Psychology #2 Exam

A Brief History of a Young Science

Psychology's Roots: The Path to a Science of Mind

• Two original movements in psych

  • Structuralism: Analyses the mind by breaking it down into its basic components

  • Functionalism  Studies how mental abilities allow people to adapt to their environment

• Wilhelm Woundt (1832-1920)

  • Established the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig, Germany, 1879

  • Tried to measure “atoms of the mind”

• Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927)

  • Used these introspective reports to build a view of the mind’s structure

    • This early school of thought was called structuralism

• William James (1842-1910)

  • First to take scientific approach to study psychology

  • Wrote The Principles of Psychology

First Wave of Psychology

• Sigmund Freud

  • A brilliant man from a humble background

  • Is not considered the first psychologist, nor are his ideas universally well received now, but his legacy is extraordinary and enduring

  • Developed what he called Psychoanalytical theory

  • Approach to understanding human behavior that emphasizes the importance of unconscious mental processes

• Carl Jung (1875-1961) & Alfred Adler (1870-1937) followed but later broke away from Freud

• Psychoanalytic theory became controversial

Behaviorism

• The Second Wave of Psychology arose in the 1930s and 1940s as a critique of Freudian thinking

• Advocates that psychologists restrict themselves to the scientific of objectively observable behavior

  • Studied rats in mazes & trained pigeons to better understand human behavior in strictly controlled conditions

  • Considered “the mind: an unscientific concept to study & irrelevant to understanding human behavior

• Major Names

  • John Watson & Ivan Pavlov pioneered classical conditioning

  • B.F. Skinner pioneered operant conditioning

Third Wave of Psychology: Humanistic psych rose up as a critique of both the 1st & 2nd wave

• Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

• Carl Rogers (1902-1987) pioneered a new movement in Humanistic Psychology

  • Humanistic psychology: approach to understanding human nature that emphasizes the positive potential of human beings

  • Offered a positive view of human nature that fit the zeitgeist of the 1960s

Modern Psychology Era

• Consolidating the work of the first waves of psychology into a holistic framework

• Technological advances creating “golden era of the brain”

• Positive psychology (explores human flourishing)

  • Positive emotion

  • Engagement

  • Relationship

  • Meaning

  • Accomplishment/Achievement

• Different relationship with spirituality

Behavior/Mental process

• Biological influences

• Psychological influences

• Social-cultural influences

Nature/Nurture

• DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid): Complex molecules containing the genetic information that makes up the chromosomes

• Genes: Segments of DNA grouped together capable of synthesizing proteins

• Chromosomes: Threadlike structures made of DNA molecules that contain the genes

  • Every human cell has 23 pairs of chromosomes

• Genome: All the genetic material in an organism’s chromosomes

Genetics & Behavior

• Environment: Every nongenetic influence, from prenatal nutrition to the people and things around us

• Heredity: The genetic transfer of characteristics from parents to offspring

• Behavior genetics: Study of the relative power and limits of genetic and environmental influences on behavior

Does environment or heredity explain our behavior?

• KEY Word: Interaction

• General Conclusion: Nature sets a window; Nurture determines which part of the window you land

  • EX: Alcoholism, Intelligence

How do Heredity & Environment work together?

• Epigenetics: The study of environmental influences on gene expression that occur without a DNA change

• Genes are self-relating; rather than acting as blueprints that lead to the same result no matter the context, genes react

• Some genes go unexpressed until an environmental event activates them

Epigenetics influences gene expression

• Life experiences beginning in the womb lay down epigenetic marks– often organic methyl molecules– that  can affect the expression of any gene in the associated DNA segment

How do heredity & environment work together?

• Epigenetics: The study of environmental influences on gene expression that occur without a DNA change

• Genes are self-regulating; rather than acting as blueprints that lend to the same result no matter the context, genes react

• Some genes go unexpressed until an environmental event activates them

How do psychologists study the relative influence of nature and nurture in humans?

