Psych Notes #3

Piaget, psychologist develops the schema, a mental plan for knowing something, when we run into something new how to we come to know it. Assimilation and accommodation, when we run into something new we try to fit into what we already know, changes in our schema.

Bowlby’s theory of attachment argues that essentially infants by around age one have a fear of the unknown.

Harlow - contact, experimented with a surrogate parent and a soft fake monkey and wire mesh monkey, one with food and one without and the monkey preferred the soft surrogate. Similar across cultures, not learned behavior, hard-wired evolution.

Ainsworth - strange situation, strangers can be around and even play with the young kid but as long as the caregiver is there. Once the caregiver leaves, the kid will cry. This is secure attachment. There are insecure attachment types like anxious-ambivalent, where the child will greet but then push away the caregiver.

Moral psychology has two main lines of research: cognitive development and evolutionary, neurological, and social-psychological research. The former focuses on moral reasoning, while the latter focuses on evolved emotions and intuitions. The latter was shaped by a debate between two 19th-century narratives about modernity. The author suggests that moral psychology should study alter-native moral perspectives, particularly religious and politically conservative ones. Morality has been around since ancient times, with texts like the Code of Hammurabi, the Hindu Vedas, the Egyptian Instructions of Amenemope, and the Hebrew Bible. Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and J.S. Mill's ideas on liberty and utility all contribute to modern discussions of moral education and moral psychology. However, moral insights are sometimes gained or lost as societies change.

- Moral psychology has two main lineages: developmental psychologists and a new synthesis of evolutionary, neurological, and social-psychological research.

- The lines have been shaped by an older debate between two 19th-century narratives about modernity: one celebrating the liberation of individuals and the other mourning the loss of community and moral authority."

- One future step for moral psychology should be to study alter-native moral perspectives, particularly religious and politically conservative ones in which morality is about protecting groups, institutions, and souls.

- Questions of morality show up in the first chapter of Western philosophy, and two of the greatest works of ancient Greek philosophy are extended inquiries into the nature and origins of good persons and societies.

Emotion

An emotion is a psychological state that combines (1) feelings, (2) thoughts, and (3) bodily arousal and that often has (4) a distinctive accompanying facial expression. In the Research Toolkit, you learned that the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is a system for detecting emotions from facial expressions that avoids reliance on self-reports.

Emotion v. Mood

Moods last longer than emotions; moods are not necessarily accompanied by a specific pattern of thinking; and moods are not strongly linked to facial expressions.

Decision Making

Emotions can aid in our decision making; they have motivational power; they communicate information; and they support moral judgments.

Emotions result from the meaning that people give to events, not from the events themselves. If thinking varies from person to person, so too will emotions. This idea was well illustrated in research presented in Cultural Opportunities, where you learned that Hindu women in northern India, who are part of a culture that values social obligation, feel the emotion lajja when they sense that they are behaving consistently with those values. People from cultures that don’t emphasize those values do not experience lajja.

Appraisal

According to appraisal theories of emotion, a small number of appraisals can generate a wide variety of emotional experiences. They include appraisals of: motivational significance (is the event relevant to my concerns and goals?), motivational congruence (does it facilitate my goals or hinder them?), accountability (who is to blame or who deserves credit for an event?), future expectancy (can things change?), problem-focused coping potential (can I myself bring about change that solves a problem?), and emotion-focused coping potential (can I adjust, psychologically, to the event?).

Because appraisals shape emotion, people can control emotions by altering their anticipatory appraisals, the thoughts they have prior to the occurrence of an event. For example, when children are taught to think of a marshmallow as a ball they can play with rather than a food, they are able to refrain from eating it. Altering anticipatory appraisals is more effective than emotion suppression, which can ironically increase arousal.

Arousal v. Valence

Arousal refers to the level of activation of the body and brain during the mood state. Valence refers to the positivity or negativity of the mood. By combining these two dimensions, psychologists can describe the full variation in mood in terms of a two-dimensional structure that functions like a map. No matter what your mood at any given time, it can be located somewhere in the “mood map.”

