principals of psych 3
Language
System for communicating meaning according to rules of grammar
Fundamental to the human experience
Infants comprehension (receptive language) develops quickly
Humans learn productive language very quickly
Babbling stage (~4 months)
Spontaneous uttering
“goo goo gaga”
NOT an imitation of adult speech
Receptive language is developing
Initially includes all sounds from all languages
Non-household language sounds eventually disappear
Other stages of language development
One word stage (~1 year)
One word at a time: “ball”, “play”, “no”
Two word stage (~2 years)
Two word sentences
Telegraphic speech: “go car”, “give toy”, “food here”
Longer phrases
Critical period for language
Language must be learned by a certain age
Children who become deaf after age 9 can not learn sign language as well as a “native” speaker
Similar to learning a second language in adulthood
Learning language after this period is difficult
Example: tragedy of genie (didn't have any social interaction from 0-9 years old, couldn't come fluent in communicating or in any language)
Thinking and language
Sapir -Whorf Hypothesis: language determines thought
The language you speak determines how you perceive the world
Determine concepts, categories
“Linguistic determinism” hypothesis
Testing the linguistic determinism hypothesis
Can investigate color naming using “Munsell chips”
“Steps” between colors are of equal magnitude
Cycle of influence
Language -> the way we categorize concepts
Categorization……
Review in book (p. 334)
The brain and language
What is aphasia?
How does damage to broca's vs wernicke's area differentially affect language
Intelligence
The ability to form experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations
Single component
People vary on one thing
(best picture award from movies)
Multiple components
People vary on many things
(costume design award from movies)
Single component theory
Spearman's general intelligence (g): a single “thing” underlies all behavior and affects performance on all mental tests
Evidence?
People who score high on one test typically score high on others
Example: vocabulary, reading comprehension, memory
Athleticism analogy
Multiple component theories
Gardner's multiple intelligences
8 different types
Sternbers three intelligences
Analytical: traditional problem solving (“school smarts”)
Creative: ability to react adaptively to new situations; generate novel ideas
Practical: skill at everyday tasks, which may be ill-defined or have multiple solutions (“street smarts”)
Criticisms:
research generally supports idea of single component intelligence
g is the best way to measure intellectual difference between people
… but success is not a one-ingredient recipe
Importance of grit (effort, consciousness, desire to improve)
Emotional intelligence
The ability to perceive, understand, manage, ans use emotions
Perceive: recognize emotions in faces, music, stories, etc
Understand: predict emotions, how they change and blend
Manage: express appropriate emotions in different situations
Use: utilize emotions to adapt or be creative
… but is this really “intelligence”? or just emotional amplitude?
Assessing intelligence
Intelligence test: assessing someone's mental abilities, comparing to others
Amplitude test: designed to predict future performance
Achievement test: designed to test what you have already learned
Different measures of intelligence pg 346-347
Calculating IQ
IQ = mental age / actual age * 100
100 = intelligence average for age
We often now get percentile rank
Differences in mental age is more important for young children
Motivation
A need or desire that energizes and directs behavior toward goal
Example: sleep, friendship
Four perspectives help explain human motivation:
Evolutionary perspective
Drive-reduction theory
Arousal theory
Hierarchy of motives
Evolutionary perspective
Older perspective focused on instincts: complex behaviors that have fixed patterns throughout different species and are not learned
Humans do have some instincts (“rooting” in babies”)
Now we think more about how certain motives evolved in evolutionary past to help ancestors adapt to those challenges (more than a million years ago)
Example: gender differences in mating behavior and preferences
Development of morality
Drive reduction theory
A physiological need creatures an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates behaviors for the organism to satisfy the need and eliminate that tension
Need for (food water) -> drive (hunger, thirst) -> drive-reducing behaviors (eating, drinking)
Physiological need pushes us toward behavior, but external stimuli may also pull us toward behavior
Feeling hungry (need) pushes us to eat
Smelling freshly-baked bread (external stimuli) may also pull us to eat
Arousal theory
We seek optimum arousal, not just to eliminate arousal (as in drive-reduction)
Evidence: not all human behavior is just to satisfy physiological needs
Sometimes we simply desire an increase physiological arousal
Sometimes we get curious and are motivated to figure things out
Sometimes we get bored
Hierarchy of motives (Maslow)
Not all motives are equal
Some motives and goals have priority over others
Order of hierarchy can change
Other goals
Cultural differences
Are there basic universal human motivations?
