Intro to Psych Notebook
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Psychology Study Guide
This guide covers key concepts from your psychology course, drawing from the provided "Week 1 - Introduction to Psychology.pdf," "Week 10 Personality (Updated).pdf," "Week 11 Health, Stress and Coping.pdf," "Week 12 Psychological Disorders (Updated).pdf," "Week 13 Social Thinking Social Influence (Updated).pdf," "Week 2 Brain Behaviour.pdf," "Week 3 Developmental Psych.pdf," "Week 4 Sensation and Perception.pdf," "Week 5 States of Consciousness.pdf," "Week 6 Conditoning and Learning.pdf," "Week 7 Memory.pdf," "Week 8 Lecture (Asynchronous) (2).pdf," and "Week 9 Motivation and Emotion.pdf" excerpts.
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Week 1: Introduction to Psychology
• Defining Psychology and its Goals
◦ Definition: Psychology is currently defined as the study of behaviour and mental processes.
▪ Historically, the word "psychology" comes from Greek roots, 'Psyche' (principle of life, breath, or soul) and 'Logos' (reason, knowledge, or study), essentially meaning "the study of the soul".
▪ Behaviour refers to overt and observable actions like eating or crying.
▪ Mental processes are covert behaviours, such as thinking, dreaming, and remembering, which are private and not directly observable.
◦ Goals of Psychology:
1. Description: Accurately naming or describing useful knowledge.
2. Understanding: Explaining the causes of behaviour.
3. Predicting: Forecasting behaviour accurately.
4. Control: Altering conditions that affect behaviour.
• Psychology as Science versus Pseudopsychology
◦ Psychology as Science: Psychologists use scientific observations and gather empirical evidence (careful, systematic, structured, unbiased, reliable, and valid).
▪ It is not mere common sense, as common sense beliefs are often false, unreliable, limited, and biased.
▪ Scientific Method: An ideal form has six elements:
1. Examining past research.
2. Defining a problem/question.
3. Proposing a hypothesis.
4. Gathering evidence/Testing the hypothesis.
5. Theory building.
6. Publishing results.
◦ Pseudopsychology: An unfounded system or idea that appears scientific but is false.
▪ It tends to change little over time and avoids evidence that falsifies its claims, with followers seeking only confirming evidence.
▪ Examples: Graphology (personality from handwriting, shown to have poor accuracy in rating personality) and Astrology (star/planet positions predict personality/affect behaviour, repeatedly shown to lack scientific validity).
▪ Reasons for Acceptance:
• Uncritical acceptance: Tendency to believe claims because they seem true or desirable.
• Confirmation bias: Tendency to notice information that fits expectations while disregarding discrepancies.
• Barnum effect: Tendency to consider general descriptions as accurate, often described as "having a little something for everyone."
• History of Psychology
◦ Informal observation of human behaviour and philosophy has existed for thousands of years (e.g., Aristotle's 'De Anima' on memory, sleep, dreams, perception; John Locke's 'tabula rasa' in 17th century; Descartes' view of pineal gland as seat of soul; ancient Chinese intelligence testing).
◦ Wilhelm Wundt: Known as the "father of psychology," he set up the first psychological laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, to study conscious experience.
▪ He used introspection ("personal observation of mental events such as thoughts, feelings, and sensations").
◦ Structuralism: Edward Titchener spread Wundt's ideas to the U.S., aiming to analyse the structure of mental life into basic elements or building blocks. A major limitation was frequent disagreement among structuralists due to varied individual experiences.
◦ Functionalism: William James expanded psychology to include animal behaviour, religious experience, and abnormal behaviour. It focused on how behaviour and mental abilities help people adapt to their environments, viewing consciousness as a continuous stream rather than lifeless building blocks.
◦ Behaviourism: Challenged structuralism and functionalism, focusing on the study of observable behaviours. John B. Watson objected to studying the mind or consciousness due to their immeasurability. Behaviourism studies the relationship between stimuli (environmental events) and an animal’s responses (observable actions). Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner were also notable behaviourists.
◦ Psychoanalytic Psychology: Sigmund Freud theorized the mind is like an iceberg, with a small conscious part and a large unconscious part. He believed behaviour is deeply influenced by unconscious thoughts and desires related to sex and aggression, and that childhood experiences shape adult personality.
◦ Humanistic Psychology: Emerged as a challenge to behaviourism and psychoanalysis, focusing on "free will" – the ability to make conscious, voluntary choices. It views humans as inherently good and motivated to learn and improve, emphasizing concepts like love, self-esteem, and self-expression. Key figures include Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.
• Present Psychology and Major Perspectives
◦ Contemporary Psychology: Three broad views shape modern understanding:
1. Biological Perspective: Explains behaviour through biological factors like brain processes, nervous system, or genetics.
2. Psychological Perspective: Explains behaviour as a result of psychological processes within the person, such as cognition, personality, memory, perception, creativity, and consciousness.
3. Sociocultural Perspective: Explores the impact of social and cultural contexts (e.g., religion, ethnicity, education, income) on human behaviour.
◦ Many psychologists are eclectic or integrative, combining insights from multiple perspectives to explain complex human behaviour.
◦ Most psychologists follow the Scientist-Practitioner Model, applying knowledge and techniques to solve problems.
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Week 2: Brain & Behaviour
• Branches of the Nervous System
◦ Central Nervous System (CNS): Consists of the brain and spinal cord, containing the majority of neurons.
◦ Peripheral Nervous System (PNS): Includes all parts of the nervous system beyond the CNS.
▪ Somatic Nervous System (SNS): Links the spinal cord with the body and sense organs, controlling voluntary behaviour.
▪ Autonomic Nervous System (ANS): Carries information to and from internal organs and glands, controlling involuntary functions like heart rate and digestion.
• Parasympathetic Nervous System: Conserves energy.
• Sympathetic Nervous System: Arouses the body.
• Neurons – Building Blocks of the Nervous System & How it Works
◦ Neuron: A single cell in the nervous system that transmits information.
◦ Basic Parts of a Neuron:
1. Dendrites: Receive incoming messages.
2. Cell-body (Soma): Receives information from dendrites, stores genetic material.
3. Axon: Carries information away from the soma.
4. Axon Terminals: Bulb-shaped ends of axons that form synapses and release chemicals.
◦ How Neurons Work (Electrical Process):
▪ Neurons are primarily electrical, using ions (charged molecules).
▪ Resting Potential: Neuron at rest, with more positive ions outside and negative charges inside.
▪ Action Potential: When excitatory input causes the electrical charge to breach a threshold, it becomes an all-or-nothing event where the neuron's electrical charge rapidly shifts from negative to positive, sweeping down the axon.
▪ Myelin Sheath: An insulating material (protein and fatty substances) coating axons that allows faster and more efficient electrical impulse transmission.
• Grey matter contains neuron cell bodies; white matter contains myelinated axons.
• Damaged myelin can lead to numbness, weakness, or paralysis (e.g., Multiple Sclerosis).
▪ Ion Channels: Tiny gates in the axon membrane that open during an action potential, allowing Na+ ions to rush into the axon.
▪ Negative After-potential: A brief dip slightly below the resting potential after an action potential.
• Synaptic Transmissions
◦ Synapse: The microscopic space where messages pass between two neurons.
◦ Neurotransmitters: Chemicals released at the axon terminals that transmit information from one neuron to another.
◦ Neurotransmitters can be excitatory (increase likelihood of action potential) or inhibitory (decrease likelihood).
◦ Transmission Pathway: Dendrites → Soma → Axons → Axon Terminals.
• Brain Structure
◦ Cerebral Cortex: The outer layer of the brain where high-level processes occur, distinguishing human brains.
◦ Cerebral Hemispheres: The brain is composed of two sides connected by the corpus callosum.
◦ Hemispheric Lateralisation: Specialization of abilities between the left and right hemispheres.
▪ Left Brain: Language, speech, time sense, rhythm, writing, calculation, complex movements.
▪ Right Brain: Nonverbal, perceptual skills, visualization, recognition, expression of emotions.
◦ Lobes of the Cerebral Cortex: Each hemisphere is divided into lobes: Frontal, Occipital, Parietal, and Temporal.
• Exploring Brain Structure & Function
◦ For Structure (Imaging):
▪ Computed Tomography (CT) scans: Multiple X-rays to create an image of a single location.
▪ Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans: Uses strong magnetic fields to create a detailed 3D model of the brain/body, more detailed than CT scans.
