Psychology 105

Chapter 8: Thinking, Reasoning, & Language

• Thinking - any mental activity or processing of information

  → such as learning

  • cognitive miser- tries to reduce mental effort

  • “System 1 thinking” → automatic, quick, intuitive

    • learned the piano years ago and then sit down to play

    • Lots of the way we process information

    • Can backfire

  • “System 2 thinking” → controlled, effortful

    • really thinking about something

    • trying to learn the piano for the first time

• Quick thinking

  • Predictions are frequently accurate

  • Looking at someone’s face can tell what kind of music the person listens to

  • Can lead to cognitive biases

    • stereotyping individuals → not necessarily accurate

  • Miss small details/make poor judgement

• Heuristics

  • mental shortcuts/rule of thumb

  • Can be inaccurate

  • Can easily be counteracted

  • Easy to change

  • Mental shortcut aimed at saving mental energy

  • Can be correct

• Representative heuristic

  • guessing how likely X is, based on how superficially similar it is to Y

  • Sounds like the prototype of a certain position → personality traits, hobbies

  • We ignore base rates → how common a characteristic is in the real world

  • Based on mental models that already exist in our minds/stereotypes

  • How much does a certain event/person represent a prototype in our minds

• Availability heuristic

  • guessing how likely X is, based upon how easily you can think of an instance where X occurs

  • How available a memory is in your mind

  • How quickly a memory pops into your mind

  • The more media coverage, the more likely one is to assume it occurs more often → what feels safer: driving your car or flying a plane

  • Estimate the probability of something

• Cognitive biases

  • systematic errors in thinking

  • Not easy to change → because it is systematic

  • Fundamental issue in the way we think

  • Not aimed at conserving mental energy

• Hindsight bias

  • overestimating your ability to have predicted known outcomes

  • After knowing the result of something, you exaggerate how much you actually know about the result → “I knew they were going to win”

    • confident they always knew it

    • I knew it all along effect → Make you feel the lessons you learn you already know (in a class)

    Ex. When a famous couple breaks up or when the Oilers win a hockey game

  • lure into a false sense of security

• Confirmation bias

  • tendency to seek out information that aligns with our beliefs and neglecting conflicting evidence

    • blackout/distort any conflicting information

  • Not seek out information that would conflict their train of thought

  • Downplay/forget information

  • Look for news that supports our thinking

  • We like people who agree with us → surround ourselves with likeminded individuals

• Top-down processing

  • filling in gaps of information based on our preexisting knowledge

  • System 1 thinking

  • We have our own ideas of how certain groups should act etc

  • Adding something to what we already know

Two types:

1. Concepts - knowledge of particular “sets” which share core properties

   • The concept of an apple → they are all apples

   • Particular set of objects that all share core properties → we all sit in chairs

2. Schemas - knowledge of how particular actions, objects, and ideas are related

   • how the concepts fit together/are related → apples and bananas are both fruit, the role of a dog owner

   • Person or group schemas → stereotyping

     • Canadians, professors, dog owner, how to host a dinner party, events (how to act)

     • Self schema → oilers fan, from Edmonton, student (System 1)

Both are apart of the cognitive economy

1. Bottom up processing

   • starting with nothing, then receiving information and building opinion from there

   • System 2 thinking

• Decision making - process of selecting between a set of possible options

  • Made in subconscious (implicit), to reserve cognitive economy

  • Long term (system 2) vs short term (system 1) impacts

  • We make so many decision we sometimes don’t think about them

  • Consequential decisions = thinking more

  • Thinking deeply/overanalyzing decisions can be problematic

    • Gut decisions are better → lead people to be happier with their choices

    • Our brain gets overwhelmed with too much information → can’t make a good decision/emotional decision

• Framing - how information is presented

  • framing of facts and information can significantly influence our decisions

• Problem solving - creating a cognitive strategy to accomplish a goal

  • series of stages that represent the cognitive process of problem solving

  • Situation where there is a difference between where you’re at and where you’re at later on

  • Stages

    • Identify the problem

      → ill-defined solution - there is not one correct solution, can vary (getting dressed)→ well-defined solution

      → well-defined solution - has one correct answer, you know what you have to do (sudoku)

    • Define the problem

      → functional fixedness - difficulty conceptualizing that an object can be used for multiple purpose

    • Develop a solution

      → trial and error strategy

      • Algorithms - step by step guide that does not change → there are situations where they do not work/is disrupted

      • Insight - suddenly realizing a solution

      → obstacles

      • Salience - focus on superficial/surface level similarities between problems → we might try to solve them in the same way (different algebra problems about trains or young children and dogs)

      • Mental set - becoming stuck on a proven strategy or being confined to previous ideas, and being unable to generate new alternatives → using the same strategy over and over and over again

    • Allocate resources

      → problem solving involves (constrained by our cognitive system)

      • Attention → how long can you focus on the problem itself

      • Long-term memory → drawing from things we learned a long time ago (how to make a sandwich, tying your shoes)

      • Working memory capacity → have to be able to have it in the front of our mind in order to be able to solve the problem

      • Expert → the more expert you are at the problem, the easier you will be able to solve it (use more effective problem solving strategies because have gone through the process already)

    • Monitor progress

      → take home message - “look back and learn”

      → evaluate how you solve the problem

• Language - combines symbols (words, gestures) to create meaning

  • Follows agreed-upon rules

  • Entirely arbitrary

    • No good reason why we use the words we use

  • Helps express emotion and maintain social ties

• Phoneme - the sounds used in a language

  • Changes to vocal apparatus produces different phonemes

    • Shoe vs cheese

• Morphemes - Smallest unit that provide information

  • Convey information about semantics

  • Can we words or word modifiers

    • Apple, help, teach, re-, ish-

• Syntax - the rules that govern how sounds should be combined to form sentences

  • Word order

  • Morphological markers

    • Change the meaning of words (adding -ed, -ing,)

  • Sentence structure

→ commonly ignored

• Extralinguistic information - parts of communication that exist outside of the language content, but influences interpretation

  • Non-verbal cues

  • Tone of voice

The nerdy psychologist made a video

1. Does the sentence follow proper syntax → yes

2. How many morphemes does psychologist have? → 3

3. How many phonemes does the word video have? → 5

• Dialects - differences in the use of the same language by different groups

  • Newfinese

  • Influenced by geographical location, culture

Evolution:

• Disadvantages

  • Lengthy learning period

  • Large mental space/energy requirement

• Advantages

  • Allows communication of complex ideas

  • Helped coordination of social interactions

→ Phoneme, morphemes, and syntax are arbitrary

• Is the arbitrary nature a good thing?

  • We can come up with new words and ways to describe things

→ Words may not always be arbitrary

• Onomatopoeia - buzz, meow, beep

• Sound symbolism - certain speech sounds associated with a particular meaning

Learning language;

• Babies in utero (5 months) recognize their mother’s voice and some songs/stories

• At 2 days old, babies respond to their mother’s native language using high amplitude sucking procedure

  • Captures how hard the baby is sucking on the pacifier

• By the end of year 1, babies start babbling → comprehension precedes production

  • Babies can recognize words before they can produce them

• By their first birthday, children start producing their first words

• By their second birthday, most children can produce several hundred words

• Underextend - when children apply words in a narrow sense

  • “Flower” refers to only a rose

  • “Ball” refers to only their red ball

• Overextend - children apply words in a broad sense

  • “Truck” for all vehicles

  • “Apple” for all round food

Learning Syntax:

• Begin at the one word stage

  • Dog, juice, mom

  • Same word used for multiple meanings

• Combine two words around 2 years old

  • Follow syntactic rules

  • Big Bird and the Cookie Monster study

    • Which photo is associated with the video

• Sign language - relies on visual communication

  • Uses hands, face, body, and “sign space” (the space in front of the communicator)

  • Same brain areas are used

    • Developmental stages are unchanged

• Bilingualism - being proficient and fluent at speaking and comprehending two distinct languages

  • Learning another language is easier when:

    • Living with native speakers

    • Motivated

    • Younger

  • Bilingual children syntactic development is slightly slower

Explanation for children’s learning:

→ Nature - biological

→ Nurture - learned

Language deprivation suggests there is a period of time where language development is crucial → the case of “Genie”

• Home signers - children with hearing loss whose parents do not know sign language

  • Develop their own rudimentary language → inventing their own signs

Nature vs Nurture:

• Critical periods - able to learn a language better with earlier exposure

  • age of immigration

• Sensitive period - “less is more” hypothesis

  • The earlier you learn it, the more likely you are to learn a language

  • Can learn a language easier

  • Less is more hypothesis

    • Suggests it is easier to learn a language from the ground up → with no prior knowledge

Accounts of Language Acquisition:

1. Pure nature/nurture account

   • Children learn through imitation

     • Hear language according to language rules, so we follow it and are reinforced for using language correctly

   → problem = does not account for the generative aspects of language

2. Nativist account (strongly nature)

   • Children are born with basic knowledge of language

   • Noam Chomsky’s language acquisition device

     • construct in the brain that is pre programmed with universal parameters of language

   → problem = unfalsifiable

   • Very hard to test whether people have a language acquisition device in their brains

3. Social pragmatics account (largely nurture)

   • Child infers the meaning of the words by observing how people use words in conversation

     • Context and figuring out what word applies to which thing

   → problem = parsimony

   • We always prefer the simplest explanation → this theory is not simple

4. General cognitive processing account

   • The development of language is an expression for the same vernal l children have for other abilities

     • Children are good at learning things

   → problem = contradictory evidence

   Researchers have settled on #3 and #4 for the most correct/reasonable

Non-human Animal Communication:

• Different forms and purposes for communication in animals

  • Scents, visual, and vocal

• Less generative and complex than human communication

  • Mating, food, aggression, predators

• Human communication is much more generative

  • Coming up with new communication

→ Chimpanzees

• Can learn rudimentary language

• Never master syntax

• Requires a lot more repetition and rewards

→ Bonobos

• More similar to human learning

  • Do better when they are young

  • Learn a lot through observation

  • Use symbols

  • No syntax

→ African grey parrot

• Not understanding what they are saying

  • Imitation of what they heard before

• Lots of reinforcement

Reading:

• Very automated and difficult to turn off

  • Stroop task

To master reading:

• Understand whole words

  • Whole-word recognition

• How to sound out unfamiliar words

  • Phonetic decomposition

• Need to understand format of reading

  • Right to left

  • Top to bottom

Chapter 9: Intelligence

• Intelligence - reflection of your senses

  • Knowledge comes through the senses, and therefore, individuals with stronger sense are more intelligent

    • However, strength of one sense does not correlate with intelligence

Intelligence Test (Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon):

• Used to differentiate students who were falling behind peers

• Used diverse items that together helped measure higher mental processes

General vs Specific Abilities:

