Unit 3 Summative

Concepts

1. Bias: Patterns of thinking or errors in research that can distort results, and reduce the reliability of findings.

2. Change: Includes how people can change their thoughts and beliefs, as well as how theories, ethical practices, and technology changes over time.

3. Causality: When one variable directly affects another one. Different from correlation, which is just a relationship between the two.

4. Measurement: How data is collected and analyzed, in different ways.

5. Perspective: One’s view on psychology, such as a biological, environmental, sociocultural, or cognitive perspective.

6. Responsibility: Following ethical guidelines and protecting patients and participants, such as debriefing them, getting informed consent, and generally protecting them physically and mentally.

Methods

1. Experiment: A controlled study in which two variables are isolated, and one’s effect on the other is studied. Can establish causation.

2. Observation: When researchers watch participants to take note of behaviors or specific actions they might take. Can be very flexible, with covert or overt observations, as well as ones in which the researchers are in the group being observed, or outside, and more.

3. Interview/Focus Group: When one or more people are asked questions in a structured, semi-structured, or unstructured way to collect information.

4. Survey: When several people send in their answers through a structured questionaire, which results in many responses.

5. Case Study: When a specific person or group of people are observed and studied. Very difficult to recreate and not reliable since those people are usually very rare.

6. Correlational Study: A study in which two variables are observed to see their relationship and whether they have an effect on each other. Not an experiment, so it can’t establish causation.

GRAVE

1. Generalizability: Did the sample represent the target population?

2. Reliability: Was the research carried out in a controlled, objective way so that it can be repeated and the same results obtained?

3. Applicability: Are the conclusions of the study useful to help people or society?

4. Validity: Were the results true within the study and beyond the study?

5. Ethical: Were the participants protected in line with ethical guidelines?

Biological Explanations

1. Model: A framework made to simplify complex cognitive processes. It provides structure to different types of thought and allows psychologists to come up with treatments in accordance with the model.

2. Theory: A well-developed and supported statement about cognitive processes, which helps to explain complex thought. It allows for psychologists to better understand and treat behaviors, as well as predict them.

3. Etiology: The study of the causes and origins of mental and behavioral disorders. 

4. Major Depressive Disorder (MDD): A mental disorder characterized by feelings of sadness, numbness, loss of energy, loss of slep and typical habits that bring joy, and potentially suicide. Cause by a variety of biological, cognitive, and environmental factors. 

5. Genetic inheritance: When someone receives a trait or gene from their parents, like the 5-HTT gene related to depression. 

6. Genotype: Someone’s genetic makeup, or genes, which they inherit from their parents. 

7. Phenotype: Someone’s traits which are expressed. 

8. Genetic relatedness: The proportion of DNA two people share because of a common ancestor. Basically how related you are to someone genetically. Identical twins, for example, have a genetic relatedness of 100%.  

9. Concordance rate: The statistical probability or percentage that two individuals share a specific trait, condition, or mental health disorder. 

10. Twin studies: Studies in which researchers compare identical and fraternal twins to determine a traits heritability. 

11. Molecular genetics: A branch of biology that studies the formation and replication of DNA at the molecular level. 

12. Neurotransmitter/Neurotransmission: Chemical signals in the brain that trigger specific reactions, like serotonin and dopamine. 

13. Diathesis-stress model: MDD is partially caused by genetic inheritance, but that extra vulnerability is only triggered by stressful life events.

Cognitive Models

1. Cognitive appraisal: The interpretation of an event, how someone processes a certain event.

2. Automatic thoughts: Thoughts that trigger automatically after an event, which can include negative schema, irrational thoughts, and the cognitive triad.

3. Beck’s cognitive theory of depression: Activating events are interpreted through automatic thoughts, which then leads to depressive symptoms.

4. Cognitive triad: Negative views of oneself, the world, and the future.

5. Negative thinking: Schema that are ingrained within someone that causes them to think a certain way, like ineptness, self-blame, or negative self-evaluation.

6. 6 Types of Irrational Thinking: Arbitrary inference, dichotomous thinking, exaggeration, overgeneralization, personalization, and selective abstraction.

7. Cognitive biases: Errors in thinking or thinking patterns that happen during the processing of information and events, like confirmation bias.

8. Cognitive style: Someone’s signature way of processing and organizing information.

9. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): Treatment that involves identifying and changing negative thought patterns and automatic thinking. REBT is a part of this.

10. Treatment-aetiology fallacy: The mistaken belief that a positive response to a medical or psychological treatment proves what originally caused the condition.

11. Ellis’ ABC model: Consists of and activating event, beliefs, or automatic thoughts, and the consequences, which is a reaction to the event. It helps show how different beliefs can cause people to interpret and react to the same event in different ways.

