Psychology 105 (Midterm #2)

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 then 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

How Do We Determine Someone’s Personaity:

• self-report questionnaires

• how they react to a specific situation

• observation of behaviour

• projective tests

• look at their life records → speeding tickets, criminal record

Personality Assessment:

• reliability - consistency of a measurement

  • test-retest reliability

  • give relativity the same response

• validity - extent to which a test measures what it purports to measure

1. physiognomy - detect personality from facial features

   • use people’s heads to try and detect their personality traits my measures the bumps on their head

   • INVALID

2. Sheldon’s body types - peoples personalities are based on their body types

   • mesomorph - muscular

   • ectomorph - tall and skinny

   • endomorphs - pear shaped

   • INVALID

3. projective tests look - people will project heir own true personality/unconscious thoughts onto ambiguous test stimuli

   → Rorschach inkblot test

   • INVALID

     • unreliable

     • lack consistency

   • mainly used to start conversation

   → Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

   • lacks consistency

   • INVALID

   → draw-a-person test (children test)

   • unreliable

   • INVALID

   • way to start a conversation → not diagnosis

4. structured personality tests

   • self-report questionnaires

   • NEO-PI-R

     • developed based on the lexical and factor analysis approach

     • items were carefully screened with statistical methods and revised as needed

     • individual’s score compared to norms

     • 240 items, measure Big 5 traits

     → reliable

     → valid - can be used to predict behaviour

   • ten-item personality inventory - narrow down NEO-PI-R

     → reliable

     → valid

   • Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) - divides people into categories

     • not reliable assessment of personality

     • INVALID

   • colour personality test

   • enneagram personality test

     → both unreliable

     → INVALID

   • Big 5

     → most accurate way to measure personality

• non-scientific way to assess personality

Scientific Examination:

• P.T Barnum effect - believing that a vague description of your future or personality is highly accurate

  • tarot cards, horoscopes, astrology, psychics

• illusory correlations - perceptions of non-existent statistical association between variables

• representativeness heuristic - seems representative of a personality test, but it doesn’t measure and predict the way of proper tests

• availability heuristic - remember the times our horoscopes were correct

→ must choose measures and tools based on empirical research, not personal feelings

→ use trusted scales from academic researchers