◦ For Function (Activity Measurement):
▪ Electroencephalography (EEG): Measures electrical activity (brain waves) near the brain's surface using electrodes.
▪ Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI): Uses MRI technology to record activity levels in various brain areas.
▪ Positron Emission Tomography (PET): High-resolution imaging technique that captures brain activity by attaching radioactive particles to glucose molecules.
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Week 3: Developmental Psychology
• Introduction to Human Development
◦ Developmental Psychology: The study of normal changes in behaviour that occur across the life span, from conception to death ("the womb to the tomb").
◦ Development is shaped by a continuous interaction between heredity (nature) and environment (nurture).
• Nature (Heredity)
◦ Definition: Biological genetic transmission of physical and psychological characteristics from parents to children via genes.
◦ Genes: Segments of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) contained within human cells.
◦ Chromosomes: Thread-like structures organizing DNA, holding heredity information (46 chromosomes: 23 from mother, 23 from father).
• Nurture (Environment)
◦ Definition: The sum of all external conditions affecting a person, especially the effects of learning.
◦ Influences:
▪ Teratogens: Environmental factors (e.g., nicotine, alcohol) that can lead to congenital conditions.
▪ Childhood experiences: How we are raised (parenting styles) and surrounding culture.
◦ Sensitive period: A phase when children are more susceptible to certain environmental influences.
◦ Deprivation: Lack of stimulation (e.g., poverty, only-child).
◦ Enrichment: A complex, stimulating, and developmentally supportive environment.
◦ Nature vs. Nurture Debate: Examined through twin studies (e.g., Paula Bernstein & Elyse Schein), considering the relative influence of genetics versus environment on academic success.
• Physical Development
◦ Focuses on how our bodies grow and change.
◦ Neonates (newborns): Possess reflexes like grasping, rooting, sucking, and moro.
◦ Muscular Control Patterns: Increases in two patterns: cephalocaudal (head to tail) and proximodistal (centre outwards).
• Social Development
◦ Affectional needs: Care, love, and relationships are as important as basic physiological needs.
◦ Emotional attachment: A close emotional bond infants form with primary caregivers, rooted in the need for physical contact (e.g., Harlow’s monkey experiment).
◦ Separation anxiety: Crying and fear signs when a child is left alone or with a stranger, typically appearing around 8-12 months.
▪ Separation Anxiety Disorder: Affects about 1 in 20 children.
◦ Attachment Quality (Strange Situation Experiment by Ainsworth):
1. Secure Attachment: Stable and positive emotional bond; child seeks mother upon return.
2. Insecure-Avoidant Attachment: Child turns away from mother upon return.
3. Insecure-Ambivalent Attachment: Child seeks to be near mother but resists contact.
◦ Attachment styles in childhood tend to carry over into adult romantic relationships.
• Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory
◦ Proposed eight developmental stages, each presenting developmental tasks (skills to master, changes to take place) or psychosocial dilemmas (conflict between personal impulses and the social world).
◦ Failing to navigate these dilemmas can lead to a crisis, stunting growth.
• Cognitive Development (Jean Piaget)
◦ Piaget observed that children's thinking differs fundamentally from adults' (less abstract, fewer generalizations, based on observable things).
◦ He believed children progress through a set series of four stages, where schema (mental frameworks) form and improve with experience.
◦ Stages of Cognitive Development:
1. The Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 Years): Thinking is limited, intellectual development is nonverbal, based on senses and movement. Infants gradually develop object permanence (concept that objects exist even if out of sight).
2. The Preoperational Stage (2-7 Years): Children develop mental images but struggle with transformations (mentally changing shape/form). They can think symbolically and engage in symbolic play. Their thinking is intuitive (little reasoning/logic) and egocentric (unable to consider others' viewpoints).
• Theory of Mind: Understanding that people have mental states (thoughts, beliefs, intentions) that can differ from one's own. Children younger than 4 often struggle with this concept.
3. The Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 Years): Children learn logic and concrete concepts (time, space, volume, number). They can perform mental operations like reversibility (if A=B, then B=A) and understand conservation (mass, weight, volume remain unchanged despite appearance changes).
4. The Formal Operational Stage (11 Years and Up): Thinking includes more complex abstract and hypothetical ideas, relying less on concrete objects. They can understand abstract principles (democracy, fairness) and metaphors, and hypothesize about possibilities.
• Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
◦ Believed intellectual skills are culturally valued and development occurs with the guidance of more knowledgeable and skilled partners.
◦ Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): The range of tasks a child can master only with guidance.
◦ Scaffolding: Temporary support provided to help a beginner understand a problem or gain skills.
• Kohlberg’s Moral Development
◦ Proposed three levels of moral development, acquired from childhood into adulthood, guiding responsible behaviour.
◦ Three Levels:
1. Preconventional Moral Reasoning: Based on consequences (punishment, reward, exchange of favours).
2. Conventional Moral Reasoning: Based on a desire to please others or follow accepted rules and values.
3. Postconventional Moral Reasoning: Follows self-chosen moral principles, not external authorities.
• Later Adulthood & Grief
◦ Middle-aged adults (35-64) and later adults (65+) face challenges concerning health, work, finances, family, and tragedies.
◦ Midlife crises: Involve reworking identities, rediscovering values, and preparing for old age.
◦ Ageism: Discrimination or prejudice against a person's age.
◦ Gerontology: The study of aging and its effects.
◦ Elizabeth Kubler-Ross on Death and Dying (Thanatology): Described five basic reactions to death, which do not necessarily occur in order or are experienced by everyone.
◦ Five Basic Reactions to Death:
1. Denial and isolation: Denying death's reality.
2. Anger: Asking "Why me?" and projecting anger onto others.
3. Bargaining: Attempting to negotiate with God or oneself.
4. Depression: Feelings of futility, exhaustion, and sadness.
5. Acceptance: Calmy accepting death if it is not sudden.
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Week 4: Sensation and Perception
• Sensory Processing
◦ Psychophysics: The study of the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations they evoke.
◦ Transduction: Sensory organs transduce physical energy into neural signals sent to the brain for processing.
▪ Sensations are detected in the brain, not the sensory organs.
◦ Data Reduction System: The senses select and analyse only the most important data to code and send to the brain.
▪ Sensory adaptation: Change in sensory receptor responsiveness to unchanging stimuli (e.g., pressure from a watch).
▪ Feature detection: Senses divide the world into important perceptual features (e.g., lines, shapes, colours).
◦ Absolute threshold: Minimum physical energy needed to produce a sensation 50% of the time.
◦ Difference threshold: Minimal difference between two stimuli required to perceive them as different 50% of the time.
▪ Weber’s Law: Two stimuli must differ by a minimum percentage to be perceived as different, depending on intensity.
◦ Subliminal Perception: Stimuli with very low intensity, briefness, or vagueness that can influence perception subconsciously.
◦ Synaesthesia: One sense induces an experience in another sense (e.g., seeing colours when tasting food).
◦ Phantom Limb Pain: Experiencing sensations in a limb that does not exist, common among amputees.
◦ Extrasensory Perception (ESP): Perception in the absence of concrete sensory input (e.g., clairvoyance).
• Vision (The Eye)
◦ Light: A form of electromagnetic radiation detected by the eye.
▪ Wavelength: Determines hue or colour.
▪ Amplitude: Determines intensity or brightness.
◦ Structure of the Eye:
1. Sclera: White outer part, maintains shape, protects eye.
2. Iris: Coloured circular muscle, controls light entry.
3. Pupil: Opening in iris, light passes through.
4. Cornea: Curved, transparent membrane, bends light inward.
5. Lens: Transparent, flexible, disk-like structure, further bends light onto retina, shape altered by ciliary muscles.
6. Retina: Multilayered, light-sensitive surface at back of eye, contains photoreceptors.
◦ Visual Receptor Cells (Photoreceptors) on the Retina:
▪ Rods (12 million): For dim light, produce black and white vision, function well under low illumination.
▪ Cones (5 million): For colours, bright light, and fine details, require more light than rods.
▪ Fovea: Tiny area in the center of the retina with the best vision, highly dense with cones, no rods.
▪ Blind spot: Area on retina with neither rods nor cones, where the optic nerve leaves the eye.
◦ Colour Vision Theories:
▪ Colour Blindness: Lacking cones or having non-functional cones; total colour-blindness is rare, colour-weakness is more common (e.g., red-green).