The need to belong
Motivation to affiliate with others
We want to be accepted
We hate to be excluded
Benefits of belonging
Evolutionary advantage: social bonds, cooperation, successful group life
Colors our thoughts and emotions
Study asking people, “what makes your life meaningful?”
Feelings of love active neural reward system
“Pain” of exclusion:
Exclusion activates brain areas associated with physical pain
Exclusion may lead to antisocial, aggressive, or angry behavior
Social media
Social media does increase social connectedness, but:
May be distracting from other tasks
May lead to imbalance between face-to-face vs online interaction
Social media increases self-disclosure, which can help us cope with difficult issues and strengthen friendships, but:
May lead to regrettable disclosures
May lead to bullying by others
Maintaining balance
Monitor your time
Monitor your feelings
Hide from distracting friends when necessary
Don't check phone too much while studying/ doing important things
The need to achieve
Achievement motivation: desire for significant accomplishment, mastering skills and ideas, for attaining high standards
Grit
Passionate dedication to an ambitious, long term goal
Self control
Regulating behavior in the face of temptations
^^^intelligence is not the only predictor of success
Emotion
An emotion is a collection of responses that includes:
Physiological arousal: (heart pounding)
Expressive behaviors: (pacing quickly)
Conscious experience: (thoughts, feelings associated with emotion)
“wow , i am pissed off” “i am so happy right now”
Emotion theories
Historical (older) theories
James- Lange theory: arousal before emotion
Physiological arousal, followed by…
Conscious experience of emotion
Cannon-bard theory: arousal and emotion are simultaneous
They argued that:
Physiological responses are too slow to trigger fast emotions
Same physiological response could signal different emotions
Evidence against Cannon-Bard:
Hypothesis derived from theory: if arousal and emotion are simultaneous, interfering with arousal should not affect emotional experience
However, patients with high spinal cord injuries (could not feel anything below the neck) had different emotional experience after injuries
Many emotions were felt less intensely
Emotions involving “above the neck” expression were felt more intensely
Suggests that physiological arousal (and our perception of that arousal) affects emotions
Modern theories
Schacter-singer's two factor theory
Arousal + cognition (label) = emotion
Emotional experience comes from two factors:
Physiological arousal
Cognitive interpretation
Evidence for two- factor theory: spillover effect
Everyone received injection of physiologically- arousing chemical
IV: participants were told the injection would:
Make heart race or
Have no reaction
Entered room where confederate would either be acting very happy or angry
Results: people “caught” feeling from confederate, but only when they were told the injection would have no effect on them
Zajonc and LeDoux: emotion without cognition
Some emotional reactions require no deliberative cognitive thinking (labeling, interpreting)
Seeing something rustle in the bushes late at night
Feeling something crawling on your arm
Evidence: when fearful eyes were subliminally (outside of conscious awareness) presented, fMRI scans showed greater amygdala activity
Expressing emotion
Expressing emotion can be a form of nonverbal communication (communicating without words)
Ekman's 6 basic universal emotions:
Anger
Fear
Disgust
Surprise
Happiness
Sadness
Evolution and facial expression
Darwin: facial expressions are byproducts of physiological reaction to stimuli in our environment
Reading others facial expressions
Encoding: expressing nonverbal behavior
Decoding: interpreting nonverbal behavior
Does Not always match
Can lead to misunderstanding (at best) or interpersonal conflict (at worst)
How universal are these emotions?
