Condensed Psych Notes

1. What you believe changes what you taste (AKA don’t listen too much to wine snobs)

   1. Paul Bloom – The Origins of Pleasure

   2. If adults believe they are tasting an expensive wine, parts of the brain light up more intensely

   3. Tell kids that their food is from McDonalds, and they will enjoy it more

2. Blushing is likely an adoptive signal

   1. Embarrassment comes from the violation of a social norm

   2. Blushing is communicating that you know about the social norm or standard and communicating their repentance

   3. “Saved by the Blush: Being Trusted Despite Defecting” Study

3. Our musical tastes are most influenced (on average) at age 13 (for girls) and 14 (for boys)

   1. Childhood influences are stronger for women than for men

4. Pain Caused Intentionally Feels More Painful

   1. “The Sting of Intentional Pain” Study

5. Taste Sensitivity is related to political orientation

   1. Political aptitudes are highly heritable

   2. Greater sensitivity to the chemicals PROP and PTC—2 well established measures of taste sensitivity—are associated with greater political conservatism

   3. These people, who are easily disgusted, are more conservative (more fungiform papilla density, higher sensitivity to disgust)

   4. Low-level physiological differences in sensory processing may shape an individual’s political attitudes

6. Owning a pet has cardiovascular benefits/buffers the stress responses

   1. Easy way to get the stress mechanism going is the cold pressor experiment

   2. Inserting arm into the cold tub activates the HPA axis

   3. Pet owners generally do better, and they do even better when their pet is in the room

“Eudaimonia”

• “Eu” – good

• “Daimon” – spirit

• Modern definition: human flourishing

The U-bend of self-reported well-being, on a scale of 1-10

• Peaks at 18-21 (6.8) then drops at 50-53 (6.3) and then rises again at 82-85 to (7.0)

How Can We Improve Happiness?

The Difficulty

• We seem to have a “set-point” of happiness

• Genetically-determined range, highly heritable

  • Estimates around 50% of the variance

  • Happy people seem to stay happy

  • This stability is evident across the lifespan

“Happiness Paradox” – trying to be happy can make you unhappy

Cantrill “Ladder” Measure

• It asks respondents to picture a ladder with the worst possible life at the bottom and the best possible life at the top, and then rate their current life on that scale. The scale is numbered from 0 to 10, with higher scores indicating greater well-being

Hedonic adaptation: The idea refers to the human tendency to return to a baseline level of happiness after experiencing positive or negative events.

The “Hedonic Treadmill”

• Gardens, parks, vineyards, castles concubines

• These are all meaningless

How Do We Move the Needle on Happiness

1. Interact with people

   1. There is a large amount of evidence that social support is linked with happiness

   2. But interacting with strangers can make us feel happier

   3. People randomly assigned to buy a coffee and either say the very minimum to the cashier, or to engage in some brief conversation: “Conversationalists” personality

2. Be In the Moment

   1. What we’re doing can account for some of our happiness

   2. But being present with whatever we are seems to matter a lot more than you might think (Wandering minds = less happiness)

3. Favor Relative Over Absolute

   1. Participants in the study were asked: which do you prefer?

      1. $70,000, if everyone else in your office is making $65,000

      2. $75,000, if everyone else in your office is making $80,000

   2. “A wealth man is one who earns $100 more than his wife’s sister’s husband

   3. People being more relatively better off than other people are generally more happier

4. Seek Experiences Instead of Stuff

   1. Using your money to purchase experiences rather than material goods leaders to greater happiness and satisfaction

      1. Material goods lend themselves to easy comparison with other material goods

      2. Easier to think of what you could have bought

      3. Experiences usually involve other people

      4. We share experiences verbally, relive the pleasure

5. Spend Money On Others

   1. Happy Money by Dunn and Norton

   2. Money Can Buy Happiness (When you spend it on others)

6. Mind Your “Peaks” and “Ends”

   1. Which is better?

      1. A medical procedure that is very painful for an hour, then stops

      2. A medical procedure that is very painful for an hour… then continues with 5 more minutes of milder pain at the end

      3. When judging our experiences we only remember the peak and the end

7. Religion

   1. Religious people are generally happier — more likely to have social support, healthy living, finding meaning in life

8. Be Grateful

   1. Students were randomly assigned to keep a “gratitude journal”

   2. People who were more grateful were happier

9. Act Happy (Smile)

   1. Large scale studies have shown that just smiling leads to an elevated mood

   2. It could just be in an experimental context

Cross-Linguistic Research

• Suggested an additional dimension absent from the Big-5

• Resultant six-factor model is referred to as the “HEXACO”

  • Honesty-Humility

  • Emotionality (Neuroticism): the tendency to frequently experience negative emotions, such as anger, worry, and sadness, as well as being interpersonally sensitive

    • Someone who is neurotic may constantly worry about little things, be insecure, hypochondriacal, and frequently feel inadequate

    • Someone who is low in neuroticism may not get irritated by small annoyances, appear calm

  • eXtraversion: the tendency to be talkative, sociable, and to enjoy others, and also has the tendency to have a dominant style

    • Gregarious

  • Agreeableness (versus Anger): the tendency to agree and go along with others rather than to assert one’s own opinions and choices

    • An agreeable person will agree with others about political opinions, is good-natured, forgiving, gullible (trusting), and helpful

    • An individual who is low in agreeableness might quickly and confidently assert their own rights and opinions, be irritable, manipulative, uncooperative, and rude

    • Conversely related to agreeableness (The “Dark Triad”)

      • Machiavellianism

      • Narcissism

      • Psychopathy

  • Conscientiousness: the tendency to be careful, on-time for appointments, to follow rules, and to be hardworking

    • Someone high in conscientiousness will rarely be late for a date or appointment, will be organized, hard working, neat, persevering, punctual, self-disciplined

    • Someone who is low in conscientiousness may prefer spur-of-the-moment action to planning, may be unreliable, hedonistic, careless, and lax

  • Openness to Experience: the tendency to appreciate new art, ideas, values, feelings, and behaviors

    • An individual high in openness enjoys seeing people with new types of haircuts and body piercing, is curious, imaginative, and untraditional

    • A person low in openness might prefer not to be exposed to alternative moral systems, has narrow interests, is inartistic

Big 5: Some Findings

• Heritable–between 42% and 57% genetic (vs environmental) influence

• Predictive of a number of outcomes

  • Relationship satisfaction (e.g., extraversion predictive)

  • Work productivity (e.g., conscientiousness predictive)

  • Stable over time (more so for adults than children)

  • But not perfect—situation forces still matter

  • More granular/specific theories that have more dimensions (e.g., 16PF) can be more predictive

• People higher in conscientiousness demonstrate more marital fidelity

  • (Also more politically conservative)

• Being high in openness to experience predicts job changes

  • (Also more politically liberal)

• People high in extraversion are more likely to look people in the eye and to have more sexual partners

The Challenge of Social Psychology and “Situationism”

• Many results showing that situations overpowered ‘traits’ (e.g., Milgram experiments)

• Does this mean that stable traits are non-existent (or useless at predicting behavior)?

• Probably not—the best approach is what people refer to as a “person x situation” one (looking at interaction between the two)

Temperament

• Distinctive patterns of feelings and behaviors that originate in the child’s biology and  appear early in development

Some Dimensions of Temperament

• Activity level

  • General arousal

• Impulsivity

  • Time taken to express emotion

• Positive emotionality

  • Smiling, laughing, sociability

• Negative emotionality

  • Irritability, fearfulness, soothability

Studies on Temperament

• In 1986, Kagan began studies dangling toys in front of babies (500 of them)

• 20% of babies showed distress (“high reactive”)

  • “Crying and vigorous pumping of the legs and arms, sometimes with arching of the back”

• 40% showed little or no emotion/motion (“low reactive”)

• Rest fell in the middle

Personality

• An individual’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

Criteria For Something to be Considered a “personality trait”

• Consistency (across situations)

• Stability (over time)

• Individual differences (variability across people)

The “Big 5” Personality Traits (handy mnemonic: OCEAN)

• Dominant theory of personality

Animals Show Similar Differences in Traits

• Most similar for extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism

How Do We Measure Personality?

How Do We Determine Whether A Measurement is Good?

• Reliability

  • Will repeated measurements yield a similar answer? (consistency of measurements)

• Validity

  • Is the measurement assessing what it is supposed to assess? (accuracy of measurement)

Personality Tests

1. Projective tests

   1. Strategy: have people interpret ambiguous stimuli as a window into their personality

   2. Assumption: people will reveal hidden aspects of personality such as motives, wishes, and unconscious conflicts

   3. Example: Rorschach Inkblot Test

      1. Images are supposed to be kept secret

   4. Example: Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

      1. What led up to this event?

      2. What is happening at the moment?

      3. What are the characters thinking and feeling?

      4. What was the outcome of the story

   5. Example: House-Tree-Person

      1. Ask a child to draw a house, tree, and a person

Projective Tests: Any Good?

• Neither reliable or valid

• There are some people who disagree (but they are just wrong).

• The best case to be made is that they can be an “ice-breaker” in therapy–they can encourage communication

Another personality test

2. Objective Tests

   1. Primarily questionnaire measures

   2. Big 5 measures both reliable and valid

   3. Stable over many years (except during early childhood when personality is more variable)

   4. Predicts real-world behavior

The “Lexical” Hypothesis

• Take as many words from a language used to describe someone’s personality

  • (some researchers began with 18,000 words)

• Many words mean very similar things—e.g., gregarious, sociable, amiable

• Apply a technique to narrow down these terms and figure out how many “buckets” are needed, using a statistical technique (usually factor analysis)

• This gets down to a generally agree-upon set of five basic traits—the “Big” 5

Part 1: Language and Language Use

Key Concepts and Definitions

1. Common Ground: Shared knowledge and assumptions between speakers and listeners that enable effective communication

   1. Usefulness: Facilitates understanding and reduces misunderstandings in conversation

2. Audience Design: Tailoring language based on the listener’s knowledge

   1. Example: Using the term “friend” for someone unfamiliar with Gary, instead of his name

3. Situation Model: A mental representation of the topic being discussed, shared among conversational participants

   1. Example: A shared understanding that “Gary is getting engaged to Mary”

4. Social Brain Hypothesis: The idea that human brains evolved to handle complex social relationships, with language as a key tool

   1. Example: Larger brain sizes in primates correlate with larger social group sizes (~150 individuals in humans)

5. Priming: Exposure to once concept triggers related ideas

   1. Example: Mentioning “ring” prompts thoughts about marriages and weddings

6. Linguistic Intergroup Bias: Using language to favorably describe ingroup behaviors and negatively frame outgroup behaviors

7. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: The idea that language influences thought and perception

   1. Example: Chinese speakers better remember personalities described with terms like "shì gù," which have no direct English equivalent.

How Language Facilitates Social Interaction

1. Gossip: Sharing information about others to navigate social relationships

   1. Example: Discussing friends, alliances, or appropriate behaviors within a group

2. Coordination in Conversations: People align language elements like vocabulary, grammar, and accent

   1. Example: If one person says, “The cowboy gave a banana to the robber,” others use similar structures

3. Cultural and Social Impacts

   1. Example: Pronoun usage (e.g., “I” vs. implied subjects) reflects individualistic or collectivist values

   2. Usefulness: Demonstrates how habitual language practices influence societal norms and behaviors

Psychological Consequences of Language Use

1. Memory and Perception

   1. Example: Describing ambiguous emotions in words intensifies memory of those emotions

   2. Usefulness: Shows how verbal expression reshapes experiences and recollections

2. Emotional Regulation:

   1. Example: Labeling negative emotions reduces amygdala activation, helping manage distress

   2. Usefulness: Explains why verbalizing feelings can improve psychological well-being

3. Therapeutic Effects

   1. Example: Writing or talking about traumatic events enhances mental health, whereas ruminating worsens it

   2. Usefulness: Highlights language’s role in processing and overcoming trauma

Experiments and Findings

1. Nicaraguan Sign Language

   1. Deaf children spontaneously developed a new language with minimal adult input

   2. Demonstrates humans’ innate capacity for language

2. Transmission of Stereotypes

   1. Stories shared through communication chains lose counter-stereotypical details but retain stereotypes

   2. Reinforces societal norms and biases through language

3. Emotion Labeling:

   1. Study: Labeling emotions alters memory and neural responses

Part 2: Intelligence

Key Concepts

• Intelligence (General Definition): The ability to learn, remember, solve problems, and adapt to novel situations

• IQ (Intelligence Quotient): A score derived from standardized intelligence tests; historically calculated as the ratio of mental age to chronological age

• General Intelligence (“g”): A single factor that underlies performance across various intellectual tasks

  • Example: People who excel in verbal reasoning often also perform well in spatial reasoning

• Multiple Intelligences: A theory suggesting distinct types of intelligence, such as logical-mathematical, verbal-linguistic, musical, interpersonal, and more

• Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence:

