Psychology Notes

 

Intro to the Ologies

What are Social Sciences?

  • Study of individuals and groups (families, tribes & communities)
  • Societies & relationships
  • History, civics, politics, behavioural sciences

What do social scientists focus on?

  • Observable & measurable human characteristics
  • Things people do, think, buy, avoid, support, act against, etc.
  • Examples: buying habits, socializing circles, peer pressure, etc.

What is Anthropology?

  • Study of the human species as members of different cultures
  • Physical
  • Cultural: shared values, beliefs, behaviours & objects in between groups of people (religion, politics, food)
  • The similar thinking/acting of people make them part of a culture

What is Psychology?

  • Study of human mental processes/behaviours
  • Reasons for behaviours and emotions when it comes to the brain

What is Sociology?

  • Study of people in groups
  • Relationships between people and developed social structures
  • Looking at individuals in a group and looking at patterns of their behaviour

Ethics in Research

What are ethics?

  • A sort of system that involves following moral principles and rules

Why do we need ethics in research?

  • Harm against people/animals/things will be prevented
  • Researchers are able to conduct research in a professional and fair manner

What are the ethical guidelines used in research now?

  • No unfair discrimination
  • Group work & cooperation among all researchers
  • Maintaining image/integrity of own discipline
  • Awareness of the impacts of assumptions on society
  • Informed consent
  • Doing no harm

Unethical Experiments Throughout History

Little Albert

  • Design: John Waston introduced Albert to different white objects such as rabbits and cotton wool. He played with these items with no fear but then started to gain fear when Watson would play scary noises behind him making it seem as if those objects were creating the noise.
  • Point: To condition a phobia in an emotionally stable child.
  • Results: Classical Conditioning - Albert then associated those objects and anything that was the colour white, with fear.
  • Unethical b/c: Albert was never reconditioned back to normal. Was not able to give consent and mother may not have been fully aware. No long term follow/check ups. Induced fear could remain lifelong.

Milgram

  • Design: Teacher (volunteer) would provide shocks to students (actors) and increase voltage every time a wrong answer to a question was given.
  • Point: To see how far the teacher (volunteer) would go if asked to by an authority figure.
  • Results: Obedience - People will obey authorities and feel pressured by them even if what they are asked to do is morally wrong/questionable.
  • Unethical b/c: Adults would be shocked and the subjects could have long term permanent guilt.

The Monster Study

  • Design: Wendell Johnson conducted a speech experiment on orphans. Half of them were given positive feedback for stuttering while the other half were given negative criticism.
  • Point: Operant Conditioning - learning process where behaviours are then provided with certain consequences.
  • Results:  The group that received negative criticism suffered negative psychological effects and some actually developed speech problems that carried on throughout their life.
  • Unethical b/c: Never reconditioned or checked on later in life. Severe psychological damage. Children were left traumatized. They were minors so couldn’t give consent.

David Reimer

  • Design: Psychologist John Money recommended that David be raised as a girl (Brenda) after having his penis burnt off accidentally during a circumcision at the age of 8 months. This is because Dr Money believed that gender is due to socialization but this was an unproven thing.
  • Point: To see if someone could be nurtured towards the opposite gender.
  • Results: After several years of feeling “wrong” and not themselves, Brenda discovered the truth as to what had happened because they were not aware before and then decided that they would prefer to live as David.
  • Unethical b/c: Sexual/physical/mental abusive methods were used on David/Brenda during therapy, the child had no consent at the age of 8 months, David/Brenda struggled for a good amount of years of their life due to being treated as a female.

Three Identical Strangers

  • Design: Triplets were separated at birth and (adopted by) put into low, middle and high class families but the families were never told that the child they were receiving was a triplet.
  • Point: The children were part of a psychological study by Dr. Peter Neubaur and his Child Development Centre to observe the question of Nature vs Nurture.
  • Results: A lot of data was collected but never released or published anywhere and was kept hidden so no one is aware of the results or why actually the study took place if there was another reason.
  • Unethical b/c: Separation of siblings for the sake of an experiment, no formal/complete results or conclusions of the study, parents were not told that they were adopting a triplet, subjects (the triplets) were not allowed to know of the results or be told of them despite being the main parts of the experiment.

