Psychology Notes

Week 5

  • Lecture 1: Ethics and integrity

  • Lecture 2:

  • Lecture 3:

  • Respect for autonomy

  • Beneficence and non-maleficence

  • Justice

  • Social facilitation: Improving performance in well-learned tasks in the presence of others and the deterioration of poorly learned tasks in the presence of others.

  • Ringelmann (1913): Ringelmann effect is that force exerted per person decreases as a function of group size.

  • Social loafing: Reduction of individual effort when working on a collective task. It is robust and pervasive.

    • Loafing decreases when:
      • Supervision is obvious (Identifiability)
      • The task is personally relevant (personal involvement)
      • Partner effort
      • Intergroup comparison e.g., Zaccaro (1984) found loafing effect was reversed when groups believed they were competing against another group

  • Bystander effect: Finding that a lone bystander is more likely to give aid than anyone of several bystanders.

    • Factors contributing to bystander effect:
      • Diffusion of responsibility – similar to social loafing. Transferring responsibility to someone else

  • Leader:

    • Can be trait
    • Behavior
    • Situational (depends on the situation)
    • A leader who projects strength before trust can risk being feared and, along with it, a host of dysfunctional behaviors
    • Affiliation vs. competence
      • Competence - skilled/efficient
      • Affiliation - social skills - cooperation

  • Behavior (style) of a leader:

    • Lewin et al. (1939) categorized:
      • Autocratic - authoritarian: Strict/independent decision-making, expects obedience
      • Democratic - participative: High affiliation, balance skill and EQ, shared decision-making
      • Laissez faire – delegative: Low guidance, trusting, flexible, only steps in when needed

  • Audience inhibition: Being self-conscious of others stops you from doing something

  • Social influence: e.g., if others seem unworried, you assume it's less serious

  • Strangers vs. Friends

  • Cognitive model of helping:

    • Attend to what’s happening
    • Define event as emergency
    • Assume responsibility
    • Decide what can be done

  • Ingham et al. (1974) experiment based on Ringelmann Effect:

    • Control condition: individual pulling alone
    • Two experimental conditions: pseudo groups and real groups
    • They did this to provide explanations to explain Ringelmann Effect. Was it co-ordination loss or motivation loss.
      • Co-ordination loss the difference between pseudo group and real group pulling
      • Motivational loss is the difference between individual and pseudo group
      • Finding was motivation loss had a greater impact

  • Zinger & Folkman (2013): Found a leader being disliked and being considered a good leader are only 1/2000.

  • Latane et al. (1979): Replicated this but with shouting/cheering.

    • Same pattern of results and social loafing to describe loss of motivation.

  • Latane and Rodin (1969): Tested bystanders effect by male subjects in waiting room who were exposed to a women yelling for help.

    • Pairs were less likely to help than alone, and with a passive confederate it was significantly decreased.

  • Latane and Darley (1970): Found that the presence of others inhibits peoples response in an emergency. More people, THE SLOWER the response

  • Latane and Dabbs findings:

    • More people stopped to help single females than for male-female pairs
    • Males helped more than females
    • Males were more likely to help single females than single males

  • How can helping increase/decrease bystander effect:

    • If the situation is clear and unambiguous
    • If group of bystanders are friends
    • Females don’t tend to help one sex more than the other.
    • Happy people are more helpful
    • Reducing anonymity
    • Seeing someone else help
    • Trained in helping profession

Week 6

  • Lecture 1:

  • Lecture 2: Love and romance

  • Lecture 3: Social psychology

  • Personality:

    • Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that distinguishes one from another and that persists over time and situations. (Phares, 1988)

    • Consistent behavior patterns and intrapersonal processes of an individual

    • Characteristics and behavior that comprise a person’s unique adjustment to life, include traits, interests, drives. Values, self-concept. Abilities, and emotional patterns

      • Sanguine (playful, sociable, contented etc.)
      • Melancholic (anxious, unhappy, serious, thoughtful)
      • Choleric (egocentric, impulsive, active, excitable)
      • Phlegmatic (reasonable, controlled, calm, principled)

  • Interpersonal relationships: Positive feelings towards another person

    • Proximity/propinquity effects
    • Physical attractiveness
    • Similarity effects - dating couples

  • Sternberg's triangular theory of love: 3 components of love

    • Intimacy
    • Commitment
    • Passion
    • Ideal partnership has all three

  • Culture and attraction may vary e.g., Ting Toomey (1991) Japanese participants rated importance of romantic love lower

  • Love grows in arranged marriage (Indian)

  • Love declines among those who marry for love e.g., US

  • Go through lecture for summary

  • Francis Galton (19th century): Went through the dictionary to build list of personality characteristics.

  • Sigmund Freud – psychoanalysis theory, shaping personality

    • Topographic model - conscious, preconscious. Ego superego and id is in our unconscious
    • Carl Jung discovered extroversion, collective

  • (Walster et al., 1966): Finding for both sexes good looks were the only variable that predicted desire to go on a second date.

