reciprocity: compliance technique used by groups

• individuals feel obligated to go along with a request for a small donation if they have first accepted a small gift

altruism: an unselfish interest in helping others

compliance: modification of our behavior at another person’s request

foot-in-the-door: compliance strategy

• an agreement to a smaller request leads to agreement with a larger request later

bystander effect: tendency for an observer to be less likely to give aid if other observers are present.

• diffusion of responsibility: reduce the sense of personal responsibility that any one person feels to help another in need and increases in proportion to the size of the group present

frustration aggression principle: aggression is a result of frustration (hostile aggression)

aggression: an act of delivering an aversive stimulus to an unwilling victim

• instrumental aggression: leads to the satisfaction of some goal behavior or benefit

social facilitation: improved peformance of well-learned tasks in front of others

social loafing: the tendency of individuals to put less effort into group projects than when they are individually accountable

groupthink: the tendency for individuals to censor their own beliefs to preserve the harmony of the group

• a lack of diversity of viewpoints that can cause disastrous results in decision making

just-world hypothesis: people get what they deserve.

• we look for ways to rationalize injustice

self-serving bias: we attribute our achievements and successes to personal stable causes (dispositional attributes) and our failures to situational factors

confirmation bias: a tendency to search for and use information that supports our preconceptions and ignore information that refutes our ideas

• often a hindrance to problem solving

fundamental attribution error: the tendency to overestimate the significance of disposition al factors and underestimate the significance of situational factors in explaining other people’s behavior

self-fulfilling prophecy: a tendency to let our preconceived expectations of others influence how we treat them and thus evoke those very expectations

stanley milgram experiment: electric shock experiment (teacher applies electric shocks when learner does not answer questions correctly.)

• 66% of participants delivered the maximum of 450 volts

• showed obedience to authority

solomon asch experiment: select the line in a triad that matches the stimulus line

• subjects confirmed 1/3 of the time when the confederates voted unanimously.

• showed conformity and normative/social influence

zimbardo prison study: prison setting at stanford university and assign roles of prisoner and guards to students.

• simulation was cut short after 6 days because of ethical violations and sadistic guards

• showed influence of social roles

psychological perspectives in relation to disorders

• anxiety/ocd/stressor disorders

  • behavioral: aquired through classical conditioning and maintained through operant conditioning

  • cognitive: misinterpretation of harmless situations as threatening, focusing excessive attention on perceived threats, and selectively recalling threatening information

  • biological: attributes anxiety responses at least partly to neurotransmitter imbalances

  • evolutionary: attributes the presense of anxiety to natural selection for enhanced vigilance that operatres inneffectively in the absense of real threats

• somatic symptom disorders

  • psychoanalytic: bottled-up emotional energy that is transformed into physical symptoms

  • behavoral: operant responses are learned and mained because they result in rewards

  • cognitive: rewards enable individuals with somatoform symptom disorders to avoid some unpleasant or threatening situation, provide an explanation or justification for failure, or attract aconcern, sympathy, and care.

  • social cognitive: individuals with somatoform symptom disorders focus too much attention on their internal physiological experiences, amplifying their bodily sensations, and forming disastrous conclusions about minor complaints.

• dissociative disorders

  • psychoanalytic: repression of anxiety and/or trauma caused by such disturbances of home llife as mental and/or physical abuse, rejection from parents, or sexual abuse.

  • social cognitive: skeptical about DID and think that individuals displaying the disorder are role-playing.

• depressive disorders

  • biological: have evidence from family studies that there is a generic component involved in depressive, bipolar, and related disorders.

  • psychoanalytic: attribute depression to early loss of or rejection by a parent, resulting in depression when the individual experiences personal loss later in life and turns angry inside.

  • behaviorists: depressed people elicit negative reactions from others, resulting in mainteneance of depressed behaviors.

  • social cognitive: holds that self-defeating beliefs that may arise from learned helplessness influence biochemical events, feuling depression

    • learned helplessness: the feeling of futility and passive resignation that results from inability to avoid repeated aversive events.

  • cognitive: depressed individuals have a negative view of themselves, their circumtances, and their future possibilities, and that they generalize from negative events (beck’s theory) / depressed people who go over and over the negative event in thoer minds are prone to more intense depression than those who distract themselves (nolen-hoeksema’s theory)

• schizophrenia spectrum

  • biological: positive symptoms associated with high levels of dopamine and negative symptoms associated with lack of glutamate. only people who are both predisposed and stressed are likely to develop schizoprenia.

  • psychoanalytic: fixation at the oral stage and a weak ego attribute to schizophrenia.

  • behavioral: schizophrenia results from the reinforcement of bizarre behavior

  • humanistic: schizophrenia is caused by a lack of congruence between the public self and actual self

schizophrenia symptoms

• positive: hallucinations and delusions

• negative: lack of emotion (flat effect) and social withdrawal

anxiety disorders

• panic disorder

• generalized anxiety disorder

OCD symptoms

• obsession: persistant, intrusive, and unwanted thoughts that are often accompanied by compulsions

• compulsions: ritualistic behaviors performed repeatedly to reduce tension created by obsessions

bipolar disorder

• characterized by mood swings alternating between periods of major depression and mania, the poles of emotions.

