Psychology Flashcards

Taste Aversion and Biological Predispositions

• Certain species are biologically predisposed to learn certain associations more readily than others.
• Example: If you get sick after eating oysters, you're more likely to develop an aversion to the taste of oysters than to the restaurant or people you were with.
• Birds, which rely on sight for hunting, are more likely to develop aversions to the sight of tainted food.
• Our predisposition to associate an effect with a preceding event can sometimes mislead us.
• Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy may develop conditioned nausea and anxiety related to the clinic's sights, sounds, and smells, even if nausea occurs an hour post-treatment (Paul, 1997; Perishan & Perry, 1986; Davy, 1992).
• Returning to the clinic waiting room can trigger these conditioned feelings.
• Revulsion to sickening stimuli is typically adaptive.

Biological Constraints on Conditioning

• Nature limits each species' capacity for operant conditioning.
• Analogy: "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig" (Robert Heinlein).
• Table 22.1 summarizes biological and cognitive influences on conditioning (Classical Conditioning, Operant Conditioning, Biological influences).

Observational Learning and Modeling Aggression

• Early experiments demonstrated learning aggressive behaviors through modeling.
• Children watched an adult perform aggressive acts towards an inflated doll, accompanied by hostile remarks.
• Researchers measured how much of the modeled aggression the children learned by observation.
• Measurement of learning of aggression uses simulated targets rather than live ones.
• Example: Simulated targets are used to test bombing strategies, rather than requiring actual bombing of cities.
• The model in the experiment pummeled the doll, flung it, and beat it repeatedly.

Neural Mirroring and Observational Learning

• Observational learning may be enabled by neural mirroring.
• In 1991, researchers implanted electrodes in a monkey's brain next to the motor cortex in a frontal lobe region involved in planning movements.
• The monitoring device alerted researchers to activity in that brain region.
• When the monkey moved a peanut to its mouth, the device buzzed.
• When a researcher entered the lab eating an ice cream cone, the monkey's monitor buzzed as if the monkey had moved, even though it was motionless.

Social Learning in Animals

• Animal social learning is evident in various species.
• Humpback whales slapping the water to drive fish into clumps is a behavior spread through social learning (Ellen et al., 2013).
• Monkeys learn to prefer the color of corn other monkeys are eating (2009; 2014).

Imitation in Humans

• Children imitate actions modeled on TV (Meltsoff, 1988; Meltsoff et al., 1989, 1990, 1997).
• Even 2.5-year-olds, with mental abilities near those of adult chimpanzees, surpass chimps in social tasks like imitating solutions to problems (Perman et al., 2007; Bernier et al., 1994; Ireland & Pennebaker, 2010).
• Imitation helps us make friends by mimicking those we like, leading them to like us more in return (Chartrand & Lincoln, 2013; Salazar Caf et al., 2018).
• We unconsciously imitate others (yawning, smiling, laughing) (Anderson et al., 2017; Bushman, 2018; Martins & Weaver, 2019; Ten et al., 2019).

Media Violence and Role Models

• Consider the effects of viewing media violence.
• Bandura's work, along with that of Pavlov, Watson, Skinner, and others, illustrates the impact of focusing on well-defined problems and ideas.
• These researchers emphasized the importance of learning.
• Intellectual history is often made by individuals who push ideas to their limits (Simonton, 2000).

Reflection

• What prosocial and antisocial role models do you see on screens?
• Which ones have you chosen to imitate?
• For whom are you a role model?
• How might you become a better role model for others?