Psychology

Stress

• A phenomenon in which some factor (or factors) in the environment causes a person to feel threatened or challenged in some way.

• The reaction to some kind of stressor which involves internal and external adaptation by and individual, is known as a stress response.

General Adaption Syndrome

• (GAS) describes the body's three-stage response to stress: the alarm reaction, the resistance stage, and the exhaustion stage, highlighting how prolonged stress can lead to significant health issues.

• Alarm - when you first encounter a stressor

• Resistance - the body attempts to adapt to the stressor through coping mechanisms, which can help maintain homeostasis despite ongoing stress.

• Exhaustion - if the stressor persists, the body's resources become depleted, leading to decreased immunity and increased vulnerability to illness.

Immune System

• Consists of

  • Lymphocytes (specialized white blood cells)

  • Natural Killer Cells

• Measuring Immune Function

  • Take blood sample and count white blood cells

  • Add cancer cells to blood sample and measure NK activity

  • Challenge system and record response

Illness and the immune system - the effects of stress on the immune system

• Bartrop et al. (1977) - the first study to demonstrate decreased immune function in response to grief

  • Subsequent research has shown that chronic stress can lead to a reduction in the body's ability to fight infections and diseases, highlighting the importance of psychological well-being in maintaining immune health.

• Stone et al. (1994) - demonstrated a relation between daily life events and antibody levels

  • This study emphasized that even minor stressors, when experienced consistently, can negatively impact immune responses, suggesting that managing stress effectively is crucial for overall health.

• Visintainer et al. (1982) - stress increases spread of cancer

  • Furthermore, their findings indicate that psychological interventions aimed at reducing stress may have a beneficial effect on cancer progression and overall patient outcomes.

• Kiecolt-Glaser et al. (1995) - stress of caring for someone with a chronic illness delays wound recovery.

How does stress exert its effects?

• People who are stressed engage in behaviors that compromise immune function

• Stress increases the release of hormones that suppress immune function

Personality Factors in Stress

• Type A personality

  • Demonstrates competitive orientation towards achievement, a sense of urgency about time, and a strong tendency to feel anger and hostility.

• Type B personality

  • Demonstrates relatively low levels of competitiveness, urgency about time, and hostility

• Phony Type B’s

  • People who appear to be Type B’s on the surface, but underneath they are tense, hostile, and troubled.

• Not all studies have found a link between Type A and heart disease

• According to Redford Williams, it is the anger and hostility component that is most harmful to health.

Environmental Factors in Stress - Overload, conflict, and frustration

• Approach/Approach

  • Deciding between two favorable options

• Avoidance/Avoidance

  • Deciding between two unfavorable options

• Approach/Avoidance

  • Given a choice, but there are positive and negative consequences to decisions

  • Ex. Going to volleyball game is fun, but you’ll miss study time

• People with scores above 300 had an 80% chance of health problems

  • Higher scores mean a higher chance of health problems

  • Correlations are not that strong

  • Doesn’t take in emotional valance (happy or sad)

Stress and the Police

• Impact of police shootings

  • over 300 black men and women are shot (25% are unarmed)

  • impact of these shootings is more impactful on students of color in these communities

    • Correlation shows GPA goes down

Hardiness

• Some people just seem to be immune to the effects of stress

• Personality characterized by

  • A sense of commitment rather than alienation

  • Control rather than powerlessness

  • Problems seen as challenges rather than threats

Environmental Factors in Stress - Control

• Brady - oops, wrong answer (monkeys)

  • Control increases Stress

• Weiss - the right answer (rats)

  • Control decreases stress

• Langer & Rodin (1976) - nursing home residents

  • Residents on the control floor had more people alive than the floor without control

• Ex. driving on the highway, behind the wheel vs. passengers seat

Enivromental Factors in Stress -Social Support

• Heart attack victims have slower recoveries if spouse is not supportive

• Longitudinal study of social connections and mortality

• Kraut et al. (1998) - Internet usage

  • They found that greater Internet use was associated with declines in participants' communication with family members, reductions in the size of their social circle, and increases in depression and loneliness

