General Psychology

Exploring what psychology means…

• Psychology - the study of behavior and mental processes, in humans and/or animals

  • Psychology hasn’t been around for a while and is a science that is used to Empirically predict how a person will behave.

  • Cognitive Process - the entire operation of the mind (thoughts, dreams, rationale, and memories)

• Goals of psychology

  • Explain

  • Predict

  • Influence

How does Psychology apply to Funeral Service?

• 1950 - Edward Martin wrote a book titled “Psychology of Funeral Service”

  • Only by having a diverse educational background can a funeral director begin to understand the people they serve

  • “The most important concept”

• Psychology is used most in Funeral services through

  • Counseling - advice is given as a result of consultation meant to help the person

  • Personal Exercise - Why are you choosing funeral service?

• Become familiar with Dr. Alan Wolfelt and his view on the funeral

  • Pay the funeral director or pay the psychologist, it’s up to you

Using research in Psychology

• Research - careful collection of information on a particular subject

• Through research, we can develop what is known as a Hypothesis which can lead to implementing a Theory

• Popular Research Methods Used in Psychology

  • Observations - Watching Behaviors without Interference

  • Case Studies - intense examination of the phenomenon with a complex explanation by utilizing multiple resources to draw a conclusion

  • Surveys - questionnaires or interviews aimed at gaining a subject insight in a relatively short time frame

  • Experiments - manipulating variables to note the impact on the subject (cause and effect)

Philosophy’s Influence on Psychology

• Ancient Greece

  • Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle worked to develop logic regarding how the human psyche operated but it was through a philosophical lens

• 1626 - Rene Descartes begins to write on the philosophy of the human mind

  • Dualism - the mind and body are separate but work together to form reality

  • Cogito, Ergo Sum - I think therefore I am

  • Automatic Reaction - Predecessor to reflex theory in that any sensation can cause a reaction from the body due to learned behavior

• During the Age of Enlightenment

  • John Locke wrote extensively on consciousness and proposed

    • Tabula Rasa - the human mind was blank at birth and is filled in with experiences and perceptions

    • Empiricism - Knowledge is derived primarily through experience

Major Players in Psychology

• Wilhelm Wundt

  • The Father of modern psychology

  • Developed the first series of psychological tests and began the first psychological research lab in 1879

  • Introspection - to look within; the subject self-reports, answering the question “How do you feel?”

• Edward Titchener

  • Proposed sensations have distinct characteristics

  • Developed Structuralism - theory based on identifying the most basic structures of the human mind

• Wiliam James

  • Authored the 1890 two-volume book, “Principles of Psychology”

  • Worked to discover how the mind, perception, habits, and emotions help you allow humans the ability to adapt and survive

  • Functionalism - theory focused on the anatomy of the mind

• Sigmund Freud

  • Viennese physician who is considered to be the most prolific psychologist in history

  • Used hypnosis to investigate the unconscious

  • Believed psychology offered only temporary answers to the human condition until neurology could explain the real cause

  • Developed many theories

    • Psychoanalysis

    • The Structure of Personality

    • The Psychosexual stages of development

    • Defense Mechanisms

  • John B. Watson

    • Psychologist and Advertising Executive

    • Focus was on what could be seen and measured, not unconscious

    • Behaviorism - the study of observable behavior since behavior is at the root of the reasons why a person acts in a certain way

    • Studied Child Rearing: The Little Albert Experiment

Differences between Practitioners

• Psychologist - has a doctoral level degree in psychology, focused on the clinical or counseling areas, investigating the workings of the mind and behavior.

• Psychiatrist - has a medical degree with a specialty in diagnosing and treating mental disorders, can prescribe medications

• Psychotherapist - practices in the clinical setting with individuals, groups, or families; attained a master’s degree; most common practitioner seen by a patient for therapy sessions

• Psychoanalyst - practices Freudian therapy techniques; for example: free association, dream interpretation, resistance, transference, and the division of the psyche

Perspectives and Subfolds of Psychology

• Cognitive - derived from the Latin word meaning to know; focus is on memory, thoughts, and reasoning

• Biological - focuses on the biological processes that underlie behavior; how biological characteristics are inherited & influence our behavior

• Behavioral - focuses on overt actions that can be measured and observed

• Evolutionary - focuses on the evolution of psychological mechanisms in conjunction with our behaviors; believe these mechanisms help or once helped in meeting basic survival needs

• Psychodynamics - focus on the role of the hidden, often unconscious processes

• Existentialism - dealing with the inner conflict of the individual due to the given fact of sheer existence

  • Focus on death, freedom, isolation, or meaninglessness

• Humanistic - suggests that people are in control of their lives and behavior

  • Able to develop higher levels of maturity through self-growth

  • Malsows Hierarchy of Needs

  • All people possess free will

  • Rejects the unconscious and focuses on the uniqueness of humanity

• Developmental psychology - studies how people change physically, cognitively, and socially over their entire lives

• Clinical Psychology - study diagnoses, causes, and treatments of mental health disorders