12. Activating Event: Some event that might cause distress or make someone uncomfortable, causing a reaction.

13. Belief: Opinions or thinking patterns that cause an event o be interpreted in a specific way.

14. Consequences: The reaction to the event, which is determined by the beliefs.

Cultural Differences

1. Diagnostic criteria: How certain mental disorders are diagnosed, what is needed to diagnose them.

2. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions:Individualism, collectivism, power distance, motivation towards achievement and success, uncertainty avoidance, long/short term orientation, and indulgence.

3. Individualism: How much someone focuses on themselves rather than a community.

4. Collectivism: How much people act and support each other as a community.

5. Power Distance: How accepted it is to have a large difference in power, with some people having lots of it.

6. Motivation towards achievement and success: How much people want to succeed.

7. Uncertainty Avoidance: How much people want to plan and avoid something they don’t expect.

8. Long term/Short term Orientation: How much people plan for the future or the present, specifically what they care about most.

9. Indulgence: How much people spend on the now rather than saving.

Environmental Factors

1. Brown and Harris Vulnerability Model: Consists of protective factors, vulnerability factors, and provoking events in an environment.

2. Provoking agents: An event that is stressful.

3. Vulnerability factors: A factor that makes you more likely to develop MDD.

4. Protective factors: A factor that makes you less likely to develop MDD.

Prevalence of Health Problems

1. Obesity: Having a BMI over 30, with a lot of unhealthy body fat causing physical or mental harm.

2. Prevalence: The number of cases at a certain point.

3. Prevalence rates: How many cases there are, like obesity, where there are a lot in the US.

4. Incidence: The rate of increase in cases from a previous point.

5. Body Mass Index (BMI): A system used to measure someones height in relation to their weight to determine if it is obese. Not super accurate, especially when it comes to muscle mass.

6. Emic Approach: Where studies are adapted to fit specific cultures and situations, making it more valid.

7. Etic Approach: Where a study isn’t adapted at all to fit a culture of situation, making it more generalizable.

Social Learning and Health

1. Social Learning Theory (Bandura): If someone sees a behavior by a model they identify with, they will immitate that behavior if it isn’t punished or is rewarded.

2. Social cognitive theory: Someone will only replicate a behavior if they are attentive to it, retain it, can reproduce it, and are motivated to reproduce it.

3. Modeling: Doing an action which other people observe and copy.

4. Imitation: Copying an action you immitate.

5. Observational learning: Learning a behavior or mannerism by observing someone else do it.

6. Vicarious learning: Learning a behavior or mannerism after seeign the consequences someone experiences after doing it.

7. Attention: Looking or watching a certain behavior.

8. Retention: Remembering a certain behavior or action.

9. Reproduction: Being able to do an action you saw performed.

10. Motivation: Having a reason to reproduce an action.

Stress and Health

1. Cortisol: A hormone linked to stress which causes the buildup of fat in the abdomen.

2. Hormones: Chemical messengers that travel through the bloodstream and signal cells to do different things. Slower acting.

3. Acute stress: Immediate distress, usually short-lived.

4. Chronic stress: Consistent stress over a long period of time, which can lead to lots of cortisol and weight gain.

5. Eustress: Positive stress that motivates you to work quickly.

6. Environmental stress: Stress caused by the environment.

7. Relaxation: An activity that reduces stress.

Biological Treatment

1. Chemical messengers: Neurotransmitters or hormones that cause reactions in the body, either in the brain or in cells.

2. Neurotransmission: When chemicals called neurotransmitters travel between synapses to transmit certain signals in the brain.

3. Biological reductionism: Saying that everything is caused by a biological factor, like biological determinism.

4. Serotonin: A neurotransmitter that promotes mood stability.

5. Neurons: Cells in the brain that absorb and transmit messages.

6. Synapse/synaptic cleft: Where the neurons absorb neurotransmitters.

7. Reuptake: Where neurotransmitters are reabsorbed into the first neuron for recycling.

8. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs): A medical form of treatment that occupies the reuptake mechanism of neurons for serotonin, reducing how much they are reuptaken.

9. Placebo: A form of medicine that isn’t real, which convinces someone they have been treated. an example is an empty pill.

Prevention and/or Treatment

1. Ecological approach to health promotion: Several different layers, going from Individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and to Public Policy.

2. Ozempic: A GLP drug which reduces one’s appetite. It is a direct biological treatment to obesity.

Psychological Treatment

1. Ellis’ Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT): A form of therapy that involves changing people’s irrational thought out for rational and better ones.

2. Ellis’ ABCDE model: An evolved ABC model which includes dispute and effective beliefs to fix the irrational beliefs.

3. Dispute: Creating cognitive dissonance by challenging the belief.

4. Effective beliefs: Replacing the belief with new ones that are good for their mental health.

5. Cognitive dissonance: When two ideas or beliefs clash and create mental discomfort, with one often getting dropped, or excuses being made to support both of them.