Evidence of cultural variation
“Boundaries” between emotional expressions
Acceptable emotions to express
Other emotional states
contempt , anxiety, shame, envy, embarrassment
What can interfere with encoding and decoding?
Cultural display rules: culturally determined rules about which nonverbal behaviors are appropriate to display and when
Emotional displays (men vs women)
Eye contact
Personal space
Hand gestures
Not knowing display rules -> mismatch in encoding and decoding
Emblem: nonverbal gesture with well- understood definition within a culture (may be different from other cultures)
First impressions of others
We form fast impressions based on facial appearance
Less than 100ms
As young as 3 years old
Example: “baby face” features
Assumed to be naive, warm, agreeable
Example: american's judgements of unfamiliar canadian politicians
1 second view of candidates faces
Ratings of ‘powerfulness’ correlated with actual facts
Thin slicing
Drawing meaningful conclusions about another person's personality based on an extremely brief (thin) sample of behavior
…. Not just fast, but also meaningful
Study on professor ratings
Participants were shown 10-sec silent clips of professors teaching
Rated them on confidence
Ratings correlated with end of semester ratings from actual students in the class
Works with 6-second clips
Also associated with doctors patients
Can create first impressions off of small amount of information
First impressions can be changed but can be hard to change/ durable
Personality
An individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting
Classic perspectives
Psychodynamic theories of personality (Freud)
… personality and behavior results from a dynamic interaction between the conscious and unconscious mind
Sigmund Freud
Medical doctor
Encountered patients with “unexplainable illness
Example: blindness, numbness with no physical cause
Disease is in the mind, which is mostly hidden
Psychodynamic theories = Psychoanalytic perspective (at least for our purposes)
Three levels of consciousness
Conscious: thoughts and feelings you are aware of right now
Preconscious: not currently thinking about; easy to bring to mind
What did you have for dinner last night?
Who was your first grade teacher?
Unconscious: mental processes that can not come into awareness
Most important to Freud
Hard to bring to conscious mind
Contains fears, urges, emotional urges, violent urges, selfish needs
Some thoughts are repressed here (blocked from our conscious mind)
Psychological problems can arise when unconscious desires or conflicts “leak” into conscious and effect emotions or behavior
Structure of personality
…. The mind is made of three separate “parts” that function independently and can conflict with each other
Id
Completely unconscious basic urges; sexual and aggressive drives
Pleasure principle: demanding immediate gratification
Ignores risks and dangers and consequences from pleasure principal
Superego
Internalized rules of society (what should i do?)
Your conscience; gives rise to guilt or pride
Ego
Balances desires of id and superego
Anxiety arises when ego is unable to satisfy them both
Modern research supports idea that the mind consists of independent “parts” that process different thoughts and motivations at the same time and can conflict with each other
Unconscious processing
Implicit attitudes
Goal pursuit and temptation
Studying the unconscious mind
Projective tests: people are asked to describe ambiguous stimuli; clinicians then interpret those descriptions
They give the unconscious a chance to “leak out” (freudian slips)
Assumption: unconscious desires are projected onto their description
Free association: “say what comes to mind”
Dream analysis
Freud called dreams “the golden road to the unconscious…”
Clinicians distinguish between”
Manifest content: what happened in your dream
Latent content: the unconscious desires fueling your dream (what your dream is “really” about)
Projective tests
Thematic apperception test (TAT)
Makeup story about various scenes
Themes, emotions, motivations, desires that are present in your story provide insight to unconscious
Advantages of projective tests:
May help “break the ice” between clinician and client
Some evidence and validity - observable measures of what patient is thinking or going through
(example: mental health outcomes)
Potential disadvantage
May depend on the interpretation of the clinician (and not the client)
Personality development
Personality forms during childhood -> unchanged in adulthood
Psychosexual stages
At each stage, the id's pleasure-seeking energy (libido) is focused on different areas of body
Personality determined by how child handles the frustration at each stage
If they fail to “successfully pass” that stage, their libido gets “stuck” at that stage, and that conflict remains a problem in their unconscious
Defense mechanisms
Unconscious strategies used by the ego ro deal with desires, drives, and conflicts from the id
Repression: moving conflict into unconscious
Underlies all other defense mechanisms
Reaction formation: switching unacceptable impulse into opposite
Example: when homosexual people become gay
Projection: attributing one's own unacceptable impulses to others
Evaluating the psychoanalytic perspective
Modern research does not support some parts..
