” in their place to fill that repressed memory gap.

• Frequently mischaracterized by media and television.

• Because of the switching between alters impairing the host’s life, DID can cause problems in one’s work, school, or otherwise daily life. (Ex. not coming into work because another alter was fronting and getting fired).

Dissociative Amnesia

• Disorder in which people with intact brains reportedly experience memory gaps

• People with this frequently report not remembering trauma-related specific events, people, places, or aspects of their identity, and life history.

Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder

• Persistent experiences of feeling detached from oneself or the external world.

Dissociative Fugue

• Psychological state in which a person loses awareness of their identity or other autobiographical information

• They also engage in unexpected travel.

Feeding and Eating Disorders

• Group of disorders characterized by altered consumption of food which impairs health or psychological functioning.

• “Feeding” is pertaining to younger children and infants who depend on others whereas “eating” refers to people who feed themselves.

• Women (especially adolescents) are more likely to experience these eating disorders, but they’re not uncommon in men.

• Western bodily standards (ex. slim figures) and expectations shape people’s self-esteem and can contribute to eating disorders.

Anorexia Nervosa

• Eating disorder in which a person maintains a starvation diet (despite being underweight) and suffers from a warped self-perception

• Sometimes accompanied by excessive exercise.

Bulimia Nervosa

• Eating disorder in which a person oscillates between binge eating and weight-loss inducing behavior (such as vomiting, fasting, laxative use, or excessive exercise).

Binge-Eating Disorder

• Eating disorder characterized by consuming (binge-eating) excessive amounts of food, followed by immense guilt and remorse