▪ Trichromatic Theory: Holds that there are 3 types of cones (red, green, blue) sensitive to different wavelengths; other colours are combinations. Problem: doesn't account for yellow.
▪ Opponent-Process Theory of Colour: Colour vision based on three "systems": red vs. green, blue vs. yellow, black vs. white.
• After Image Effect: Fatigue from one colour response produces an afterimage of the opposite colour.
• Hearing (The Ear)
◦ Sound: Vibrations/rhythmic movements of air molecules captured by the auditory system.
◦ Structure of the Ear:
▪ External Ear: Channels sound waves to the eardrum (air conduction).
▪ Eardrum: Collides with sound waves.
▪ Middle Ear Ossicles (bones): Vibrate, connecting eardrum to cochlea.
▪ Inner Ear: Receives vibrations from ossicles at the oval window.
▪ Cochlea: Snail-shaped organ in the inner ear, filled with fluid, contains sensory receptors (hair cells) for hearing. Hair cells bend and transduce vibrations into electrical signals.
◦ Hearing Loss:
▪ Conductive Hearing Loss: Weakened transfer of vibrations from outer to inner ear (damage at eardrum/ossicles), can be helped by hearing aids.
▪ Sensorineural Hearing Loss: Damaged hair cells or auditory nerves (e.g., noise-induced hearing loss); dead hair cells cannot be replaced.
◦ Theories of Hearing:
▪ Frequency Theory: As pitch rises, nerve impulses of a corresponding frequency are sent to the auditory nerve.
▪ Place Theory: Higher and lower tones excite specific areas of the cochlea (e.g., higher tones at the opening, lower tones at the end).
• Other Senses
◦ Chemical Senses:
▪ Smell: Detection of airborne chemical molecules.
• Lock & Key Theory of Olfaction: Odorant molecules fit into specific receptors to trigger a signal.
▪ Taste: Detection of chemical molecules in food.
• Five basic taste sensations: Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami.
• Taste buds: Taste receptors found mostly around the top edges of the tongue.
◦ Somesthetic Senses (Body-related senses):
▪ Skin receptors: Detect pain, temperature, and touch.
▪ Kinesthetic Sense: Provides information on movement (kinesthesia) and bodily position (proprioception) through sensory receptors in joints and muscles (e.g., muscle memory).
▪ Vestibular Sense: Governs balance and orientation via semicircular canals in the ear.
• Motion sickness/dizziness: Caused by sensory conflict (eyes and ears don't match up).
• Perceptual Processes
◦ Perceptual constructions: Mental models of external events actively created by the brain (e.g., touch perceived as love).
◦ Perceptual hypothesis: Initial plan or guess guiding the interpretation of sensations.
◦ Illusions: Perceptual misconstructions where sensory information is interpreted inconsistently with objective reality.
• Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down Processing
◦ Bottom-up processing: Analyzing information from small units (senses) upwards to form a complete perception.
◦ Top-down processing: Uses pre-existing knowledge and experience to rapidly organize features into a meaningful whole, often without processing individual components.
• Gestalt Principles of Organisation
◦ From the Gestalt School of thought (Max Wertheimer), stating that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".
◦ Principles:
▪ Figure–ground organization: An inborn tendency for part of a stimulus to stand out (figure) against a plainer background (ground).
• Reversible figure: Figure and ground can be reversed.
▪ Nearness: Stimuli near each other are grouped together.
▪ Similarity: Similar stimuli (size, shape, color, form) are grouped together.
▪ Continuation (or continuity): Perceptions tend towards simplicity and continuity.
▪ Closure: Tendency to complete a figure to achieve a consistent overall form.
▪ Common region: Stimuli within a common area are seen as a group.
▪ Proximity: Stimuli close together are seen as more related.
• Other Perceptual Phenomenon or Principles
◦ Ambiguous stimuli: Patterns allowing more than one interpretation (e.g., Rorschach test).
◦ Size & Shape Constancy: Perceived size and shape remain constant despite changes in retinal image.
◦ Brightness constancy: Relative brightness of objects stays the same even as lighting conditions change.
◦ Inattentional blindness: Failure to perceive a stimulus in plain view because it's not the focus of attention (e.g., driving accidents).
◦ Relative size: A distant object looks smaller if two objects of the same size appear at different distances.
◦ Light and shadow: Patterns create a three-dimensional appearance.
◦ Overlap: When one object partially blocks another, it appears closer.
◦ Perceptual habits: Ingrained patterns of organization and attention, perceiving things as they usually are.
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Week 5: States of Consciousness
• Nature of Consciousness
◦ Consciousness: Awareness of external events in the environment, and awareness of one's own mental processes (thoughts, memories, feelings). It is a complex and varying concept.
◦ William James' "Stream of Consciousness" (1893): Described consciousness as an uninterrupted flow of changing sensations, images, thoughts, and feelings.
• Levels of Awareness
◦ Most of life is spent in waking consciousness.
◦ Altered states of consciousness: Marked by shifts in perceptions, emotions, time sense, memories, thoughts, feelings, and suggestibility (e.g., fatigue, hypnosis, dreaming). These states change and occur at different levels based on the quality and pattern of mental activity.
• Hypnosis
◦ Definition: An altered state of consciousness characterized by focused attention, reduced peripheral awareness, and heightened suggestibility.
◦ History: Interest began with Dr. Franz Mesmer (mesmerize) in the 1700s, though his magnetic cure was actually hypnosis. James Braid coined the term "hypnosis" from Greek "hypnos" meaning "sleep," though brain activity during hypnosis is different from sleep.
◦ State Theory (Hilgard): Hypnosis causes a split in awareness, or a dissociative state.
◦ Basic Suggestion Effect: Hypnotized persons tend to carry out suggested actions as if involuntary.
◦ Techniques: Focus attention, promote relaxation, encourage acceptance of suggestions, use vivid imagination.
◦ Realities of Hypnosis: Individuals must cooperate, remain in control, and are aware of what's happening. It cannot produce superhuman strength or aggression.
◦ Hypnotic suggestibility (hypnotisability): Varies among individuals; imaginative people prone to fantasy and those willing to be hypnotized have higher chances.
◦ Uses: Can possibly improve memory, relieve pain, and help with sensory changes or relaxation.
• Meditation
◦ Definition: A mental exercise to alter consciousness, heightening awareness and producing relaxation by interrupting typical thought flow.
◦ Leads to changes in brain activity (e.g., frontal lobes), suggesting it's a distinct state.
◦ Core is a relaxation response, opposing the body's fight-or-flight mechanisms.
◦ Benefits: Reduces daily tension/anxiety, distress, increases well-being, and can help with smoking.
• Sleep – Subconscious Awareness
◦ Definition: An innate biological rhythm, a reversible (almost total) loss of consciousness. Humans spend about 1/3 of their lives sleeping.
◦ Sleep Deprivation: Sleep is a necessity. Randy Gardner holds the record for 11 days without sleep.
◦ Restorative/Repair Theories: Sleep regulates temperature, immune system, conserves energy, aids development and repair. It lowers metabolism and brain activity to replenish resources, and improves memory, mood, and creativity.
◦ Circadian Rhythm: An internal biological clock that governs physiological sleep-wake cycles (approx. 24-hour day).
▪ "Day people": Early peaks in rhythms, wake up alert, energetic early, sleep early.
▪ "Night people": Later peaks, wake up groggy, lively in afternoon/evening, stay up late.
▪ Major time zone shifts (jet lag) or shift work can disturb circadian rhythms.
• Patterns of Brain during Sleep
◦ Brain activity changes during sleep, measured by an Electroencephalograph (EEG).
◦ Brainwaves:
▪ Beta waves: Small, fast, associated with alertness/wakefulness.
▪ Alpha waves: Larger, slower, associated with relaxation/falling asleep.
◦ Descending into Sleep Stages:
1. Stage 1 (Light sleep): Heart rate slows, irregular breathing, muscles relax; features hypnagogic jerks, small irregular & alpha waves.
2. Stage 2 (Sleep Deepens): Sleep spindles (brief bursts of high frequency waves) appear on EEG; individuals report being asleep.
3. Stage 3 (Even Deeper Sleep): Delta waves (very large & slow) emerge; further loss of consciousness.
4. Stage 4 (Deep Sleep): Deepest level of normal sleep, almost purely delta waves; sleeper in oblivion.
◦ Rapid Eye Movement (REM) Stage:
▪ Associated with dreaming, marked by fast, irregular EEG patterns similar to Stage 1.