→ Charles Spearman noted that items on a intelligence test correlate

• Some underlying factor should account for this

  • g is the underlying intelligence — “mental energy”

  • s are the specific abilities that fall within g

Fluid and Crystallized:

→ Raymond Cattell and John Horn

• Fluid intelligence - ability to learn new ways to solve problems

  • Used when mastering new tasks

• Crystallized intelligence - knowledge we have acquired over time

  • Used to recite facts

Multiple Intelligences:

→ Howard Gardner’s “Frames of Mind”

• Different frames of mind have different way of viewing the world

  • Each type should be relatively independent, and verifiable from studies of brain damage and autistic savants

Intelligence Types:

• Linguistic - speak and write well

• Logico mathematical - use logic and mathematical skills to solve problems, such as scientific questions

• Spatial - think and reason about objects in three dimensional space

• Musical - perform, understand, and enjoy music

• Bodily kinaesthetic - manipulate the body in sports, dance, or other physical endeavours

• Interpersonal - understand and interact effectively with others

• Intrapersonal - understand and possess insight into self

• Naturalistic - recognize, identify, and understand animals, plants, and other living things

Triarchic Model (Robert Sternberg):

• Analytical intelligence - ability to reason logically, traditional “book smarts”, g

• Practical intelligence - ability to solve real world problems, especially socially

• Creative intelligence - ability to create novel and effective answers

Weaknesses:

• Practical intelligence is related to g

• The measures of practical intelligence may be considered measures of job knowledge

Measuring Intelligence:

• Self reports do not work

  • Double curse of incompetence

    • Poor cognitive skills lead to poor metacognition and therefore, poor estimation one’s intelligence

→ Lewis Terman

• 1916 — Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test

• Established norms

  • Typical scored from large groups of people at different ages

  • Norms are used to compare Person X to peers

→ What is IQ?

• Intelligence quotient

  • Wilhelm Stern

  • Mental age is the “age” corresponding to the persons performance

  • Mental age / chronological age X 100 = IQ

    → know this formula for the midterm

→ Reformulating IQ

• Works well for children, but not for adults

• IQ formula needed to be revised

• Deviation IQ

  • Compares each person to what is normal for their age, with an average of 100

• Bell curve - intelligence follows a normalized distribution in most populations

  • Most people will be pretty close to 100

• Wechsler test

  • Wechsler adult intelligence scale (WASIS-IV)

  • 15 subtests that can generate 5 main scores:

    1. Full scale IQ → g score, overall intelligence

    2. Perpetual reasoning → spatial awareness skills

    3. Working memory → how much information can you hold in your mind at one time

    4. Verbal comprehension → ability to use and understand language

    5. Processing speed → how fast can you think through something

  • Wechsler intelligence scale for children

  • Wechsler preschool and primary scale of intelligence

  • Used for kids 16 and older

Examples:

• Who is the president of the United States?

  • Possible item from the information subtext

  • Measures general knowledge

• Why should people be tested to get a driver’s license?

  • Possible inter from the comprehension subtext

  • Measure’s understanding of social conventions and use of past experiences

• Complete the empty spaces using the legend

  • Possible item from digit symbol subtest

  • Measures speed of learning and processing speed

• Which two pieces can be combined to make the object above?

  • Possible item from visual puzzles subtest

  • Measures spacial abilities, mental organization

  • Perceptual reasoning index

• Repeat this number set after me…

  • Possible item form digit span subtest

  • Measures attention and short-term memory

• What does the word repugnant mean?

  • Possible item from vocabulary subtest

  • Measures verbal intelligence

  • Crystallized intelligence

→ intelligence tests must be standardized

• Must be done at the same speed and same way

Reliability of IQ Scores:

• For adults, intelligence scores tend to be extremely stabile

  • Very high correlations, regardless of test-retest duration

• Very low correlations between intelligence scores taken before age 3 and adult correlations

  • However, speed of habituation in infants is related to adult intelligence

    • Getting bored of looking at an image (habituating to it) → the faster you habituate, the higher IQ they will have

Validity of IQ Scores:

• Strong concurrent validity

  • Do other intelligence tests agree with each other

  • Convergent validity

• Are you measuring the thing you say you are measuring

  • Correlation is high between different intelligence measures

• Predicative validity

  • Does the test tell you about the person in the real world

  • Real world criteria

Correlations:

0.5> = strong relationship

.30 - .50 = moderate/medium relationship

.10 -. 30 = weak relationship

.00 - .10 = no relationship

→ intelligence is the best predictor of how well you will do in life (school, work)

• Strong predictive validity

  • Positively associated with health related outcomes

    • People with higher IQ tend to be healthier

  • Negatively associated with criminal tendencies

• Socioeconomic status

  • What are your parents’ jobs?

  • What neighbourhood do you live in?

Environment Influences:

• Children from larger families may have lower intelligence

  • Have less opportunities/parents don’t have as much money

  • People with higher intelligence wait to have children and have less children

• If you believe intelligence is “fixed”, may be less likely to challenge yourself academically and mentally

  • “I suck at this and there is nothing I can do about it”

  • Versus a growth mindset → “I will work and get better”

• More education may lead to higher intelligence

  • Children with more time in school score higher on intelligence tests than children of the same age with less school

  • IQ score decrease when out of school

  • Kids who start school earlier boost IQ

  • Bloomer study

    • Psychologist lie to teachers and tell them a specific kid is going to be smart → teachers treat them differently

→ if your teacher expects you to be smart, may add a minor boost to intelligence

• Head start program

  • Gave disadvantaged preschool chilled access to enriched educational environments

    • After program ended, the kids’ IQs went back down

  • Hoped it would help them “catch up”

  • Provided a short-term boost to IQ score

  • If you give people equal opportunity, their IQs match

  • Had high emotional intelligence

    • Able to regulate their emotions better

• Poverty

  • Arthur Jensen’s cumulative deficit study

    • Older siblings had lower intelligence than younger siblings → the older child has lived longer not having resources (younger child has not had intelligence sucked out yet)

  • Lead poisoning

    • Has a clear detrimental effect on intelligence

  • Breastfeeding

    • Boosts IQ scores, but could be de to SES

      → Women who have time to breastfeed often are able to go on long-term maternity leave/have enough money to take a year off

  Biology and Intellect:

• Brain volume and intelligence

  • r = .30 - .40

    • Stronger for verbal abilities than spatial abilities

    • Moderate correlation, but may not be casual

    • Bigger brain is better → more connections to different aspects of the brain

      → Einstein is the exception - small, but FULL of connections

• Smarter brains may be more efficient brains

  • Reaction time

  • Overall activity

  • Working memory

    • Moderately to strongly correlated with intelligence tests than

    • Ability to hold multiple things in your mind at one time

→ Tetris study and reaction time boxes study (pg. 340-341)

• Prefrontal cortex is highly active when engaging in “g-loaded” tasks”

  • Parietal lobe is related to spatial reasoning

    • Awareness of your body

    • Able to move shapes around in your head

Genes and IQ:

• Intelligence runs in families

  • Family studies show significant correlation

  • Identical twins IQ, r = .70 - .80

  • Fraternal twins/siblings IQ, r = .30 - .50

    • Same as any brother and sister

  • Cousins IQ, r = .15

→ heritability of IQ is 40%-70%, and becomes higher in adulthood

→ genes account for about 50% of people’s IQ

• Identical twins reared apart are as similar on intelligence tests as identical twins reared together

  • Adoption studies

    • If leaving a deprived environment, intelligence will increase

    • Adopted children’s intelligence is more closely related to biological parents than adopted parents, especially with age

Eugenics:

• Intelligence tests were used to determine who was “feeble-minded”, “dumb”, etc

• Belief in biological basis of intelligence led to a fear of the “low IQ” of immigrants, minorities, and others, mixing with the majority populations

  • It will “dumb down” the population (lose IQ)

• Positive eugenics vs negative eugenics

  • Positive - offering something to people to have children

    • Money, support, encouraging smart people

  • Negative - Stopping someone from having children

    • Sterilizing people with low IQ

→ sexual sterilization act lead to over 2800 individuals being sterilized from 1928 to 1972

• Flynn Effect

  • Discovered by James Flynn in the 1980s

  • Average IQ scores rise by approximately 3 points every decade

→ environmental influences

• Increased experience with test

  • However, finding is stronger or uncommon tests

• More information processing required in modern life

• Improved nutrition

• Improvements at home

• Improvements in education

Mental Giftedness:

• Top 2% of IQ (Mensa criteria)

  • Tend to reside in “higher” occupations

• Terman’s “termites”

  • 1500 junior high students with IQs of 135+

  • Many eared prestigious degrees

  • Lower rates of mental illness and suicide

  • May be a link to between worry/rumination and verbal intelligence

• While genes play a role, dedication and practice are essential

  • Rare that insights com without substantial effort

Intellectual Disability:

→ three general criteria

1. Childhood onset

2. Deficits in intellectual functioning

   • Previously stated as IQ below functioning

3. Deficit in adaptive functioning

   • Have a hard time living independently, communicating, dressing themselves

→ often lose the diagnosis as life skills are developed

→ mild (55-70), moderate (45-55), severe and profound

• Mild - immature social judgement

• Severe

  • Rare genetic mutations

  • Birth accidents

  • Fragile X syndrome

    • Mutation on X chromosome

    • Nearly half meet criteria for autism

    • Boys are at higher risks

• Down syndrome

  • Extra copy of chromosome 21

  • Most have mild to moderate intellectual disability

  • Likelihood increases with mother’s age

Sex Differences & IQ

• Very few, if any, differences between men and women on average

  • However, men have a wider distribution of scores

• Differences do appear to exist in a few specific aspects of intelligence

  • Women tend to do better with verbal tasks, arithmetic, and recognizing emotions

  • Men tend to do better with spatial abilities and mathematical reasoning

• Biology as a casual agent

  • Estrogen related to verbal abilities

  • Testosterone related to spatial abilities

• Yet, environment plays a major role

  • Infants show few differences

  • Different problem-solving strategies

  • Gender roles ands stereotypes

Racial Differences and IQ:

• Common findings

  • Asian-Americans score higher than Caucasians

  • Jews score higher than non-Jew

  • African-Americans and Hispanics sore lower than Caucasians

  • Non-indigenous recruits in the Canadian Forces scored higher in verbal abilities than First Nation member from remote areas

• Many have argued for genetic and evolutionary support for origins

  • Not due to “racial superiority”

    • IQ scores gap is shrinking

    • Substantial overlap in overall distributions

    • World War II study

    • Social deprivation, prejudice etc lead to differences

• Within-group heritability

  • How much the variability of a trait in a group is due to genes

• Between-group heritability

  • How much the difference in a trait between groups is due to genes

• Differences between groups are largely environmental

  • Within-group differences may be at least partially genetic

• Does stereotype threat play a role?