  • Fluid Intelligence: The ability to solve new problems and think on one’s feet

  • Crystallized Intelligence: The use of accumulated knowledge and experience

• Emotional Intelligence (EI): The ability to understand and manage emotions in oneself and others

• Mindset: Beliefs about the nature of intelligence as fixed or changeable

• Stereotype Threat: The risk of confirming negative stereotypes about one’s group, which can affect performance

  • Example: Women performing worse on math tests when reminded of stereotypes about gender and math ability

Major Theories and Models

Carroll’s Three-Stratum Model

• Structure:

1. Stratum III: General intelligence (“g”)

2. Stratum II: Broad abilities (e.g., fluid intelligence, processing speed)

3. Stratum I: Specific abilities (e.g., world fluency, reaction time)

Stanford-Binet Test:

• Adapted by Lewis Terman from Binet-Simon’s original test

• Standardized scores plotted in a bell curve

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS):

• Features: Assesses multiple intellectual domains, including verbal comprehension, working memory, and processing speed

Key Findings and Experiments

1. Flynn Effect: The observed rise in average IQ scores over decades

   1. Caused by improved nutrition, education, and test familiarity

2. Mindset Research: Believing intelligence is malleable leads to better academic performance

   1. Application: Encourages teaching strategies that foster growth mindsets

Controversies

1. Group Differences: Differences in measured intelligence among genders or ethnic groups

   1. Example: Men excel in spatial reasoning; women excel in verbal skills

Part 2: The Nature-Nurture Question

Key Concepts

• Behavioral Genetics: The study of how genetics and environment contribute to behavioral traits

  • Example: Investigating the genetic and environmental contributions to intelligence or personality

• Adoption Study: Research comparing adopted children to their biological and adoptive parents to isolate genetic vs. environmental influences

  • Example: If an adopted child’s intelligence resembles that of their biological parents more than their adoptive parents, genetic factors may dominate

• Twin Study: Research comparing identical (monozygotic) and fraternal (dizygotic) twins to assess genetic and environment effects

  • Example: Identical twins are more similar in height than fraternal twins, suggesting a strong genetic influence

• Heritability Coefficient: A numerical value (0 to 1) estimating the proportion of variation in a trait attributable to genetic differences

  • Example: A heritability coefficient of 0.7 for intelligence means 70% of the variation in intelligence in a population is due to genetic differences

• Gene-Environment Interaction (G x E): The interplay where specific genes are expressed differently depending on environmental conditions

  • Example: Children with a particular MAOA gene variant may develop antisocial behavior only if maltreated

• Epigenetics: The study of how environmental factors modify gene expression without altering the DNA sequence

  • Example: Stress or diet during pregnancy influencing a chi;d’s susceptibility to illness

Research Methods

1. Quantitative Genetics: Statistical analysis of genetic and environmental contributions to trait variation using family, twin, and adoption studies

   1. Example: Measuring how much genetics influences height versus diet

2. Molecular Genetics: Examining specific genes to understand their roles in behavior

Major Findings and Examples

1. Genetic Influence on Traits:

   1. Finding: Most traits (e.g., height, personality, intelligence) are influenced by both genes and environment

Challenges and Misconceptions

• Oversimplification: Traits cannot be labeled as purely genetic or environmental; they result from dynamic interactions

  • A heritability coefficient of 07 does not mean 70% of a trait is “genetic” for an individual

  • Heritability applies to populations, not individuals, and varies by context

Correlation vs. Causation: Genetic or environment correlations do not prove causation

Early Childhood Interventions: Nutrition (Protzko, Aronson, and Blaire, 2013)

• Supplementing long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PFA), (found in breast milk but absent in many formulae)

  • Yes

• Most other supplements (zinc, iron, multivitamins)

  • Probably not

Early Childhood Interventions: Educational Environment

• Cognitive training? (working memory, nonverbal reasoning, and effortful control)

  • No

• Listening to music? (“The Mozart Effect”)

  • No

• Training mothers to provide a richer cognitive environment?

  • Yes (if trained extensively for about a year, about 7 IQ points)

• Interactive reading (where the child is an active participant in the reading, and adult encourages the child to be as elaborate as possible)

  • Yes (as much as 6 IQ points)

  • Effect only seems to hold up until age 4

• Sending children to preschool

  • Yes (up to 6 IQ points)

  • Works more/best for children from low-income households

  • Interestingly/ more time in preschool doesn’t provide more benefits

Nutritional Supplements in School-Aged Children

• Multivitamins?

  • Very small, but positive effect (Mostly when supplementing poor diets, not when supplementing diets already rich in nutrients)

• Iodine?

  • Some evidence that iodine improves IQ in children with iodine deficiency

• Zinc or iron?

  • No evidence of an effect

Changing School-Aged Students’ Environment

• Balanced and coordination exercises

  • No

• Home academic support? (e.g., in-home tutoring for 3 years)

  • No

• Reasoning training?

  • These studies often suffer from the problem of “teaching to the test”

  • Improvements can be seen on the same task (e.g., practicing picture rotation helps with picture rotation)

  • No improvements seen on the other factors of intelligence

Changing School-Aged Students’ Environment

• “Executive Function” Training (e.g., attentional control, cognitive inhibition, working memory)

  • Probably not

• Teaching children a musical instrument

  • Yes! Surprisingly robust effect–⅓ of a standard deviation (5 points)

  • Unclear why, but speculate that it might be due to strengthening white matter tracts in the prefrontal cortex associated with rhythm perception and discrimination

IQ Over (Historical) Time

The Flynn Effect

• Over time, the average raw score of IQ tests has been going up (the average is always 100)

• This effect has been slowing down in the past ten or twenty years

• Adding up to a 30 point difference over the course of 100 years

• Changes are due to increase of standard of living and education

Gender Differences

• Average IQ score shows no real differences between men and women

• BUT

  • Women tend to outperform men on verbal measures

  • Men tend to outperform women on spatial ability

• Not clear why, but they appear fairly early in life

• Lost of good reasons that these effects are influenced by societal expectations, test-taking strategies, individual interests

• Fluid intelligence: ability to perceive relationships, ability to adapt, ability to learn new material. Independent of culture and moral training. Vulnerable to brain damage and aging

  • Fluid intelligence peaks at age 25

• Crystallized intelligence: completely dependent on culture and formal training or learning. Peak in middle age

  • Example: reading comprehension, information, and vocabulary

Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

• Analytical Intelligence: intelligence that is assessed by intelligence tests

• Creative intelligence: intelligence that makes us adapt to novel situations, generating novel ideas

• Practical intelligence: intelligence that is required for everyday tasks (e.g. streets smarts)

Emotional intelligence

• Perceiving emotions (e.g., recognizing emotions in others)

• Using emotions (e.g., harnessing emotions to motivate yourself)

• Understanding emotions (e.g., knowing the relationships between emotional states, such as surprise turning into joy)

• Managing emotions (e.g., the ability to regulate emotions in oneself and others)

Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences

1. Verbal-linguistic intelligence (well-developed verbal skills and sensitivity to the sounds, meanings and rhythms of words)

2. Logical-mathematical intelligence (ability to think conceptually and abstractly, and capacity to discern logical and numerical patterns)

3. Spatial-visual intelligence (capacity to think in images and pictures, to visualize accurately and abstractly)

4. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (ability to control one’s body movements and to handle objects skillfully)

5. Musical intelligences (ability to produce and appreciate rhythm, pitch and timber)

6. Interpersonal intelligence (capacity to detect and respond appropriately to the moods, motivations and desires of others)

7. Intrapersonal (capacity to be self-aware and in tune with inner feelings, values, beliefs and thinking processes)

8. Naturalist intelligence (ability to recognize and categorize plants, animals and other objects in nature)

9. Existential intelligence (sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence such as, “What is the meaning of life? Why do we die? How did we get here?”

Criticism of Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences

• Gardner never systematically tested these, but just came up with them (and has kept adding to the list—e.g., “existential” intelligence).

• Little evidence exists for these divisions (weakly correlated)

• A lot of these are skills, or perhaps personality traits, not what we’d consider intelligence

IQ Over the Lifetime

• Fairly high test/retest reliability (mentioned earlier)

• Early IQ tests predict later IQ tests

• IQ predicts educational achievement (although they are not the same thing)

• IQ predicts a number of health outcomes (e.g., heart disease, hypertension)

• IQ predicts death (high IQ/later death)

• IQ predicts job performance, job success, income

• While social class can influence IQ scores, IQ also seems to influence people’s ability to “move-up” (social mobility)

Is IQ Heritable? (i.e., do genetic differences predict differences in IQ?)

• Heritability is the extent to which differences in the appearance of a trait across several people can be accounted for by differences in their genes. (Usually represented as between 0.0 and 1.0, or between 0 and 100%)

Understanding the Heritability Statistic (h²)

• Compute the correlation between the IQ (or any trait) of identical twin siblings (who share, roughly, 100% of their DNA).

• Compute the correlation between the IQ of fraternal twin (siblings (who share the same DNA as other non-twin siblings share with each other).

• Assumption: both children are raised by the same parents, in the same environment. Differences seen should be genetic differences

What Heritability Does Not Tell Us

• Heritability cannot say how much an individual person’s intelligence is due to genes vs environment—it is a statistic about groups of individuals. It is about variation among the sample of people studied

• It does not tell us anything about which genes cause a trait (most psychological traits are polygenic—influenced by many genes).

Heritability can’t say how easy or difficult it is to change

Heritability: how much of the variation in a trait across a population is due to genetic differences

Test-Retest Reliability

• IQ tests general stay consistent throughout someone’s life with r~ = 0.8 accuracy

• Generally “more” accurate the more times someone takes it

Is there a single thing that we can call intelligence? (“g”)

• Suppose we want to discover whether some people are in better shape than others–whether they are “fit”

• Give them a series of physical tasks

  • These are all positively correlated with each other–if you’re high on one, you tend to be high on the other

  • Cognitive tasks are similarly correlated

Part 1: Judgment and Decision Making

Key Concepts:

1. Bounded Rationality: The idea that cognitive limitations, time, and resources constrain human decision-making, preventing full rationality

   1. Example: A shopper chooses the second-best option because evaluating every product would take too much time

2. Biases: Systematic deviations from rationality caused by a reliance on heuristics

   1. Examples:

   2. Anchoring: Initial information influences subsequent judgements (e.g., price negotiation starts with an arbitrary high number)

   3. Framing: Decisions vary based on how information is presented (e.g. saving lives vs. losing lives in health policies)

   4. Overconfidence: Overestimating the accuracy of one’s knowledge or decisions

3. Heuristics: Mental shortcuts used to simplify complex decisions, often leading to predictable biases

   1. Example: Judging risk based on recent events(availability heuristic)

4. System 1 and System 2 Thinking:

   1. System 1: Fast, automatic, emotional, and intuitive processing

      1. Example: Deciding quickly whether a stranger seems trustworthy

   2. System 2: Slow, deliberate, logical, and effortful processing

5. Bounded Awareness: The tendency to overlook obvious information because of focusing failures

   1. Example: Missing critical safety details in a rushed project evaluation

6. Bounded Willpower: The tendency to prioritize immediate rewards over long-term goals

   1. Example: Splurging on a luxury item instead of saving for retirement

7. Bounded Self-Interest: Caring about others’ outcomes, sometimes to the detriment of self-interest

8. Bounded Ethicality: Unconscious biases and ethical lapses affecting decision-making

Key Experiments and Findings:

Anchoring Bias:

• Experiment: Participants estimated fraud rates based on anchors

• Finding: Judgements were influenced by the anchor, even when arbitrary

• Application: Be aware of starting points in negotiation or decision contexts

Framing Effect:

• Experiment: People preferred saving 200 lives over probabilistic options but chose risky options when outcomes where framed as losses

• Finding: Decisions are swayed by whether outcomes are framed as gains or losses

• Application: Reframe problems to encourage balanced decision-making

Overconfidence:

• Experiment: Participants estimated quantities with a 98% confidence range but missed the mark frequently

• Finding: People are overly confident in their knowledge

• Application: Adjust confidence levels and test assumptions against data

Defaults and Nudges:

• Experiment: Opt-out organ donation policies dramatically increase consent rates

• Finding: Subtle changes in choice architecture (nudges) can guide better decisions

• Application: Design systems (e.g. retirement plans) to favor beneficial defaults

Strategies to Improve Decision-Making

1. Shift to System 2 Thinking

2. Be Aware of Biases

3. Nudging

   1. Adjust environment to favor better choices

4. Use Structured Decision Processes to Arrive at Rational Conclusions

5. Learn from Data

Part 2: Persuasion: So Easily Fooled

Key Concepts:

Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion:

1. Central Route: Relies on logical, direct messages requiring careful thought. Effective when the audience is motivated and capable of evaluating information

   1. Example: Voting for a candidate based on their policy proposals

2. Peripheral Route: Uses superficial cues like emotions, heuristics, or appearances, targeting low-effort decision-making

   1. Example: Buying a product because of celebrity endorsement

Triggers Features and Fixed Action Patterns (FAPs)