▪ Brain areas linked to emotions and imagery become active.
▪ Body is largely paralysed (paradoxical sleep), except for eyes, while brain shows high activity.
▪ Sleep Paralysis: Waking up while muscles remain frozen, sometimes with hypnopompic hallucinations.
◦ Sleep Cycle: Fluctuations in hormones cause recurring cycles of deeper and lighter sleep (Stage 1 to REM) approximately every 90 minutes.
• Dual Process Hypothesis of Sleep
◦ Proposes two basic states: non-REM (stages 1-4) and REM sleep.
◦ Both are important for memory consolidation: Slow wave sleep (SWS) for declarative memories, and REM sleep for non-declarative memories.
◦ William Dement’s study & REM rebound: Extra REM sleep occurs after its deprivation.
◦ General functions: NREM calms/refreshes the brain, REM sharpens memory and is associated with dreaming.
• Sleep-Wake Disorders
◦ Insomnia: Difficulty getting to/staying asleep, frequent awakenings, or waking too early.
◦ Hypersomnolence Disorder: Excessive daytime sleepiness.
◦ Night terrors: Occur in NREM Stage 4, characterized by total panic and hallucinating dream images into the room.
◦ Sleepwalking, sleeptalking & sleepsex: Engaging in waking behaviours while asleep during NREM sleep.
◦ Sleep apnea: Interruption of breathing during sleep, with loud snoring.
◦ Narcolepsy: Sudden, irresistible daytime sleep attacks.
• Dreaming
◦ Psychodynamic Theory of Dreams (Sigmund Freud):
▪ Dreams are the "royal road to the unconscious," reflecting internal conflict (Id, Ego, SuperEgo) and unconscious forces.
▪ Wish fulfillment: Dreams disguise expressions of unconscious desires or conflicts.
▪ Dream symbols: Images with deeper symbolic meaning.
▪ Understanding dreams requires analyzing manifest content (obvious, visible meaning) and latent content (hidden, symbolic meaning).
◦ Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis (Hobson & McCarley):
▪ Lower brain centers are randomly activated and send signals to higher brain areas, which are blocked from reaching the body.
▪ The brain struggles to interpret this random information, searching memories to manufacture a dream (synthesis).
▪ Frontal cortex areas are shut off, making dreams appear more primitive and bizarre; dreams are usually meaningless.
◦ Neurocognitive Dream Theory (William Domhoff):
▪ Dreams share much in common with waking thoughts and emotions.
▪ Brain areas active during the day are also active at night.
▪ Most dreams reflect daily thoughts and feelings, serving as an expression of REM sleep processes where the brain sorts and stores daily experiences.
• Psychoactive Drugs; Drug Altered Consciousness
◦ Psychoactive drugs: Substances capable of altering attention, judgment, memory, time sense, self-control, emotion, or perception (e.g., coffee, nicotine, alcohol).
◦ Can be instrumental (for a purpose) or recreational (for pleasure).
◦ Act on the Central Nervous System (CNS) to either increase (stimulants) or decrease (depressants) bodily processes.
◦ Stimulants: Increase CNS activity.
▪ Amphetamines: Synthetic stimulants (e.g., Adderall, Ritalin), rapidly produce drug tolerance.
▪ Cocaine: Powerful CNS stimulant, produces euphoria, alertness, energy.
▪ Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA): Similar to amphetamines, can produce hallucinations, rush of energy, heightened sensory experiences (e.g., ecstasy).
◦ Depressants: Decrease CNS activity.
▪ Opioids (narcotics): Derived from opium (e.g., raw opium), induce sleep, pain relief, euphoria; highly addictive; high doses impair breathing.
▪ Barbiturates: Sedative drugs that depress brain activity (e.g., downers); low levels mimic alcohol intoxication, higher levels cause confusion, hallucinations, uninhibited behaviour.
▪ Alcohol (ethyl alcohol): A depressant, contrary to popular belief.
• Alcohol myopia: Shortsighted thinking and perception during intoxication.
◦ Hallucinogens: Stimulate perceptions at odds with reality.
▪ LSD, PCP, psilocybin, cannabis.
▪ Cannabis (derived from hemp plant): Psychological effects include euphoria, well-being, altered time sense, perceptual distortions. Frequent use carries risk of dependence and cognitive decline, but evidence suggests medical benefits (pain, nausea, inflammation).
• Drug Abuse
◦ Often a maladaptive coping mechanism, or unintentional addiction from recreational use.
◦ Drugs stimulate the brain's reward circuitry (dopamine), producing pleasure and physically changing brain circuitry, making it hard to stop.
◦ Substance Use: May not be problematic.
◦ Substance Abuse: Over-using or using in an unintended manner.
◦ Addiction: Continued use despite negative effects, characterized by physical or psychological dependence.
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Week 6: Conditioning & Learning
• What is Learning
◦ Definition: A relatively permanent change in knowledge or behaviour that results from experience.
◦ Excludes temporary changes (mood, motivation, drugs) or permanent changes due to disease or maturation.
◦ Associative learning: Formation of simple associations among stimuli and responses.
◦ Cognitive learning: Understanding, thinking, knowing, anticipating, or using information-rich higher mental processes (e.g., lectures, reading).
◦ Learning is not just repetition; it requires improvement or change.
◦ Key Concepts in Associative Learning:
1. Antecedents: Events that precede a response (more important in classical conditioning).
2. Consequences: Effects that follow a response (more important in operant conditioning).
3. Reinforcements: Any event that increases the probability of a response occurring.
• Classical Conditioning (CC)
◦ Discovered by Ivan Pavlov while studying dog digestion.
◦ Definition: Linking an antecedent stimulus that doesn't produce a response with one that does. Also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning.
◦ Key Terms:
▪ Neutral Stimulus (NS): A stimulus that initially does not cause a response (e.g., metronome before conditioning).
▪ Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): A stimulus that naturally causes a response (e.g., meat powder).
▪ Unconditioned Response (UCR): The natural, unlearned response caused by the UCS (e.g., salivation to meat powder).
▪ Conditioned Stimulus (CS): A stimulus that causes a response after being paired with the UCS (e.g., metronome after conditioning).
▪ Conditioned Response (CR): The learned response caused by the CS (e.g., salivation to metronome).
◦ Further Classical Conditioning:
▪ Extinction: Weakening of a conditioned response by removing the unconditioned stimulus.
▪ Spontaneous recovery: Reappearance of a learned response after apparent extinction.
▪ Higher-Order Conditioning: A CS is later used to reinforce further learning, acting as if it were a UCS.
▪ Stimulus generalization: Tendency to respond to stimuli similar, but not identical, to a conditioned stimulus.
▪ Stimulus discrimination: Learned ability to respond differently to similar stimuli.
◦ Realities of Classical Conditioning:
▪ Little Albert Experiment (John B. Watson): Conditioned a baby to fear a white rat, demonstrating a conditioned emotional response (CER).
▪ Phobia: A fear that persists even when no realistic danger exists.
▪ Desensitization techniques: Uses extinction by gradually exposing phobic people to feared stimuli while they remain calm.
▪ Aversion therapy: Pairs an unwanted behaviour with a negative unconditioned stimulus.
• Operant Conditioning
◦ Also known as instrumental learning.
◦ B.F. Skinner was a key figure.
◦ Based on Thorndike's Law of Effect: The probability of a response is altered by the effect it has. Learning is based on the consequences of responding.
◦ Skinner Box: Experimental apparatus to study operant conditioning, showing that learning alters the probability of behaviour repetition.
◦ Operant Conditioning Terms:
▪ Positive reinforcement: Response is followed by a reward or positive event.
▪ Negative reinforcement: Response is followed by the removal of an unpleasant event.
▪ Positive punishment: An unpleasant consequence that follows a response, decreasing its likelihood (e.g., a spanking).
▪ Negative punishment: Removal of a positive reinforcer after a response (e.g., losing privileges).
◦ Factors Influencing Effectiveness:
1. Intensity: Subjective value of rewards.
2. Timing: Immediate reinforcement/punishment after target behaviour.
3. Consistency: Learning works best when it is response-contingent.
◦ Response chaining: A series of actions linked that leads to reinforcement.
◦ Shaping: Reinforcement of behaviours that are increasingly close approximations to a desired response.
◦ Reinforcement Schedules: Plans for determining which responses will be reinforced.
▪ Continuous Reinforcement: Reinforcer follows every correct response.