    • They distinguished between passionate love and companionate love

  • Conclusions:

    • Being attractive more important for women than men
    • While for men they like to emphasize material resources, buying gifts, showing off.

Week 7

  • Lecture 1:

  • Lecture 2: Colonization comes in many forms

    • Destruction of culture and language
    • Genocide
    • Assimilation
    • Introduction of weapons, disease, drugs
    • Racist portrayals and perspectives

  • “The violent denial of indigenous peoples to continue governing themselves in their own land” – essentially taking leadership

  • Effects of colonization:

    • Dislocation
    • Marginalization
    • Racism
    • Over representation

  • Maori mental health is over represented

  • Prevalence rates are high due to:

    • Under reporting, under assessment, under treatment means sickness are less likely to be identified early => poorer health
    • Racism in healthcare, not inclusive as healthcare only uses western models

  • KM research is theory driven and community focused

    • Process How you’re doing the project
    • Kaupapa Māori principles

  • Kaupapa Maori principles

    • Tino Rangatiratanga – maori self determination | making sure they have power control throughout the research
    • Taonga tuku iho – cultural aspirations | acknowledging the culture
    • Ako Māori - culturally preferred pedagogy | honouring maori teaching methods they must be reciprocal
    • Kia piki ake I ngā raruraru o te kāinga – socioeconomic mediation | Māori and Pākehā power imbalances exist due to economic discrepancies
    • Whānau – extend family structure
    • Kaupapa - collective philosophy | need to benefit the wellbeing of Māori culturally, socially, economically or politically
    • Ata - respectful relationships between participants and community
    • Te Tiriti o Waitangi – making sure the research is valued and uplifted and that Maori are seen as citizens and people of the land

  • Kaupapa maori research must over come ethical and institutional issues (funding, grants) and working within western ethics and institutions

  • We must also as researchers navigate the system as a minority and ensure we are culturally competent.

  • Different types of research

    • Research not involving maori means the results don’t impact maori
    • Research involving maori
    • Maori centered research produces maori knowledge and they are involved at all stages of research and is measured against western standards/methodologies as well as maori standards
    • KAUPAPA MAORI RESEARCH Māori are involved at all parts, Māori methods of analysis and perspective, primary accountable to Māori standards and expectations.
    • Kaupapa Maori means a maori way of thinking and doing research

Week 8

  • Lecture 1: maori mental health and wellbeing

  • Lecture 2:

  • Lecture 3: Cultural identity – cultural values and practices, the ways in which one regards the ethnic or cultural groups they belong to and prioritization of the individual and of the group = who you are in your culture

    • Being proud to be Māori, belonging.

  • Ethnic identity is the extent to which one identity with other of their ethnicity and culture = how important it is to you.

    • Having a secure ethnic identity leads to positive outcomes, considered a protective factor
    • Exploring ethnic identity can have negative outcomes

  • Maori well-being should:

    • Have longer life expectancy
    • Better health
    • Increased cultural connection
    • Te reo ability
    • Thriving not surviving

  • Actively engaging in culture, marae.

  • Committed to learning/teaching, promote Kaupapa and tikanga

  • Perfectionism e.g., CM, DA. PE, PC. PS, O Adaptive - positive, maladaptive more negative. NOT FLEXIBLE

  • Mauiui kotihithi matauranga maori is maori knowledge knowing: impact of colonization

  • Social desirability

  • Mechanisms of development and maintenance

  • Identity

  • Cultural contexts

  • Its all about being considerate

  • Maori have poorer health due to lack of support.

    • No place for spiritual and cultural practices
    • Racism
    • Negative perceptions of healthcare workers
    • Services are limited in nz
    • Financial costs
    • Transport
    • Environmental barriers like rooms being unsuitable for whānau.
    • Lack of cultural understanding
    • Staff overworked - not empathetic

  • To better support, increasing positive interactions with healthcare staff, having whanau there.

  • Red - physical health | Tinana

  • Green - relationship health - Whanau

  • Blue - cognitive health | hinengaro

  • Purple - spiritual and cultural health - Wairua

Week 9

  • Lecture 1: psychopathology

  • Lecture 2:

  • Lecture 3:

  • Psychopathology is the study of mental disorder

  • Mental disorders are relatively continuous/dimensional when modeled

  • No correct answer to what a mental disorder is.

  • DSM-5 diagnosis

    • List of recognized mental disorders and guidelines for diagnosis.
    • Only describes signs and symptoms, doesn’t imply anything about causation

  • Compromised definition: a MD is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individuals cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning.

    • MD are usually associated with significant distress or disability in social, occupation, or other important activities.

  • DSM - 298 different MD

  • Diagnosis is based of criteria.