• Trigger Features: Specific cues that activate automatic responses or behaviors

  • Example: The phrase “for a good cause” can prompt charitable behavior

• Fixed Action Patterns: Pre-programmed sequences of behavior triggered by specific stimuli

• Heuristics: Mental shortcuts for making decisions quickly

• Triad of Trust

  • Authority: Perceived expertise and status influenced trust

    • Example: Following a doctor's health advice

  • Honesty: Signals reliability and fairness

    • Example: A well-known brand emphasizing its ethical practices

  • Likeability: We trust and are persuaded by people we like

• Reciprocity: Feeling obligated to return favors or gifts

• Social Proof: Looking to others to determine correct behavior, especially in uncertain situations

  • Example: Choosing a busy restaurant over an empty one

• Scarcity: Valuing items more when they are perceived as rare or limited

• Psychological Reactance: Resisting persuasion when feeling a loss of freedom

• Commitment and Consistency: Once committed to a course of action, people prefer consistency

  • Example: Agreeing to a small request increases likelihood of agreeing to larger requests

• Techniques of Persuasion

  • Foot-in-the-Door: Start with a small request, followed by larger ones

  • Door-in-the-Face: Start with a large request expected to be refused, then present a smaller, more reasonable request

  • That’s-Not-All: Offer something additional or reduce the price after presenting the initial offer

Experiments and Finders

1. Trigger Features:

   1. Study: Bake sale success increased when cookies were sold “for a good cause” regardless of legitimacy

2. Milgram’s Authority Experiment

   1. Study: Participants obeyed an authority figure to deliver potentially lethal shocks

   2. Finding: Authority triggers compliance even against moral judgement

3. Social Proof and Laugh Tracks:

   1. Study: Audiences laughed more with canned laughter

   2. Finding: Social cues strongly influence behavior

4. Scarcity and Reactance:

   1. Study: Boys preferred toys made less accessible by barriers

   2. Finding: Scarcity increases desirability

Defending Against Persuasion

1. Inoculation: Expose individuals to weak arguments so they can refute stronger ones later

Stinging: Highlight when someone has been manipulated to crease awareness of future tactics

Confirmation Bias

• Favoring information that is consistent with your belief

• We search for, attend to, remember, and use information that provides evidence for our belief

We Seek Evidence To Confirm Our Hypotheses

• Experimenter presents you with 3 numbers (2-4-6), and asks you to guess the pattern behind it

• Most hypothesize: “successive even numbers”

• When “testing” it, they generate confirmatory guesses–e.g., “8-10-12”

• They easily miss the real rule (numbers increasing by 2/numbers increasing in size/any 3 positive numbers)

Ditto and Lopez (1992) “Motivated Skepticism”

• Showed that people are motivated to accept facts that are consistent with their desires/beliefs

  • Don’t think too hard if it agrees with you

  • But if it disagrees with you, then work hard to disprove

Two “Modes” Of Thinking

• “System 1”-- quick, intuitive, gut thinking

• “System 2”-- rational, deliberate, careful, slow thinking

Solution? Shortcuts to the Right Answer

• Heuristics–mental shortcuts that serve as guides to making judgments and decisions without having to go through all that calculation

  • e.g. , the availability heuristic

  • Are there more English words that start with “T” or that start with “K”?

    • Availability heuristic: what is more easily available and comes to mind right away

• But Heuristics Can Give Rise to Biases

  • Heuristics can lead us to make judgments and decisions that are pretty wrong/irrational

    • How many words with “K” as first letter vs “K” as third letter?

We are predictably irrational–the errors we make are systematic and reflect underlying rules

Solution? Shortcuts to the Right Answer

• Heuristics–mental shortcuts that serve as guides to making judgments and decisions without having to go through all that calculation

  • e.g. , the availability heuristic

  • Are there more English words that start with “T” or that start with “K”?

    • Availability heuristic: what is more easily available and comes to mind right away

• But Heuristics Can Give Rise to Biases

  • Heuristics can lead us to make judgments and decisions that are pretty wrong/irrational

    • How many words with “K” as first letter vs “K” as third letter?

We are predictably irrational–the errors we make are systematic and reflect underlying rules

• Two biases

  • Relativity

  • Loss aversion

    • Heuristic where humans really hate losing

    • In housing market and stock markets, people hold onto depreciating assets longer because they don’t want to sell at a loss

Buying cars example

• Decision-making fatigue: cognitive and emotional exhaustion that sets in after making a large number of decisions over a period of time, which often results in a decline in decision quality.

Status quo bias: This cognitive bias causes individuals to stick with the option that is pre-selected or the one that requires the least effort to choose. The default choice often feels like the “path of least resistance,” and people may assume it's the best or most recommended option, particularly if they lack strong preferences or complete information.ƒse

• Cognitive development

  • The progression of thinking, reasoning, problem-solving, and other mental activities across the lifespan

Piaget’s Stage Theory

• Definition: Cognitive development progresses through four distinct, fixed stages characterized by qualitative changes in thinking

• Stages:

1. Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years): Understanding the world through sensory experiences and actions; lacks object permanence until about 9 months

2. Preoperational Stage (2-7 years): Use of symbols (language, drawings), but thinking is egocentric and focused on one dimension (e.g., conservation problems: situations where a child demonstrates an inability to understand that a quantity remains the same even when its appearance changes)

3. Concrete operational stage (7-12 years): logical thinking about concrete events, understanding conversation, but struggles with abstract concepts

4. Formal operational stage (12+ years): abstract, systematic reasoning and hypothetical thinking

Sociocultural Theory (Lev Vygotsky)

• Definition: emphasizes the role of social interactions and cultural tools in shaping cognitive development

• Key Concept: Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)---the range between what a child can do independently and with help

• Example: Learning to solve a puzzle by observing a parent’s strategies

Information-Processing Theory

• Definition: focuses on the mental processes involved in thinking and learning, such as attention, memory, and problem-solving

• Example: Improvements in working memory help children solve increasingly complex problems over time

Nature and Nurture in Cognitive Development

• Nature: biological endowment, such as genes that influence temperament and intellectual potential

• Nurture: environmental factors, like parental care, education, and social interactions

• Interaction: genes and environment influence each other—for example, attractive or calm infants elicit more positive interactions, aiding development

Continuous vs. Discontinuous Development

• Continuous: gradual improvements in skills over time (e.g., improving memory capacity)

• Discontinuous: sudden, qualitative changes (e.g., moving from egocentric thinking to logical reasoning in Piaget’s stages)

• Example: object permanence develops gradually but appears as a sudden leap in Piaget’s tasks

Key Experiments

1. Maynard the Cat Study (Appearance vs. Reality)

   1. Younger children believed a cat wearing a dog ask was a dog, showing limited understanding of appearance versus reality

2. Conservation Tasks (Piaget)

   1. Children under 7 fail to understand that quantity remains the same despite changes in shape or appearance

3. Numerical Board Games

   1. Children from low-income families improved math skills after playing games like Chutes and Ladders, which emphasized numerical concepts

   2. Relevance: demonstrates how targeted interventions can narrow educational gaps

Evolutionary Mechanisms Create Social/Moral Emotions

• We feel gratitude and liking for people who cooperate with us. This motivates us to be nice to them in the future

• We feel anger and distrust toward those who betray us. This motivates us to betray or avoid them in the future

We feel guilt when we betray someone who cooperates with us. This motivates us to (not do it in the future?)

Empathy Leads to Moral Concern And Helping Behavior

• Batson’s “Empathy-Altruism” hypothesis

  • Feeling empathy vs thinking rationally about someone in need

  • Empathy leads people to care more and to be more likely to offer help

  • Do we selfishly help because it will put us in  a good mood? Seems like no–we will prefer to help over non-helping activities that will improve our mood

Psychopathy Primarily an emotional deficit

• Differences in emotional systems compared to “normals”

  • Reduced skin conductance response (SCR) to distress and fear in others

  • Impaired startle response to threatening and distressing (mutilated bodies, victim being harmed) images

  • Abnormal conditioned fear response

  • Behaviorally uninhibited temperament

  • Reduced amygdala volume

• They do not learn well from their mistakes

Emotional “Dot Probe” Task

• Distressing and non-distressing image

• Non-psychopaths are more able to pick the dot behind the distressing image because they were already drawn to it

Free rider: an individual who benefits from a group effort or shared resource without contributing their fair share

Key Concepts

• Cooperation

  • Definition: Coordination of multiple individuals toward a common goal that benefits the group

  • Example: Building the Channel Tunnel involved cooperation between nations, companies, and workers across cultural and linguistic boundaries

• Altruism

  • Definition: A selfless concern for the well-being of others, even at a personal cost

• Competition

  • Definition: Efforts by individuals or groups to achieve goals that may be mutually exclusive or to outperform others

• Social Value Orientation (SVO)

  • Definition: Individual preferences for allocating resources between oneself and others

    • Cooperative: Maximizes joint benefits for all

    • Individualistic: Maximizes personal gain, regardless of others

    • Competitive: Seeks to outperform others

  • Example: A cooperative SVO would lead someone to use public transport to reduce emissions, while an individualistic SVO might prioritize personal convenience

• Prisoner’s Dilemma

  • Definition: A scenario in which two individuals must choose between cooperation (benefiting the group) and defection maximizing individual gain)

  • Example: If both prisoners cooperate and remain silent, they face minimal punishment, but if one defects, the defector benefits at the other’s expense

Influences on Cooperation

Individual Influences

1. Empathy: The ability to understand and share the feelings of others

   1. Research example: Participants encouraged to empathize with partners in economic games exhibited higher cooperation levels, even when the partner did not reciprocate

2. Social Value Orientation: Cooperative individuals are more likely to act in ways that benefit the group, such as using renewable resources or volunteering

Situational Influences

1. Communication: open discussion can promote trust and alignment of strategies

   1. Research example: Groups that communicated before a public goods game were more likely to cooperate

2. Trust: Belief in the reliability or fairness of others

3. Group Identity: The extent to which individuals identify as part of a group

   1. Research Example: Participants who strongly identified with their group (e.g., university students) were less likely to defect in cooperative tasks

Cultural Influences

1. Interdependence:

   1. Cultures requiring collaboration for survival (e.g., whaling communities) show higher cooperation rates in experiments like the ultimatum game

2. Collectivism vs, Individualism

   1. Collectivist cultures emphasize group harmony and cooperation, while individualist cultures may prioritize personal goals

Methods of Research

1. Prisoner’s Dilemma Experiments

2. Commons Dilemma

   1. Participants manage shared resources to maximize group sustainability

   2. Cooperative SVO individuals deplete resources less than competitive ones

3. Ultimatum Game

   1. Allocators distribute resources, and responders accept or reject offers

   2. Reveals cultural and individual differences in fairness and cooperation

Part 2: Helping and Prosocial Behavior

Key Concepts

1. Prosocial Behavior: Actions intended to benefit others

2. Helping: A specific type of prosocial behavior focused on providing assistance to eliminate another’s need

3. Altruism: Helping with the ultimate goal of improving another person’s well-being, without expecting personal benefits

4. Egoism: helping motivated by self-interest, such as seeking to feel better or avoid guilt

5. Bystander Effect: The phenomenon where the presence of others reduces the likelihood of an individual helping

   1. Examples:

   2. Pluralistic Ignorance: People assume help isn’t needed because others are not acting

   3. Diffusion of Responsibility: Individuals feel less personal responsibility to help in a group setting

6. Cost-Benefit Analysis: Weighing the costs (e.g., time, risk) against the benefits of helping

Factors Influencing Helping Behavior

1. Ambiguity of the situation: uncertainty about whether help is needed

2. Peopleare more likely to help when costs are low and rewards are high

3. Individual Differences:

   1. Gender

   2. Men are more likely to help in risky, physical situations, while women are more likely to offer emotional support

   3. Personality traits:

   4. Agreeableness: sympathetic, generous, and cooperative individuals are more likely to help

   5. Prosocial Personality:

      1. Other-Oriented Empathy: Understanding and empathizing with others

      2. Helpfulness: A history of helping behavior that fosters future acts of assistance

Motivations for Helping

1. Evolutionary Perspective

   1. Kin selection: Helping relatives ensures the survival of shared genes

   2. Reciprocal Altruism: Helping others with expectation of future reciprocation

2. Egoistic Motivations

   1. Negative State Relief Model: Helping to alleviate personal distress or sadness

   2. Arousal: Cost–Reward Model: Helping to reduce discomfort caused by witnessing others in need

3. Altruistic Motivations:

Empathy–Altruism Model: Helping motivated by empathizing with the victim and aiming to improve their welfare, even at a personal cost

1. Psychopathy: A personality disorder characterized by boldness, meanness, and disinhibition, often leading to antisocial behavior

   1. Example: A manipulative individual who lacks guilt or remorse, yet appears charming and socially adept

2. Disinhibition: Impulsivity, weak self-control, and emotional dysregulation

   1. Example: Engaging in risky behaviors without considering consequences 

3. Boldness: Social confidence, fearlessness, and emotional resilience

   1. Example: Thriving in high-pressure leadership roles, such as firefighters or military officers

4. Meanness: Lack of empathy, callousness, and a tendency to exploit others

5. Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD): A behaviorally focused disorder emphasizing rule-breaking and impulsivity

Distinction from Psychopathy: ASPD lacks the interpersonal-affective traits central to psychopathy, such as charm and meanness

Modern Assessment Methods:

1. Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R):

   1. Developed by Hare (2003)

   2. Emphasizes interpersonal-affective traits (e.g., manipulation, lack of empathy) and antisocial behaviors

   3. Used in forensic settings; a score of 30+ indicates psychopathy

2. Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI):

   1. Focuses on two factors:

      1. Fearless Dominance (FD): Boldness, social confidence

      2. Self-Centered Impulsivity (SCI): Impulsivity, manipulativeness

3. Antisocial Process Screen Device (APSD):

   1. Used for children and adolescents

   2. Assesses callous-unemotional (CU) traits (low empathy) and impulsive/conduct problems

The Triarchic Model of Psychopathy

1. Disinhibition:

   1. Impulsivity, poor emotional regulation, and hostility

2. Boldness

   1. Confidence, fearlessness, and social dominance

3. Meanness: Callousness, lack of empathy, and cruelty

Causal Theories

1. Emotional deficits: Psychopathy arises from impaired emotional processing, such as reduced fear or empathy

2. Cognitive-Attentional Deficits: Psychopaths show reduced cognitive flexibility and impaired error monitoring

Evolutionary Perspectives: Traits like boldness and meanness may have evolved as adaptive strategies in specific contexts

Anger and the “Culture of Honor”

• Subcultural differences – the “Culture of Honor” in the Southern U.S.