▪ Partial Reinforcement Schedules: Reinforcer given only part of the time.
• Fixed & variable ratio: Reinforcement after a fixed or varying number of correct responses.
• Fixed & variable interval: Reinforcement after a fixed or varying amount of time has passed.
▪ Partial reinforcement produces learning that is more resistant to extinction.
◦ Realities of Operant Conditioning:
▪ Token Economies: Systems for managing behaviour through reinforcement (e.g., points for rewards).
▪ Casinos: Slot machines often use continuous reinforcement initially, then switch to partial reinforcement.
▪ Primary reinforcer: Unlearned, satisfies physiological needs (e.g., food, water, sex).
▪ Secondary reinforcer: Learned reinforcer, gains properties by association with a primary reinforcer (e.g., money, grades).
• Observational Learning
◦ Definition: Learning by watching and imitating the actions of another, or noting their consequences.
◦ Model: Someone who serves as an example (including media models).
◦ Bo-bo Clown Doll Experiment (Albert Bandura): Children imitated aggressive behaviour towards a doll after observing adults do so. Cartoon aggression was less effective than real-life observation.
◦ Conditions for Observational Learning:
1. Learner must pay attention to and remember what the model did.
2. Learner must be able to produce the observed behaviour.
3. Learner is more likely to imitate if the model is successful or rewarded.
4. Learner is more likely to repeat learned behaviour if it is reinforced.
◦ Violent video games have been correlated with increased aggressive behaviour, but these are correlational studies.
• Cognitive Learning
◦ Acknowledges that even conditioning involves "mental elements" like expectations, information, and perceptions.
◦ Definition: Ability to acquire behaviours, skills, and information heavily dependent on memory, thinking, and problem solving.
◦ Learner Characteristics:
1. Growth vs. Fixed Mindsets.
2. Learning Styles (auditory, visual, kinesthetic).
◦ Method of Instruction:
1. Direct Instruction: Presented via lecture or demonstration, students learn through rote practice.
2. Discovery Learning: Teachers create conditions encouraging students to discover or construct knowledge.
◦ Latent learning: Occurs without obvious reinforcement and is not demonstrated until reinforcement is provided (e.g., suddenly being able to roast chicken after living abroad).
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Week 7: Memory
• The Atkinson-Shiffrin Model of Memory
◦ Memory is an active system that receives, stores, organizes, alters, and recovers information.
◦ Proposed a three-stage model:
1. Sensory Memory
2. Short-Term Memory (STM)
3. Long-Term Memory (LTM)
◦ To remember, information must be encoded (converted into usable form), stored (held in memory), and retrieved (taken out of storage for use).
• Sensory Memory
◦ The first stage of memory.
◦ Stores an exact copy of incoming information for a few seconds or less.
◦ Operates outside consciousness unless selectively attended to.
◦ Large capacity, but very short duration.
◦ Information is held briefly enough for retrieval and encoding into short-term memory.
◦ Iconic memory: Visual sensory image stored for about half a second.
◦ Echoic memory: Auditory information stored for up to 2 seconds.
• Short-Term Memory (STM)
◦ Conscious awareness.
◦ Stores small amounts of information for a relatively brief period (about a dozen seconds).
◦ Working Memory: Part of STM; a mental workbench or notepad for thinking and problem-solving, holding information needed while thinking.
◦ Working Memory Capacity: Limited to Miller’s Magic Number 7 plus or minus 2 information bits.
◦ Working Memory Processes:
▪ Maintenance Rehearsal: Repeating information to keep it active in STM. Without it, memory rapidly decays.
▪ Rote Rehearsal (Rote Learning): Learning by simple repetition.
▪ Elaborative Rehearsal (Elaborative Encoding): Making memories more meaningful by linking new information to existing memories and knowledge.
• Long-Term Memory (LTM)
◦ A storage system that can hold a great deal of information over lengthy periods.
◦ Information that is important or meaningful is encoded from STM to LTM.
◦ In theory, LTM can store a nearly limitless amount of information.
◦ However, long-term memories are only relatively permanent and can be updated, changed, lost, or revised.
◦ Thoughts, inferences, and mental associations can be mistaken for true memories, leading to "false memories".
• Organising Memory
◦ The more you know, the easier it is for memory to expand.
◦ LTM is often encoded as images or sounds, and also stored based on meaning.
◦ Network Model: LTM is organized as a network of linked ideas.
◦ Redintegration: Memories are expanded by starting with one memory and following chains of association to other related memories.
• Types of Long-Term Memory: Implicit and Explicit Memories
◦ Explicit memories: Past experiences and specific factual information that are consciously brought to mind (involve recall and recognition).
◦ Implicit memories: Lie outside of awareness but influence behaviour (e.g., classical conditioning, procedural (muscle) memory, priming).
◦ Types of Explicit Memory:
1. Semantic memory: Part of declarative memory for factual knowledge and impersonal facts ("mental encyclopedia," vocabulary, general knowledge).
2. Episodic memory: Part of declarative memory for autobiographical records of personal experiences and life events (e.g., first kiss, 18th birthday).
◦ Episodic memories, unless very important, can be easily forgotten compared to semantic memory. Memories are stronger with associated emotions.
• Forgetting
◦ Forgetting Curve (Herman Ebbinghaus): Shows that memory decays rapidly at first, then more slowly; meaningful information is not forgotten as rapidly.
◦ Causes of Forgetting:
▪ Encoding Failure: Memory was never fully formed (e.g., studying while distracted).
▪ Memory Storage Failure:
• Memory Decay: Fading of physical changes in nerve cells or brain activity where memories are stored.
• Disuse: Memory traces weaken when not periodically used or retrieved.
▪ Retrieval Failure: Information became inaccessible for recall, even if encoded and stored.
• How Can I Improve Memory?
◦ Use elaborative processing: Look for connections of new knowledge to existing knowledge; use examples.
◦ Selection: Learn to filter and select only the most important concepts.
◦ Organization: Organize difficult items into chunks (e.g., phone numbers) and use "Key Concepts".
◦ Memory cues: Use stimuli that aid retrieval.
◦ Overlearning: Study beyond bare mastery.
◦ Spaced Practice: Alternate short study sessions with brief rest periods; better than massed practice.
◦ Retrieval Practice: Practice recalling information and getting feedback.
◦ Sleep: REM sleep helps sharpen memory.
◦ Mnemonics: Impose artificial organization of information if none is naturally present (e.g., acrostics, mental images).
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Week 8: Cognition, Creativity, & Intelligence
• What is Thinking?
◦ Cognition: The process of thinking, gaining, and dealing with knowledge.
◦ Human cognition includes Mental Representation.
◦ Experiential Processing: Passive, effortless, automatic thought (e.g., daydreaming).
◦ Reflective Processing: Active, effortful, controlled thought (e.g., problem solving).
◦ Three Basic Units of Cognition: Mental Images, Concepts, and Language (symbol).
• Basic Unit of Cognition: Mental Imagery
◦ Most people think, remember, and solve problems using images.
◦ Aphantasia: A condition where an individual lacks a "mind's eye".
◦ Mental images are held in working memory, specifically the visuospatial sketch pad.
• Basic Unit of Cognition: Concepts
◦ Concept: An idea that represents a category of objects or events.
◦ Concept formation: Process of classifying information into meaningful categories.
◦ Adults acquire concepts by learning or forming conceptual rules (guidelines for belonging to a concept class).
• Basic Unit of Cognition: Language
◦ Thinking can occur without language, but language expresses vague ideas or feelings and is productive.
◦ Structure of Language:
1. Symbols: To symbolize objects and ideas.
• Phonemes: Most basic speech sounds (e.g., /d/, /o/, /g/ in "dog").
• Morphemes: Speech sounds collected into meaningful units, such as syllables (e.g., "in," "come," "ing" in "incoming").
2. Grammar: Set of rules for making sounds into words, and words into sentences.
• Semantics: The study of meaning in words and language, either denotative (literal) or connotative (associated). Word meanings depend on context.
◦ Language is not limited to speech and text (e.g., sign language, animal language).
• Problem Solving
◦ Methods of Problem Solving:
1. Algorithms: Following a series of step-by-step rules, typically for routine problems.
2. Heuristics: A shortcut or rule of thumb for finding a solution, reducing alternatives.
3. Insight: A sudden mental reorganization of a problem that makes the solution obvious.
◦ Barriers to Problem Solving:
▪ Fixations: Tendency to get stuck on wrong solutions or be blind to alternatives.