  • Influences behaviour in research, but unclear whether it plays a role in the real world

  • Genes play little role in group differences

“Culture-Fair” IQ Testing:

• Heavy reliance on language has always been criticized

  • Could culture or language be negatively impacting IQ scores?

• Raven’s progressive matrices

  • What pattern complete the sequence

• American vs Canadian knowledge

  • Just because something looks bias, doesn’t mean there is

Creativity:

• Requires divergent thinking

  • Ability to generate many alternative solutions

  • “Use of an Object Test”

• Also requires convergent thinking

  • Ability to generate the best solution

• Weak to moderate association with standard IQ test

Emotional Intelligence:

• Ability to recognize an regulate emotions in our selves and others

• Specific components are debated and depend on the model of EI

  • May be considered a personality trait or a skill

• May be used to manipulate and lie

• Does not appear to improve predictions of job performance

• Weak predictor of general intelligence

Chapter 10: Human Development

• Developmental psychology - the study of how humans change over the lifespan

  • How behaviour and mental processes trained across one’s life

    • Personality

    • Physiology

    • Behaviour

Research methods in developmental psychology:

• Cross sectional design - people from different age groups are all compared at the exact same time

  • Giving a memory test to a certain age group → give people the same test

    • Cost effective

    • Only need to run the test once

  • Cohort effect - systematic difference between different age groups

    • Experiences of COVID could influence

• Longitudinal design - the same group of people are studied over a long period of time

  • Giving 10 year olds and memory test and then giving them the same test 5 years later

  • Very expensive and takes up time

  • Result are going to be more trustworthy → eliminates cohort effect

• Gallup happiness study

  • 340 847 individuals between 18-85 years old

    • Result → before age 50, happiness decreases

  • Cross-sectional study

• Edmonton transition study

  • Collected samples of data from two different groups

    • 1. High school seniors followed from age 18-43

    • 2. University seniors followed from age 23-37

    → result = happiness increased into 30s in both samples, with a slight downturn by age 43 in the high school example

  • Longitudinal

Challenges in developmental psychology:

• Cohorts - a group born around the same time, who would have similar cultural experiences

  • Knowing how to use a rotary phone

• Post-hoc fallacy - logical error where you assume A cause B, only because A came before B

  • Just because two events happen in the same order doesn’t mean it directly caused what came after it

  • Ex. Children who are read to at a very young age grow up to be very good at reading and do better in school later

• Bidirectional influences - human development is rarely linear

  • Parents have a strong impact on their child’s behaviour, but the behaviour will impact the parent

    • We can’t really know what effects what

• The influence of early experiences (MYTHS)

  • Infant determinism

    • indicates that the first three years of life are the most influential in shaping adult behaviour

  • Childhood fragility

    • children are easily damaged/fragile creatures → we must protect them at all costs

• Nature-nurture debate

  • Nature via nurture

    • Genetic predisposition drive us to select particular environments

    • The children can seek out environment that fits their genetic predisposition

  • Gene expression

    • The activation/deactivation of genes by environmental experiences

  • Gene-environment interaction

    • There is an ongoing interaction between our genetics and our environment

    • Make looking at causal claims for difficult

• Chronological age is not especially related to behavioural and biological changes

  • Other types of age are better predictors

    • Biological age

      → estimate of a person’s based on biological functioning

    • Psychological age

      → person’s mental attitude/ability to function in high stress environment

    • Functional age

      → Person’s biliary to function in a given roles in society

    • Social age

      → Whether people behave in accordance with social behaviours that are appropriate for their age

• Physical development

  • Contributes to cognitive and social development

  • How your brain grows

Cognitive Development:

• How we acquire the ability to learn, think, reason etc

  • Differ

    1. Stage-like changes(sudden changes or jumps in cognitive development skills) vs continuous changes (as you move throughout life, cognitive develops)

    2. Domain-general (al cognitive skills rise together) vs domain-specific (different skills develop individually)

    3. Primary source of learning

• Jean Piaget

  • Domain-general theory of development

    • All cognitive skills develop together but there are also skills that develop individually

  • Children aren’t miniature adults

    • Don’t learn the same way adults learn

  • Assimilation - absorbing new experiences into current schemas

    • Requires that children add new information to what they already know without changing the understanding of the schema

      • Any four-leg small animal is a dog

  • Accommodation - altering a schema to make it more compatible with experiences

    • Requires child to create or modify the existing schema

    • Much larger/bigger examples

      • Santa isn’t real → have to come up with a new schema

    • Basic process of thinking children go through while experiencing new experiences

Piaget’s Stages of Development:

1. Sensorimotor Stage (birth - 2 years)

   • Lack of object permanence

     • If the object can’t be seen anymore, it doesn’t exist anymore

       → test - whether a child reaches for a toy they were previously playing with it

   • Lack differed imitation

     • Inability to imitate

   • Focused on current physical environment

→ will move on from this stage when they can do both of these things

2. Pre-operational Stage (2 - 7 years)

   • Show egocentrism

     • Only see the world from your perspective

     • Theory of mind → recognizing you have different perspective

   • Can use mental representations

     • Start to take on imaginary roles (play with their dolls)

     • Struggle to change representation (what happens when the doll breaks?)

   • Lack of conservation

     • Knowing objects retains heir basic value/amount even though they might change shape or orientation

       → different sized beaker, the taller one has more water even though they actually have the same amounT - related more to maturation

3. Concrete Operations Stage (7 - 11 years)

   • Can pass conservation task

   • Can sort/create scenes with physical objects

   • Struggle with abstract reasoning

   • Can only think about one way to solve a problem

4. Formal Operations Stage Stage (11 - adult):

   • Engages in hypothetical reasoning

   • Understands if-then and either-or statements

   • Thinks about abstract questions

Strengths:

• Recognizes that children are not mini-adults

• Learning as an active process

• Explored general cognitive process to explain changes to multiple domains

Weaknesses:

• Development is continuous

• Underestimated children’s abilities

  • Ability to detect object permanence

• Hard to replicate in ways that do not rely on language

  • Ignored language ability

• It is a stage model (specific age timeline)

  • Restrictive

Lev Vygotsky:

• Scaffolding - caretakers work with children in a way that guides them along during tasks and learning opportunities

  • Really focused on the social interaction

  • Focusing on a students ability to learn information with the help of a knowledgeable individual

  • Zone of proximal development

    • Where a child is ready to learn a new skill → use the assistance to teach a child more and more

      • Riding a bike → need to walk before they can learn to ride a bike

    • Finding ways to slowly introduce the child to a new skill

→ did not believe in stages, instead that children learn and develop on their own

Cognitive changes:

• Childhood

  • Self-recognition

  • Theory of mind

  • Counting and math

• Adolescence

  • Frontal lobe maturing

  • More active limbic system

    • Processing emotions

    • Experiencing peer-pressure

  • Personal fable

    • Adolescences think they are special and unique compared to other people

• Late adulthood

  • Cognitive decline in recall, processing sped

  • Vocabulary and crystallized intelligence increases

Chapter 12: Stress, Coping & Health

• Stress - the tension, discomfort, or physical symptoms that arise when a stressor strains our ability to cope

• Stressor - a stimulus in our environment that provokes stress

• Traumatic event - extreme stressor that causes long-term psychological or health consequences

Three Ways of Studying Stress:

1. stressors as stimuli

   • identifying types of stressors

   • which people respond the most to certain types of stress

   • disasters that affect whole communities

2. stress as a transaction

   • how people interpret and cope with stressors

     • primary appraisal

     • secondary appraisal

   • problem-focused coping vs emotion-focused coping

3. stress as a response

   • physical and psychological responses to stressors

   • variables that could be examined

     • hopelessness

     • depression

     • hostility

     • changes in corticosteroids/cortisol

Measuring Stress:

• Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS)

  • number of major life events in the past year

  • moderate predictive validity

  • however has several limitations

• Hassles Scale

  • frequency and severity of daily stressors/minor annoyances

  • better predictor of physical health, depression, and anxiety than the SRRS

Physiological response to stress:

• General Adaptive Syndrome (Hans Selye)

→ phase 1 - alarm reaction

• limbic system activates

• stress hormones releases (HPA axis)

• autonomic nervous system activates

• physical symptoms of anxiety develop

→ phase 2 - resistance

• adapt and cope with stressor

• physical symptoms may still occur

→ phase 3 - exhaustion

• breakdown of resistance

• physical symptoms may change/intensify

Diversity of Stress Responses:

• women are more likely to tend-and-benefit than men

  • evolutionary advantage

• post traumatic stress disorder

  • vivid memories

  • heightened startle response

  • depression-like symptoms

→ symptoms predicted by:

• number of events

• severity, nearness, & duration

• lack of social/family support

Coping with stress:

• social support and mortality rates

  • social support includes family, friends, religious membership, and other community groups

• proactive coping - trying to prevent or minimize an anticipated stressful event

• a sense of control decreases stress

→ five types of control:

1. behavioural control → problem focused coping

2. cognitive control → emotion focused coping

3. decisional control

4. informational control

5. emotional control → expression and suppression

• catharsis - sudden emotional release of stress

• critical incident stress debriefing (crisis debriefing) - a single session treatment immediately following trauma

  • must describe negative emotions in detail

  • if forced, may cause PTSD

• individual differences

  • hardiness

    • seeing changes as a challenge, not a threat

    • believing you can control events

  • optimism

    • focus on the positives

    • leads people to be more productive, focused, and handle frustration better

  • spirituality

    • feeling connected to a higher power

    • positive outcomes may be due to social nature, rejection of vices, and/or sense of meaning and control

  • rumination and worry

    • endlessly over-thinking past and future events

  • flexible coping

    • important to change coping strategies as the situation changes

    • suppressing/avoiding emotions or specific stressors is generally NOT helpful

Stress and the immune system:

• the immune system - the body’s natural defence against invading bacteria, viruses, and other illness-producing organisms

  • includes the skin and other means used to expel pathogens

    • phagocytes

    • lymphocytes (T and B cells)

    • macrophages

  • can be compromised by disorders (eg. AIDS)

  • some disorders cannot be contained by the immune system (eg. cancer)

  • immune system can become overactive creating autoimmune diseases (eg. multiple sclerosis)

  • psychoneuroimmunology - the relationship between the immune system and the central nervous system

    • stress and developing a cold

    • the stress of someone who cares for an individual with Alzheimer’s

    • it can takes weeks/months for immune system to go back to normal after stress is removed

Stress-related illnesses:

• many diseases are biopsychosocial in origin and maintenance

• psychophysiological illnesses (psychosomatic)