  • it seemed to negatively affect social involvement and psychological well-being

• Liu & Yu (2013) - social support on facebook not related to well-being

• Kross et al (2013) Facebook use predicts declines in subjective well-being in young adults

Social Support - Lonliness

• Heart bypass survival (Herlitz et al., 1998)

• Don’t sleep as well (Cacioppo et al., 2002)

Loneliness

• Risk of Premature Death increased by

  • 5% as a result of air pollution

  • 20% as a result of obesity

  • 30% as a result of alcoholism

  • 45% as a result of loneliness

Coping - Cognitive Appraisal

• Primary appraisal - is this important to me?

  • Determining whether a stimulus is stressful

• Secondary Appraisal - what strategy can I use to maximize positive outcomes and minimize negative outcomes.

Coping Strategies

• Problem-focused coping

  • Studying for a test

  • Effective when in control

• Emotion-focused coping

  • Focused on being relaxed and calm

  • not helpful in situations where you are in control

• Thought Suppression - exaggerates the effect of stress

  • Does not work

• Meditation

  • Does work

• Aerobic Exercise

  • Does work - proven antidepressant

  • 3-4 times a week for 20-30 minutes

What is a psychological disorder

• Baron - thought and behavior that is maladaptive and causes the individual distress

  • Abnormal - Deviates from the norm

  • Maladaptive - behavior is disruptive

  • Personal distress

• The roots of behavior can be psychological, biological, or can root from childhood

One-year prevalence rates

• 26.7% of adults suffer from a diagnosable disorder each year

  • Any anxiety disorder 18%

  • Any mood disorder 9.5%

  • Schizophrenia 1.1%

• 20.9% of children have any disorder in a given year

Psychological approaches

• Psychological disorders are the result of past and present life experiences

  • Psychodynamic — intrapsychic conflict

  • Behavioral — abnormal behavior is learned

  • Cognitive — distorted thinking

Sociocultural approach

• Psychological disorders occur within the context of society.

Incidence rates of common psychological disorders

• Anxiety

  • 19% men 31% women

• Depression

  • 15% men 24% women

• Substance abuse

  • 35% men 18% women

• Schizophrenia

  • 0.6% men 0.8% women

• Antisocial personality

  • 6% men 1% women

Mental Illness as a myth

• Thomas Szaz - problems in living not mental illness

Interactionist Approach - what causes psychopathology?

• Diathesis-stress model

  • Something puts you at risk for this disorder ex. genes

• Biopsychosocial model

  • interplay between biology, social, and psychological

How do we treat psychological disorders? — historical perspective

• Treatment based on the concept of the disorder

  • Trephining (ancient people) — thought people had mental disorders due to people having spirits trapped in their heads, so they’d drill holes in their heads

  • St. Mary’s of Bethlehem (insane asylums)

  • Phillipe Pinel — treating people with kindness and gave them decent work to do, would help them recover

Biomedical Treatments

• Psychosurgery

  • Removing parts of the brain to try and get rid of psychological diseases

• Electroconvulsive therapy

• Drug therapies

Psychological Treatments

• Psychotherapy - a form of treatment in which a trained professional employs psychological techniques to help persons in need

  • Insight therapy

  • Behavior therapy

  • Eclectic - using more than one approach

Psychodynamic Therapies

• Psychoanalysis — goal is insight and catharsis

  • Free association — patient talks about what ever comes to mind, not directing conversation

  • Resistance — unwillingness to talk about a certain topic was where there was conflict

  • Transference — the patient would develop strong feelings to the analyst, projecting feelings onto the analyst. Shows important relationships that shaped patients life.