▪ Functional Fixedness: Tendency to perceive an item only in terms of its most common use.
▪ Emotional Barriers: Inhibition, fear of looking foolish, inability to tolerate ambiguity, excessive self-criticism.
▪ Cultural Barriers: Values that view fantasy as a waste of time, playfulness as for children, or prioritize reason/logic over feelings/intuition.
▪ Learned Barriers: Conventions about uses, meanings, possibilities, and taboos.
◦ Novice vs. Experts in Problem Solving:
▪ Surface Structure: A problem's superficial features (e.g., names, objects in a math problem).
▪ Deep Structure: The problem's underlying principles or fundamentals (e.g., addition in a math problem).
▪ Experts are better at assessing a problem's deep structure and use fast automatic processing, organizing information in chunks or patterns.
• Creative Thinking
◦ Creativity: The ability to combine mental elements in new and useful ways.
◦ Divergent thinking: Thinking that produces many ideas or alternatives, a major element in original or creative thought. It involves Fluency (number of ideas), Flexibility (different categories of ideas), and Originality (uniqueness of ideas).
◦ Stages of Creative Thought:
1. Orientation: Problem is defined, key dimensions identified.
2. Preparation: Gathering as much information as possible about the problem.
3. Incubation: Subconscious problem-solving, ideas "cooking" in the background.
4. Illumination: The "Aha!" experience, insights or solutions appear rapidly.
5. Verification: Testing and evaluating solutions.
◦ Creative Personality & Honing It:
▪ Stereotypes: Eccentric, introverted, neurotic, socially inept.
▪ Creativity tests (divergent thinking) are weakly correlated with intelligence tests (convergent thinking).
▪ Creative individuals are often open to varied experiences, value independence, prefer complexities, enjoy symbolic thought, and are willing to challenge conventions.
▪ To hone creativity: Make associations, ask questions, seek varied input (networking), observe, and experiment.
• Intelligence
◦ Human Intelligence: The overall capacity to think rationally, act purposefully, and adapt to one's surroundings.
◦ G-factor (Spearman): A measure of an individual's overall intelligence, distinct from specific abilities.
◦ Fluid Intelligence: Ability to solve novel problems involving perceptual speed or rapid insight.
◦ Crystallised Intelligence: Effective use of prior knowledge.
◦ Challenges in Defining Intelligence: There are many ways to be smart, and traditional views captured only a small part of real-world intelligence.
◦ Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences:
▪ Linguistic, Logical-mathematical, Visual, Musical, Bodily-kinesthetic, Intrapersonal (self-knowledge), Interpersonal (social abilities), Naturalist (understanding natural environment), Existential (understanding spirituality and existence).
◦ Cultural Relativity of Intelligence: What is considered "smart" varies significantly across cultures, reflecting skills valued and useful in a particular environment (e.g., finding food in the tundra for the Cree, ocean navigation for the Puluwat).
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Week 9: Motivation and Emotion
• Basics of Motivation
◦ Definition: The ways in which our actions are aroused, maintained, and guided.
◦ Pattern of Motivated Behaviours:
1. Need: Internal deficiency, causes a drive.
2. Drive: Energized motivational state (e.g., hunger, thirst), activates a response.
3. Response: Action or series of actions to attain a goal.
4. Goal: Target of motivated behaviour.
◦ Needs are not always linked to drives (e.g., older persons may be dehydrated but not thirsty).
◦ Incentives: Desirable goals that can motivate behaviour even without an internal need.
• Biological Motives
◦ Innate motives based on biological needs essential for survival (e.g., hunger, thirst, air, sleep, pain avoidance).
◦ Maintain homeostasis (bodily equilibrium/balance) in temperature, blood pressure, etc..
◦ Sleep: Governed by circadian rhythms (internal biological clock, 24-hour cycle of body functions and arousal levels).
▪ "Day people" are alert early; "Night people" are lively later.
▪ Disruptions (jet lag, shift work) can take weeks to resynchronize.
◦ Hunger:
▪ Early studies (e.g., Washburn swallowing a balloon) linked hunger pangs to stomach contractions.
▪ The brain (especially the hypothalamus) receives signals from the body (tongue, stomach, intestines, liver, blood sugar levels) to regulate hunger and thirst.
▪ Ghrelin: A hormone released by the stomach that activates the lateral hypothalamus, part of the feeding system.
▪ External eating cues: Influence hunger and eating beyond biology.
• Taste: Availability or tastiness of food can stimulate overeating.
• Emotional eating: Overeating when anxious, angry, or sad.
• Cultural factors: Greatly affect food incentive value (e.g., diets in Vietnam vs. Malaysia vs. USA).
• Eating Disorders: Anorexia Nervosa & Bulimia Nervosa
◦ Anorexia nervosa: Active self-starvation or sustained loss of appetite with psychological origins, often involving control issues and distorted body image.
◦ Bulimia nervosa: Excessive eating (bingeing) followed by self-induced compensatory behaviours like vomiting, laxatives, or excessive exercise (purging). Bingeing and purging can severely damage health (e.g., stomach acids damaging throat).
• Stimulus Motives
◦ Needs for stimulation and information, exploration, manipulation, and sensory input.
◦ Appear innate but not directly needed for survival; help in scanning the environment and identifying danger.
◦ Arousal theory: We try to keep arousal at an optimal level.
◦ Yerkes-Dodson law: Model of relationship between stress and task performance.
▪ For simple tasks, high arousal is best; for complex tasks, lower arousal is best.
• Learned Motives
◦ Based on learned needs, drives, and goals, often social in nature or associated with valued human concepts (e.g., fame, power, affiliation, achievement, money).
◦ Acquired through socialization and cultural conditioning.
◦ McClelland’s Human Motivation Theory: Humans are driven by three primary needs.
1. Need for achievement: Desire to meet an internal standard of excellence; individuals strive hard, work alone, take calculated risks.
2. Need for power: Desire to have impact or control over others; enjoys competition, winning, status, and recognition.
3. Need for affiliation: Desire to belong to a group; wants to be liked, favors collaboration.
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Self-Actualisation)
◦ Lower needs are dominant and must be satisfied before higher needs can be attained.
◦ Moves from basic physiological needs upwards to self-actualization (the process of fully developing personal potentials).
• Types of Motivation: Intrinsic and Extrinsic
◦ Self Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci): Stresses importance of freedom of choice and classifies motives as internal or external.
◦ Intrinsic motivation: Comes from within, based on personal enjoyment of a task (e.g., volunteering).
◦ Extrinsic motivation: Based on obvious external rewards, obligations, or similar factors (e.g., running a business for profit).
• Emotions
◦ Involve:
▪ Experience: Subjective feelings (e.g., anger, sadness).
▪ Physiological arousal: Activation of the autonomous nervous system (e.g., faster heart beat).
▪ Expressions: Facial expressions, kinesics (body language, posture, voice tone).
▪ Cognition: How one thinks affects how they feel, through appraisals and attributions.
◦ Eight Primary Emotions by Robert Plutchik.
◦ Brain and Emotions: Positive emotions processed mainly in the left hemisphere, negative emotions in the right hemisphere.
◦ Amygdala: Part of the limbic system specializing in fear responses, receiving sensory information quickly and directly, bypassing the cortex. Explains fear without conscious awareness of its cause.
• Lie Detectors
◦ Polygraph: Device that records changes in heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and galvanic skin response (GSR - measures sweating).
◦ Measures autonomic nervous system arousal, not lying per se.
◦ Accuracy is doubtful; nervous innocent people might fail, calm liars might pass.
• Theories of Emotion
◦ James-Lange Theory (1880): Emotional feelings follow bodily arousal and come from awareness of such arousal. (Arousal then feeling)
◦ Cannon-Bard Theory (1932): Emotional feelings and physiological arousal occur at the same time, stimulated simultaneously by the brain. (Simultaneous arousal and feeling)
◦ Schachter & Singer’s Two-Factor Theory (1962): Emotion occurs when we first experience physiological arousal (1st Factor), and then apply/interpret a particular mental label (2nd Factor) to it.
▪ Attribution: The process of determining the cause of an event.
▪ Misattributions: More common than thought (e.g., Dutton & Aron experiment where arousal from a swaying bridge was misinterpreted as attraction).
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Week 10: Personality
• Understanding Personality
◦ Personality: A person’s unique long-term pattern of thinking, emotion, and behaviour. It represents the consistency of who you are, have been, and will become, a blend of talents, hopes, loves, hates, values, and habits.