  • stress plays a role in the disease/keeps it going

  • peptic ulcers → caused by bacteria

  • coronary heart disease → associated with multiple psychological characteristics

    • stress → direct and indirect effects (immediate impact vs long-term)

    • type A personality → hostility (really connects to heart disease)

      → impatient, aggressive, competitive, ambitious

      → direct and indirect pathways

Healthy living:

• health psychology (behavioural medicine) integrates behavioural sciences with medicine

  • includes education and psychological interventions

  • promotes having good health, as well as preventing and treating illness

    1. stop smoking

  • only 5-10% successfully quit when doing it on their own

  • 25-35% can quit when using methods from health psychologists

  • easy to go back to

    2. curb alcohol consumption

  • severe withdrawals from regular consumption

  • binge drinking (heavy episodic drinking) is associated with increases in cancer, liver problems, pregnancy complications, and brain shrinkage

    3. achieve a healthy weight

       • roughly 35-45% of Canadians are overweight or obese

       • based on body-mass index (BMI)

       • obesity is associated with:

         → heart disease and stroke

         → cancer

         → diabetes

         → depression, anxiety, and social issues

       • obtaining (and keeping) a healthy weight:

         → avoid fads and crash diets (yo-yo effect)

         → exercise regularly

         → monitor total calories and body weight

         → eat properly (good fats, low salt, high fibre)

         → get social support

         → control portions

         → reward your achievements

    4. exercise

       • lowers blood pressure and risk for coronary heart disease

       • relieves arthritis

       • decreases diabetes risk, breast cancer, colon cancer

       • 30 minutes several times a week is best

→ up to 80% of patients do not follow their doctor’s advice

• personal inertia

• under-estimate the risks

• feelings powerless

→ prevention

• psycho education around peer-pressure and risks

• introduction of good role models

• effective coping skills

• D.A.R.E general not effective

Complementary & Alternative Medicines (CAM):

• alternative medicines - using a health care practice/product instead of conventional medicines

• complimentary med ideas - using heath care practice/product instead addition to conventional medicine

• biologically based CAMS

  • most herbal supplements are no more effective than placebo

    • St. John’s Wort, shark cartilage, açai Bettie’s, gingko biloba

  • weak evidence for most vitamins & supplements

    • calcium, vitamin C

  • may negatively interact with modern medicines

    • 5-HTP supplements → precursor to serotonin

      → can develop serotonin syndrome - bad stomach, headaches, and can put you into a coma

→ have been poorly regulated by Health Canada, but new regulations are coming

• manipulative methods (chiropractors)

  • manipulate the spine to treat pain

    • some argue that their treatments work for severe illnesses and other disorders

  • subluxation theory

    • misalignment of the spine is the cause of problems in the nervous and immune system

  • no more effective than exercise, relaxation, or physical therapy

• mind-body medicine

  • biofeedback

    • provides immediate feedback for internal sensations, such as pulse or body temperature → can do it on purpose (train your body)

    • no better than relaxation

  • meditation

    • heightens creativity, empathy, self-esteem

    • decreases anxiety and depression

    • increases blood flow to the brain and immune functioning

    • better than placebo treatments

    • relaxation induced anxiety - being scared of the feeling of their body relaxing

• energy medicines

  • based on mapping our energy field and managing disruptions

  • acupuncture

    • needles relieve blockages of qi (energy/life force) → “chee”

    • helps relieve nausea after surgery

    • helps treat pain

    • no scientific support for qi

• homeopathy → whole medical system

  • consuming an extremely diluted dose of a harmful substance is believed to help you avoid or alleviate illness

    • Rhus Tox → poison ivy supposed to treat arthritis, sprains, flu

    • Ignatia → treat anxiety, grief, depression (used to be a very popular rat poison)

  • not effective

Placebo and CAMs:

• placebo effect is often as effective as CAMs

• sham acupuncture treats back pain and migraines as well as true acupuncture

• pain is very responsive to placebo, which may be why CAMs are so popular/effective

Reasons why people believe CAMs are effective:

1. The placebo effect

2. Conventional medicine

3. Natural changes

4. Misdiagnosis/non-severe issues

5. Believed to have “no side-effects”

Chapter 13: Social Psychology

• social psychology - the scientific study of how people influence other’s behaviour, beliefs, and attitudes

  • primary mode of investigation is experiment

  • applies to everyone

    • bias → people say they are not influenced (systematic error in thinking)

Research Methods:

• experimental research

  • watching more violent television is associated with higher aggression in children

    • can develop hypothesis

    • create an experiment to study this

  • isolate the cause

  • variables

    • independent → manipulated

      → watching violent television

    • dependent → measured/assessed

      → aggression (observe responses)

Social Nature of Humans:

• need to belong - fundamental human motivation to form and maintain an significant interpersonal relationships

  • need to feel connected to people

  • satisfy this need through social media

• evolutionary purpose

  • advantageous to get along with other people

    • need help with something

• social comparisons - people compare themselves to others to obtain an accurate assessment of their own abilities

  • we also try to explain other people’s behaviours

Fundamental Attribution Error:

• internal attribution - focused on something internal about the person themselves

  • don’t like the class, unreliable

• external attribution - focused on the situation the person is in

  • bus was late

→ more likely to make internal attribution for other people’s behaviour

• fundamental attribution error - believing that internal factors influence behaviour to a far greater extent than external factors

  • external attribution error for yourself

  • internal attribution for other people

  • we never talk about it when thinking about our own behaviour

  • situational attribution

    • overhearing someone saying they are traveling to their mother’s deathbed

  • dispositional inference

    • your reconsider your assumption about rudeness

• ultimate attribution error - assumption that behaviour among individual members of a group are due to their internal dispositions

  • particularly damage when it occurs to minority/stereotyped groups

Stereotypes:

• positive or negative beliefs (schemas) about most individuals in a group

  • might be correct/accurate

  • can be over-applied

  • massive over generalizations

  • illusory correlation - the tendency to overestimate the link between variables that are loosely or not at all correlated

Prejudice:

• an attitude (usually negative) toward members of a group based on their membership in that group

  • in-group bias - favouring people within our group over others

    • see more diversity

  • out-group homogeneity - all members of the other group are the same

    • we see people in a group are all the same (posses the same characteristics)

Developing Prejudice:

• scapegoat hypothesis - blaming those beneath us for our misfortunes

  • after COVID, there was more hate towards Asian individuals

    • scapegoating them for the pandemic

• just-world hypothesis - blaming the victim

  • belief that things happen for a reason/the world is fair

  • if somebody is disadvantaged, there is a reason

• conformity to social norms - want to fit in and be liked

  • drives a lot of people’s behaviour

  • “supposed” to hate a specific group because everyone else is

Hidden Prejudice:

• explicit - stated/conscious beliefs

• implicit - unstated/unconscious beliefs

  • thought of as what is important today

  • subtle form of prejudice

Discrimination:

• act of treating the out-group differently

Overcoming Prejudice:

• stereotype activation - cultural stereotypes may come to mind automatically

  • will come to everyone’s mind automatically but might not be applied

• stereotype application - expression of stereotypes is controlled

• contact hypothesis

  • increase our contact with people who are different than us

• need collaborative group work

Attitudes

• favourable or unfavourable evaluative reaction toward something or someone

  • self-esteem → attitude towards ourselves

  • political → conservative, liberal

    • our attitudes aren’t the best predictor of what we do

      Ex. survey of 3600 Edmonton drivers

      → 95% believe that running a red light is unacceptable

      → 24% admitted to running a red light within the past month

  • situational occurrence → other factors that influence our behaviour

• when do attitudes predict behaviour?

  • easily accessed attitudes

    • we think about it a lot

    • had a negative experience

  • firmly held

    • involvement → politics

• cognitive dissonance - unpleasant mental anxiety due to conflicting thoughts or behaviours

  • to reduce anxiety, you must change your thoughts or behaviours

  • coming up with a rational reason why

    Ex. Cheating on a test

    → cognition A - “I’m an honest person”

  • change cognition A - “I am not an honest person after all”

    → cognition B - “I cheated on my psychology exam”

  • change cognition B - “I didn’t really cheat, I just saw someone’s answers”

Boring Study Experiment:

• boring experiment, but you are asked to help recruit the next participant

• offered either $1 or $20 as compensation

• how do you justify the behaviour

  • helping the researcher

  • $1 doesn’t feel as justified

    • dissonance → not good reason to lie, so have to change your mind

  • $20 is sufficient justification

    • no dissonance

→ independent variable = whether to participant is given $1 or $20

→ dependent variable = the ratings of how boring the tasks are

Alternatives to Cognitive Dissonance:

• self-perception theory - our actions give us clues to our attitudes

  • I eat a grilled cheese, so I must like cheese

  • using your behaviour to infer your attitude

• impression management theory - change our behaviours to appear consistent

  • how do I make myself look consistent to other people

  • might lie about our attitudes to appear consistent

  • we don’t have to change our attitudes, we just have to say we did

Persuasion:

• efforts to change attitudes through various kinds of messages

  • central route (system 2)

    • analytical

      → list pros and cons

      → do research

    • high effort

    • argument strength is key

      → systematic

    • have to be highly motivated to come up with a decision

    • have to have the ability to think deeply about a particular issue

    • strong and stable attitudes

  • peripheral route (system 1)

    • not analytical

    • low effort

    • incidental cues are key

    • everything outside of the fact that can bias or sway our decision

      → how pretty something is, the colours etc

    • unstable and weak attitudes

      → change from time to time

      → not enduring

    • attitudes can greater influence decisions

• increasing persuasion

  • attractiveness/famous spokesperson

    • celebrities

  • “experts”

    • dentists

    • doctors

  • vivid testimonials

    • immerse audience → videos/images of people in need

  • “natural goodness”

    • emphasizing things that are natural/organic

  • emphasizing scarcity

    • things are running out/losing opportunity to buy something

    • limited supply/limited time offer

  • people with similar features

    • make us feel similar to them

    • somebody like us

  • name-letter effect

    • we like ourselves and things that are associated with ourselves

    • features of our name

    • implicit egotism

    • more drawn to things that are similar to ourselves

• persuasion techniques

  • foot in the door

    • make a small request first, then follow up with a bigger request

    • increasing request

  • door in the face

    • ask for a large favour then quickly bring it down

    • people say no the large favour are more likely to say yes to a smaller request

    • inducing guilt

    • can backfire if initial request is too big

  • lowball

    • start with a very low price, then bring in the add-ons

    • agree to something small then mention the much needed add-ons

    • base-model car with nothing else

  • “but you are free”

    • ask someone to do something for you while informing them they can refuse

    • gets others to agree based on the illusion of free choice

    • double the odds of the person complying because they feel like they have a choice

Conformity:

• the tendency for people to alter their behaviour due to group pressure

  • public compliance - outwardly going with a norm, but privately don’t agree with it

    • dressing up for a Halloween costume

  • private acceptance - acting with accordance to what the group is doing and agreeing with the idea

    • using the proper place to study at school

Solomon Asch’s Conformity Study:

• you and 7 other “participants” (confederates)

  • others hired by researcher to say certain things and act a certain way

• which of line A, B, or C match the first line

• what would you do it the other participants all said “B”

• researchers found 75% of participants conformed in the study at least once

→ we will conform to social pressure

• increasing conformity

  • unanimity

    • the group being unanimous

    • it takes one person to give an alternate response decreases conformity

  • differences from the majority

    • you feel okay saying a different answer if the group is small ( > 5) → 5 is the magic number

  • size of majority

    • the larger the group, the more likely chance for group conformity

  • having to answer publicly

    • more likely to conform

Conformity and the Brain:

• activates our amygdala

→ other influences

• self-esteem

  • more likely to conform if you have low self-esteem

• individual vs collectivist cultures

  • collectivists cultures have more conformity

    • care more about what the group think

Deindividuation:

• the tendency for people, upon being striped of their usual identity, to engage in behaviours that they would almost never engage in

  • anonymity

    • feel more anonymous

    • can’t be personally identified

  • lack of responsibility

    • everyone is doing something (getting in a fight)

Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment:

• 24 male students randomly assigned to be guards or prisoners

• guards began treating prisoners harshly

• prisoners tried to rebel, guards acted worse

• study ended on day 6, 8 days early

• could be result of demand characteristic

→ social roles matter

Obedience:

• adherence to instructions from authority figures

  • conformity to following social norms/peers

Milgram’s Study of Obedience:

• participant is the “teacher”

• wrong answer receives shocks, increasing in voltage

• “student” is confederate, acting as though shocks are working

• urged to continue after wanting to stop administering shocks

• 62% completed the test, went to 450 volts

  • was thought only 0.1% of people would complete the study

→ we tend to obey authority figures

Variations:

• more “psychological distance” between experimenter and teacher decreased compliance

• less “psychological distance” between teacher and learner decreased compliance

  • sitting side by side → less likely to obey

• other variation

  • authority figures needs to be seen as official/have power

  • school was associated with Yale

    • more likely to comply

  • teacher told somebody else to shock to the learner

    • more likely to comply because they aren’t the ones shocking the learner

Groupthink:

• emphasis on group unanimity at the expense of critical thinking

  • Ex. Titanic, Research Ethics Board protocols

  • maintaining group cohesion is more important

Group Polarization:

• the tendency for group discussions to push dominant ideas to be held more strongly

  • cults

    • gradual indoctrination

  • group discussion can strengthen feelings about a decision

  • reduce group polarization by avoiding conformation bias

Social Loafing:

• slacking off in groups, when individual efforts are unclear

  • Ex. clapping and cheering in groups, tug-of-war

  • everyone working towards the same goal and not being able to tell the amount of effort each person put in

  • reduce loafing when a task is challenging, appealing, or people feel motivated to do something

  • less social loafing when people think they are the smartest in a group

    • if they get to choose their own groups/in groups with their friends

Bystander Non-Intervention Effect:

• Kitty Genoese - 1964

  • stabbed numerous times in the early morning outside her apartment

  • numerous people heard her screams, but no one called for help

• bystander non-intervention effect - tendency for individuals to assume that others will act

  • pluralistic ignorance - error of assuming no one in the group perceive things as we do

  • diffusion of responsibility - people feel less responsible when there are more witnesses near by

• enlightenment effect - learning about psychological research can change real-world behaviour for the better

Social Interactions:

• prosocial

  • helping behaviour

    • help only if rewards outweigh costs

    • help regardless of rewards and costs

  • altruism - type of helping behaviour where people help others for unselfish reasons

    • helping regardless of reward/no benefit for them

  • helping behaviour

    • situational influences

      → number of bystanders

      → no escape — more likely to engage if they can’t escape the situation

      → being in a good mood — happy people are more likely to help others

      → observing positive role models — if we are encouraged to be empathetic, we are more likely to do so

      → no time constraints (Good Samaritan study) — feeling rush, you are a lot less likely to help

      → victim characteristics — much more likely to help an older person with a cane/someone who looks like us

    • individual differences

      → less concern with social approval — if people are less, they are going to be more helpful

      → more extroverted — more likely to help than an introverted person

      → training/expertise — trained medical workers are more likely to help than

    • gender differences

      → men more likely to help is risky situations

      → women more likely to volunteer (safer situation)

• asocial

• anti-social

  Aggression:

• aggression - any behaviour intended to cause physical or psychological pain

  • physical harm, verbal harm, decision to harm someone

• predicting aggression

  • situational influences

    • interpersonal provocation → whether or not we are provoked

    • frustration → more likely to behave aggressively when frustrated

    • media influences → watching violent media increases odds of engaging in violence (observational learning) — relatively short term

    • aggressive cues → external cues associated with violence can prime more aggressive responses (being a presence of some sort of violent cue like a knife) — weapons effect - the mere presence of weapons increases aggression

    • arousal → autonomic system is hyped up, we might interpret this arousal as anger

    • alcohol/drugs → decreases inhibition to act violently/lower self-awareness

    • temperature → being warm increases irritability/bodily discomfort/levels of arousal

  • individual differences

    • high levels of negative affect → anxiety, depression, mistrust

    • impulsivity → very impulsive/can’t withhold feelings of anger

    • less prevalent among Asian cultures (collectivist cultures)

    • culture of honour in Southern USA → insult wife, try to take land = aggressive reaction

  • gender differences

    • men tend to be more physically aggressive

    • women display more relational aggressive

Chapter 14: Personality

• personality - people’s typical ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that influence how they live

  • relatively consistent

  • characteristics that remain stable across situations that then we often use to predict how people are going to act/react in new or certain situations

  • we tend to categorize people to help us understand others (sometimes to even predict behaviour)

    • categorize in terms of extroversion/introversion and other similar ways

Two Major Ways of Studying Personality:

1. nomothetic - researchers find general rules that govern all individuals

   • what is true for everyone; making generalities about people, personality, or tendencies

2. idiographic - researchers find unique combinations of characteristics and experiences within individuals

   • looking at one individual, we may be able to figure out their personality qualities and how they might have predicted their success and their behaviour

   • can be difficult to falsify post hoc, but studying one person via idiographic research can be a good starting point for going into nomothetic approaches to compare the traits of one person to others

Behavioural Genetics Research:

→ three broad influences on our personalities

1. genetic factors - heritability is not super accurate in identifying personality, but a large part of our personality comes from genetic factors

   • approx 50% of our personality comes from genetic factors

2. shared environmental factors - experiences in one family/house/community that makes individuals more alike

   • diet, routines, access to things such as technology, manners/mannerisms

3. nonshared environmental factors - specific for each individual

   • putting one sibling in soccer and the other in martial arts, different friends, different teachers

   • have a larger influence on personality that shared environmental factors

   • a larger portion of our personality comes from non shared environmental factors

→ things that differentiate individual members from the rest of their family

→ some things that look shared may not truly be shared

• parenting styles with multiple children

Twin + Adoption Studies:

• twins reared together - comparing identical twins (100% same genetic makeup) to fraternal twins (50% same genetic makeup → same as siblings)

  • identical twins are more alike in personality traits than fraternal twins

    • suggests the role of genetics

• adoption studies - compares an adopted child’s personality to their biological parents to their adopted parents

  • adopted children tend to be more like their biological parents

    • suggests greater influence of genetics

• identical twins reared apart - comparing identical twins that were raised apart

  • about similar as regular kids being reared together → the shared environment has little difference/impact on personality

  • the nonshared environmental factors have greater impacts than the shared ones but still less than genetics

Psychoanalytical Theory:

Sigmund Freud - used his hypothesis and free association to access the unconscious mind, studied neurosis, and came up with a base of personality that is true for most/all people

→ father of psychoanalytic theory

→ treated many patients with hysteria

• assumptions

  • psychic determinism - all our actions are due to inner forces/conflicts

    • dreams, accidental slips of the tongue, repressed/suppressed emotions or thoughts

    • our dreams our symbolic messages for hidden, unconscious desires

  • symbolic meaning - our actions represent our inner forces and conflicts

    • Freud studied this via dream content → thought that what we dream about is a reflection of our unconscious desires

  • unconscious motivation - the reason for our actions are outside our awareness

    • view human personality that we have little control over what we do

    • thought we had to engage in psychoanalysis to bring the unconscious out and make it conscious to find out how we can be motivated

Structures of Personality:

1. id - primitive instincts

   • libido - sex drive and urges

   • thanatos - aggression and death → impulses — immediate gratification

2. superego - sense of morality

   • conscience → moral compass, holds impossible standard of ideals and values, deciding right from wrong

3. ego - the decision maker

   • conscious awareness and wishes → the rational part of our brain that mediates between the id and superego — sense of reality that controls and directs the other two in ways that are acceptable and “right”

Example:

→ id in a hungry state would want to grab a snack and eat in the grocery store without paying for it

→ superego says “you can eat anything now, you have to buy it first”

→ ego makes the decision to buy the snack then eat or eat it then buy it (find a compromising decision)

Defense Mechanisms:

→ work to keep us psychologically healthy, unless we begin to rely on one or two of the mechanisms exclusively

• repression - motivated forgetting of threatening memories or impulses

  • blocking out traumatic experiences

• denial - motivated forgetting of current experiences

  • denying something that is currently happening to reduce anxiety in the moment

• regression - returning to a psychologically younger state

  • regress to a lower level of maturity, returning to things that gave you comfort as a child or infant

• reaction-formation - doing the opposite of what triggers the anxiety

  • similar to overcompensating to not expose insecurities or weakness

  • ex. unwanted pregnancy leads to overprotective parenting style

• projection - attributing your feelings onto others

  • ex someone not liking someone and describing them as mean

    • though their actual actions many not display these negative feelings because they’ve been projected onto the person

• displacement - transferring your feelings onto a safer object

  • ex. coming home from work and punching a wall

• rationalization - explaining away behaviour

  • excuses for why we act the way we act

  • external attributions → blaming outcomes of situational factors

• intellectualization - explaining emotions with higher concept ideas

  • making anxiety causing things seem more complex

    • ex. calling terminal or chronic rather than fatal because it may sound more intellectual

• sublimation - changing negative impulse into a socially acceptable goal

  • ex. engaging in exercise after a stressful day to get rid of pent-up energy and frustration

Stages of Psychosexual Development:

→ Freud believed that development occurred in 5 erotic stages

1. oral stage (brith - 18 months)