Personality develops throughout life and is not fixed in children
Psychoanalytic theory relies on repression of painful experiences, but many children, death camp survivors, and battle-scarred veterans are unable to repress painful experiences
And support others
Two tract mind: much of our thinking is unconscious (although not in sexual, agressive wat that freud though)
Implicit attitudes
We can have conflicting goals and desires
Humanistic theories
Reaction to:
Negativity of psychodynamic theories
Mechanistic view of behaviorism
Humanistic psychology focused on how we think about ourselves and identity rather than how our personality is determined by the unconscious or simple conditioning
Maslow
Self-actualization: fulfilling our potential
Basic needs must be satisfied first
You move up the pyramid as you satisfy basic needs
Studied healthy creative people (not individuals in clinical settings)
Self accepting
Not concerned with others judgements
Open and spontaneous
Compassionate
Few quality relations over many, superficial ones
Rogers
Self-actualization: fulfilling our potential
Sometimes our actual self does not match our ideal self
Self actualization occurs when they do match
What environmental/ life factors predict self actualization?
Genuineness
Allows you to be open/ honest about one's feelings
Acceptance
Unconditional positive regard: being accepted despite failures
Empathy
When others share and mirror our feelings - we feel understood
Evaluating the humanistic perspective
Huge impact of modern day life
Focus on positive self concept, empathy, and that people are fundamentally good and can improve
Criticisms:
Subjective
Too individualistic
Naive
Trait theories
Our personality is best understood as a collection of traits
Trait: predisposition to think, feel, or act in a certain way
Generally stable over time
We use trait descriptions all the time
“They are hot headed”, “they are compassionate”
Factor analysis is a method of identifying the most important traits by seeing which “group together” when people use them
Used to condense list of ~18,00 traits words in dictionary
—----
“The big 5” aka five factor theory
Openness to experience
Tendency to enjoy new experiences, ideas
Imaginative, independent
Conscientiousness
Self discipline and competence; dutiful, careful, organized
Striving for achievement
Extraversion
Outgoing, social, fun loving, affectionate
Agreeableness
Compassionate; friendly; trustworthy
Neuroticism (emotional reactivity)
Emotionally reactive; insecure, worried
You can be high or low on each of these
Your levels = your personality
These five dimensions can distinguish almost all people
Warning about personality assessment
The barnum effect
Refers to the way we want to be seen
How stable are these traits?
We change as we are growing
Stabilize at around 40 years old
How heritable are they?
Around 40% heritability of personality
Do they predict behavior?
yes!
Extraverted people do tend to enjoy being around others, making new friends
Evaluating trait theory
Person-situation debate:
Which matters more for understanding behavior?