Stanford Prison

  • Design: A team of researchers led by professor Philip Zimbardo used college students and gave some the role of prisoners while given the others the role of prison guards.
  • Point: To conduct the study of what it was like being a prisoner or prison guard but most importantly to observe the abuse of power.
  • Results: The students adapted to the roles beyond expectations and as the guards would force their authority rights over the prisoners it eventually led to psychological and physical torture. Some prisoners accepted the abuse as they became tired of it and gave up while others who were against it would just receive even more and more.
  • Unethical b/c: A lot of dehumanization was involved such as being stripped naked or forced to do unsanitary things, levels of abuse and aggression from the guards would increase each day, some prisoners became overwhelmed/ broke down and left the prison while other became numb and zombie like and would simply just do whatever they were told to do.

Clark Doll

  • Design: Dr. Kenneth and his wife Mamie asked black children to choose between a black doll and a white doll when asked a series of questions.
  • Point: To see the psychological effects of segregation on black children.
  • Results: Majority of the black children preferred the white dolls to the black dolls and gave common answers of how the black dolls were “bad” (based on a question) and how they looked more similar to the white doll (based on a question). Overall, it caused most children to believe that white is more “beautiful” than black.
  • Unethical b/c: Questions were very biased and slanted which pushed the child to give answers despite being uncomfortable (“which doll is the bad doll’”), the order of the questions asked was unethical because it forced them to choose the opposite doll for the second question (“1. which doll is the nice doll?, 2. which doll is the bad doll?),

History of Psychology

Four Temperaments

What are they?

  • Sanguine/blood: optimistic, passionate, amorous & courageous
  • Phlegm: dull, indifferent, lazy, apathetic & idle
  • Choler: angry, irascible & bad tempered
  • Melancholy: sad, gloomy, sullen & depressed

Who came up with these wacky ideas?

  • The Greeks

What did they tell us?

  • The Greeks believed that personality was related to fluids (the four temperaments) in a person's body. Also the different combination would cause different personality types and illnesses.

Hippocrates

Who was he?

  • Father of modern medicine

What did he study?

  • Studied people and noted that people with brain injuries acted differently

What did he conclude?

  • Brain was the source of our pleasures, joys, laughter, sorrows, pains, grief and tears

Wilhelm Wundt

  • Known as the father of psychology

What did he do? How did he do it?

  • Separated psychology from philosophy
  • Opened the first experimental psychology lab

Why was he different?

  • Did his research in carefully controlled conditions
  • Encouraged other researchers to do the same and be more scientific

 

Sensation and Perception

Sensation & Perception

Definition

  • Sensation: passive process where info from outside is brought into the body/mind
  • Perception: active process of selecting, organizing and interpreting the info brought in
  • Optical Illusions: incorrect perception caused by distortions of visual sensation

3 Main Types:

Literal

  • Create images different from the objects that make them

Physiological

  • Eyes receiving excessive stimulation that can make us feel uneasy (brightness, tilt, colour, movement)

Cognitive

  • Makes you think - the eyes and brain make unconscious inferences

Depth Perception

  • What does our brain have to do in order to see things in a 3D world?
  • Edward Titchener
  • Has to make informed guesses about the structure of space

 

Memory

Definition

  • Ability to store/use info while storing stuff that has been learned and remembered in different parts of the brain

Case studies:

Who is HM? Why is his story important? What did it teach us about memory?

  • He suffered with seizures and had his hippocampus removed so that they would stop
  • Important b/c after getting his hippocampus removed he had no recollection of doing tasks despite doing it several times a day but the star tracings he did demonstrated some improvement which showed that he had some memory of that task
  • This taught us that there are different types of memory located in different parts of the brain

Who is Clive Wearing? Why is his story so important?