• In response to insult, southerns displayed more anger, were more physiologically aroused, and gave stronger shocks to a confederate

• Southern and Northern men were made angry by getting bumped into in the hallway, and then the Southern men were more inclined to give longer and stronger shocks

Emotional Display Rules

• Compared Japanese and American students who were watching a film depicting a disgusting surgical procedure

• Japanese students were much less expressive (they maintained neutral expressions) than American students, but only when watching film in the presence of an authority figure

Emotional Reactivity and Culture

• Large body of findings: temperamental differences between Western Caucasian and East Asian infants

  • Asian infants are less irritable

  • Take longer to reach peak excitement

  • Grow accustomed to novel stimuli sooner

  • Better able to stop crying by themselves than Caucasian newborns

  • Caucasian infants show more rapid negative facial expressions

Russians and Negative Emotion

• Russians value negative emotion far more than Americans

• Report that a good life is one in which both kinds of emotion are experienced

It Benefits Animals to Cooperate

• Warning cries, grooming, food exchange

Prisoner’s Dilemma

• If both cooperate: They receive a light sentence.

• If one defects while the other cooperates: The defector goes free, and the cooperator gets a heavy sentence.

If both defect: They receive a moderate sentence.

Intrapersonal Functions of Emotion

Rapid Decision-Making: Emotions allow for quick, unconscious reactions to situations

• Example: Disgust prevents ingesting spoiled food, enhancing survival

• Related Research: Cosmides & Tooby (2000) described how emotions streamline decision-making in life-threatening situations

Preparation for Action: Emotions orchestrate physiological responses, such as increased heart rate during fear, to prepare the body for fight-or-flight

• Example: Fear redirects blood flow to muscles, expanding visual fields for quick responses

Influences on Thoughts: Emotions color memories and influence attitudes, values, and beliefs

• Example: Sadness can make negative memories more salient, while happiness brings positive recollections

Motivation for Future Behavior: Positive emotions encourage repeated behaviors, while negative emotions help avoid harmful actions

• Example: Feeling joy from success motivates striving for future

Interpersonal Functions for Emotions

Communication of Intentions: Emotional expressions (e.g., smiles, frowns) signal internal states to other, influencing their responses

• Example: a fearful face might prompt others to approach and provide support

Facilitation of Behavior in Others:

• Example: Observing an angry face can evoke avoidance behavior, while a distressed expression can elicit sympathy and aid

Signaling Relationship Quality:

• Example: contempt or disgust in marital interactions predicts dissatisfaction and potential divorce

Regulations of Social Interactions:

• Example: infants use social referencing by observing caregivers’ emotional expression to decide whether to approach or avoid situations

Social and Cultural Functions of Emotion

Transmissions of Cultural Norms:

• Worldviews: Cultures define ideal emotional experiences (e.g., happiness in Western cultures, serenity in Eastern cultures) and regulate emotional expression through norms

• Example: cultural display rules dictate that children in many Asian cultures suppress negative emotions like anger

Regulation of Behavior

• Emotions, moderated by cultural norms, promote socially appropriate behaviors

• Example: Norms like “big boys don’t cry” or smiling at authority figures help maintain social harmony

Avoidance of Social Chaos

• Emotions foster predictable behaviors, reducing societal unpredictability and facilitating group efficiency

• Example: Display rules help ensure constructive interactions in complex societies like cities

Applications and Insights

Survival and Adaptation

• The evolutionary role of emotions such as fear and disgust ensures physical safety

• Example: Disgust help avoid toxins, while fear prompts escape from predators

Social Bonding

• Emotions like joy and empathy enhance relationships and group cohesion

• Example: Smiling universally signals friendliness, promoting positive social interactions

Cultural Identity

• Shared emotional norms contribute to a group’s identity and cohesion

• Example: Emotional restraint in public reflects collective values in certain cultures, enhancing societal order

Conflict Resolution:

• Awareness of emotional expression can predict and mitigate interpersonal conflicts

• Example: Recognizing contempt in relationships can guide interventions to prevent marital breakdown

Part 2: Culture and Emotion

Historical Perspectives on Emotion and Culture

• Universalist View: emotions are biologically hardwired and universal, evolving from the survival needs of early humans

  • Example: Paul Ekman’s studies found that facial expressions of basic emotions (happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust) are recognized across cultures

  • Experiment: Ekman and Friesen’s Facial Action Coding Systems (FACS) demonstrated universal recognition of emotional expression, though recognition rates varied across cultures

• Socialist Constructivist View: Emotions are shaped by cultural norms and practices, varying significantly between groups

  • Example: The Ifaluk people view emotions as exchanges between individuals rather than internal events (Lutz, 1988)

Cultural Models of Self and Emotion

Cultural differences in emotion stem from dominant self-construals:

• Independent Self (North America):

  • Emphasizes individuality and personal goals

  • Encourages emotional expression to influence others

  • Example: Americans are more likely to describe themselves using psychological attributes like “friendly” or “cheerful”

• Interdependent Self (East Asia)

  • Emphasizes connectedness and group harmony

  • Encourages emotional suppression to adjust to others

  • Examples: Japanese people are more likely to describe themselves in terms of social roles like “daughter” or “student” (Cousins, 1989)

Cultural Influences on Emotional Responses

• Physiological Responses:

  • Similar across cultures (e.g., heart rates increases during emotional events).

  • Example: European Americans and Hmong Americans showed no difference in physiological arousal when reliving emotional episodes (Tsai et al., 2002)

• Facial Expressions

  • Vary significantly between cultures

  • Example: European Americans smile more intensely than Chinese Americans during positive events due to cultural norms emphasizing emotional expression

• Emotional Suppression

  • North America: Suppression is linked to negative psychological outcomes like depression

  • East Asia: Suppression aligns with cultural norms and has fewer adverse effects on well-being (Soto et al., 2011)

• Mixed Emotions During Positive Events

  • North America: Positive events rarely evoke negatives emotions

  • East Asia: Mixed emotions ar ecommon, reflecting a balance between positive

  • Example: East Asians may feel worry or guilt alongside joy, as seen in dialectical thinking patterns

Cultural Differences in Ideal Affect

• Ideal affect: the emotion states people value and strive to achieve

  • North America: High-arousal positive states (e.g., excitement, enthusiasm)

  • East Asia: Low-arousal positive states (e.g., calmness, peace)

  • Example: American children’s storybooks  feature more excited characters, while Taiwanese storybooks emphasize calmness

• Behavioral Implications:

  • Americans prefer thrilling activities like skydiving, while East Asians favors tranquil activities like lounging on the beach

Cultural Variations in Happiness and Well Being

• Self-Esteem vs. Relationship Harmony

  • North America: Happiness is strongly linked to self-esteem

  • East Asia: Happiness depends equally on self-esteem and relationship harmony (Kwan et al., 1997)

• Life satisfaction:

  • North America: Based on emotional states and individual experiences

  • East Asia: Balances personal emotions with societal norms (Suh et al., 1998)

Practical Implications of Cultural Differences in Emotion

• Cross-Cultural Communication

  • Misunderstandings can arise from differing emotional norms

  • Example: Asian Americans’ calm demeanor may be misinterpreted as disengagement in North American settings

• Psychological Inventions:

  • Recognizing cultural variations in ideal affect can inform mental health strategies

  • Example: Promoting calm states may enhancing happiness in cultures that value excitement (Chim)

Current Directions in Research

• Diverse Cultural Contexts:

  • Studies beyond North America and East Asia are needed to explore additional emotional dimensions and models

• Cultural Transmission

  • Cultural products like storybooks influence emotional ideals from a young age

  • Example: Story content impacts children’s preferences for high- or low-arousal states

• Temperament vs. Culture

  • Temperament shapes actual affect, while culture shapes ideal affect

  • Future research should explore how biological and cultural factors interact

Part 3: Mood Disorders

Types of Mood Disorders

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)

• Definition: Periods of at least two weeks characterized by feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and loss of interest or pleasure (anhedonia), among other symptoms

• Symptoms:

  • Depressed mood, fatigue, or low energy

  • Insomnia or hypersomnia

  • Significant weight changes

  • Feelings of worthlessness or guilt

  • Difficult concentrating

  • Recurrent thoughts of death or suicide

• Prevalence: Lifetime prevalence of 16.6% in the U.S., with higher rates in women and younger adults

• Examples: A person loses interest in activities they once enjoyed and feels persistently hopeless, affecting their work and relationships

Persistent Depressive Disorder (PDD)

• Definition: Chronic depressive symptoms lasting at least two years, with fewer acute symptoms than MDD but greater persistence

• Symptoms:

  • Low energy, poor concentration

  • Low self-esteem, feelings of hopelessness

Bipolar Disorders (BD)

• Definition: Mood disorders characterized by episodes of mania/hypomania and depression

  • Bipolar I Disorder: Defined by manic episodes, with or without depressive episodes

  • Bipolar II Disorder: Involves hypomanic and depressive episodes

  • Cyclothymic Disorder: Alternating periods of hypomania and mild depression for at least two years

• Symptoms of Mania:

  • Elevated self-esteem, decreased need for sleep

  • Racing thoughts, excessive talking

  • Risky behaviors (e.g., excessive spending, unprotected sex)

Prevalence: Lifetime prevalence of 4.4% globally, with higher rates in adolescents and young adults
Environmental Factors:

• Stressful Life Events:

  • Loss of relationships, unemployment, and trauma increase the risk for MDD and BD

• Early Adversity:

  • Childhood abuse or neglect correlates with higher risk

• Chronic Stress:

  • Poverty and marital dissatisfaction can exacerbate symptoms

• Social Stressors:

  • Life disruptions, such as travel or irregular sleep patterns can trigger manic or depressive episodes in BD (social zeitgeber theory)

Psychological Factors:

• Attribution Style:

  • Pessimistic thinking patterns (e.g., internal, global, stable attributions for negative events) contribute to MDD vulnerability

• Interpersonal dynamics:

  • People with mood disorders may generate interpersonal stress, exacerbating their symptoms

Treatments for Mood Disorders

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)

1. Medications:

   1. Antidepressants:

      1. Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors (MAOIs): Effective but with dietary restrictions and side effects

      2. Tricyclics: Treat vegetative symptoms but are cardiotoxic

      3. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) and Serotonin-Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors (SNRis): Fewer side effects, commonly prescribed

2. Biological Therapies

   1. Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): Induces seizures to treat severe, treatment resistant depression

   2. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS): Non-invasive magnetic pulses to stimulate the brain

   3. Deep Brain Stimulation: Implanted electrodes to regulate specific brain regions

3. Psychotherapies:

   1. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Addresses distorted thoughts and behaviors

   2. Interpersonal Therapy (IPT): Focuses on improving interpersonal relationships

   3. Behavioral Therapy: Encourages engaging in enjoyable activities

Bipolar Disorder (BD)

1. Pharmacotherapy:

   1. Lithium: First-line treatment stabilizing mood by regulating neurotransmitters

   2. Anticonvulsants: Often used alongside lithium for symptom management

2. Psychosocial Therapies:

   1. Interpersonal and Social Rhythm Therapy (IPSRT)

      1. Focuses on maintaining regular routines to stabilize circadian rhythms and prevent episode relapse

Key Studies and Experiments

• Social Zeitgeber Theory:

  • Stressors disrupting sleep and routines can trigger mood episodes in BD

  • Example: Travel disrupting sleep cycles leads to manic symptoms

• Attributional Style and Depression:

  • Internal, global, stable attributions for negative events increase MDD risk

Facial Action Coding System

• Identify facial muscle movement

• Specific combinations known to reflect a particular emotion

Shaping Behaviorism

• Positive reinforcement

  • A “reinforcer” is the thing that increases the behavior

  • Can be “primary” (e.g., food) or “secondary” (e.g., money)

• Negative reinforcement

  • Rewarding someone by removing a BAD thing (e.g., an umbrella stops the rain)

  • (do not ever forget this, please)

• Punishment

  • Negative consequences in response to an unwanted behavior

• Successive Approximation to Train Animals

• The Partial Reinforcement Effect

  • In order to have behaviors persist, put the organism on a less frequent schedule of rewards

• Schedules of Reinforcement

  • Fixed ratio reinforcement: reward after every n^th response

  • Variable ratio reinforcement: reward on average once in every n responses

  • Fixed interval reinforcement: reward after every y seconds (or minutes, or hours, etc.)