  • DSM criteria:

    • Five or more of the following symptoms have been present during the same 2-week period
    • symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important area of functioning.
    • The episode is not attributable from a substance or another medical condition
    • At least one major depressive episode is not better explained a schizoaffective disorder.
    • There has never been a manic episode or hypomanic episode

  • DSM symptoms - example

    • Depressed mood
    • No interest
    • Insomnia or hyper insomnia
    • Fatigue or fatigue loss
    • Feelings of worthlessness

  • They have to meet the criteria but not all the symptoms - just a certain number.

  • DSM diagnostic reliability- ensuring same results even when seen by different physicians

  • Symptoms that are common within multiple of the disorders are left out

  • Anxiety is an emotion, and it can be adaptive

  • Anxiety function to keep you safe but too much can be a problem.

  • Anxiety disorders include social anxiety, panic, agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder PSTD, OCD,

  • Theory - a scientific explanation of how something works.

  • Transdiagnostic mechanism is a chunk of a theory that seems to apply to across different diagnosis.

  • Avoidance, hyperventilation, anxiety sensitivity.
  • Anxiety sensitivity is when you get freaked out by anxious feelings
  • Formulation- is a theory of an individual’s presenting problem. Like what they are experiencing, background factors, triggers which leads to treatment planning as this allows clinicians to understand the individual and not just the symptom
  • It is not just a diagnosis
  • A MENTAL DISORDER HAS THIESE FEATURES
*   Clinically significant disturbance | THE SYMPTOMS
*   Dysfunction psychology, biology or development (often assumed)
*   Usually significant distress or disability (unable to work, socialize)
*   Socially non normative

  • Limitations

    • Symptomatic heterogeneity – two people with no common symptoms get diagnosed with same MD.
    • Causal heterogeneity – capture diverse patterns of difficulty under one label
    • Very categorical.

  • Diagnosis is not causation in MENTAL HEALTH

  • Clarks model - of panic, anxiety sensitivity

Week 10

  • Habituation - was first used in 1960s by Robert Fanz to study infants ability to recognize and remember stimuli.

    • When you get used to something after experiencing it multiple times

  • VoE was first established and used by Renee Baillargeon in 1980s

  • VoE measures how infants represent, reason about, respond to events and its used to conceptualize how unexpected events may lead to learning by making them rethink

  • Normative protest paradigm- Used on 2-3 year olds Uses puppets as confederate

  • Two functions of imitation - UZGIRIS

    • Cognitive function to promote learning
    • Interpersonal function to promotes children’s sharing of experience with others

  • Vygotsky (1934/78)

    • General law of cultural development- every function in the childs development appears twice

      • On the social level. Interpsychologically
      • Individual level- Intrapsychologically
      • Going from interpersonal to intra personal is the result of series of developmental events

  • Nature vs. nurture

    • Is a childs development more influence by genetic inheritance or environmental factor and experiences.
    • E.g., play, interact with parents, peers, teachers which model behaviour, language and problem solving

  • Pedagogical vs observational

    • Pedagogical is learning from formal teaching, and observationally from hearing/seeing it.
    • Collaborative vs individual, which do they learn better at.

  • Can be used peer to peer step-up where each child is introduced to an alternative method of to observe reaction towards norm violation.

  • Minimal group paradigm

    • Inspired by social psychology
    • Can be used with infants, toddlers as well as older children.
    • Manipulate in/out groupiness of experimental models as well as the group membership the child participant.
    • Effective method of assigning arbitrary group memberships (random) instead of naturalistic social markers like ethnic appearance language spoken.
    • The Minimal Group Paradigm (MGP) is a classic concept in social psychology that shows how easily and quickly people form group biases, even when those groups are based on trivial or meaningless criteria.

  • Definition: The Minimal Group Paradigm refers to experiments where participants are randomly assigned to groups (e.g., based on a coin toss or preference for a painting), yet still show in-group favoritism and out-group discrimination.

  • The Normative Protest Paradigm helps us learn how people respond to peaceful, Humans’ intelligence is because of the social nature.

  • Instrumental vs ritual/conventional stances (Nielsen and Legare)

    • Instrumental Stance

      • This is when someone sees an action as a means to an end — it's goal-directed and practical. 🔧 "I’m doing this because it works."
        • The focus is on efficiency or function
        • Actions are adaptable — you can change them if there’s a better way

  • Ritual/Conventional Stance

    • This is when someone copies an action because it is socially or culturally important, not just because it "works." 🎎 "I’m doing this because that’s how we do it."
      • The focus is on belonging, custom, or symbolism
      • Actions are often copied exactly, even if they don’t help achieve a clear goal
      • 🧠 Example: A child sees an adult tapping the stick three times before using it — even though the taps don’t help — and copies the whole sequence to fit in or respect the custom

  • 5 learning strategies - Legare learning through..

    • Exploration
    • Observation
    • Participation/collaboration
    • Imitation
    • Instruction

  • 5 teaching types (Kline teaching by..

    • Social tolerance
    • Opportunity provision
    • Stimulus/local enhancement
    • Evaluative feedback
    • Direct active teaching.