It's both. (interactionism)
We flexible adapt to situations and have a consistent personal style
Our personality affects how we adapt to different situations
Situationists: believe traits don't matter
People don't always act the same across situations; inconsistency makes traits useless
The only thing that matters is the situation
Personality theorists: even though behaviors change from situation to situation, average behavior remains the same
Traits predict general tendencies, not exactly what you will do every single time
Relative consistency: people will be quieter in a library than at a concert, but a very talkative person will be more talkative than others at a concert than at a library
There are other traits other than the big 5
Disgust scale - measures how predisposed to feeling disgusted you are
Like other traits, people can be relatively high, low, or average
Personality variables/ individual difference variables/ traits- Distinguishing people from one another
Exploring the self (pg 516-523)
Defining psychological disorder
A collection of symptoms marked by a “clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior”
“Clinically significant”: severe enough to affect normal functioning
Causes distress to individual
Unable to get out of bed, go to work, maintaining social relationships, leave the house
“Not voluntarily controlled”
Individual can not simply stop the dysfunctional behavior
Treating psychological disorder
How we view disorder affects how we treat it
Ancient treatments were often barbaric by modern standards
Disorder thought to be causes by evil spirits
The Medical Model
Treating psychological disorder like a physical illness
Diagnose using symptoms, treatment in a hospital
No more “loony bins”, “nut house”
Biopsychosocial model
Our cultures/ norms/ traditions interact with biological and psychological factors
What's considered “normal” is different around the world
Classifying psychological disorder
Goals of classifying/ labeling a disorder:
Predict future course
Suggest appropriate treatment
Prompt research on the cause of the disorder
However must be mindful of the risks of labeling
Can change how individuals are viewed by others and how they view themselves
More appropriate to say “individual with schizophrenia” than “a schizophrenic”
Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders
American psychiatric association
Describes ~400 disorders
Helps clinicians identify / classify
Helps increase reliability of diagnosis
Rates of psychological disorder
~25% of americans meet criteria for psychological disorder during any given year
Evidence of increase during pandemic
Not the same as seeking treatment
Similar rates around the world
Anxiety disorders
Marked by distressing, persistent anxiety and maladaptive coping strategies
Generalized anxiety disorder
Overwhelming sense of worry that applies to many different things
Symptoms:
persistent, chronic, or obsessive worrying
Autonomic arousal
May lead to twitching, sweating, jittery
Inability to identify the cause if anxiety
“Free floating” anxiety
Constant anxiety -> stress responses
Stress also negatively affects physical health (immune system)
Panic disorder
Generalized anxiety with incidence of panic attacks
Minutes long episodes of intense dread, terror
Dizzy, tight chest, heart pounding (often mistaken for heart attack)
Can occur without working
Can be in response to specific situation (not necessary “free floating”)
Worry about having a panic attack -> more anxiety
Phobias
Excessive, persistent, intense, recurring, irrational fears paired with avoidance behaviors
More than just being scared of things
Coping is disruptive/ distressing; interfere with normal functioning
Target of phobia can be almost anything
Open spaces, heights, closed spaces, blood, animals,social interaction
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Persistence of unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and urges to engage in rituals (compulsions) that help relieve obsessive thoughts
Individuals know that obsessions and compulsions are “irrational” but can not stop
Posttraumatic stress disorder (pg 540)
Understanding anxiety disorders and OCD
The learning perspective
Anxiety may be partly a result of fear conditioning
Stimulus generalization: fear of stimulus generalized to other, similar stimuli
Fear of public speaking in class -> social interactions
Reinforcement: if engaging in behavior reduces fear, will be more likely to do that behavior
If washing hands reduces distress from obsessive thoughts
Fear responses can also occur via observational learning
Biological perspective
Natural selection has predisposed us to be worried about certain things (predators, cleanliness/health)
Genes also have an effect
Identical twins are more likely to share phobias, even when raised separately
Major Depressive Disorder
A type of mood disorder: characterized by intense emotional states (mood disturbances) with related physical, behavioral, and cognitive symptoms
Bipolar disorder is another type of mood disorder
Severely depressed mood; inability to experience pleasure (2+ weeks)
Not just mood, but cognitive, behavioral, and physical symptoms
18% of population (pretty common)
Explaining mood disorders
Biological perspective: genes and the brain
Depression rate higher in identical (50%) than fraternal twins (20%)
Higher heritability for bipolar disorder (70% I 20%)
Neurotransmitters like norepinephrine and serotonin are scarce/ inactive during depression
Social cognitive perspective: depression associated with rumination and negative explanatory styles