• Educational Psychology - all areas of the educational process; especially concerned with how students learn and develop, often focusing on subgroups

• School Psychology - applies principles of clinical psychology and educational psychology the the diagnosis and treatment of children’s and adolescents behavioral and learning problems

• Industrial/Organizational Psychology - the study of employees, workplace, and organizations

  • Study behaviors demonstrated in the workplace

  • Improve performance and well-being of employees

  • Develop better hiring, training, and feedback programs/practices

• Health, Sports, Forensic, Engineering, and Environmental Psychology

Learning

• Exploring how we learn

  • Learning - permanent change in behavior or knowledge produced by experience

    • Outcome is either tangible or intangible

    • Assessed by observing the subject

  • Types of Learning

    • Methods in education

    • Multiple Intelligences

    • Observational

    • Classical Conditioning

    • Operant Conditioning

• Methods in Education

  • Pedagogy - the method and practice of teaching, especially an academic subject or theoretical concept in K-12

  • Andragogy - the method and practice of teaching adult learners; adult education

  • Concepts behind these methods

    • Self Concept - all the information you hold about yourself, pedagogically defined by others

    • Learner experience - While we are kids, we need other’s experiences. As adults, we learn though experience

    • Readiness - Pedagogically its forced. andragogical, its by choice

    • Orientation - P - Learn it and test it. A - Learn it, postpone it, apply it

    • Motivation - P - why do it? please others A - Please self

  • Multiple Intelligences

    • Howard Earl Gardner (1943)

      • humans have several different ways of processing information, and these ways are relatively independent of one another

      • Multiple intelligences represents different intellectual abilities

      • Learning styles are the ways in which an individual approaches a range of tasks

• Fundamental Learning Style

  • Observational - acquiring new forms of behavior, information or concepts though exposure to others and the consequences they experience

    • Monkey See, Monkey Do

    • Principles: Attention, remembering, conversion, and motivation

    • Latent - a form of observational learning in which new behavior is acquired but not demonstrated until the need arises

    • Forms a cognitive Map

• Classical Conditioning

  • Ivan Pavlov

    • Worked in physiology, neurology, and psychology fields

    • Worked to develop temperament, conditioning, and involuntary reflex action

    • Deduced the dog could learn and respond when a basic need was about to be met by observing changes in behavior

    • Classical Conditioning - Defined as a learning process in which pairings are made between a stimulus and an involuntary reflex

      • Signal placed before reflex

  • Terms

    • Unconditioned Stimulus - event that brings about a reaction without being learned

    • Unconditioned Response - reaction that is naturally occurring

    • Neutral Stimulus - signal that initially produces no response, it just grabs the focus of the subject

    • Conditioned Stimulus - once the neutral stimulus is paired repeatedly with the UCS; the NS is seen as original UCS

    • Conditioned Response - The feedback to the CS, only occurs after pairing, similar to UCR

  • Principles of Classical Conditioning

    • Acquisition - the time in the learning process where pairing occurs

      • NS + UCS = CS

    • Extinction - the gradual disappearance of a conditioned response. The CS is overused WITHOUT pairings

      • Recondition - rapid recovery of the learned behavior just by pairing the CS & UCS again

      • Spontaneous Recovery - after extinction, reappearance of the lost response with only the CS, NO RECONDITIONING, this response is weaker and less frequent

    • Generalization - other stimuli that are similar to the CS lead to the CR

    • Discrimination - as long as two stimuli are distinct from each other, the subject can differentiate the response

  • Treating Phobias with classical conditioning

    • Phobia - is an overwhelming and unreasonable fear of an object or situation that poses little real danger

      • Certain factors increase your phobia chances

        • Age

• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

  • Anxiety disorder in which people have unwanted and repeated thoughts, feelings, ideas sensations, or behaviors that make them feel driven to do something

  • Obsessions/Compulsions cause major distress or interfere with everyday life, not performing the rituals causes great anxiety

    • Checking and rechecking actions

    • Excessive counting

    • Excessive fear of germs

      • Repeatedly washing the hands to ward off infection

• Precursor to Operant Conditioning

  • Edward Thorndike proposed the LAW OF EFFECT

    • Responses that are more satisfying will be repeated and those that are not become less repeated

    • Done through studying hungry cats in cages

    • Concluding that understanding between reward and response was irrelevant since through time, behavior becomes so engrained that it acts on almost an unconscious level

• Operant Conditioning

  • B.F Skinner - American psychologist concerned with explaining how we acquire the range of learned behaviors we exhibit each and every day

    • Father or Operant Conditioning - method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior

  • Skinner box

    • A controlled environment by the researcher to condition an animal to demonstrate a selected behavior

    • Reinforcement - based on a stimulus that can be either positive or negative when added or removed the result increases the behavior

• Operant conditioning Terms

  • Primary Reinforcer - satisfies a basic need (biological/primitive origin); works naturally regardless of experience

  • Secondary Reinforcer - becomes ingrained because of the association with the primary reinforcer