  • He had a virus attack his central nervous system which caused him to be unable to store memories and associate them with emotions b/c of the damage to his hippocampus
  • Important b/c it tells us about how the hippocampus is the area which is required to transfer memories from short-term to long-term memory

Types of memory

  • Sensory: ultra short time memory, leaves after 200-500 milliseconds,

(iconic= visual, echoic= sounds)

  • Short-term: temporarily store info, used when problem solving
  • Long-term: info stored from 30-40 seconds to a lifetime
  • Depends on Attention and Motivation

Types of long-term memory

Implicit: remembering something unconsciously

  • Procedural: knowledge for behavioural/physical skills we learn
  • Priming: memory recalled with support

Explicit: remembering something consciously

  • Semantic: memory for facts and info
  • Episodic: memory of personal experiences

Motivation

Motivation: study of why we do things, the desire to do things and causes for our behaviour

  • Biological: innate and physical needs such as thirst and hunger (internally motivated)

  • Social: learned and psychological needs such as praise and success (externally motivated)

Freud’s Theory of the Mind (explain freud’s reasoning and main components of his theory)

  • Tied to early childhood experiences
  • Sexual connections influence adult personality
  • Basis for many adult emotional problems

3 Aspects of the human mind  -- what are they? describe each?

  • Conscious (thoughts & perceptions)
  • Preconscious (memories, stored knowledge)

Unconscious (selfish needs/urges/wishes, shameful experiences, unacceptable sexual desires, fears, violent motives)

3 Components of the human psyche-- what are they? How do they play a role in decision making? Examples or each

  • Id  (devil, urges): inherited personality
  • Superego (angel, perfect self): values and morals of society

Ego (referee, in the middle): mediates between Id desire and Superego demands

Psychoanalysis (define)

  • Patients discuss background feelings/experiences with trained psychologist

Freud’s Theory of Psychosexual Development

  • Connection to adulthood
  • Personality development depends on libido (sex drive)

5 stages

The characteristics, and what fixation looks like within each stage

  • Oral Stage: sucking, biting and chewing

  • Anal Stage: stingeness, stubborness, ordeliness, messiness

  • Phallic Stage: child’s sexual desire for parent of opposite sex

  • Latency Stage: repression of sexual impulses, development of friendships

  • Gential Stage: gential stimulation, development of intimate relationships

  • Defense Mechanisms (definitions & examples)

  • Regression: reverting to earlier stage of development when in a stressful event (crying upon hearing unpleasant news)

  • Intellectualization: avoid thinking about the negative aspect of a situation and focusing on the good part. (after breaking up with someone, focusing on things you can do like spending more time with friends)

  • Denial: being unable to face/admit something (drug addicts/alcoholics will not admit to their addiction problems)

  • Repression: keeping info out of conscious awareness. (a person with memories of child abuse may have trouble forming relationships later on)

  • Displacement: taking out anger or frustration of one thing on to something else less threatening. (having a really bad day at work then later on taking out all the anger and stress on your family at home)

  • Sublimation: acting out unacceptable impulses in a way that makes them more acceptable. (an angry person can choose to take out all his anger by kickboxing)

  • Projection: taking out our own unacceptable qualities/feelings and putting them on other people. (if you strongly dislike someone you might instead believe that they dislike you)

  • Rationalization: making up excuses or ideas to avoid the true explanation for the behaviour. (a person who was rejected may end up saying that they didn’t like the other person anyways)

  • Reaction Formation: taking up the opposite feeling/impulse/behaviour to reduce anxiety. (treating someone you dislike in a friendly manner so that they don’t find out you dislike them)

Emotions

3 Major Components of Emotion

  • Cognitive: conscious state of being happy, sad, angry or excited.
  • Physical: tensed muscles, increased energy, pounding heart and body temp changes.
  • Behavioural: actions, withdrawal, body language, facial expressions

Harlow

Link between maturity and emotions

  • Emotions develop/change over lifetime
  • As people change and grow, different emotions are experienced at different intensities

What were Harlow’s beliefs regarding children and emotions?