Rumination: continually overthinking about a problem
Negative explanatory styles: depressed people tend to attribute failures in ways that are
Stable (instead of temporary)
Global (instead of specific)
Internal (instead of external)
Schizophrenia
“Split mind” = patient is split from reality
Chief example of psychotic disorder
Not the same thing as dissociative identity disorder (DID)
~1% of population (relatively rare)
Characterized by following symptoms
Disorganized and delusional thinking
Delusions: false beliefs (i am god; someone is trying to kill me)
Disturbed perceptions
Hallucination: false perceptions (hearing voices; seeing things)
Inappropriate emotions and actions
Types of symptoms
Positive symptoms: the presence of inappropriate behaviors
Hallucinations, disorganized or delusional talking
Laughing, crying at inappropriate times
Negative symptoms: the absence of appropriate behaviors
Expressionless face, rigid bodies
Individual may have some/ both
Delusions - false beliefs
Types of delusions
Control: another group of people or external force is controlling their thoughts, feelings, mood, impulses, behavior
Grandeur: believing they are someone more important, famous, powerful than they really are
god, the president
Persecution: believe they are being followed, harassed, spied on, drugged
More common delusion
Hallucinations - false perceptions
Perceiving things are not there
Most common
Auditory (hearing things; voices)
Visual (seeing things)
Can involve other senses
Onset and development
Prevalence about 1% of population
Age of onset: often young people as they mature into adults
Gender differences: men and women have same rate, but men often experience more severe symptoms and earlier onset
Understanding schizophrenia
Most research points to brain abnormalities
Dopamine receptors
Individuals have higher levels of dopamine receptors (~6x as many)
May intensify brain signals, causing positive symptoms
Drugs that block dopamine receptors can help reduce symptoms
Atypical brain activity in frontal cortex and thalamus
Frontal cortex activity is decreased; used for reasoning
Thalamus may be smaller; used for organizing sensory information
Prenatal virus: contracting virus (the flu) during pregnancy increases chances of child having schizophrenia
Not the only way people get it
Genes
Identical twins ~50%
Both parents ~45%
Researchers still not sure of specific gene that is responsible
Personality disorders
Extremely rigid and inflexible patterns of thinking and behavior that impair social functioning
Creates distress, impairs functioning
Problems with way they interact with the world
Different types of clusters
Anxiety
eccentric/ odd
Dramatic or impulsive
Example: narcissistic/ histrionic personality disorder
Antisocial personality disorder
Antisocial personality disorder
Lack of remorse and empathy (dont care about others)
Extremely high rates of APD in jails/ prisons
Formerly known as psychopathy or sociopathy
Criminal behaviors
Impulsive
Lack of remorse
Irresponsible
Aggressive
Understanding APD
Less psychological arousal to threatening, fearful events
Lower stress hormones
Brain functioning
PET scans of ~40 murderers showed less activity in frontal lobes
Frontal lobe associated with reasoning, long term planning, understanding consequences of actions
Eating disorders
General symptoms:
Disturbance in perception of body shape and weight
Results in extreme disturbances in eating behavior (binging and purging)
Two most common types:
Anorexia nervosa
Body weight is 85% of normal -> severely underweight
Also combines with
Severe caloric restrictions
Intense fear of gaining weight
Body image disturbance
Women between ages of 15-24
Highest threat of death in this age group is complications with anorexia
Eating disorders have a high mortality rate
Bulimia nervosa
Characterized by cycles of binge eating plus purging
Binge episode (binge eating)
Very large amount for one sitting
Individual can not control behavior
Purging (vomiting, using laxatives)
Self evaluation over influenced by body shape, weight
Difference from anorexia
Need not be less than 85% normal body weight
Understanding eating disorders
Childhood sexual abuse has not been linked to these disorders
Family: being raised in family which weight is an excessive concern may promote eating disorder
Genetics: higher tate in identical twins
Culture: body ideals differ across cultures
Psychotherapy
treatment involving emotionally charged interactions between a trained therapist and a patient seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth
Different biomedical therapy, which focuses on medication and other biological treatments
Psychotherapy and biomedical therapy may be combined using an eclectic approach
Psychoanalysis
First formal psychotherapy
Developed by Sigmund Freud
Cause of disorder:
Unresolved mental conflicts; unconscious thoughts
Repressed issues “leaking” into conscious
Goal of therapy:
Bring the unconscious conflict TO the conscious mind
Therapist and patient can use logic and reason to “work through” the problem/ conflict
Techniques
Free association
Dream analysis
Other projective tests
… clinician must interpret patients statements
Criticisms
Hard to refute - not a lot of empirical evidence
Time consuming and expensive
Humanistic therapy
Carl Rogers’ client-centered therapy stressed relationship between therapist and patient
Cause of disorder:
Mismatch between ideal self vs. actual self
Goal of therapy:
Make patients aware of their own abilities and feelings …and accept them!