◦ Self-Concept: Perception of one’s own personality traits. Once stable, it guides attention, memory, and thought.
◦ Self-Esteem: Regarding oneself as a worthwhile person; an evaluation of oneself.
▪ Individualistic cultures promote self-esteem as personal success.
▪ Collectivistic cultures see it as secure belonging to social groups.
◦ Personality traits: Differences among individuals in thoughts, feelings, and behaviour that are relatively stable over situations and time. They help make sense of individual differences and predict behaviour.
◦ Trait-Situation Interaction: How traits manifest in different situations.
◦ Personality type: People who have several traits in common.
▪ Carl Jung proposed two types:
• Introvert: Shy, reserved, attention focused inward.
• Extrovert: Bold, outgoing, attention directed outward.
• Personality Theories
◦ Provide frameworks (concepts, assumptions, ideas, principles) to explain personality.
• Trait Theory
◦ One of the most common and dominant theories.
◦ Focuses on learning what traits make up personality and how they relate to actual behaviour.
◦ Trait theorists analyse, classify, and interrelate traits, often viewing them as biological predispositions (hereditary).
◦ Classifying Traits:
▪ Gordon Allport (1961) identified:
1. Common traits: Shared by most members of a culture (e.g., "Asians are competitive").
2. Individual traits: Define a person’s unique personal qualities.
3. Cardinal traits: So basic that all of a person’s activities can be traced back to it (e.g., Mother Teresa's passion); few people have these.
4. Central traits: Core qualities of a personality (e.g., attentive, warm, sensitive mother).
▪ Raymond B. Cattell (1906-1998) studied traits and found:
• Surface traits: Visible features of personality.
• Source traits: Deeper characteristics or dimensions, from which surface traits cluster. Cattell identified 16 source traits (measured by the 16PF Questionnaire).
◦ The Big 5 (Five Key Dimensions): Reduced from Cattell’s 16 factors, widely accepted:
1. Extroversion: How introverted or extroverted a person is.
2. Agreeableness: How friendly, nurturant, and caring a person is.
3. Conscientiousness: Self-disciplined, responsible, and achieving.
4. Neuroticism: Tendency towards negative, upsetting emotions; anxious, emotional instability.
5. Openness: Open to new ideas and experiences.
• Psychodynamic Theory
◦ Focuses on what lies under the surface of personality – hidden or unconscious thoughts, needs, or emotions.
◦ Based on the work of Sigmund Freud.
◦ Personality is a dynamic system directed by three components (structures of the psyche): id, ego, and superego.
◦ The Id:
▪ Made of innate biological instincts and urges.
▪ Operates on the pleasure principle: Wishes desires satisfied immediately, without waiting or regard for consequences.
▪ Self-serving, irrational, impulsive, and totally unconscious.
▪ Powered by libido (energy) from life instinct (eros) and death instinct (Thanatos), explaining Freud's focus on sex and aggression.
◦ The Superego:
▪ Acts as a judge or censor for thoughts and actions.
▪ Operates on the moral principle.
▪ Developed from parents/caregivers, acting as an internalized parent.
▪ Leads to guilt when standards are not met, and pride when they are.
◦ The Ego:
▪ Within conscious control of personality.
▪ Operates via the reality principle: System of thinking, planning, problem-solving, and deciding, directing rational behaviour.
▪ Often caught between the tension from the Id (urges) and Superego (ideals).
◦ Level of Awareness (Freud's Iceberg Analogy): Behaviour expresses both conscious and unconscious forces.
▪ Conscious: Everything you are aware of at a given moment.
▪ Preconscious: Material that can be brought to awareness.
▪ Unconscious: Holds repressed memories, emotions, and instinctual drives of the Id.
▪ Freudian slips: Slips of the unconscious into conscious thought.
◦ Freudian Personality Development: Psychosexual Stages:
▪ Core personality is formed by age 6 through a series of psychosexual stages.
▪ At each stage, a different body part becomes a primary erogenous zone (producing pleasure and frustration).
▪ Fixation: Unresolved conflict or emotional hang-up from overindulgence or frustration in a stage, which can lead to adult personality traits.
▪ Stages:
1. Oral (Infant, 1st year): Stimulation from mouth; fixation can lead to nail-biting, smoking, overeating, sarcasm.
2. Anal (1-3 years): Attention shifts to elimination process; fixation can lead to anal-retentive (obsessively clean, stingy) or anal-expulsive (messy, disorderly) traits.
3. Phallic (3-6 years): Sexually aware, increased interest in opposite-sex parent, competition with same-sex parent (Oedipus Complex for boys, Elektra Complex for girls).
4. Latency (6-puberty): Relatively quiet stage; development continues.
5. Genital (puberty): Upsurge of unresolved past conflicts, leading to adolescent emotional turmoil.
◦ Neo Freudians: Psychologists who were influenced by Freud but developed their own theories, often disagreeing with his emphasis on sex and biology.
▪ Alfred Adler (School of Individual Psychology): Disagreed with Freud's emphasis on unconscious and sexuality.
• Striving for superiority: Basic drive towards perfection.
• Compensation: Attempts to overcome feelings of inadequacy or limitations.
• Coined the term "inferiority complex".
• Creative self: Humans create personalities through choices and experiences.
▪ Karen Horney: Resisted Freud's biological and instinctive ideas, especially "anatomy is destiny" (gender determines personality traits) and Penis Envy.
• Challenged male bias in Freud's thinking and his explanation of neurosis.
• Proposed Basic Anxiety: People feel isolated and helpless in a hostile world.
▪ Carl Jung: Student of Freud, shared views on Ego and the unconscious.
• Personal unconscious: Mental storehouse choose, not controlled by genetics, learning, or unconscious forces).
◦ You are largely the product of your choices.
◦ Subjective experience: Private perceptions of reality, or what is real for the individual (emphasizing empathy).
◦ Abraham Maslow and Self-Actualisation:
▪ Self-Actualisation: The process of fully developing personal potentials, or a continuous search for personal fulfillment.
▪ Characteristics of self-actualized individuals: Acceptance of others,self, and ideal self**.
▪ Incongruence: A state where there is a discrepancy between one’s experiences and self-image, or between one’s self-image and ideal self.
• Personality Testing
◦ Interviews: Face-to-face meetings to gain information about personality, psychological state, or history.
▪ Unstructured interview: Informal conversation.
▪ Structured interview: Follows a prearranged plan with planned questions. * MMPI-2 (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2): Widely used, 567 test items, many sub-scales.
▪ Big-5 Personality Tests.
▪ Myer-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI).
▪ DISC (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness).
◦ Projective Tests:
▪ Use ambiguous or unstructured stimuli; person describes stimuli or makes up stories to uncover deeply hidden and unconscious wishes, thoughts, and needs. Deals with coping with pain, chronic illness, stress-related diseases, motivation to change, treatment compliance, and promoting quality of life.
• Behavioural Risk Factors
◦ Lifestyle diseases: Related to health-damaging personal habits (e.g., heart disease, AIDS, lung cancer, type-2 diabetes).
◦ Actions increasing chances of disease, injury, or early death (e.g., smoking, alcohol/drug abuse, poor diet, insufficient exercise, risky sexual practices).
◦ Unhealthy lifestyles often relate to each other (e.g., smokers also drink, overeaters exercise less). Health psychologists work to reduce these risks.
• Social Risk Factors
◦ Social factors can be barriers to change.
◦ Social Network: Influence on behaviours (e.g., obesity, alcohol consumption, smoking cessation).
◦ Poverty: Linked to lower life expectancy, can reverse declining absolute poverty trends. Poorer women in better-off neighborhoods may have higher mortality rates than those in poorer ones.
• Psychological Risk Factors
◦ Involve attention, perception, cognition, emotions, motivation, and personality.
◦ Role of Personality:
▪ Type A personality: Hard-driving, ambitious, highly competitive, achievement-oriented, sense of urgency, uptight; high risk of heart attack.
▪ Type B personality: More laid-back, flexible, easygoing; lower risk of heart attack.
▪ **Type49, 50].
• Psychology of Health – Addressing Risks
◦ Early prevention: Involving parents, peers, community, education system, government.
◦ Health Programmes: Prevention programs, school programs, refusal skills training (resisting unhealthy behaviours), life skills training (stress reduction, self-protection, social skills, relaxation).