  • Variable interval reinforcement: reward once in every y seconds (or minutes, or hours, etc.)

The World As A Skinner Box

Variable interval reinforcement: like a slot machine

When You Only Need Once To Learn: Taste Aversion

• The “Garcia effect”

  • Garcia (1955) found that rats given sweetened water, then exposed to radiation (to induce nausea)

  • Rats avoided the sweet water after only one trial

• Organisms are biologically prepared to learn this association

  • Conscious awareness is not necessary

  • Sickness can occur hours later

  • Only some kinds of stimuli work (pairing nausea with tones or lights has no effect)

Operant/Instrumental Conditioning

• Simple but powerful concept: organisms learn the relationships between actions and rewards/punishments

  • Learning occurs as the organism changes its behavior (increases or decreases a response) as a function of the consequences that follow from their behavior

The ‘Law of Effect’

• Behaviors that are followed by a “satisfying state of affairs” tend to be repeated and those that produce an “unpleasant state of affairs” are less likely to be repeated

• Positive Reinforcement

  • A “reinforcer” is the thing that increases the behavior

  • Can be “primary” (e.g., food) or “secondary” (e.g., money)

• Negative reinforcement

  • Rewarding someone by removing a BAD thing (e.g., an umbrella stops the rain)

• Punishment

  • Negative consequences in response to an unwanted behavior

Classical conditioning (Pavlovian Learning)

• Definition: Learning to associate a neutral stimulus (Conditioned Stimulus, CS) with a significant stimulus (Unconditioned stimulus, US) to elicit a response

• Key terms:

  • Unconditioned stimulus (US): a stimulus that naturally elicits a response (e.g., food)

  • Unconditioned response (UR): a natural reaction to the US (e.g., salivation)

  • Conditioned stimulus (CS): a neutral stimulus that becomes associated with the US (e.g., bell)

  • Conditioned response (CR): the learned response to the CS (e.g., salivation at the bell)

  • Experiment: Pavlov’s dogs associated a bell (CS) with food (US), leading to salivation (CR) at the sound of the bell

Operant Conditioning (Instrumental Learning)

• Definition: learning based on the consequences of behavior, where behaviors are reinforced or punished

• Key Terms:

  • Reinforcer: increases the likelihood of a behavior (e.g., food reward)

  • Punisher: decreases the likelihood of a behavior (e.g., a penalty)

  • Discriminative stimulus: signals that a specific behavior will result in a certain consequence (e.g., traffic light for driving)

• Experiment: Skinner’s rat pressed a lever (behavior) to receive food (reinforcer)

Observational Learning

• Definition: Learning by observing the behaviors of others (social models) and their consequences

• Key components:

  • Attention: Observing the model

  • Retention: Remembering the behavior

  • Initiation: Reproducing the behavior

  • Motivation: Willingness to learn

• Experiment: Bandura’s Bobo doll study demonstrated children imitating aggressive behavior observed in adults

Related Experiments and Examples:

1. Classical conditioning

   1. Taste aversion: a person avoids a food after associating it with illness (CS: food, US: illness, CR: avoidance)

   2. Fear conditioning: a tone (CS) paired with a shock (US) causes fear (CR) in rats

2. Operant conditioning

   1. Reinforcer devaluation: rats avoided a lever associated with a reinforcer (sucrose) once it was paired with illness

   2. Stimulus control: a rat learns to press a lever only when a light is on (discriminative stimulus)

3. Observational Learning:

   1. Vicarious reinforcement: children imitated or avoided aggression toward Bobo based on whether the model was rewarded or punished

   2. Everyday example: a child learns to use utensils by watching parents at the dinner table

Applications and Integration

• Combining Classical and Operant Conditioning

  • Example: a smoker associates the sight of a cigarette (CS) with relaxation (US). Operant conditioning reinforces the behavior by rewarding it with stress relief

• Habit formation: classical cues (e.g., coffee aroma) combined with operant reinforcements (e.g., caffeine stimulation) lead to habitual coffee drinking

• Behavior modification

  • Extinction: gradually reducing a conditioned response by repeated presenting the CS without the US (e.g., bell without food)

Spontaneous recovery: a previously extinguished response reappears after a pause (e.g., fear of spiders after therapy)

Nature Vs. Nurture

• This is one of the first examples of the many heated debates in the field about how much of our psychological experience is innate, and how much is due to the environment

  • Nativism vs. empiricism

 Three Basic Forms of Learning

1. Habituation (non-associative)

   1. The decline in the tendency to respond to stimuli that are familiar due to repeated exposure

      1. E.g., clock ticking, traffic noise, trains

   2. This mechanism keeps us focusing on new objects and events

   3. It is an example of non-associative learning (o.e., it does not require the pairing of two different stimuli)

   4. Distinct from sensory adaptation (a fairly rigid neural mechanism in which cells no longer fire in response to the same stimuli)

2. Classical (Pavlovian) Conditioning (associative)

   1. The learning of an association based on repeated presentation of pair stimuli

   2. An unconditioned stimulus (US or UCS) such as food or shock that causes a reflexive response

   3. Paired with a neutral stimulus that does not normally cause a reflexive response, the Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

   4. After enough pairings, the Conditioned Stimulus (CS) cases the response without need for the unconditioned stimulus

   5. Repeated pairings of Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) and Conditioned Stimulus (CS) will give rise to a Conditioned Response (CR) with just the CS

      1. Requires optimal timing-right before (contiguous AND contingent)

   6. Extinction - if the CS occurs repeatedly in the absence of UCS, it will extinguish conditioned response

Stimulus generalization - stimuli that are similar to the CS will predictably cause the CR. The more dissimilar the less likely it will cause the CR

Can An Infant Learn Via Classical Conditioning?: The “Little Albert” Experiment

• In 1920, John Watson and Rosalie Rayner conducted an experiment on 9-month old “Albert”

• Goal: use classical conditioning to “teach” the infant a novel fear

• Evidence that what seems instinctual and innate–a fear response–is actually learned

• Watson – babies as blank slate (“tabula rasa”)

The Scope And Power of Classical Conditioning

• Crabs, fish, cockroaches, pigeons, rats, etc.

  • Cognitive behavioral therapy

• Humans

  • Fear

  • Hunger

  • Sex

“Lost in the Mall” Paradigm

• Therapists talk to college students with the permission of their parents

• Therapists tell college students that they were lost in the mall as a child and the college students would even say that it never happened to them

• Then when they came back two weeks ago, many of the college students would say that they did remember getting lost in the mall

Flash-Bulb Memories

• Asked individuals to report highly emotional events (80 participants)

• People reported having vivid, detailed memories of surprising and important events

• They typically remember:

  • Where they were

  • What was going on at the time

  • Who told them the news

  • How others felt

  • How they felt

  • What happened next

False Confessions

• About 25% of exonerated criminals actually confessed to their crimes

• Saul Kassin: false confession studies

  • Accuse subjects of pressing a computer key that they were instructed to avoid or accuse them of cheating on a task

  • Use a “bluff” technique–say that there is damning evidence when there is none

  • In one study, 43/71 participants confess to pressing the key (10% of those to an observer who has nothing to do with the study)

Stages of Memory

• Sensory Memory (like a “buffer”)

• Short-term memory (like RAM)

• Long-term Memory (kind-of permanent storage)

  • Episodic (what happened/autobiographical)

  • Semantic (facts, meanings)

Two Stage Mechanisms in Free Recall (1966), Glanzer and Cunitz

• Percentage recalled and position in sequence graph

• Memorizing a series of words

  • Primacy effect: initial items are stored in long-term memory more efficiently

  • Recently effect: last few items are still in working memory and are readily available

How To Get Something Into Long Term Memory

• Rehearsal

  • Serial position effect

• Mnemonic Strategies

  • Rhymes

  • Acronyms (e.g., Kings Play Chess on Fine Grain Sand)

  • Method of Loci (associating items with physical locations)

• Depth-of-Processing

  • Deep (semantic) processing leads to better memory than shallow processing

  • Word memorization study

    • Group asked to visualize what the word looks like memorized 15% of words

    • Group asked to memorize how the word sounds memorized 60% of words

    • Group asked to memorize what the word means memorized 90% of words 

Context Aids Memory

• Physical location

  • E.g., studying in same room as exam is taken

• Mood dependent memory

  • If you study in a good mood, they will remember better in a good mood

Context-Dependent Memory (Godden & Baddeley)

• Participants learn better when learning and testing context matched

When Memories Can’t Be Trusted

Deese-Roediger-Mcdermott Experimental Paradigm

• List of words that have to do with sleep

• People think that sleep was on the list

Memory is Malleable

• Loftus and Palmer (1974)

• Showed participants a videotape of a car accident and asked participants questions about their speed, but manipulated the way they were asked

Clive Wearing

• Example of an extreme amnesia and he only has a 7-30 second memory

• Anterograde amnesia: inability to form new memories after a certain point

Memory is the Processing of Information

Information processing model

1. Sensory input

2. Encoding: information is acquired and processed into neural code

3. Storage: information is stored in the brain

4. Retrieval: information is retrieved when it is needed

Atkinson and Shiffrin’s model

1. Sensory input

2. Sensory memory (like a “buffer”): unattended information is lost

3. Short term memory (like RAM): unrehearsed information is lost

4. Long term memory (permanent(ish) storage): information is lost over time

Without Attention, Memory Doesn’t Get Going

• Attention acts as a filter and a highlighter

  • We focus on certain information (at the expense of other information)

• This way, it gets information from sensory memory to short-term memory

Clive Wearing

• Example of an extreme amnesia and he only has a 7-30 second memory

• Anterograde amnesia: inability to form new memories after a certain point

Memory is the Processing of Information

Information processing model

1. Sensory input

2. Encoding: information is acquired and processed into neural code

3. Storage: information is stored in the brain

4. Retrieval: information is retrieved when it is needed

Atkinson and Shiffrin’s model

1. Sensory input

2. Sensory memory (like a “buffer”): unattended information is lost

3. Short term memory (like RAM): unrehearsed information is lost

4. Long term memory (permanent(ish) storage): information is lost over time

Without Attention, Memory Doesn’t Get Going

• Attention acts as a filter and a highlighter

  • We focus on certain information (at the expense of other information)

• This way, it gets information from sensory memory to short-term memory

The “Cocktail Party Effect”

• In the midst of a loud and noisy room, you are not attending to all conversations

• If your name is spoken, it “pops” out and captures your attention

Selective Attention

• Selective attention: the ability to select certain stimuli in the environment to process, while ignoring distracting information

Dichotic Listening Studies

• Dichotic listening and shadowing tasks: situation when two messages are presented simultaneously to an individual, with one message in each ear. In order to control which message the person attends to, the individual is asked to repeat back or “shadow” one of the messages as he hears it

• Humans can become good at shadowing tasks, but forget the ignored message—only able to recall basic physical characteristics of the speech (man or woman, etc.)

Models of Selective Attention

• Broadbent’s Filter Model: people select information on the basis of physical features: the sensory channel (or ear) that a message was coming in, the pitch of the voice, the color or font of a visual message. People are vaguely aware of the physical features of the unattended information, but had no knowledge of the meaning.

  • Broadbent argued that selection occurs very early, with no additional processing for the unselected information

• Treisman’s Attenuation Model: selection starts at the physical or perceptual level, but that the unattended information is not blocked completely, it is just weakened or attenuated. As a result, highly meaningful or pertinent information in the unattended ear will get through the filter for further processing at the level of meaning.

  • No filter that completely blocks unattended information, but attenuation control focuses on the most meaningful information

Late Selection Models

• Alate selection or response selection model proposed by Deustch and Deustch (1963) suggests that all information in the unattended ear is processed on the basis of meaning, not just the selected or highly pertinent information. However, only the information that is relevant for the task response gets into conscious awareness.