• Contemporary psychodynamic therapies

Humanistic Therapies — the goal is to facilitate self-actualization (Carl Rodgers)

• Person-centered therapies — when people aren’t acting toward their goals and drive

  • Empathy

  • Unconditional positive regard

  • Active listening and genuineness (congruence)

Behavior Therapies

• Classical conditioning approaches

  • Counterconditioning — trying to condition an opposing emotional response

    • Systematic desensitization - Joesph Wolpe — teaches individuals how to be relaxed

    • Aversion Therapy — conditioning an unpleasant stimulus to a normally soothing stimulus

• Operant conditioning approaches

  • Token economies — reinforce desired behaviors

  • Punishment

  • Flooding — we get relief when escaping feared objects which makes them stay feared, so flood with fear and patient becomes very anxious, but anxiety can’t last forever and realize its okay

• Social learning — watching a third party to understand it is okay

Is therapy effective?

• Therapy clients show greater improvement than non-therapy clients

• The more therapy sessions the greater the likelihood of success

Psychodynamic Explanation of Depression

• Depression is anger turned inward

Behavioral Explanations of Depression

• Lewinsohn’s reinforcement theory - a failure to elicit reinforcement from the social world

Cognitive Explanations of Depression

• Learned helplessness model - Seligman & Abramson

  • Attributional Style - Internal, Global, Stable\

    • Internal - Something wrong with me

    • Stable - Life sucks now, its gonna suck in the future

    • Global - Everything sucks in the world

• Beck’s Cognitive Triad

  • Negative views about Self, World, Future

• Rational Emotive Therapy - Albert Ellis

  • Activating Event

  • Beliefs

  • Consequences

• Beck’s Cognitive Therapy

  • Is there another way to think about the situation

Psychotherapy vs. Pharmacotherapy

• No difference between medication and CBT irrespective severity

• Psychotherapy more effective in preventing relapse

  • Psychotherapy changes the way you think, pharmacotherapy just takes away symptoms, and does not prevent relapse

General Anxiety Disorder — Persistent floating anxiety

• Incidence — 3.1% males, 6.6% females

• Genetic component 30% of variability

Panic Disorder — Frequent episodes of Intense anxiety (overwhelming sense of terror)

• Incidence — 4% males, 7% females

• Biological Explanations

  • Right-sided increases in the limbic system

  • Genetic

• Cognitive - misattribution of bodily sensations

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (8% of people experience this)

• Incidence — 5% males, 10.4% females

• Symptoms

  • Appear in 4 symptom clusters: intrusion, avoidance, negative alterations in cognitions and mood, alterations in arousal and reactivity.

• Biological Factors

  • Genetic

• Psychological factors

Phobias

• Simple phobias

  • Evolutionary explanation

  • Psychodynamic — displaced anxiety

  • Behavioral — learned

  • Cognitive — exaggerated beliefs about harm

• Social anxiety disorder

• Agoraphobia — intense fear of being in a nonsafe place

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder — persistent thoughts or actions

• Obsessions — thoughts

• Compulsions — behavior

• Seen in 2% of population

Treatment of Anxiety Disorders

• Behavior therapies

  • Systematic sensitization - Joseph Wolpe

  • Social Learning

  • Flooding

• Biological Treatments

  • Antianxiety drugs - benzodiazepines

    • Works short-term, but not long term

Schizophrenic Disorders

• Bleuler coined the term to describe cases where personality loses its unity

• Not multiple personality

• Seen in 1% of populations

Symptoms

• Positive Symptoms — hallucinations, delusions, incoherent speech

• Negative Symptoms — loss of interest, flattened affect, poverty of speech, social withdrawl

• Cognitive symptoms

Schizophrenia is 8x more common in lowest socioeconomic status than highest

• Social drift hypothesis (social selection)

• Stress and social class

• Social class and diagnostic labeling

Biological Explanations

• Abnormalities in brain function and structure

  • more brain fluid, less brain tissue

• It is heredity and increases with genetic loading

• Neurotransmitter abnormalities

  • Dopamine hypothesis — excess amounts of dopamine in the brain of a schizoprenic activates the symptoms