• Ethics are a key consideration, so we look for “Natural laboratories”

Identical vs Fraternal Twins

• Identical (monozygotic) twins: Develop from a single fertilized egg that splits in two, creating two genetically identical organisms

  • They share the same conception, uterus, and birth date and usually the same cultural history

• Fraternal (dizygotic) twins: Develop from separate fertilized eggs

  • Genetically no closer than brothers and sisters, but they share a prenatal environment

• Comparing identical twins' similarities/differences to fraternal twins' similarities/differences is valuable because we can essentially control for environment

  • Comparing identical twins separated at birth is even better

Twin Studies

• Similarities found in studying separated twins and identical twins compared to fraternal:

  • Personality, styles of thinking & relating

  • Abilities/intelligence test scores

  • Attitude

  • Interests/tastes

  • Specific fears

  • Brain waves, heart rate

Adoption as another “Natural Laboratory:”

Biological vs Adoptive Relatives

• Studies conducted with adopted children who do not have contact with their biological family

  • Adopted children seem to be more similar to their genetic relatives than their adoptive relatives

  • The environment shared by a family’s children has virtually no discernible impact on their personalities

• Despite the strong impact of genetics on personality, environment has a larger influence on:

  • Religious beliefs

  • Values

  • Manners

  • Politics

  • Habits

Personal Development:

• Biological Influences: 

  • Shared human genome

  • Individual genetic variations

  • Prenatal environment

  • Sex-related genes, hormones, and physiology

• Psychological Influences:

  • Gene-environment interaction

  • Neurological effect of early experiences

  • Responses evoked by our own temperament, gender, etc.

  • Beliefs, feelings, and expectations

• Social-cultural Influences:

  • Parental influences

  • Peer influences

  • Cultural individualism or collectivism

  • Cultural gender norms

• Evolutionary Psychology: The study of the evolution of behavior and the mind, using principles of natural selection

• Natural Selection: The principle that those chance inherited traits that better enable an organism to survive and reproduce in a particular environment will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations

• Nature has indeed selected advantageous variations from the new gene combinations produced at each human conception, plus the mutations (random errors in gene replication) that sometimes result
  

Consciousness

Consciousness: Subjective awareness of self and environment

• There are many different states of consciousness

  • EX: Daydreaming, Drug-induced hallucinating, Meditating, Hypnosis, and Sleep

4 Basic Properties of Consciousness:

• Intentionality: Being directed toward an object

• Selectivity: Capacity to include some objects but not others

• Unity: Irreducibly complex

• Transience: Tendency to change

Intentionality 

• Thought suppression: Conscious avoidance of a thought

  • Rebound effect of thought suppression: Tendency of a thought to return to consciousness with greater frequency following suppression

Selectivity:

• Inattententional blindness: Failure to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere

• Change blindness: Failing to notice changes in the environment 

• Popout effect: When our attention is unintentionally drawn to distinct stimuli in the environment; they draw our eye and demand our attention

• Cocktail party phenomenon: People turn in one message even while they filter out other nearby

Out of the millions of thoughts in our mind, we process 40 of it

Unity: The Two-Track Mind

Parallel Consciousness/Dual Processing:

• Principle that information is often simultaneously processed on separate left and right brained track

• Perceptions, memory, attitude, and other cognitions all operate on two levels, a conscious, delicate “high road” and an unconscious, automatic “low road”

Biological Rhythms & Sleep

• Two Biological rhythms

  • 24hr biological clock

• Circadian rhythm

  • An internal biological clock

  • Altered by age and experience

    • Night owls vs Early birds

Stages of sleep:

• NREM 1 (Trying to fall asleep)

  • Hyonogogic states

  • Dramatic sensory experiences

  • Explanation for alien abduction “memories”

  • Body can suddenly jerk

• NREM 2 (Just fallen asleep)

  • Sleep spindles: spikes in brain activity

  • Talking in your sleep happens 

  • Clearly asleep

• NREM 3 & 4

  • 3: Short transitional stage before deep sleep

  • 4: Deep sleep; it is hard to wake up in this stage, but your brain is still attuned to some basic external cues