Multimode model

• Suggests that the stage at which selection occurs can change depending on the task

• Johnson and Heinz (1978) demonstrated that under some conditions we can select what to attend to at a very early stage and we do not process the content of the unattended message very much at all

Subliminal perception

• The idea that stimuli presented below the threshold for awareness can influence thoughts, feelings or actions

  • Unclear if it is a valid phenomenon

Divided Attention and Multitasking

Divided Attention Tasks

• Each task is evaluated separately in order to determine baseline performance when the individual can allocate as many cognitive resources as necessary to one task at a time

• Then performance is evaluated when the two tasks are performed simultaneously

• Study showed that some participants who had received sufficient practice could learn to take dictation for lists of words and read for comprehension without affecting performance in either task

Distracted Driving

• It is the cognitive demands on our limited capacity systems can seriously impair driving performance

• Only 2% of people can truly perform cognitive tasks without impairing their driving performance

• Cognitive distractions such as cell phone conversations can produce inattentional blindness, or a lack of awareness of what is right before your eyes

Part 2 – Failures of Awareness: The Case of Inattentional Blindness

Inattentional Blindness

• The failure to notice a visible but unexpected object or event when focusing attention on something else. This occurs because attention has limited capacity and filters out non-relevant information.

• Example: Missing a woman in a gorilla suit walking through a scene while counting basketball passes

Focused Attention

• The cognitive process of concentrating on one task or stimulus while ignoring others. This enables efficient processing of relevant information but limits awareness of peripheral stimuli

Cognitive Deafness

• A phenomenon similar to inattentional blindness but in the auditory domain where individuals fail to notice sounds or changes in sound while focusing on a specific auditory task

Multitasking Myth

• The idea that multitasking involves simultaneous attention to multiple tasks. Research suggests it is actually rapid task-switching, which reduces efficiency and increasing inattentional blindness

Dichotic Listening

• A method used to study selective attention, where participants listen to two different audio streams in each ear and focus on one. Results demonstrate that people often miss significant changes in the ignored stream

Attention as a Limited Resource

• Attention can only focus on a finite amount of information at a time. More demanding tasks consume more cognitive resources, increasing the likelihood of inattentional blindness

Evolutionary Perspective

• Focused attention may have been advantageous for survival, prioritizing important stimuli while ignoring rare or less immediately relevant events

Counterintuitive Nature

• Most people overestimate their ability to notice unexpected events and underestimate the effects of distractions, leading to risky behaviors like texting and driving

Part 3: Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval)

• Types of memory:

  • Working memory: Short-term memory used to hold and manipulate information temporarily. Example: multiplying 24 x 16 in your head.

  • Episodic memory: memory of specific life events or experiences: Example: recalling last birthday party

  • Semantic memory: knowledge of facts and concepts. Example: knowing that Paris is the capital of France

  • Collective memory: shared memories within a group. Example: a town’s shared remembrance of a local festival

• Memory processes

  • Encoding: the initial learning of information by perceiving and organizing it. Example: linking a new fact to prior knowledge

  • Storage: maintained encoded information over time, forming memory traces or engrams in the brain

  • Retrieval: accessing stored information when needed. Example: remembering a friend’s name after seeing their face

• Enhancing memory:

  • Mnemonic Devices: memory aids that create associations to facilitate recall

  • Distinctiveness: unusual or unique events are easier to remember

  • Recoding: transforming information into a more memorable format. Example: using acronyms like ROY G BIV for rainbow colors

  • Encoding specificity principle: retrieval is more effective when cues match how the information was coded. Example: studying and testing in the same environment improves recall

Related experiments:

1. Working memory and digit span:

   1. Experiment: Simon Reinhard memorized long sequences of digits using memory techniques, showcasing how mnemonic strategies can expand working memory

   2. Takeaway: Working memory capacity can be increased with practice and deliberate encoding techniques

2. False Memories (DRM/Deese-Roediger-McDermott Effect)

   1. Experiment: Participants falsely recalled related but unpresented words from a list. Example: mistaking “window” as part of a list that included related words like “door” and “pane”

   2. Takeaway: memory is reconstructive, and errors can occur during encoding and retrieval

Concepts in use:

• Flashbulb memories: remembering where you were when you heard about a major historical event (e.g., 9/11). These memories are vivid but not always accurate

• Proactive and retroactive interference:

  • Proactive example: struggling to learn a new language due to interference from native language grammar

Retroactive example: forgetting details of an older memory (a lunch from 17 days ago) due to more recent lunches

Key Definitions and Concepts

• Eyewitness Testimony

  • A legal account where a witness recalls details of a crime or significant event

  • Persuasive in court but prone to inaccuracies due to memory distortions

• Misinformation effect

  • The alteration of memory due to misleading information presented after the event

  • Experiment: Lotus (1978) demonstrated this with a study where participants incorrectly remembered a yield sign instead of a stop sign after being misled

  • Example: an eyewitness recalls seeing a weapon after being asked leading questions about it, even if no weapon was present

• Memory biases:

  • Systematic errors in memory influenced by expectations, beliefs, or external information

  • Schema consistency: remembering a generic “library” scene rather that its actual specifics

  • Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT): difficult retrieving a name or fact that feels just out of reach

• False memories:

  • Recollections of events that never occurs

  • Loftus & Pickrell (1995): participants believed they were lost in a mall as children after hearing a fabricated story

  • Wade et al. (2002): subjects falsely recalled a hot air balloon ride after seeing doctored photos

• Identifications errors:

  • Mistakes made when witnesses identify perpetrators from lineups or photo spreads

  • Factors influencing errors:

    • Poor visibility, stress, and delays between the event and identification

    • Cross-race identification is notably less accurate

• Co-Witness Contamination:

  • Gabert et al. (2004) showed that co-witness discussions reduced accuracy due to shared false memories

Implications and Recommendations

1. Avoid leading questions and ensure neutrality in phrasing

2. Use double-blind methods where the lineup administrator does not know the suspect

3. Inform jurors and legal professionals about memory limitations and biases

4. Minimize co-witness discussions to prevent memory contamination

Lecture 13: Freud & Attention and Memory

Freud’s 5 Stages of Psychosexual Development

• Oral (0-1 year old)

• Anal (1-3 years old)

• Phallic (3-5 years old)

• Latent (5-puberty)

• Genital (puberty on)

“Structural” Theory of the Mind

• Id: Irrational, pleasure-seeking part of the mind – unconscious desires

• Ego: Mediates between the id and the superego – partially conscious and unconscious

• Superego: moral standards and ideals acquired from parents and society

Phallic Stage (3-5 years)

• Focus of pleasure shifts to the genitals

• Oedius complex in boys of Electra complex (a term coined by Jung) in girls

• Fixation can lead to lead to excessive masculinity in males and the need for attention or domination in females (Freud thought girls had “penis envy”)

Oedipus Complex

• Child fears castration, so Dad wins

• Freud used to think that this was a key part of a boys moral development; girls did not have this same development process and were less morally developed

  • The Oedipus Complex is led by the id, the Mom is the source of bodily pleasure for children

Latency Stage (5-Puberty)

• Sexuality is repressed

• Children participate in hobbies, school and same-sex friendships, and derives pleasure from those

Genital Stage (Puberty On)

• Sexual feelings re-emerge and are oriented toward others

• Sexuality is consensual and adult, rather than solitary and infantile

• Healthy adults find pleasure in love and work

• Fixated adults have their energy tied up in earlier stages

• Sublimation: shifting to activities that are valued by society

• Displacement: redirection of shameful thoughts to more “appropriate” targets (e.g, “kicking the dog” after an argument with the boss).

• Projection: reducing anxiety by attributing unacceptable impulse to someone else

  • Ex. Closeted gay person acts homophobic to others

• Rationalization/Intellectualization: reasoning away anxiety-producing thoughts

• Regression: retreating to a mode of behavior characteristic of an earlier stage of development

  • Ex. New baby makes the older sibling start acting childish

• Reaction formation: replacing threatening wishes and fantasies with their opposites

  • Ex. Closeted gay man has five kids and two marriages because he’s trying so hard to prove to himself that he’s straight

Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) is a rare ability that allows people to remember almost every event of their life with great precision.

Lasting contributions

• The unconscious mind

• Basic, often hidden, motivations influence all aspects of psychology

• The importance of early childhood development

• Willingness to discuss pleasure and sexuality (broadly defined)

“Structural” Theory of Mind

• Id - “dumb,” driven by instinct, present from birth

  • Does not distinguish between reality and fantasy

  • Operates according to the pleasure principle (instinctual force to seek pleasure)

• Ego - develops out of the id in infancy

  • Understands reality and logic

  • Mediator between id and superego

• Superego

  • Internalization of society’s moral standards

  • Responsible for guilt

5 Stages of Psychosexual development

• Infant is all “Id”

• Each developmental stage characterized by the primary source of pleasure

• An individual can become fixated on a stage if pleasure is unsatisfied, and this can lead to adult neurosis

  • An attempt to achieve pleasure as an adult in ways that are equivalent to how it was achieved in these stages

Oral Stage (Birth - 1 Year)

• Mouth is associated with sexual pleasure

• Weaning child can lead to fixation if not handled correctly

• Fixation can lead to a personality characterized by passivity, gullibility, immaturity, and unrealistic optimism

Anal Stage (1-3 Years)

• Anus is associated with pleasure

• Toilet training can lead to fixation if not handled correctly

• Fixation can lead to retentive and expulsive behaviors in adulthood, or a personality characterized by compulsiveness such as a person too concerned with neatness and order

Low Awareness

• Some cues, or significant sensory information, will automatically elicit a response from us even though we never consciously perceive it

  • Example: subtle variations in sweating of participants with a fear of snakes when presented with pictures too fast to consciously understand

• Our brain perceive some stimuli without our conscious awareness

• Priming studies and replication – some of these priming studies have been very hard to replicate in practice

• Priming: readily “activating” certain concepts and associations from one’s memory

  • Example: priming people by having them drink from a warm glass (vs. a cold one) resulted in behaving more “warmly” toward others

• Implicit associations test: research method that uses computers to assess people’s reaction times to various stimuli and is a very difficult test to fake because it records automatic reactions that occur in milliseconds

High Awareness

• Mindfulness: higher consciousness that includes an awareness of the thoughts passing through one’s head

• The less humans are paying attention, the more likely we are to be influenced by unconscious stimuli

• Flexible Correction Model: people who are aware that their thoughts or behavior are being influenced by an undue, outside source, can correct their attitude against the bias

  • Low awareness saves mental effort compared to high awareness

  • High awareness can overcome some biases

Hypnosis

• Hypnosis: a mental state characterized by reduced peripheral awareness and increased focus on a singular stimulus, which results in an enhanced susceptibility to suggestion

• Dissociation: the separation of one’s awareness from everything besides what one is centrally focused on

• During hypnosis, the dissociation becomes extreme. A person concentrates so much on the words of the hypnotist that they lose perspective of the rest of the world around them

• Trance states: also involve a dissociation of the self

Sleep

• Melatonin: a sleep hormone that increases at night

• Circadian Rhythm: natural daily rhythm of sleep

  • Can be influenced by the amount of daylight to which you are exposed as well as your work and activity schedule

• Beta waves: marks brain activity when awake and alert. High in frequency but low in intensity

• Alpha waves: marks brain activity when relaxed. More consistent and more intense

• Stage 1 (NREM 1 or N1): “falling asleep” stage and is marked by theta waves

• Stage 2 (called NREM 2 or N2): light sleep. Occasional “sleep spindles” or very high intensity brain waves are thought to be associated with the processing of memories. NREM 2 makes up about 55% of all sleep

• Stage 3 (called NREM 3, or N3): makes up between 20-25% of all sleep and is marked by greater muscle relaxation and the appearance of delta waves

• REM (Rapid Eye Movement)  sleep: similar to wakefulness in terms of brain activity—brain waves occur less intensely than in other stages of sleep. REM sleep accounts for about 20% of all sleep and is associated with dreaming

Psychoactive Drugs

• Three types: hallucinogens, depressants, and stimulants

• Hallucinogens: substances that alter a person’s perceptions, often by creating visions or hallucinations that are not real

  • Examples: marijuana, LSD, and MDMA

• Depressants: slow down the body’s physiology and mental processes

  • Example: Alcohol, opiates (“narcotics”)

  • Alcohol’s psychological effects are the result of it increasing the neurotransmitter GABA

• Stimulants: substances that “speed up” the body’s physiological and mental processes

  • Example: caffeine and nicotine

Sensation: the physical process during which our sensory organs respond to external stimuli

Transduction: the conversion of one form of energy into another. Physical energy such as light or a sound wave is converted into a form of energy the brain can understand: electrical stimulation

Perception: the psychological process of making sense of the stimuli

Absolute threshold: the smallest amount of stimulation needed for detection by a sense

Signal detection: process involving presenting stimuli of varying intensities to a research participant in order to determine the level at which he or she can reliably detect stimulation in a given sense

Method of limits test: effort to determine the point, or threshold, at which a person begins to hear a stimulus

• Can be done in descending or ascending trials

Differential threshold or just noticeable difference (JND): ability to detect the difference between two stimuli of different intensities

Weber’s Law: the idea that bigger stimuli require larger differences to be noticed