Cannot explain whether a consequence is good or bad, can only tell you the consequence.

How do we make moral decisions in our lives?

Kohlberg’s theory of moral development: influenced by Piaget, who said we tend to think in different ways as we get older, and Kohlberg says our morality depends on how we think.

Ex. A person’s spouse is dying bu they cannot afford the drug to save them, should they steal it or let the spouse die?

Preconventional Stage: want to avoid punishment, want to get rewards (either you might get thrown in jail, or your family might be mad at you if you don’t steal it) whether you think of something as right or wrong entirely depends on the consequences to you

Conventional Stage: There is a law that you should follow (it’s against the law to steal, or the fundamental rule isn’t necessarily the actual law but maybe the fundamental rule is that you need to take care of your spouse) unlike preconventional, it’s not about consequences, but about rules

Post conventional stage: Abstract set of moral principles, what is just (stealing is not just and it is selfish, or it is unjust for the pharmaceutical company to make profit off the drug that could save someone’s life)

Social Intuitionist Model (Haidt): evolution has provided for a moral a system for having moral emotions, regulate selfishness, intuition = justify, trolley problem

Hypnosis, causes someone to feel disgust at the word take. Then have them read about the moral infractions, feel morally strongly about people who take things from other people and judge more harshly

Trolley Problem

If you ask if people will pull the lever, they say yes, if you ask if you would push the person into the track they say no and they can’t explain.

Haidt is asking how people develop their intuitions.

Quandary Ethics v. Moral Habits

Puzzles that are unfamiliar vs. familiar problems and bundles of habits

Consequentialist - Utilitarian view or Deontology - rule based and obligatory

Virtue theory - where the key question is what sort of human being do I wanna be? How can I become an excellent human?

Veronica Huta study - do something for pleasure or do something excellently

Models of excellent human activity - Albert Bandura, involves observational learning and a Bobo Doll

Judging

Attribution - trying to determine the cause of someone’s behavior

Fundamental Attribution Error: in terms of others, we tend to overestimate the effect of their disposition and underestimate the situation as a cause

Our attributions go where our attention is focused and our culture and our cognitive load.

The above average effect: on average, people think they’re above average. This is motivational, it’s based on what we want, we want to feel good about ourselves so we assume we’re above average. There’s also an informational explanation, where with the information you have you assume a conclusion, we’re unaware of our incompetence. Dunning - Kruger effect, we do the stuff we do because we think it’s right.

Cognitive Dissonance: insufficient justification, effort justification

Stanley Milgram ( Should Know name + studies an obedience)

developed a way of generalizing obedience in the 60s.

brought people in to give electric shocks

each shock, the voltage goes up by 15 volts.

the person receiving the shock is out of sight but can wear him -> says he has a heart

• noises indicating physical distress

• at 150 volts, the receiver of the shock says

"I don't want to do this anymore”

if the person keeps shocking the actor, they scream and then go quiet

• asKed psychiatrists now many people would have continued on to the end, they said <1% in the actual study.

65% obeyed to the and

• above - average effect about disobedience.

• when asked in class, only 3-4 people raised their hand

• in the actual study, another 17% continued past 150 volts where the person receiving the shock said Stop

• meaning 82%. were willing to show someone without their consent

the last replication of the Milgram Study in the

US was in 1972 with college students remember anti-Vietnam protests

• van with women: 65% went to the end

Applications of Social Psychology

Causes of Prejudice

motivational - protection of self esteem, group identity, minimal group, increased diversity threatening, positive intergroup contact

cognitive - need to simplify by group membership, which leads to confirmation bias, perceive what someone does in light of beliefs about the group they belong to, need to simplify when cognitive resources are low

Robert Garner/Roberto Garcia - outgroup homogeneity

Legal

jury decisions, conformity, death qualifications, confirmation bias, jury size, having an ally, 12 person to 6 person juries, consider less evidence

Finally, describe the basic methods and results of a study
that has demonstrated that interventions can affect attachment style.Finally, describe the basic methods and results of a study
that has demonstrated that interventions can affect attachment style.