◦ Community Health: Community-wide education projects to lessen major risk factors (e.g., screenings, roadshows, Zumba). Campaigns provide prolonged (long-term) stress, categorized in three stages. Same autonomic Nervous System (ANS) arousal as emotion.
◦ Psychosomatic illness: Illnesses of psychological origins, often lacking medical explanations (e.g., headaches, stomachaches).
◦ Stages:
1. Alarm Reaction: Body mobilizes resources to cope; hormones (adrenaline, cortisol) released; initial symptoms (headache, fatigue) appear.
2. Stage of Resistance: Bod].
◦ Psychosomatic disorders: Illnesses where psychological factors contribute to bodily damage or changes in bodily functioning (e.g., stomach upset, asthma, eczema, hypertension).
• Learned Helplessness
◦ Definition: A psychological state occurring when an appraisal suggests that events do not appear to be controllable.
◦ Seligman's 1967 dog experiment showed that animals subjected to inescapable shocks later failed to try to escape even when possible, resigning to their fate.
• Depression
◦ Similar to learned helplessness; an acquired inability to overcome obstacles.
◦ Marked by feelings of despondency, powerlessness, and hopelessness.
◦ Symptoms: Guilt, loss of appetite, fatigue, low mood, sleep disturbances, loss of interest, irritability.
◦ One of the most common mental health concerns.
◦ Learned helplessness helps explain the hopelessness in depression (e.g., repeated failure leading to giving up). Students may experience depression due to academic stress, isolation, relationship issues, or difficulty living up to ideal-self.
• Burnout
◦ A work-related condition of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion.
◦ Symptoms: emotional exhaustion, cynicism, detachment, irritability, low mood.
◦ Those passionate about their work are more vulnerable. Common in emotionally demanding helping professions (nursing, teaching, counselling).
• Appraising Stressors
◦ The level of stress experienced depends on how one appraises it.
◦ According to Lazarus (1991):
1. Primary Appraisal: Assessing whether a situation is relevant, irrelevant, positive, or threatening.
2. Secondary Appraisal: Assessing resources and deciding how to cope with a threat or challenge.
◦ Additional Factors in Appraising Stress:
1. Perceived control: Belief in ability to handle a stressful situation.
2. Perceived competence: Belief in one's competence to manage life's demands.
3. Unpredictability.
4. Pressure: Needing to meet urgent external demands or expectations.
• Social Readjustment Rating Scale (Holmes and Rahe, 1967)
◦ Rates the impact of various life events (positive and negative) on the likelihood of illness, expressed in Life Changing Units (LCUs). Positive events (e.g., marriage, vacation) can also be stressful.
• Improving Health with Treatment
◦ Recognising Illnesses: Some deny/ignore symptoms, seeking treatment only at late stages.
▪ Hypochondriacs: Believe they are ill despite medical evidence.
▪ Factors in Recognition: More likely to recognize painful symptoms or those impacting highly valued body parts. Neuroticism is associated with noticing symptoms. Information availability (internet) also plays a role.
◦ Treatment Seeking Behaviour: Women are more likely to seek healthcare than men. Income is a barrier to accessibility and prevention. Older adults are less likely to delay treatment than adolescents. Culture may influence seeking alternative treatments.
• Stress Management
◦ Uses behavioural and cognitive strategies to reduce stress and improve coping skills:
1. Exercise: Dissipates stress-based arousal.
2. Meditation: Quiets body, promotes relaxation.
3. Progressive relaxation: Deep relaxation by tightening/relaxing muscles.
4. Guided imagery: Visualizing calming images.
5. Slow down: Deliberately do things at a slower pace.
6. Organize: Disorganization creates stress.
7. Strike a balance: Prevent one life element (e.g., work) from becoming overwhelming.
8. Recognize and accept your limits: Set gradual, achievable goals.
9. Seek social support: Close, positive relationships promote health and morale.
10. Write about your feelings: Helps cope with stress.
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Week 12: Psychological Disorders
• What Is Normal? (Abnormality)
◦ Psychopathology: Scientific study of mental, emotional, and behavioural disorders; abnormal or maladaptive behaviour.
◦ Defining abnormality can be tricky:
1. Statistical abnormality: Having extreme scores on a dimension (e.g., intelligence, anxiety, depression).
2. Social nonconformity: Disobeying societal standards for conduct; often leads to destructive behaviour.
3. Situational context: The social situation or circumstances influence what's considered normal (e.g., nakedness in a locker room vs. public street).
4. Cultural relativity: Judgments are made relative to the values of one’s culture (e.g., shouting when talking, eating without utensils).
5. Subjective discomfort: Private feelings of pain, unhappiness, or emotional distress.
• Defining Feature of Disordered Behavior
◦ Maladaptive behaviour: Behaviour arising from dysfunction that makes it difficult to function, adapt to the environment, and meet everyday demands.
◦ Often results in serious psychological discomfort, disability, and/or loss of control of thoughts, behaviours, or feelings.
◦ Example: Drinking alcohol is normal, but inability to start the day without it indicates maladaptiveness.
• Insanity
◦ A legal term, not a psychological one.
◦ Refers to an inability to manage one’s affairs or foresee the consequences of one’s actions.
◦ Those judged insane (by a court) are not held legally responsible for their actions and can be involuntarily committed to a mental hospital.
◦ Established through testimony from expert witnesses like psychologists or psychiatrists.
◦ Not guilty by reason of insanity: The accused, due to a diagnosable psychological disorder, could not realize their actions were wrong.
• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
◦ Published by the American Psychiatric Association, used to classify psychological problems.
◦ Current edition is the DSM-5-TR.
◦ Homosexuality was removed as a disorder in 1974, but gender dysphoria is still considered a disorder due to insurance/medical complications.
◦ The original DSM had about 100 disorders; today it has over 350.
• Classification Using Symptoms
◦ Mental illness is typically diagnosed by the presence/absence, duration, and interference of symptoms with everyday life.
◦ Positive Symptoms: Symptoms in excess or exaggerations of normal behaviour (e.g., delusions, hallucinations).
◦ Negative Symptoms: Deficiencies or absences compared to normal behaviour (e.g., apathy, flat affect).
◦ Comorbidities: Presence of more than one disorder at the same time.
• General Risk Factors (Etiology)
◦ Classified into the biopsychosocial model by George Engel:
▪ Biological factors: Organic vs. environmental influences (e.g., genetics, brain chemistry).
▪ Psychological factors: Self-esteem, coping skills, personality, stress level, core beliefs, emotional regulation skills.
▪ Social factors: Family system, socioeconomic status (SES), work/school conditions, peers, loneliness.
◦ Stress Vulnerability Model: Psychologists largely agree that mental illnesses result from various combinations of inherited vulnerabilities and environmental stress.
• Neurodevelopmental vs. Neurocognitive Disorders
◦ Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Nervous system damage arising prior to adulthood (e.g., Down Syndrome, Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD).
◦ Neurocognitive Disorders: Problems arising not until adulthood (e.g., Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease).
▪ Often serious mental impairments in old age due to brain deterioration, causing disturbances in memory, reasoning, judgment, impulse control, and personality.
• Psychotic Disorders
◦ Psychosis: Loss of contact with shared views of reality.
◦ Typically marked by delusions and hallucinations, disturbed thought or speech, disturbed motor behaviour, and social/emotional isolation.
◦ Delusions: False beliefs individuals insist are true despite overwhelming evidence. Types include: depressive, grandeur, influence (controlled/observed), persecution (others out to get them).
◦ Hallucinations: Imaginary sensations (seeing, hearing, smelling) that don't exist in reality.
◦ Delusional Disorder: Presence of deeply held false beliefs; hallucinations are typically absent. Types: Jealous, Erotomanic, Somatic.
◦ Schizophrenia: Marked by both delusions, hallucinations, apathy, and thinking/emotional abnormalities.
▪ Affects about 1 in 100 persons.
▪ May lead to violence due to delusions.
▪ May experience catatonia: Remaining mute and holding odd postures for hours or days.
◦ Risk Factors of Psychotic Disorders:
▪ Inherited potential: Individuals inherit a vulnerability to schizophrenia (e.g., 48% chance for identical twin if one has it).
▪ Biochemical abnormality: Disturbance in brain chemicals or neurotransmitters (e.g., overactivity in brain dopamine system).
▪ Early psychological trauma: Injury or shock from violence, abuse, or neglect.
▪ Disturbed family environment: Stressful or unhealthy family relationships.