• Example: harder to tell the difference between 10 and 11 lbs than it is to tell the difference between 1 and 2 lbs

Bottom-up processing: when we build up to a perception from the individual pieces

Top-down processing: stimuli we’ve experienced in the past will influence how we process new ones

Sensory adaptation: if a stimulus does not change, our receptors quit responding to it

Vision

• Light enters the eye through the pupil, a tiny opening behind the cornea. The pupil regulates the amount of light entering the eye by contracting (getting smaller) in bright light and dilating (getting larger) in dimmer light

• Once past the pupil, light passes through the lens, which focuses an image on a thin layer of cells in the back of the eye, called the retina

• Binocular vision: the two eyes in different locations, the image focused on each retina is from a slightly different angle (binocular disparity), providing us with our perception of 3D space

• It is in the retina that light is transduced, or converted into electrical signals, by specialized cells called photoreceptors (rods and cones)

  • Rods: primarily responsible for our ability to see in dim light conditions, such as during the night

  • Cones: provide us with the ability to see color and fine detail when the light is brighter

• Visual pathway: retina → optic nerve → thalamus → primary visual cortex

  • Some of these cortical regions are specialized

Dark and light adaptation

• Dark adaptation: the adjustment of eye levels to low light

  • Our rods become bleached in normal light conditions and require time to recover

• Light adaptation: the adjustment of eye levels to high light

  • A large number of rods and cones are bleached at once, causing us to be blinded for a few seconds

Color vision

• Trichromatic theory: we have cones that respond preferentially, not exclusively, for red, green, and blue

• Opponent-process theory: our cones send information to retinal ganglion cells that respond to pairs of colors (red-green, blue yellow, black-white)

  • These specialized cells take information from the cones and compute the difference between the two colors—a process that explains why we cannot see reddish-green or bluish-yellow

Hearing (Audition)

• Amplitude of a sound wave codes for the loudness of a stimulus

• The pitch of a stimulus in coded in the frequency of a sound wave

• Auditory pathways: pinna (external part of ear) → auditory canal (Q-tip hole) → tympanic membrane (eardrum) → vibrates against three smallest bones in the body, hammer, anvil, and stirrup (collectively called the ossicles

• The eardrum and ossicles amplify the sound waves before they enter the fluid-filled cochlea

Touch

• Somatosensation: includes our ability to sense touch, temperature and pain—transduces physical stimuli, such as fuzzy velvet or scalding water, into electrical potentials that can be processed by the brain

• Tactile stimuli (those associated with texture) are transduced by special receptors in the skin called mechanoreceptors

Phantom limbs: sensations such as itching seemingly coming from their missing limb

• Phantom limb pain: described as the muscles of the missing limb uncomfortably clenching

Smell and Taste: The Chemical Senses

• Both olfaction (smell) and gustation (taste) require the transduction of chemical stimuli into electrical potentials

Olfaction

• Odorants in our environment bind with olfactory receptors found in the olfactory epithelium

Gustation (taste)

• Taste receptor cells: taste buds

• Taste buds are not the bumps on your tongue, but are located in small divots around these bumps

Multimodal perception: information from one sense has the potential to influence how we perceive information to another

• Superadditive effect of multisensory integration: humans respond more strongly to multimodal stimuli compared to the sum of each single modality together

• Principle of inverse effectiveness: you are less likely to benefit from additional cues from other modalities if the initial unimodal stimulus is strong enough

Stages Of Sleep

• Stage 1: brief transition stage when first falling asleep (hypnagogia)

• Stage 2 through ¾: (slow-wave sleep)

  • Successively deeper stages of sleep

  • Characterized by an increasing percentage of slow, irregular, high-amplitude delta waves

• Cycle back:

  • Upon reaching stage ¾ and after about 80 to 100 minutes of total sleep time, sleep lightens, returns through stages 2

• REM sleep:

  • Characterized by EEG patterns that resemble beta waves of alert wakefulness

  • Muscles most relaxed

  • Rapid eye movements occur

  • Dreams occur

  • Four or five sleep cycles occur in a typical night’s sleep (70-110 mins/cycle)

Brain Waves During Stages Of Sleep

Hypnagogia

• The transition from sleep to wakefulness

• Can include vivid hallucinations, thoughts, and dreams

• For some, can include sleep paralysis

Lucid Dreaming

• Awareness that you are dreaming, while you are dreaming

• Scientific studies demonstrate the ability to communicate between dreamer and external observers

Sleep Changes Function Over Function

• Before the age of 2 or 3 years, the human brain grows very rapidly

  • During REM sleep, is busy building and strengthening synapses

• After 2 or 3 years, however, sleep’s primary purpose switches from brain building to brain maintenance and repair

Why Do We Sleep?

• Conservation

  • Perhaps we sleep to save energy/calories?

  • But comparing energy use from sleep to wake shows that there is little gained

• Restoration

  • Yes–evidence that body is recuperating at a genetic level

• Memory consolidation/neural synthesis

  • Connections that are important are linked, strengthened

  • We do better at memory tasks when we “sleep on it”

  • We are more creative when rested

How Much Sleep Do We Need?

• Newborns: About 16 Hours

• 6 year-olds: about 11/12 hours

• Adults: ~8 hours

Sleep Disorders

• Insomnia: difficulty in falling or staying asleep

• Sleep Apnea: a disorder in which the person stops breathing for brief periods while asleep

• Narcolepsy: a disorder in which sudden sleep attacks occur in the middle of waking activities

• Sleep Paralysis: the experience of waking up unable to move

What is Sleep Paralysis?

• Sleep paralysis is identified by a brief loss of muscle control just after falling asleep or waking uo. 75% of sleep paralysis episodes involve hallucinations

  • Intruder hallucinations: involves the perception of a dangerous person or presence in the room

  • Vestibular-Motor (V-M) Hallucinations: including feelings of movement or out-of-body sensations

  • Chest Pressure Hallucinations: incites a feeling of suffocation

Sleep Disorders

• Sleep paralysis: the experience of waking up unable to  move

• Night terrors: abrupt awakenings with panic and intense emotional arousal

  • It is a non-REM parasomnia, occuring during slow wave sleep

• Somnambulism (sleep walking)

  • Also a non-REM parasomnia (2-14% of children)

• REM Behavior Disorder (RBD)

  • Disorder in which people act out their dreams

Binocular Rivalry

• Presenting two different images to each eye

• Do not see a blend of both images, but instead see only one or the other

• Balcetis, Dunning and Granot (2012)

  • Participants were told that they will play a game in which they will receive a reward depending on what pops-up in the screen (a number or a letter)

  • They were then presented binocular images

  • More likely to see a winning category

Circadian Rhythms

• Rhythmic cycles corresponding to roughly 24-hour period

• Circadian rhythms are endogenous

• Circa (“about”) dies (“day”)

  • (“about” is right: humans tend to have cycles that are slightly longer than 24-hours)

  • People sequestered without clocks or windows go to bed a bit later and wake up a bit later each day

• Electroencephalogram (EEG)

  • Electrodes placed on the scalp provide a gross record of the electrical activity of the brain

  • EEG recordings are a rough index of psychological states

Stages of Sleep

• Stage 1

  • Brief transition stage when first falling asleep (hypnagogia)

• Stage 2 through 3 and 4 (slow-wave sleep)

  • Successively deeper stages of sleep

  • Characterized by an increasing percentage of slow, irregular, high-amplitude delta waves

• Cycle back

  • Upon reaching stage 3 and 4 and after about 80 to 100 minutes of total sleep time, sleep lightens, returns through stages 2

• REM sleep

  • Characterized by EEG patterns that resemble beta waves of alert wakefulness

  • Muscles most relaxed

  • Rapid eye movements occur

  • Dreams occur

  • Four or five sleep cycles occur in a typical night’s sleep (70-110 mins/cycle)

The Building Blocks Of The Mind

• Sensation - acquiring basic/raw information about the world through the five senses

• Perception - making sense of the information, changing it into something useful

  • Many scientists that study perception are focus on visual perception

Binocular Depth Cues

• Binocular disparity: images giving slightly different info to each eye, gives depth

• Convergence: at close distances, how much your eye is “crossed” gives the brain info about depth

Monocular Depth Cues

• Ponzo illusion: a visual illusion that makes two parallel lines of equal length appear to be different length

• Motion parallax: objects farther in the back look like they are moving slower when

Muller-Lyer Illusion

• Perceptual psychologists have hypothesized that the top horizontal line looks longer because t also looks farther away

• Specifically, the inward pointing arrows signify that the horizontal line is closest to you, and the outward pointing arrows signify the opposite case

“Top-Down” Vs “Bottom-Up”

• Higher cognitive processes: language, thought, judgment, beliefs, desires, etc.

• Lower cognitive processes: sensation, perception, attention

  • Generally the interaction/influence is seen as bottom-up (e.g., sensations and perceptions → judgments and beliefs)

• Might there be top-down influences on perception?

  • Can what you see be influenced by what you believe? What you WANT to believe?

Do We All See The Same Colors?: Research On Linguistic Relativity And Color

• Linguistic relativity: the view that the language we speak constrains our perception and cognition (Also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis)

  • E.g., if your language doesn;t have a word for the color green, you don’t see the color green

  • This would be A “Top Down” Effect

    • An example of a “higher” process affecting a lower level process

• Basic Color Universals – Berlin and Kay (1969)

  • All languages contain terms for black and white

  • If a language contains three terms, then it contains a term for red

  • If a language contains four terms, then it contains a term for either green or yellow (but not both)

  • If a language contains five terms, then it contains terms for both green and yellow

  • If a language contains six terms, then it contains a term for blue

• What Do We Know?

  • Linguistic color categories shape a great deal of “color cognition”

    • Memory, leaning, and discrimination

  • But there appear to be clear basic universals in perception

    • Infants and individuals from cultures with only terms for :light” and “dark,” are able to tell the difference between “Focal” colors (i.e., basic red, green, blue, yellow, etc.)

The McGurk effect: perceptual illusion where what you see someone saying visually can influence what you hear them saying auditorily, causing you to perceive a third sounds that is a combination of the visual and auditory information, essentially “mixing” the two sounds together

• It demonstrates how our brain integrates information from both sight and sound when processing speech

Gestalt properties of object perception

1. Law of Similarity: The law of similarity states that similar things tend to appear grouped together. Grouping can occur in both auditory and visual stimuli.

2. Law of Prägnanz (The Law of Simplicity): This law holds that when you’re presented with a set of ambiguous or complex objects, your brain will make them appear as simple as possible.

   1. Example: Olympic logo – when you look at the logo, you see overlapping circles rather than an assortment of curved, connected lines

3. Law of Proximity: things that are close together seem more related than things that are spaced farther apart. Put another way, when objects are close to each other, we also tend to group them together

4. Law of Continuity: holds that points that are connected by straight or curving lines are seen in a way that follows the smoothest path. In other words, elements in a line or curve seem more related to one another than those positioned randomly

5. Law of Closure: we perceive elements as belonging to the same group if they seem to complete some entity. Our brains often ignore contradictory information and fill in gaps in information. 

Law of Common Region: when elements are located in the same closed region, we perceive them as belonging to the same group.

Part 1: The Nervous System

Evolution of the Nervous System

• The nervous system’s complexity has developed over millions of years, showing both conserved and advanced behaviors across species

• Key points:

  • Basic behaviors like neuron responses are conserved across species

  • Higher complexity in brain structure correlates with advanced behaviors (e.g., tool use in Homo habilis vs. space travel in Homo sapiens).