   • babies navigating the world by putting things in their mouths

     • pleasure from food, sucking, chewing

   • individuals in this stage can develop oral fixation

     • the adult version of this stage is being dependent upon others for reassurance

   • adults chewing nails, smokings, rubbing lips

2. anal stage (18 months - 3 years)

   • toilet training and sense of control over self and environment

   • anal fixation - either excessive orderliness or laziness

     • “anal” in reference to intensely orderly people comes from this term and its fixations

3. phallic stage (3 - 6 years)

   • sexual desires for the opposite sex parent and urges to harm or be more like the same sex parent develop

     • oedipus complex - urge to harm father and/or have sex with mother

     • electra complex - urge to kill mother and have sex with father

4. latency stage (6 - 12 years)

   • sexual impulses are held in the unconscious

     • mostly disproved due to the recent research on sexual development between 6 and 12 years old

5. genital stage (12+ years)

   • sexual impulses renew with puberty

   • romantic relationships develop

→ Freud argued that what happened in the first 5 years of life contribute largely to our personality later in life

Scientific Examination:

• unfalsifiable

• failed predictions

• poor support for the unconscious

• unrepresentative and small samples

• poor support for the role of shared environmental influence

Non-Freudian Theories:

• core assumptions

  • emphasis on the unconscious and early childhood experiences

  • less emphasis on sexaulity

  • more optimistic about human nature

• Alfred Adler

  • striving for superiority

    • striving to dominate others, be better than others, achieving the goals you want to achieve

  • children who are pampered or neglected may develop inferiority complex

    • low self-esteem

  • parenting styles impacts inferiority complex

    • children become more dependent on people

• Carl Jung

  • collective conscious

    • suggest all of us have a personal unconscious (traumas) and collective unconscious (shared historical members, desires, wishes, that are passed down from our ancestors)

    • fear of snake → passed down from ancestors

    • accounts for similarities we see in myths about other cultures

  • archetypes

    • symbol of a mother → loving, caring

    • hero

    • circle → unity, wholeness

  • Karen Hornet

    • first major feminist theories that had an issue with Freud’s theory

    • founder of feminist psychology

    • argued against penis envy and oedipus complex

      • argued it had to do with the social/gender norms

    • otherwise, did not stray from Freud

Scientific Examination:

• unfalsifiable

Humanistic Theory:

• core assumptions

  • rejects determinism for free will

  • believe people want to self-actualize

    • trying to develop our innate potential to its fullest extent

• Carl Rogers

  • revolutionized psycho therapy

  • people are inherently positive

  • conditions of worth → expectations we place ourselves regarding appropriate vs inappropriate behaviour

    • rewarding kids who say they want to be a firefighter or a doctor vs not rewarding kids who say they want to be a stay at home parent

  • differences in personality is a reflection of the condition of work that has been put on us

• Abraham Maslow

  • focused on individuals who have “achieved” self-actualization

    • believed only 1% if adults reach this

  • common features → creative, spontaneous, accepting, self-confident

Scientific Examination:

• human nature is no entirely positive

• when people receive therapy to match their current self-identities with “true identities”, symptoms do not necessarily improve

• selection bias for Maslow’s findings

• difficult to falsify the drive for self-actualization

Behavioural Theory:

• core assumptions

  • behavioural determinism - your past learning experiences drive your behaviour

  • our behaviour is governed by what we have been rewarded for or punished in the past

  • there is no such thing as free will

  • the environment drives the “unconscious”

    • can be aware of the influence it has

Scientific Examination:

• if thoughts were unnecessary, why did humans evolve to be able to think?

Social Learning:

• core assumptions

  • reciprocal determinism - how personality, cognitive, behaviour, and the environment include each other

  • all inclusive theory

  • observational learning - learn by watching other people

Scientific Examination:

• social modeling relies on the influence on the shared environment

Personality Traits:

• personality traits - relatively enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that make people different from one another

  • implements our behaviours across situations

  • different ways to describe people’s personality traits

    • aggressive

    • impulsive

    • curious

    • social

Trait Models:

• focused on describing the structure of personality, instead of the cause

  • trait theorists interested in what behaviours and attitudes are consistent across situations

    • Gordon Allport → first trait theorist

      → if we have particular traits, we must be able to describe them

      → noticed many words are synonyms to each other

      → personality traits with the most synonyms might be the most important when considering different models of personality

Factor Analysis:

• Raymond Cattell

  • factor analysis - statistical means of examining which things go together

  • higher correlation between items indicate the items are more related to one another

  • how researchers developed the Big 5 Model

Big Five Model of Personality:

• suggests that all of us possess each of the traits from one degree to another

  1. neuroticism - emotionally unstable

     • anxious

     • tense

     • irritabile

     • lack self-confidence

  2. extraversion - being outgoing

     • sociable

     • assertive

     • energetic

  3. conscientiousness - organized and reliable

     • efficient

     • orderly

     • thorough

     • self-disciplined

     • higher GPAs

  4. agreeableness - highly agreeable

     • kind

     • warm

     • very trusting of others

     • forgiving

     • altruistic

     • compliant

     • modest

  5. openness to experience

     • imaginative

     • curious

     • artistic

     • unconventional values

     • one of the most controversial traits in the Big 5

→ people can vary along any of these traits

→ traits can be describe with different amounts of each trait

→ just because two people match in one trait doesn’t mean they will match in other traits

→ each trait is uncorrelated with one another

• good at predicting our behaviours

• cultural influences

  • lots of cross-cultural support

  • openness to experience may not be cross cultural

    • “group harmony” vs “honesty/humility”

  • individualism vs collectivism

The Big Three:

• neuroticism

• extraversion

• impulse control - how much you can resist a desire to engage in something

The Big Two:

• extraversion/dominance

• agreeableness/love

→ interpersonal traits - interactions between people involving exchanges (traits that can’t be expressed when you are alone on an island)

Can Traits Change:

• until age 30, some changes are common

  • openness to experiences, neuroticism, and extroversion decrease from late teens to early 30s

  • conscientiousness and agreeableness tend to increase

    • suggests that as we mature and gain more social roles, we end up adopting personality that is more consistent with those roles

• after age 30, there is very little personality change

  • psychotherapy can prolong personality changes

Scientifically Examined

• behavioural inconsistency (Walter Mischel)

  • low correlations between similar behaviours in different environments

  • low correlations between traits and specific behaviour

→ response to Mischel

• personality traits predict aggregated behaviours

  • correlation of 0.4 is not that small

• both personality and situations influence each other

• your consciousness cannot predict whether you show up to class → cannot predict situations

Chapter 15: Psychological Disorders

Defining Mental Disorders:

• statistical rarity - the idea that to call something a mental disorder, it should be relatively rare

• subjective distress - idea that the person should show up talking about the symptoms they are experiencing are overwhelming

  • stress them out

  • cannot work

  • * one of the most important

• impairment - there is something in your life you cannot do because of your symptoms

  • * one of the most important

• societal/cultural disapproval - are the behaviours a person is engaging in acceptable?

  • griefing looks different for different cultures → wearing black/mourning vs minimal reaction/change to every day life

• biological dysfunction - for some disorders, there are much more prominent roles of biological factors

  • least important

→ need a combination of these to determine if someone has a mental disorder

History of Mental Disorders:

• demonic model - mental disorders are due to evil spirits

  • demons, exorcisms, witches, moon and stars

  • trephining - puncture a hole in the skull to let the evil demons out of the skull

    • decreasing the inter-cranial pressure might have helped people who needed the pressure released (getting hit in the head)

• medical model - mental disorders are due to physical health issues

  • asylums - prison for people with mental disorders

    • a place to keep people with mental disorders

  • blood-letting - opening up a vain and letting some of the blood out

    • people who are acting this way have too much blood (sometimes up to 40% of a persons blood)

  • moral treatment/therapy - changing how they treat people

    • removing all the restraints

    • doctors actually talk to the clients → treating them like human beings

    → very successful, but lead to its own downfall

• modern era

  • deinstitutionalization movement

  • community-based resources

Diagnosing:

• diagnosing - the act of giving someone a label/term for their symptoms

• why do we diagnose

  • to improve communication between professionals and disciplines

  • to give the client a term for what they are experiencing

  • to choose the best treatments

  • to aid in research

Misconceptions about Diagnosing:

• diagnosing is just putting people into “boxes”

  • argued that psychologists believe that all people with a diagnosis are the same

• diagnoses are unreliable

  • argued that no two psychologists ever agree on the same diagnosis

• diagnoses are invalid

  • argued that diagnosing doesn’t tell us anything useful

    1. diagnoses distinguish between groups

    2. labels can predict what family members are dealing with

    3. diagnosis can predict what is going to happen with a person’s symptoms over time

    4. diagnosis predicts how they are going to respond to certain treatments

• diagnoses stigmatize

  • argued that the labels are self-fulfilling prophecies, and influence how others treat them

  • Rosehan’s pseudo patient study (1973) - 8 people when to 12 different psychiatric hospitals reporting they are all hearing “empty” “hollow” and “thud” → every single person got admitted to the hospital and almost all got diagnosed with schizophrenia

DSM-5-TR:

• diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders

• diagnostic criteria

  • set of symptoms, such that a client must have X number of possible symptoms, within Y amount of time

    • major depression → have to have 5 of the 9 symptoms within a 2 week period

  • symptoms must not be due to medical conditions or substances

    • Ex. tumour on your thyroid gland, you don’t have depression

• published by American Psychiatric Association

  • psychiatrist get the final say

• other features

  • prevalence rate → percentage of the population that has/had the disorder

    • stats

  • atheoretical bio psychological approach → points our general information about all the disorders

  • how development and culture may affect disorders → you have to take a person’s culture into account — the way they’re acting may be normal to them and not to us

• criticisms

  • comorbidity between disorder - when people have more than one disorder

    • more natural than a problem

  • categorical approach vs dimensional approach

    • dimensional - never a clear line in the say in whether you have a disorder or not

    • categorical - there is a specific cut off as to if you have the disorder or not → if you have 4 of the symptoms vs 5 of the symptoms

Anxiety-Related Disorders:

→ typical onset is from teenage years to early adulthood

• somatic disorders (which feature anxiety) → not technically anxiety disorders

  • somatic symptom disorder - intense anxiety regarding physical symptoms

    • Ex. having cluster headaches and believing you have a brain tumour

  • illness anxiety disorder - intense anxiety regarding physical symptoms that cannot be found by medical professionals

    • Ex. noticing a spot on your arm, scratch and pick at it → believe they have skin cancer (no you have dry skin)

• generalized anxiety disorder - excessive and uncontrollable worry

  • worries about numerous minor topics

  • experiences muscle tension, irritability, difficulties sleeping, and difficulties with concentration