    • Children may wet bed in this stage

    • Sleep walking occurs in this stage

About an hour after you first fall asleep, you ascend from your initial sleep dive, returning through NREM-2 sleep to REM sleep

• Heart rate rises, breathing becomes rapid and irregular, and every half minute or so your eyes dart around

• Dreaming occurs during these periods

• REM sleep is paradoxical sleep: The body is internally aroused, with waking-like brain activity, yet asleep and externally calm
  

Sleep Debt effects

• Mood affected; testiness, anger, conflicts

• Depressive disorders predicted; higher risk of suicidal thinking

• Potential weight gain

• Increased risk of accidents/death

Dreams

There are 5 major characteristics that distinguish dreaming from waking consciousness

• Intense emotion 

• Illogical thought

• Meaningful sensation

• Uncritical acceptance

• Difficulty remembering

We usually dream of ordinary events and everyday experiences, most involving some anxiety or misfortune

• For both men and women, 8 in 10 dreams are marked by at east one negative event or emotion

• Dreams with sexual imagery occur less commonly than believed, with one study finding just 1 in 10 among young men and 1in 30 among young women

• Dreams incorporating previous days experience are the most common

Why do we dream?: 5 Dream Theories:

1. Freud

   1. Dreams have Latent content: an expression of our true desires

2. Activation: Synthesis Theory

   1. Dreams make sense of random neural static

3. Information Processing Theory

   1. Dreams may help sift, sort, and fix a day’s experiences in our memories

4. Physiological Function Theory

   1. Dreams provide the sleeping brain with periodic stimulation

5. Cognitive Development Theory

   1. Dreams reflect themes of our particular stage of cognitive development

6. More than a dream?

   1. Symbolism/Message from God

Hypothesis: Altered state of consciousness characterized by suggestibility and the feeling that one’s actions are occurring involuntarily

• The essence of hypnosis is in leading people to expect that certain things will happen that are outside their conscious will

• Susceptibility varies greatly, subject to agreeableness

Facts & Falsehood of Hypnosis:

Those who practice hypnosis agree that its power resides in the subject’s openness to suggestion

• Can anyone experience hypnosis?

  • Yes, to some extent

• Can hypnosis enhance recall of forgotten events?

  • No

• Can hypnosis force people to act against their will?

  • No

• Can hypnosis be therapeutic?

  • Yes, self0suggestion

Learning

Part of the 2nd wave in the scene of psychology

Learning: Process of acquiring through experience new and relatively enduring information on behavior

• This unit will focus on 3 main approaches to learning:

  • Classical conditioning

  • Operant conditioning

  • Observational learning
    

Classical conditioning: Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov demonstrates a kind of learning by association called classical conditioning

Pavlov’s experiments:

Before conditioning, the neutral stimulus (tone) does not elicit any response on its own, while the unconditioned stimulus (US), food, naturally triggers an unconditioned response (UR), salivation. Pavlov observed that by repeatedly pairing the neutral stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus, an association would form. During conditioning, the neutral stimulus (tone) and the US (food) are paired, resulting in salivation (UR). After conditioning, the neutral stimulus (now Conditioning Stimulus, CS) elicits salvation (now Conditioned Response, CR).

• EX:

  • US - Food

  • UR - Saliva

  • NS - Bell

  • CS - Bell

  • CR - Saliva

  • US - Loud noise

  • UR - Fear (crying)

  • NS - Rat

  • CS - Rat

  • CR - Fear (crying)

Classical conditioning works, BUT it isn’t efficient

The Basic Principles of Classical Conditioning:

• Acquisition: Phase of classical conditioning when the NS and the US are presented together

• Extinction: Gradual elimination of a learned response that occurs when the US is no longer presented

• Spontaneous recover: Tendency of a learned behavior to recover from extinction after a rest period

• Second-order conditioning: Conditioning where the US is a stimulus that acquires its ability to produce learning from an earlier procedure in which was used as a CS