Bring client closer to self-actualization
Techniques of Humanistic Therapy
Empathy and active listening
Paraphrasing patient’s statement; emphasize that you are listening
“What I think you’re saying…”
Unconditional, genuine, positive regard
Therapist thinks client is a good person, and shows it
Acceptance of client
Can be difficult!
Congruence between behavior and language is important
Behavior Therapy
Grounded in behaviorism (stimulus-response)
Does not care about “inner causes”!
Cause: Learned behaviors are causing stress
e.g., learned via classical or operant conditioning
Goal:
Identify maladaptive behaviors
Stop or replace them with adaptive behaviors – using conditioning
Techniques of Behavior Therapy Counterconditioning: forming new responses to stimuli that trigger unwanted behaviors (based on classical conditioning)
Exposure therapy
Expose patients to things they fear
Repeated exposure (without bad outcome) will extinguish stimulus-fear association
Systematic desensitization
Aversive conditioning
Create new association between unwanted behavior and bad emotions
e.g., nail-biting and disgusting nail polish
Rubber band snap
Tweeting
Cognitive Therapy
Focus on thoughts (assumption: thoughts behaviors)
Cause: Maladaptive beliefs and thoughts about the world
“I have to be perfect.”
“If I don’t do this, bad things will happen.”
“That person did that to me on purpose.”
Goal:
Identify maladaptive beliefs and habits of thought
Stop or replace with new, adaptive beliefs and habits of thought
Cognitive Therapy
Goals and goal plans (e.g., improve week-by-week)
Cognitive restructuring: Asking patients to question their automatic beliefs or habits of thought
“Homework” given
Find evidence against maladaptive thoughts: e.g., “write down the times you thought something bad would happen but didn’t”
Combining cognitive and behavioral therapy… Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Cause of disorder
Learned behaviors are causing stress
(e.g., phobias, social anxieties)
Maladaptive beliefs and thought patterns
(e.g., if I don’t do this, bad things will happen; I must be perfect all the time; that person hurt me on purpose; I’ll never succeed…)
Goal of therapy
Identify maladaptive behaviors and/or thoughts
STOP or REPLACE them with new, adaptive beliefs, habits of thought, and behaviors
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Techniques may include counterconditioning and/or cognitive restructuring
Most widely used form of psychotherapy; lots of empirical support
Problem-focused: specific problem to be solved
Action-oriented: therapist helps with specific ways to change behavior or thoughts
Ideally, it will take less time than psychoanalysis…
Is Psychotherapy Effective?
How to answer this question?
Ask clients
Ask clinicians
Evaluate outcomes!