  • Affection toward children was a sentimental gesture
  • Love is a basic need like food and water

What did Harlow study? What was his experimental design?

  • He studied whether babies might not love their mothers for their milk only but because they provided warmth and affection
  • His design involved a cloth mother and a wired mother with the use of a baby monkey and observed that the baby felt more safe and wanted more affection from the cloth mother despite drinking milk from the wired mother

What did Harlow’s experiments reveal?

  • Importance of a mother’s love for healthy childhood development
  • Comfort was more important to the baby than nurture
  • Babies rely on affection and security in order to not have fear or feel overwhelmed
  • Contact and touch are very important for attachment, learning, emotional, well-being and psychological development

Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

What is it?

  • Ability to identify and manage your emotions along with the emotions of others.

What skills are important? (3)

  • Emotional awareness
  • Tackling emotions and being able to apply them to tasks like thinking or problem solving
  • Managing emotions, regulating your own emotions and cheering up or calming down other people.

Why is it important?

  • Because no matter how smart you are intellectually, if you don’t have a strong emotional intelligence then you will not get very far in terms of anything (career, relationship, etc.)

Learning

Learning: causes the results of human thoughts and behaviours. The gain of knowledge, skills and new ideas through being taught or through experience.

Learned behaviour - examples

  • Riding a bike
  • Playing an instrument
  • Typing
  • What other species learn from experience?
  • Animals (in class examples: fish, kangaroo rat)

Other examples of learning?

Innate drive - fish swimming upstream, goosebumps, blushing, reflexes

Conditioned Learning (define each of the following)

  • Conditioning: learn to respond to a particular environmental stimulus in a particular way

  • Stimuli: objects or events that produce a response from a person or another living thing

Classical Conditioning

  • Ivan Pavlov
  • Russian physiologist

  What was he interested in studying?

  • Digestion in dogs

  • Unconditioned Response: automatic, unlearned reaction

  • Conditioned Response: learned reaction

Operant Conditioning

  • B.F. Skinner
  • Repetition of responses is influenced by rewards or punishments

  Positive Reinforcement (list examples)

  • Mother praises son for working hard at school and doing his best
  • Daughter receives $15.00 for cutting the grass without being asked

  Negative Reinforcement (list examples)

  • Bob’s father nags at him whenever he doesn't do the dishes so Bob does the dishes in order to prevent his fathers nagging
  • Natalie must sit at the table and cannot go play until she eats 2 bites of her broccoli

Observational Learning

  • Albert Bandura
  • Believed that you learn by observing people who act as models of behaviour

  What are the Four Processes? How do they apply to learning through observation?

  • Attention: paying attention to the behavior of others
  • Retention: storing mental representation of what you observe in your memory (what worked well)
  • Reproduction: put stored memory into action (practice)
  • Motivation: must be motivated to practice skills (believe skill is important/useful)

  BOBO Doll Experiment

  • A child saw an adult beating up the BOBO Doll so assumed that it was okay to beat the doll as well

  What did this experiment teach us about learning that was in opposition to the ideas of Pavlov and Skinner?

  • Most of our skills are learned through observation

Dreams

What Are Dreams?

Freud’s theories on dreaming

  • Dreams are the road to the unconscious where the ego’s defenses are lowered and some of the repressed material comes to awareness.

  • What stage of sleep do most of our dreams occur in?

  • REM Sleep

  Benefits of Sleep

  • Problem solving methods become more clear
  • You obtain more energy
  • You burn calories which help you lose weight and stay fit
  • Helps to form long-term memory of material encountered during the day
  • Reduce stress and improve mood
  • Lowers risk for serious health problems and helps you feel better when you are sick

Effects of sleep deprivation (should know at least 3)

  • Increases chances for health problems
  • No energy for the day
  • Slower thinking and negative moods/mood changes

The Down Side of Dreaming

What links does stress have to our dreams?

  • Stress ruins the ability to have a proper night's sleep which then causes more negative possible dreams which can be effects of that stress

  What is a nightmare?