• manic state symptoms include an inflated ego, little need for sleep, excessive talking, and impulsivity.

carl roger’s humanistic theory

• theory of self (an organized, consistent set of beliefs and perceptions about ourselves, which develops in response to our life experiences

• we are all born with a need for unconditional positive regard (acceptance and love from others)

neo-freudians

• karen horney

  • brought a feminist perspective to psychoanalytic theory and attacked freud’s male bias

• erik erikson

  • unlike freud, he focused more on the social factors of development rather than the biological

freud’s defense mechanisms

• repression: pushing away of threatening thoughts, feelings, and memories into the unconscious mind (unconscious forgetting)

• regression: the retreat to an earlier level of development characterized by more immature, pleasureable behavior

• rationalization: offering socially acceptable reasons for our inappropriate behavior

• projection: attributing our own undesirable thoughts, feelings, or actions onto others

• displacement: shifting unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or actions from a more threatening person or object to another, less threatening person or object

• reaction formation: acting in a manner exactly opposite to our true feelings

• sublimation: the redirection of unacceptable sexual or aggressive impuslses into more socially acceptable behaviors

• denial: refusing to admit that there is a problem or that something happened

• compensation: one covers up a problem through excellence in another area

freud’s theory of personality

• 3 systems of personality: the id, the ego, and the superego

• id: driven by instincts to avoid pain and obtain pleasure, and is totally irrational and self-centered (wants what it wants when it wants it)

• ego: mediates between our instinctual needs and the conditions of the surrounding environment in order to maintain our life and see that our species lives on.

• superego: the moral judge

general adaptation theory (G.A.S.): selye’s three-stage provess (alarm, resistance, and exhaustion) that describes our biological reaction to sustained and unrelenting stress.

motivational conflicts

• approach-approach: situations involving two positive options, only one of which you can have

• avoidance-avoidance: situations involving two negative options, one of which you must choose

• approach-avoidance: situations involving whether or not to choose an option that has both a positive and negative consequence or consequences.

• multiple approach-avoidance conflict: situation involving several alternative courses of action that have both positive and negative aspects.

yerkes-dodson law: for easy tasks, moderately high arousal is needed to do well, for difficult tasks, moderately low arousal is needed, and for most average tasks, moderate level of arousal is needed.

maslow’s hierarchy of needs: 1) basic biological needs, 2) safety and security needs, 3) belongingness and love, 4) self esteem needs, 5) self-actualization needs.

extrinsic and intrinsic motivation

• extrinsic: the desire to perform a behavior for a reward or avoid punisment

• intrinsic: the desire to perform an activity for its own sake rahter than for an external reward

overjustification effect: getting a reward for doing something we already like to do results in our seeing the reaward as the motivation for performing the task

theories of motivation

• instinct/evolutionary theory: certain behaviors are driven by innate instincts that have evolved over time to ensure survival and reproduction.

• drive reduction theory: motivation arises from the need to reduce internal drives (like hunger) to maintain homeostasis and achieve physiological balance.

• incentive theory: behavior is motivated by the desire to attain rewards and avoid punishments. external stimuli can influence actions and decisions.

• arousal theory: individuals are motivated to maintain an optimal level of arousal, seeking to increase or decrease stimulation to reach a comfortable state. varying levels of arousal can impact performance and behavior.

nature vs. nurture: genetic and biological factors influencing traits as opposed to environmental influences shaping behavior and development.

visual cliff & depth perception

• depth perception: the ability to perceive the distance of objects.

• visual cliff: an experiment testing depth perception in infants by creating an apparent drop-off

fetal alcohol syndrome: a condition caused by prenatal exposure to alcohol, leading to physical, cognitive, and behavioral issues

kohlberg’s stages of moral development

• preconventional

  • stage 1: obedience & punishment orientation

  • stage 2: individualism & exchange

• conventional

  • stage 3: good interpersonal relationships

  • stage 4: maintaining social order

• postconventional

  • stage 5: social contract & individual rights

  • stage 6: universal principles

erik erikson’s 8 stages of social development

• (0-1 year): trust vs. mistrust

• (1-3 years): autonomy vs. shame and doubt

• (3-6 years): initiative vs. guilt

• (6-12 years): industry vs. inferiority

• (12-18 years): identity vs. role confusion

• (18-40 years): intimacy vs. isolation

• (40-65 years): generativity vs. stagnation

• (65+ years): integrity vs. despair

piaget’s stages of cognitive development

• sensorimotor stage (0-2 years): object permanence, sensory exploration

• preoperational stage (2-7 years): egocentrism, symbolic thinking

• concrete operational stage (7-11 years): conservation, logical thinking

• formal operational stage (11+ years): abstract thinking, hypothetical reasoning

konrad lorenz's experiment and discovery: experiments on imprinting in birds and discovered that young birds imprint on the first moving object they see after hatching, which can have long-lasting effects on their behavior and social interactions

harry harlow's experiment: experiments with rhesus monkeys to study attachment and social behavior. surrogate mothers made of wire or cloth to observe the monkeys' responses and showed the importance of comfort and emotional connection in attachment

diane baumrind’s parenting styles

• authoritative: set limits but explain the reasons for rules and make exceptions when appropriate

• authoritarian: set up strict rules, expect children to follow them, and punish wrongdoing

• permissive: tend not to set firm guidlines, if they set any at all. more responsive than demanding

• uninvolved: make few demands, show low responsiveness, and communicate little with their children

mary ainsworth's strange situation experiment: studied attachment styles in infants by observing their reactions to separations and reunions. introduced secure, insecure-avoidant, and insecure-resistant attachment styles.