  • Positive Reinforcement - seen by the subject as a stimulus that strengthens a response

  • Negative Reinforcement - seen by the subject as an unpleasant stimulus that when removed from the environment leads to a stronger response

  • Punishment - based on a stimulus that can either be positive or negative when added or removed the result decreases the behavior

  • Positive Punishment - introduces an unpleasant stimulus to curtail the behavior

  • Negative Punishment - sometimes referred to as Penalty, removes a pleasant stimulus to deter the behavior

• Principles of Operant Conditioning

  • Schedule of reinforcement - the guidelines determining when and how reinforcement will be delivered

  • Reward Delay - the time interval between response and reward

  • Shaping - technique for teaching complex behavior; the subject is rewarded for closer and closer strides towards the desirable behavior

  • Chaining - the procedure that establishes a sequence of responses that lead to a reward only at the conclusion of the final response in the chain (multiple shapings strung together)

Motivation and Emotion

Motivation

• Defined as the process that initiates, directs, and sustains behavior

  • Usually satisfying the physiological or psychological needs

  • the reason, purpose, or motive

• Theories of Motivation

  • Drive Theory - People are motivated to take action in order to reduce the internal tension that is caused by unmet needs. Working to maintain homeostasis

    • Being hungry, cold, thirsty, tired, or hot

  • Arousal Theory - take action to either decrease or increase the level of arousal. people seek optimal levels of arousal

    • When arousal is too low, a person my go for a jog. Too high and a person may meditate

  • Expectancy Theory - people are motivated to do things because of external rewards. People are drawn to the positive and repelled by the negative outcomes

    • Focus on incentives

  • Goal setting theory - People are propelled strongly by the use of goals. increases performance

    • Goals must be specific, challenging, attainable, feedback aids progress

• Components and classification of our motives

  • Three Components to Motives

    • Activation

    • Persistence

    • Intensity

  • Classification of Motives

    • Extrinsic Motivations - those that arise from outside of the individual and often involve rewards

      • Accolades (enticement maintains interest)

      • Intrinsic motivations - those that arise from within the individual

        • Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose

• Abraham Maslow

  • Most notable Humanistic psychologist of the 20th Century

  • People do not blindly react to situations

  • Studied Exemplary People

  • Created the Hierarchy of Needs

    • the arrangement of needs from the most basic to those at the highest level

  • The Pyramid of Needs

    • Base Level - Breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis, excretion

    • Second Level - Safety - Security of body, employment, resources, family, health, and property

    • Third Level - Love and Belonging - Friendship, family, sexual intimacy

psychosexual stages of development

• An innate sequence of stages though which all humans pass. At each stage, pleasure is focused on a different region of the body. These stages help to determine our overall personality

  • Libido - the psychic energy that powers all mental activity, an instinctual force residing in the ID that focuses on pleasure

  • Fixation - excessive investment of psychic energy resulting in various psychological complexes/disorders

• Oral Stage - Birth to 2 years of age

  • Pleasure is centered around the mouth through oral activities; like feeding, thumb sucking, and babbling

  • Oral Receptive Personality - Reduce tension through oral activities; smoking, over-eating, nail-biting

  • Oral Aggressive personality - hostile and verbally abusive to others; sarcastic people & bullies

• Anal Stage - 2-4 years of age

  • Pleasure is centered around elimination

  • Child learns how to respond to the demands of society; exerting bowel and bladder control

  • Anal retentive personality - stingy, favor order and tidiness. Stubborn and perfectionists

  • Anal expulsive personality - lack of self control. generally messy and careless

• Phallic Stage - 4-7 years of age

  • Pleasure source is genitals

  • Child learns to recognize the difference between males and females

  • Oedipus Complex (Castration Anxiety) - boys fear that if they anger their father, he will cut off their penis (king what??? ;////;)

  • Electra Complex (Penis Envy) - girls are envious that they do not have a penis, so to compensate, girls want to have children with their fathers

• Latency Stage - 7-12 years of age

  • Pleasure is focused on developing new skills and knowledge

  • No conflict because libido is repressed

  • This is the time where same gendered friends are prevalent

  • Turns to sports, hobbies, or school

• Genital Stage - 12 and up

  • Pleasure is sexual gratification

  • Acquire the adult capacity to combine lust with affection

  • Time of physical/sexual changes, i.e Puberty

  • repressed needs reawaken but instead of focusing on the self, now the welfare of others is more of a concern

  • Removes old dependencies and learns to deal maturely with sexual desires

Variations on the Psychoanalytic Approach

• Neo-Freudian - personality theories who accepted portions of Freud’s theory, but rejected or modified other portions

  • Carl Jung - Analytic Psychology

    • Shared Freud’s view of the importance of the unconscious but saw an area Freud missed

    • Collective Unconscious - portion of personality that all humans share; these experiences are a part of our biological heredity that humans have acquired since we originated

    • Archetypes - inherited images our collective unconscious holds that shapes our perceptions of the world