  • Frightening dreams that occur during REM sleep
  • Occur when emotionally distressed
  • Can be response to real life trauma/issue

  What are night terrors?

  • Occur during NREM sleep

Signs:

  • Sitting up suddenly
  • Blood curling screams
  • Incoherent speech
  • Quickly fall back asleep
  • Failure to recall episode

Purpose of Dreams

Wish fulfillment

  • Manifest content: dream recalled by the dreamer
  • Latent content: dreams with hidden/underlying meanings

  Problem solving

  • Provides more creative approach
  • Freer/less constrained by logical thinking in everyday lives

  Aid to memory

  • Helps form long-term memories of material encountered during the day
  • How do dreams help us retain information in the long-term?
  • More REM sleep = better memory for material during previous day

Theories on Why We Dream:

Information Processing Theory:

  • Sorting out and processing day’s events and stores into memory

Physiological Function Theory:

  • Neural development and preserves pathways by providing brain simulation

Cognitive Development Theory:

  • Knowledge and understanding of the world, mimicking reality

Neural Activity Model:

  • REM sleep triggers neural activity and dreams are a side effect

Mental Illness

  • History of Mental Illness:

  Mental Health

  • Current state, can be good or bad

  Mental Illness

  • Changes how you think, act/behave abnormally

Factors:

  • Family history of mental illness
  • Age
  • Sex
  • Substance abuse
  • Chronic diseases
  • Family, workplace, life stressors

Changing Approach throughout the years

  • 5th-15th Century: abnormal behaviour meant you were possessed and a witch and needed to be treated with exorcism
  • 15th-16th Century: witchcraft and devil possession, abnormal behaviour meant you sold your soul to the devil
  • 18th Century: people who behaved abornally were put in asylums and kept in chains to help their disorders
  • 1793: modern era of treatment, violent treatments were abandoned, rooms were made more comfortable, patients were allowed to roam around
  • 19th-20th Century: psychoanalysis/therapy were used, medical drugs became available

  Types of Treatment

  • Insulin comas
  • Prefrontal lobotomy
  • Electroshock therapy
  • Pill medication

  Changes in Attitude

  • Medical and mental health funded equally
  • Treatment changed with the increase in funding
  • Universities and doctors combined for research
  • Change from medicine to more humane treatments which made people happier
  • Mental Health Act led  to closing of asylums

  Today’s Approach

  • Specific treatments for specific illnesses
  • Consider impact of drugs
  • Mental illness should be categorized/treated like other physical illnesses
  • Move to patient centred care (patient knows best)
  • Introduction of meds and medical research
  • Better conditions in asylums
  • Open gate policy
  • Occupational therapy (dance, work)
  • Community based treatment (end of asylums)

  Current models of care

  • Medical vs. Biopsychological Approach (what’s the difference)
  • Medical means that by treating their illness it could treat their mental illness
  • Bio means things caused by environmental factors (not physical or mental)

  Illnesses

  • Physiological: biological causes, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder
  • Non-physiological: environmental causes, depression, anxiety

  Today’s approach to Mental Health (community approach, outreach programs (ie: ROCK), social workers in schools, better family doctor training in mental health, etc..)

  • Breaking the stigma
  • Bell lets talk
  • Kids help phone
  • Mental health week
  • Celebrity awareness and campaigns

  David Rosenhan

  • Significant for mental illness DIAGNOSIS
  • He tested the doctors to see if they could determine who was actually unhealthy and who was healthy
  • Results were that doctors did not have a clear criteria
  • This changed the categorization and classification for mental disorders/illnesses so that they were more clear and right and a criteria was formed

  Elizabeth Cochran (Nellie Bly)

  • Significant for mental illness CONDITIONS
  • Pretended to be ill and got herself admitted in an asylum
  • She shed light on what goes on at the asylum
  • She reported all the abuses and negatives
  • She forced and influenced the corrections of the terrible conditions of the asylums and how much more funding and improvements were required
  • Better atmosphere was created at asylums after this, improved food and water, better and more happier conditions