  • not the overarching category of anxiety

  • depression usually comes first (18-20 years), then GAD (30 years)

• panic disorder - repeated, unexpected panic attacks that cause the individual to change their behaviour or that the in individual persistently worries about

  • change their life to stop them

  • worry about how you live your life with panic attacks

  • 20-25% of university student experience at least one panic attack in the past year

  • panic attack - heart racing, tingling in your fingers, sweating

    • can feel like a heart attack

• agoraphobia - avoidance of, or intense distress in, locations where escape may be difficult or embarrassing, or help would be unavailable, if panic attack-like symptoms began

  • public transit

  • open space

  • enclosed places

  • outside of the home alone

  • lines or crowds

  → don’t need to be diagnosed with panic disorder to be diagnosed with agoraphobia

• social anxiety disorder - afraid of the evaluation of others and believe they lack the same social skills as other people

  • avoid social situations or endure them with intense distress

  • fear of judgement and other people’s opinions

  • one of the most common disorders

• specific phobias - significant and recurrent fear or anxiety of specific objects or situations

  • animals, insects, storms, water, elevators, darkness, clowns, etc

  • having these fears are okay

  • not a disorder → does not impair day-to-day life

  • can’t look at somebody’s behaviour and diagnosis them

• post-traumatic stress disorder - exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence (trauma/stress related disorder category)

  • how to get PTSD

    • experience it

    • witness it

    • hear out it from close friends or family

    • repeatedly exposed to traumatic events

  • intense distress when reminded about event

  • attempts to avoid or suppress memories

  • anhedonia - loss of pleasure → things don’t feel good anymore

    • Ex. hanging out with your friends

  • exaggerated startle response

• obsessive-compulsive disorder

  • obsessions - recurrent & persistent thoughts, images, or urges that are considered intrusive & unwanted

    • causes you to get very anxious

  • compulsions - repetitive behaviour or mental acts that are done in response to to an obsession, but are unable to realistically prevent distress or feared future event

Psychological Factors in Anxiety-Related Disorders:

• classical conditioning - neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus, which causes fear and anxiety

  • Ex. Little Albert and the white rat, Pavlov’s dogs

• operant conditioning - negative reinforcement of avoidance/escape response

  • negative reinforcement - keep doing the certain behaviour to get rid of a bad behaviour

• observational learning - learning from watching others

  • Ex. picking up fears from parents → dad is scared of blood, brother is now scared of blood

• information/misinformation - being told something, which encourages anxious behaviours

  • being told about a plane crash in Toronto, but you’re flying to Calgary

• catastrophizing - assuming the worst outcome will occur

  • blowing things out of proportion

• anxiety sensitivity - awareness of internal sensations and fear of fear

  • similar to a personality trait (on the spectrum)

• intolerance of uncertainty - fear of the unknown future

  • need to know what will happen

• metacognitions - beliefs and worries about our own thoughts and patterns

  • thinking about your thinking

Biological Factors in Anxiety-Related Disorders:

• twin studies show small to moderate genetic contributions for all anxiety disorders

• low levels of serotonin and GABA (general inhibitor neurotransmitter)

• evolutionary preparedness learning

• neuroticism is elevated in most anxiety disorders, especially GAD (generalized anxiety disorder)

  • high in worry and rumination

Mood Disorders:

→ most commonly associated with feeling down (depression), but also with excessively elevated/expansive mood (mania)

• major depressive disorder - significantly depressed mood or anhedonia

  • significant change in weight/appetite, insomnia or hypersomnia, worthlessness, thoughts of suicide

  • most often it features recurrent episodes

Psychological Factors in Major Depression:

• life events model - stressful life events trigger depression

  • loss of a significant relationship

• behavioural model - lack of positive reinforcement

  • continued withdrawal and deterioration in social skills

• interpersonal model - depressed individuals seek excessive reassurance and talk pessimistically, which drives away others

  • Coyne (1976) - talking to depressed people study

    • reported that the students did not want to talk to the depressed person again vs the other two groups

• learned helplessness model (Seligmen) - if you find yourself in a situation where you can’t escape from a bad thing, you give up trying to change things. Even when the situation changes, you continue to not try and change it

  • dog is blocked from escaping blocks

  • taken into a new room, where escape is possible

  • does not learn to escape shocks

  • in humans? → people in abusive relationships

• cognitive model (Beck)

  • cognitive triad - people with depression have negative views of 1) themselves, 2) the future, and 3) the world

  • negative schemas/cognitive distortions - filter into the negative, ignoring the positive

  • depressive realism - argument that people with depression aren’t negative about themselves, they just see the world as it truly is

    • people who are not depressed are more optimistic than they should be

Biological Factors in Major Depression:

• genetic contribution, but role of specific genes is still debated

• serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine all involved

• neuroticism especially high

• biological factors affect women more than men

Bipolar Disorders:

• mani/hypomania - significantly elevated, expansive, or irritable mood (personality gets turned way up)

  • hypomania - less severe and doesn’t last as long

  • grandiosity (think highly of themselves), increased goal directed activity, decreased need for sleep, engagement is risky activities

  • causes a lot of stress on friends and family

    • Ex. gambling away life savings

• bipolar I disorder - have experienced a manic episode

• bipolar II disorder - have experienced a hypomania episode, as well as major depression

Factors in Bipolar Disorders:

• biological factors

  • heritability may be as high as 85%

  • serotonin and dopamine likely involved

  • antidepressant induced mania

• psychological factors

  • stressful life events

  • sleep disruptions

Suicide:

• 3rd leading cause of death in children, adolescents, and young adults

• also high in Indigenous populations and the elderly

• women attempt more, but more men die by suicide

• predictors of attempting suicide (in order from best - worst)

  • current planning/ideation

  • previous attempts

  • hopelessness

  • depression

  • comorbid substance abuse or other mental disorders

  • recent major life stressor

Schizophrenia:

• positive symptoms (added to their experience of reality)

  • delusions - strongly held irrational beliefs

    • persecutory (FBI is tracking you boss is trying to screw you over), grandiose (believing you are the born-again Jesus, you can make a car that runs on water with no engineering experience), erotomaniac (believing somebody is in love with you), somatic (something is wrong with your body that isn’t real)

  • hallucinations - auditory or visual sensory stimuli that are not real

    • auditory is the most common

• disorganized symptoms

  • disorganized speech - loose associations between ideas

  • disorganized behaviour - behaviour that does not fit context

  • catatonia - waxy flexibility (freezing for a period of time), echolalia (talking parrot), purposeless activity (pacing)

• negative symptoms (something is taken away)

  • apathy - no motivation, even for personal hygiene

  • flat affect - emotional responses

  • asociality - no interest in others

  • alogia - very limited speech

  • anhedonia - loss of pleasure in anything

Factors in Schizophrenia:

• schizophrenogenic mothers - cold, overprotective, rejecting mothers broke the child’s brain

  • Freud idea

  • no evidence (probably doesn’t play a role)

• expressed emotion (does play a role)

  • family is high in criticism, hostility, an over-involvement

  • has both genetic contributions, and may emerge as a result of the stress and associated with diagnosis

  • differs between cultures

    • Black Americans → lack of warmth plays more of role than high criticism

      → low expressed emotion might be worse

      → high expressed emotion is the norm

• brain abnormalities

  • not diagnostic

  • not everybody with schizophrenia has brain abnormalities

  • enlarged ventricles

    • bring good stuff in, flush bad stuff out

    • don’t know why this happens

  • hypofrontality

    • frontal lobe doesn’t seem to be firing as much (less activity)

    • issues with planning/thinking things through, language, lack of connection with people

    • 50% of people with schizophrenia show this

• marijuana use

  • if you have a genetic risk of developing schizophrenia and between the age of 10-30, regularly weed with really high THC increases your odds of developing schizophrenia

  • weed doesn’t cause schizophrenia

• neurotransmitters

  • organically dopamine hypothesis (chemical imbalance theory of schizophrenia)

    • people with schizophrenia have too much dopamine in their brain

    • the drugs that seem to work for schizophrenia but cause people to develop something that looks like Parkinson’s (low dopamine), so the drugs must be pushing down the dopamine in your brain

  • excess stimulation of some dopamine receptors, but lack of stimulation at others

• genetics

  • family, twin, and adoption studies show significant genetic influences

  • up to 80% genetic

  • never entirely genetic → depends on what happens in your life

• diathesis-stress model (applies to every disorder)

  • diathesis (risk factors/predisposition) + stressor = symptoms

    • do you have the genetics + does some major life event happen = disorders starts (old way of thinking about it)

    • diathesis is not just genetics → did you grow up in poverty, were you assaulted by your parents

    • stressors can be daily hassles

    • once the symptoms start, those symptoms are also stressors

Personality Disorders:

→ does not want to diagnosis until around 17-18, but can see elements of it earlier

• common characteristics

  • persistent ways of behaving across situations

  • causes enduring emotional distress/impairment

    • exception that with these disorders, some people do not acknowledge the impairment (claims it is just who they are)

• controversies

  • distress and impairment may not be apparent to the individual

  • lower reliability, questionable validity

    • lots of psychologist do not know how to diagnose correctly

    • some of the personality disorders may not be real disorders

  • high comorbidity rates

    • high degree of overlap between disorders

• borderline personality disorder:

  → line between neurosis and psychosis

  • preoccupied with fears of abandonment

    • when they are in relationships, they are always looking for ways the person is going to leave them → switch to being the one who threatens to leave first

  • instability in mood, identity, and relationships

    • get angry, sad, anxious out of no where

  • highly impulsive

    • engaging in substance abuse, purging

  • chronic feelings of emptiness

    • when something bad happens, they can start spiraling down

  • repeated suicide attempts or self-harm behaviours

  • only diagnosed in women

    • don’t look for it in men

Proposed Explanation:

• psychoanalytic concept of “splitting”

  • don’t realize they are acting this way

• difficulties regulating emotions

• neuroticism

• childhood sexual abuse

• psychopathic personality

  → not a disorder

  → anti-personality is the disorder

  • subset of antisocial personality disorder

    • do not follow society’s rules

  • lack empathy

  • highly manipulative

  • charming and engaging

  • frequently commit crimes

  • no connection to intelligence and being a psychopath

Proposed Explanation:

• under arousal hypothesis

  • baseline is under aroused because they want to be up where everybody else it

• fearlessness hypothesis

  • people who are psychopaths don’t learn fear cues or have a sense of danger

• genetic contribution

• childhood physical abuse

  • little boys experience more physical abuse

    • only men are diagnosed with anti-social disorder

• dissociative disorders

  • depersonalization/derealization disorder

    • multiple episodes of depersonalization or derealization or both

  • dissociative amnesia

    • memory loss following a stressful/traumatic experience

  • dissociative fatigue

    • dissociative amnesia, combined with feeling the area

  • dissociative identity disorder

    • two or more personality states

    • “host” and “alters”

    • different respiration rates, brain waves activity, eyesight, handedness, voice patterns, etc

    • amnesia between alters has not been supported

    • can pretend your way through it (fake it)

Explanations For Dissociative Disorder:

• post-traumatic model

  • individual compartmentalizes their identity in response to childhood abuse

  • abuse histories have not aways been supported, and abuse is not specific to DID

• sociocognitive model (better model)

  • beliefs of, techniques used by, therapists help to create the “alters“

  • significant empirical support

    • clients rarely report alters before beginning therapy

    • techniques like hypnosis can implant false memories

    • therapists often encourage clients to name the alters

    • number of alters often increases during therapy

    • dissociation is associated with daydreaming/fantasizing

Childhood Disorders:

• autism spectrum disorder

  • severe deficits in language, social bonding, and imagination, and intelligence

  • repetitive and restrictive behaviours

Proposed Explanation

• genetics, parental age at conception

• MMR vaccine (illusory correlation)

  • a doesn’t necessarily cause b

• improved/more liberal diagnostic criteria

• attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder

  • restless, emotional outbursts as preschoolers

  • refuse to stay seated, do not follow directions, can’t stay focused, and have temper tantrums

Proposed Explanation

• genetic contribution

• decreased brain volume and frontal lobe activation

• over diagnosed (?)