50% get better on own
80% get better with treatment (and faster; less relapse)
Stress
“Stress” can refer to threat itself or response to the threat
Stressful even/ person/ situation sometimes called “stressors”
Separate from how we understand/ explain those events
Stress responses can be adaptive or maladaptive
Can mobilize you to action; deal with stressor
Can increase anxiety, decreased health, lead to unhealthy habits
Appraisal matters a lot - how we deal with stressors
Stressors
Catastrophes: unpleasant, large scale events
Global pandemic
Significant life changes: personal life transitions
Many changes during your young adulthood; transitions; new responsibilities
Daily hassles and social stresses
How does our body respond to stress?
The Stress Response System
Walter cannon (1929) proposed that the stress response is a fast “fight or flight” response to extreme events
Outpouring of epinephrine and norepinephrine
Increases heart and breathing rates, diverts blood to muscles, dulls pain, releases fat and sugar
Hans Selye extended this research; proposed that people react to most stressors in the same way:
General adaptation syndrome (GAS)
Alarm
Resistance
Exhaustion
Body copes well with temporary stress, but long term stress can damage it
Stress and Disease
Stress does not make us sick, but alters our immune system functioning (which leaves us more vulnerable to sickness)
Study: researchers exposed participants to the cold virus
More stressed participants were more likely to contract virus
Stress and Heart Disease
Coronary heart disease:
Clogging of blood vessels that nourish the heart
Leading cause of death in the United States
How does personality affect stress and heart disease?
Type A vs type B
Optimism vs Pessimism
Type B personality:
Easygoing, relaxed people
Type A personality:
Competitive, impatient, verbally aggressive, anger prone
Type A personality men were more likely to have a heart attack
Why?
More negative emotions (especially anger)
Stress response is always “active”
Blood flows to muscles and away from internal organs
If liver can not filter fat and cholesterol from blood, it ends up in the heart
Review in book (pg 412-413)
Coping with stress
Reducing stress using emotional, cognitive, or behavioral methods
Problem - focused coping
Attempting to reduce stress directly - by changing the stressor or how we interact with that stressor
Common when we feel control over situation and think we can change the situation
Emotion - focused coping
Attempting to reduce stress by avoiding/ ignoring the stressor; or attending to our own emotional needs
Useful when we think we cannot control the situation
What affects our coping?
Feelings of personal control
Less control over our lives -> health problems
Because loss of control produces too many stress hormones
Rat study
“Executive” and “subordinate” rat received same number of shocks
Only the “executive” rat could control shock by turning wheel (“subordinate” rat could not control anything)
Receiving the same amount of shock
“Executive” rat had less health problems
Nursing homes
Have control over their room and activities compared to others that have less control
Ones who have more control tend to live longer and have less health problems
External vs internal
We can also differ in our perceptions of control over our lives
External locus of control
Belief that chance and/ or outside forces control our fates
Internal locus of control
Belief that we control our own fate
Associated with better learning, work performance, prosocial behavior; punishment of rule breakers
Explanatory style: Optimism vs Pessimism
Optimists
Stronger immune system, healthier, live longer
Better moods
Cope better with stressors
Likely because optimists are also more likely to have internal locus of control
We can learn to be more optimistic
Social support
Feeling liked and encouraged by friends and family increases health
Reduces stress hormones, blood pressure
Strengthens immune system
Allows us to confide painful feelings
Happiness
Our moods have natural ups and downs, but are generally stable
We are very adaptable to negative events
We tend to overestimate the power of emotional events on us
Wealth and well-being
In rich societies, people with money are happier than people who struggle for basic needs
People in rich countries are happier than people in poor countries
A sudden rise in financial conditions makes people happy
Money matters most for people in need
Why doesn't money buy happiness?
Happiness is relative
…to our own experience
adaptation-level phenomenon: our judgements depend on past experiences
We get used to things quickly
“How much money do you need to be happy?”
…. to other people
Relative deprivation: feeling worse off compared to someone else
How we feel depends on who we can compare ourselves to
Review pg 436-438