  • Revised dopamine hypothesis

  • Glutamine

• Prenatal complications

agonist effect and antagonist effect

Psychological explanations of Schizophrenia - causes

• Schiczophrenogenic mother

  • Double bind communication

• Psychodynamic explanations — fixation at the oral stage

• Humanistic explanations

• Cognitive explanations — filtering

Diathesis — Stress (causes of schizo)

• What sort of stresses increase likelihood of developing the disorder

  • Growing up in homes with conflict, having ADHD, living in poverty, prejudice and discrimination, being a minority in a place without them, marijuana

Treatment of Schizophrenia

• Psychosurgery

  • Moniz & Lima

    • Severed frontal lobe from the rest of the brain (lobotomy)

• Antipsychotics

  • Work on the dopamine system (block dopamine receptors and block positive symptoms)

  • Pseudo-parkinsonian symptoms

  • Tardive dyskinesia

Eating Disorders

Severe disturbances in eating behavior

• Anorexia Nervosa

  • Well below ideal body weight, fearful of gaining weight

• Bulimia Nervosa (normal weight)

  • engage in episodes of binge eating, and then try to get rid of it (forced vomiting, laxatives, excessive exercise)

• Binge Eating Disorder

  • Engage in binge eating, but don’t do anything to get rid of that food

• Genetic component, but cultural influences play a larger role

• Increased use of social media makes people miserable

Social Psychology

“The attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts feelings, and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.” - Gordon Allport

Cognitive Dissonance

Something we experience when our actions do not align with our beliefs

• Festinger and Carlsmith

  • Cognitive consistency - we are motivated towards consistency

  • Self-perception theory - looks to actions to explain beliefs

Social Perception

• Primacy effect - Soloman Asch

  • Schemas

  • Confirmation bias - ignore things that don’t fit our views

  • Self-fulfilling prophecy

• Social Comparison - Leon Festinger

  • Seeing how we are doing compared to other people

Attribution

—How we determine the causes behind others’ behaviors

• Consensus (are people just acting like everyone else)

  • Low…internal, high…external

• Distinctiveness

  • Low…internal, high…external

• Consistency

  • high…internal or external, low…external

• Fundamental attribution error (correspondence bias)

  • Jons & Harris - Speech for or against Castro

Conformity - Solomon Asch

Factors that effect Conformity

• Group size — as group size increased conformity increased

• Group cohesiveness — more cohesiveness less feeling of having to conform

• Self-esteem — more self-esteem less feeling of conformity

• Social Status

• Culture

• Appearance of unanimity

Compliance - Tactics based on commitment or consistency

• Foot in the door

  • Make small requests that the person agrees to then make larger request

• Low-ball technique

  • Get the target to agree to an offer that has very favorable terms, then you tell them all the additional costs

Tactics based on reciprocity

• Door-in-the-face technique

  • Make an outlandish request to target, then modify the request

• Reciprocity

  • Give you something in hopes you give something back

• That’s-not-all

  • Throws in something to make the deal more indicting

Tactics based on scarcity

• Hard-to-get

• Fast-approaching deadline

Justification

Bystander effect

• Diffusion of responsibility

• Feels like someone else is going to solve the problem and gets rid of the guilt

Pro-Social Behavior

• Altruism

  • Ex. I gave up my kidney without anyone knowing

• Reciprocal Altruism

  • doing something with the expectation that the receiver would do the same for you

• Kin selection, aka evolutionary theory or genetic determination hypothesis

Love and Attraction

• Arousal

• Proximity

  • mere exposure effect

  • the more we are exposed to a stimulus the more we are attracted to it

• Reciprocal liking

  • we tend to like people who that like us

• Attractiveness

  • we tend to like people who are more attractive

• Similarity

  • we tend to like people that are simular to us

• Passionate love

  • Just sexually attracted to each other

• Companionate love

  • Shared goals compatible with each outside of sex