  • Evolutionary forces like natural selection and sexual selection have driven these changes

Development of the Nervous System

• The nervous system develops from embryonic tissues and follows a predictable pattern

• Key processes:

  • Formation of the neural tube, which later differentiates into the brain and spinal cord

  • Development of neuroblasts, which form neurons and glial cells

  • Conditions like spina bifida arise from improper closure of the neural tube

Structure of the Nervous System

• Peripheral Nervous System (PNS)

  • Components:

  • Somatic nervous system: controls voluntary movements via cranial and spinal nerves

  • Autonomic nervous system: regulates involuntary actions through:

    • Sympathetic system: activates fight-or-flight responses

    • Parasympathetic system: promotes rest-and-digest activities

• Central Nervous System (CNS)

  • Components:

  • Forebrain: includes the cerebral cortex, which houses:

    • Frontal lobe: motor control, decision-making, language (e.g., Broca’s area)

    • Parietal lobe: sensory processing (e.g., somatosensory cortex)

    • Temporal lobe: auditory processing, language comprehension (e.g., Wernicke’s area)

    • Occipital lobe: visual processing

  • Midbrain: processes sensory information (e.g., colliculi for vision and hearing)

  • Hindbrain: controls vital functions like breathing (medulla) and coordination (cerebellum)

  • Spinal cord: transmits sensory and motor signals between the brain and body

Techniques for Studying the Nervous System

• Anatomical methods

  • Microscopy: observing neurons and synapses at high resolution

  • Immunocytochemistry: identifying specific neuron types using staining

• Physiological techniques

  • Lesion studies: observing behavioral changes after damage

  • Electrophysiology: Recording electrical activity of single neurons

  • Electroencephalography (EEG): Monitoring large-scale brain activity

• Imaging Techniques

  • CT Scans: 3D brain imaging using X-rays (low resolution)

  • MRI: high-resolution brain imaging using magnetic fields

  • PET Scans: functional imaging using radiolabeled glucose analogs (invasive)

  • fMRI: functional imaging based on blood flow changes (non-invasive)

Part 2: The Brain

Anatomy of the Brain (brain stem, cerebellum, and cerebral hemispheres)

Brain Stem

• Definition: known as the “trunk” of the brain, it regulates essential life-sustaining functions like respiration, heart rate, and digestion

• Key structures:

  • Medulla: controls autonomic functions like breathing

  • Pons: facilitates communication between different parts of the brain

  • Midbrain: processes auditory and visual reflexes

  • Diencephalon (thalamus and hypothalamus): handles sensory relay and hormonal regulation

Cerebellum

• Definition: located at the back of the brain, the cerebellum coordinates movement, posture, and balance. It also plays a role in cognitive functions like language

Cerebral hemispheres

• Definition: the largest part of the brain, responsible for cognitive abilities and conscious experience

• Subdivisions:

  • Occipital lobe: visual processing

  • Temporal lobe: auditory processing, memory, and multisensory integration

  • Parietal lobe: somatosensory processing and spatial attention

  • Frontal lobe: motor planning, decision-making, and language production

• Subcortical structures:

  • Basal ganglia: control voluntary movements

  • Amygdala: emotion processing

  • Hippocampus: memory function

Gray vs. White Matter

• Gray matter: composed of neuronal cell bodies (responsible for metabolism and protein synthesis). Found on the brain’s outer surface

• White matter: consists of myelinated axons (facilitating communication between neurons). Found beneath gray matter

Split-Brain Patients

• Individuals with severed corpus callosum, the bundle connecting the two hemispheres

  • Each hemisphere processes information independently

  • The left hemisphere is dominant in language, while the right handles spatial tasks

• Experiment: split-brain patients may verbally deny seeing an object in their left visual field (processed by the right hemisphere), but can identify it using their left hand

Studying the Brain: Methods

Neuroanatomy:

• Dissection: provide a detailed view of brain structures and changes due to disease

• MRI and CT scans: offer high spatial resolution to map brain anatomy and detect abnormalities

Neurostimulation:

• Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS):

  • Uses magnetic pulses to interfere with neuronal communication

  • Provides good temporal resolution but limited to surface-level studies

• Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS):

  • Uses electrical currents for prolonged stimulation

  • Enhances cognitive functions like memory and attention

Neuroimaging:

• Positron Emission Tomography (PET):

  • Tracks blood flow using radioactive tracers

  • Good spatial but poor temporal resolution

• Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI):

  • Measures oxygen levels in the blood to identify active brain regions

  • Provides high spatial resolution but low temporal resolution

• Electroencephalography (EEG):

  • Records electrical activity from the scalp

  • Excellent temporal resolution but poor spatial resolution

• Diffuse Optical Imaging (DOI):

  • Uses infrared light to measure brain activity

  • Can achieve high spatial and temporal resolution depending on the set up

Temporal and Spatial Resolution

• Temporal Resolution: Indicates the precision of a method in measuring when brain activity occurs (e.g., EEG).

Spatial Resolution: Indicates the precision in identifying where brain activity occurs (e.g., MRI, fMRI).

• The case of visual perception: Our mind makes certain assumptions about the environment to help us see accurately despite having limited data to work with

• Are My Sensations the Same as Yours?

  • Women versus men: women see more colors than men

  • Taste is clearly person-dependent

    • “Supertasters” are more likely to have approximately 35 to 60 taste buds per six-millimeter section

    • “Tasters”: Average tasters make up approximately 50% of the population. They have about 15 to 35 taste buds per section. 

    • “Non-Tasters”: 15 or fewer taste buds per six-millimeter section.

• Neurons

  • About 86,000,000,000 neurons

  • Sensory (afferent) neurons, motor (efferent) neurons

  • Characterized by all-or-nothing response – they either fire or they do not

  Intensity: expressed through the number of neurons firing and the frequency of firing

• Neurons receive signals through dendrites

• Neuron axons send signals to other neurons

Neurotransmitters:

• Chemical messengers that send signals across neurons

• Chemicals made in the cell body, and when transmitted to a second neuron…

• Makes it more likely for next neuron to fire (excitatory) or less likely (inhibitory)

A Few Important Neurotransmitters

• Acetylcholine

  • Excitatory–stimulates muscle movement, plays a role in memory, arousal, attention, mood (alezheimer’s is associated with low levels of acetylcholine)

• Dopamine

  • One of a group of neurotransmitters called monoamines. Produces both excitatory and inhibitory effects and is involved in several functions, including learning, attention, and movement

  • Important for reinforcement learning

  • Implicated in motivation and addiction

  • Pleasure system in human brain

  • Motivated Rats: Direct Brain Stimulation Of The “Reward System” (Olds & Milner, 1954)

    • Rats able to press a lever that would send a weak electrical signal to their brain that would trigger their reward system; the rats would stop eating, drinking, and doing other essential tasks for life

• Serotonin

  • Plays an important role in regulating mood, sleep, impulsivity, aggression, and appetite

• Norepinephrine/noradrenaline

  • Affects eating habits (it stimulates the intake of carbohydrates) and plays a major role in alertness and wakefulness, and fight-or-flight (drugs such as beta blockers for anxiety target norepinephrine)

• GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid)

  • Is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain (low GABA linked to generalized anxiety disorder)

• Endorphins

  • Relief from pain or the stress of vigorous exercise and produce feelings of pleasure and well-being (responsible for pleasure of sex/orgasm, eating appetizing foods, etc.); implicated in ‘liking’

How Drugs Affect Neurotransmitters

• Many drugs act by influencing the action of neurotransmitters in a number of ways (as agonists or antagonists):

  • Influence the chemical precursors of a transmitter substance

  • Prevent the storage of the transmitter substance in vesicles

  • Inhibit or stimulate the release of the transmitter substance

  • Block postsynaptic receptors

  • Block reuptake of free-floating transmitter substance

Reuptake: the process of reabsorbing neurotransmitters after they have been released and transmitted a neural impulse

• Amphetamines: prevent reuptake of neurotransmitters, increase the amount of neurotransmitter floating around in a cell

Example: Dopamine, drugs, And Disease

• We know that cocaine and amphetamines act by boosting dopamine. Some hypothetical examples to illustrate their action…

  • Been doing crystal meth for a week straight? That much dopamine-boosting and you’ll get amphetamine psychosis (delusions and hallucinations)

  • Didn’t touch the crystal meth, but still having delusions and hallucinations? Schizophrenia can be improved by the use of drugs that reduce dopamine

  • But don’t go too far… Not enough dopamine and you might get tardive dyskinesia (uncontrollable bodily movements-twitching and shaking)

Having uncontrollable bodily movement but you didn’t take dopamine-reducing drugs? Parkinson’s Disease can be treated by increasing the levels of dopamine in your brain

Methods Involving (Human) Brains

• Measuring brain activity associated with thoughts/behaviors (correlation)

• Naturally-occuring lesions from accidents or disease (quasi-experiment)

  • Test subjects such as Henry Moilasion

• Direct brain stimulation (experimental manipulation)

Examples: Electroencephalography (EEG)

• Measures electrical activity in the brain

• Good temporal resolution (milliseconds)

• Poor spatial resolution

• (fairly) non-intrusive

Example: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

• Measure of blood flow to areas of brain (oxygenation)

• Decent spatial resolution

• Poor temporal resolution (signal lags)

• Expensive, inconvenient

Example: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

• Electromagnetic induction over scalp

• Disrupts neuronal activity in targeted region (depolarize or hyperpolarize neurons)

• (For now) penetration is limited to a few cm deep, and spatial resolution is low

• Minor side-effects (headaches, scalp discomfort, rare chance of seizure)
  Part 1: Why Science?

Characteristics of Science

• Systematic Observation: organizing and recording observations under controlled conditions to minimize bias

• Testable Hypothesis: Science generates predictions that can be empirically tested

• Democratic Process: findings are open to debate and scrutiny to ensure validity

• Cumulative Nature: knowledge builds on past discoveries, allowing for continual progress

Ethical Guidelines in Psychological Research

• Informed consent: Participants must be aware of the study and provide voluntary agreement to participate

• Confidentiality: researchers must protect participants’ personal data and share it only with consent

• Privacy: Observations in private settings require explicit consent

• Risk-Benefit Analysis: Risks to participants must be outweighed by the study’s potential benefits

Part 2: Thinking like a Psychological Scientist

Scientific Thinking vs. Everyday reasoning

• Scientific Thinking: a systematic approach using observation, hypothesis testing, and probability to draw conclusions

• Everyday Reasoning: informal and anecdotal, based on personal experience and intuition

Key Features of Scientific Theories:

• Empirical evidence: based on observable and measurable data

• Falsifiability: claims must be testable and capable of being proven false (Karl Popper)

• Cumulative Nature:  builds on previous findings, refining understanding over time

• Predictive power: accurately predicts future outcomes

Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST)

• A statistical method to determine the probability that observed data would occur if there were no relationship between variables (the null hypothesis)

  • Null Hypothesis (H₀): assumes no effect or relationship

  • Alternative hypothesis (H₁): Suggests a meaningful effect or relationship

• Errors in NHST:

  • Type I Error: False positive; concluding there is an effect when there isn’t

  • Type II Error: False negative; failing to detect an effect that exists

Inductive vs. Deductive Reasoning

• Inductive Reasoning: Drawing conclusion from specific observations

  • Example: “The sun has risen every day; therefore, it will rise tomorrow”

• Deductive reasoning: drawing conclusions from general principles

  • Example: “All living cells contain DNA; therefore, human cells contain DNA.”

Scientific Theories: A comprehensive framework for explaining phenomena based on evidence and falsifiable predictions

Levels of Analysis: examining phenomena from multiple perspectives

• Biological: neural activity

• Cognitive: Thought processes

• Behavioral: actions

• Social/Cultural: influence of societal norms
  The Middlemist, Knowles, and Matter (1977) Experiment

• The Prediction/Theory:

• Presence of others → physiological arousal

• Arousal → inhibits relaxation of the muscles involved in urination

• Experiment: Participants visiting three-urinal bathroom randomly assigned to one of three conditions

• Confederate stood immediately adjacent to participant or

• Confederate stood one urinal away from participant or

• Participant alone

• Research design:

  • Experiment (not just observation)

  • Setting: Field

  • Collection method: ObservationScience: Careful and systematic observation of natural phenomena. A method for arriving at knowledge about the natural world, describing it accurately, and explaining why things are the way they are.

Explanation: “A satisfying explanation invokes principles that are fewer in number, more general, earlier in the causal chain, and closer to irreducible physical and mathematical laws than the ones that immediately fit the data in question.”

• Can Be Problematic in Practice

  • Vague theories (e.g. unfalsifiable theories): not specific enough to be tested or if it cannot be proven wrong under any circumstances

  • Sloppy methods (observation/measurement/experimentation): using inconsistent, imprecise, or poorly designed methods to collect data or conduct experiments

  • Improper statistical analyses: misuse or misinterpretation of statistical techniques to analyze data

  • Overly broad conclusions: drawing conclusions that extend beyond what the data supports

  • Publication bias: the tendency for studies with positive or significant results to be published more than studies with null or negative results

  • Date Fraud (making up manipulating data): deliberately fabricating, falsifying, or manipulating data to achieve desired results

The Challenge Of Reproducibility in Science (Especially in Psychology)

Gathering Data

Most methods can be captured by three dimensions:

1. Research Design (Observational/Correlational Study or Experiment): 

   1. Observational/Correlational Study: researchers observe and measure variables as they naturally occur without manipulating them

      1. Cannot establish causation (e.g., does exercise cause happiness, or do happy people exercise more?)

   2. Experiment: Researchers manipulate one or more independent variables to observe their effect on dependent variables

      1. Goal is determine causality

2. Research Setting (Laboratory or “Field”)

   1. Laboratory: controlled environment where variables can be precisely managed

      1. Strength: High internal validity (confidence that changes in the dependent variable are caused by the independent variable)

      2. Limitation: May lack external validity (generalizability to real-world settings)

   2. Field: natural environment where the phenomenon occurs (e.g., workplace, school, public spaces)

      1. Strength: High external validity because the study reflects real-world conditions

      2. Limitation: Lower control over extraneous variables

3. Data-Collection Method (Self-Report or Behavior)

   1. Self-report: participants provide information about themselves, often through questionnaires, surveys

      1. Strength: can access internal states like feelings, thoughts, and attitudes

      2. Limitation: susceptible to biases, such as social desirability

   2. Behavior: researchers observe and record participants’ actions, often in real time.

      1. Strength: Objective

      2. Limitation: Behavior may not always reflect internal states