Chapter 16: Treating Psychological Disorders

What is, and Who Provides, Psychotherapy:

• a psychological intervention designed to help people resolve emotional, behavioural, and interpersonal problems, and improve their quality of life

• primary clinical psychiatrist, counselling psychologist, social workers, and psychiatric nurses

• paraprofessionals

  • less formal training

Psychoanalysis & Pyschodynamic Therapies

• core features

  • cause of abnormal behaviours

    • intra-psychic conflicts & adverse childhood events

  • analyze

    • distressing thoughts, feelings, wishes, dreams, or fantasies that the client is avoiding

    • therapeutic relationship

  • treatment

    • increase client insight through therapist’s interpretations

• psychoanalysis techniques

  • free association

    • client says whatever comes to mind

  • interpretation

    • telling the client what the underlying motivations may be

  • hypnosis & dream analysis

    • all dreams were driven by sex and aggression

  • resistance

    • trying to avoid experiencing more distressing thoughts

  • transference

    • projection of intense feelings onto the therapist

      → counter transference - how a therapist acts towards a client

  • working through

    • challenging of ineffective coping strategies and resistance

• psychodynamic therapy

  • interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT)

    • therapist is a participant observer

    • strengthens social skills, improve current relationships, and helps client adjust to relationship losses and life transitions

    • developed to treat depression

Scientific Examination:

• is insight necessary → no

• is dream analysis falsifiable → no

• is repression real → no

• lack of treatment outcome research with large and representative samples

  • psychoanalysis is no more effective than support groups

• IPT is effective in selective disorder

Humanistic Therapies:

• core features

  • cause of abnormal behaviour

    • conditions of worth and lack of self-actualization

  • analyze

    • current emotions and relationships

    • disconnect between current-self and ideal-self

  • treatment

    • increase insight through empathy and reflection

Person-Centred Therapy Techniques:

• non-directive

  • given full control of the session and therapy to the client

• therapists is authentic and genuine

  • must tell the client his/her reaction to what the client is saying

• unconditional positive regard

  • non-judgemental of the client’s life and their decisions

• empathetic understanding with reflection → how you show the unconditional positive regard

  • must try to fully understand the client’s experience and communicate it back to them

Scientific Examination:

• self-actualization is difficult to falsify

  • how important is the therapeutic relationship

    • necessary, but not sufficient

    • treatment may enhance relationship

• may be no more effective than placebo treatments

  • some studies have shown strong effects

Behaviour Therapy (BT):

• core features

  • cause of abnormal behaviours

    • learning history and current behaviours

  • analyze

    • present thoughts, emotions, and behaviours

    • environmental contingencies

  • treatment

    • change client’s behaviour and environmental stimuli

BT Techniques:

• systematic desensitization

  1. teach client to relax on cue

  2. develop an exposure hierarchy

  3. begin imaginal exposure to least-anxiety provoking stimulus while engaging in relaxation

  4. as the client masters one level of the hierarchy, move on the next

     • steps of a fear/phobia

     • works well for anxiety

• exposure therapy

  • same process, but the less focus on relaxation, more focus on in-vivo exposures

    • in-vivo → doing it in real life

Type of Exposure Therapy:

• flooding with response prevention

  • starting at the top of the exposure hierarchy, with little relaxation training

• virtual reality therapy

  • can create exposure scenarios that are expensive, dangerous, or impossible to create in-vivo

• token economy

  • use of positive and/or negative reinforcement to change behaviour

  • reward to encourage good behaviour

• aversion therapies

  • use of unpleasant conditioning or punishment to change behaviour

  • quickly become scared of doing the behaviour

Cognitive-Behavioural Therapies (CBT):

• core features

  • cause of abnormal behaviours

    • dysfunctional/irrational beliefs

  • analyze

    • present thoughts, emotions, and behaviours

    • core beliefs

  • treatment

    • change dysfunctional thinking and behaviours

Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy:

• developed by Albert Ellis

• ABCs

  • activating event

  • beliefs

  • consequences

• challenges core beliefs

• homework exercises

Cognitive Therapy:

• developed by Aaron T. Beck (father of CBT)

• automatic thoughts and the cognitive triad drives symptoms

• challenge automatic thoughts (and core beliefs)

  • if you tell yourself something, then the therapist will point out that evidence but find more positive evidence → you did well on the presentation, you are not actually a bad presenter

• exposure exercises and homework

  • what drives the change is what you do in between sessions

• realistic thinking → training people to be scientists about their own thinking

• works for almost every disorder

Other CBT Approaches:

• acceptance and commitment therapies

  • accept thoughts as “just thoughts”

    • let the thoughts float by

  • be open to emotional experiences

  • behave in accordance with one’s values

• dialectical behaviour therapy

  • many elements of Beck’s cognitive therapy, plus radical acceptance, mindfulness, and interpersonal therapy

  • developed specifically for borderline personality disorder

  • minimum of one year therapy

• metacognitive therapies

  • challenge the beliefs you have about your thoughts

    • why are you worrying about it in the first place

• eclectic approaches

  • many therapists take elements from many approaches, including yoga, motivational interviewing, and mindfulness

Scientific Examination:

• BT/CBT

  • more effective than placebo treatments

  • generally, more effective than psychoanalytic and person-centred therapies

  • as effective as IPT and medications, potentially less relapse long-term

  • new methods are as effective as older approaches

Couples/Family and Group Therapies:

• core features

  • cause of abnormal behaviours

    • group dynamics/interpersonal relationships seen as cause of individual dysfunction

  • analyze

    • group interactions

  • treatment

    • both therapists and other group members may help an individual client and provide support

Examples of Group Therapy:

• Alcoholics Anonymous

  • “sponsored” by another member who has had years of sobriety

  • alcoholism is a disease and once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic

    • once you’re in AA, you cannot touch alcohol

  • must turn to a “higher power”

    • God

  • very high drop out rate

  • work for 30%-60% of people who stick with it

    • still very high rate of relapse

• controlled drinking and relapse prevention

  • CBT approach

  • can learn to drink moderately, and relapse is seen as a “slip” and nothing more

  • setting your own goal

    • two beers on the weekend

Effectiveness of Psychotherapy:

• the dodo bird verdict

  • “all psychotherapies are equally effective”

  • meta-analysis techniques have tested this

    • in some meta analyses, psychodynamic, person-centred, and CBT approaches have been equally effective

    • however, CBT consistently performs the best for children/teens and for anxiety disorders

  • other therapies have greater potential to cause harm

• common factors

  • empathetic listening

  • instills hope

  • forms a strong therapeutic alliance

  • provides clear rationale for treatment

  • offers way to improve thinking, feeling, and behaving

  • necessary, but not sufficient for severe disorders

    • have to give patient actual techniques and strategies

• why do people believe pseudoscientific treatments work

  • regression to the mean

    • symptoms would have gotten better if you stayed home for three months

  • spontaneous remission

    • sometimes symptoms just go away

  • placebo effect

    • believing therapy is going to work, they therapy is going to work

  • common factors

    • having a good therapist is going to decrease stress

  • self-serving bias

    • someone will say therapy is going well because they put a lot of money into it

  • inaccurate memories

    • overestimate symptoms at the start

Biological Therapy - Psychopharmacology:

• anxiolytics drugs (anti-anxiety)

  • benzodiazepines (Valium, Xanax, Ativan)

  • increase the effects of GABA in the brain

    • GABA - main inhibitory transmitter in brain (calms brain down)

  • tend to be highly addictive

  • rebound anxiety

  • effective only in short term

• antidepressants

  • SSRIs (Prozac, Celexa, Zoloft)

  • tricyclics and monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs)

  • effective, but takes 2-6 weeks

    • disproves “chemical imbalance theory”

  • also work for anxiety and eating disorders

• mood stabilizers

  • lithium, anticonvulsant medications (valporate)

  • decrease the frequency/duration of mania

• antipsychotic drugs

  • conventional (Thorazine, Haldol) antipsychotics

    • primarily treat the positive symptoms of schizophrenia

  • atypical (Risperdal, Seroquel, Clorazil) antipsychotics

    • can treat both positive and negative symptoms

    • fewer side effects than conventional

  • tardive dyskinesia

    • side effect that makes the person looks like they have Parkinson’s disease

→ over prescribed?

• SSRIs may not be effective for children, and may increase suicide risk in adults

• rates of ADHD medication have greatly increased

  • psychostimulants (Ritalin, Adderall)

• increasing polypharmacy, particularly in the elderly

  • being on multiple medications → largely don’t do anything

Scientific Examination:

• CBT is as effective as most medications, and often better at preventing relapse

  • removal of medication often prompts relapse

• CBT can change brain circuitry, like medications

• CBAT + medications have been shown to be more effective in some conditions

  • medications are strongly encouraged for some disorders and situations

Biological Theory - Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT):

• used for people with depression, when other treatments have failed

• shock in administered for less than 1 second

• once every second day, 6-10 times

• 80%-90% respond well, but relapse remains high

• minor memory loss, but it may persist

• new forms

  • trans cranial magnetic stimulation, trans cranial direct current stimulation

Biological Therapy - Psychosurgery:

• prefrontal lobotomies were extensively used until the 1940s and 1950s

• control behaviour, and punishments, served as justification more than treatment

• newer versions, such as deep brain stimulation or precise removal of brain tissues, and are much safer but rarely used, so there is little research