Psych test

UNIT 5 - EMOTION AND MOTIVATION

01/23/2025 Notes

• Emotions - the body’s adaptive response ancient communication system

  • Physiological arousal 

  • Expressive behavior 

    • Expression is culturally specific/influenced by culture

  • Conscious experience

• Commonsense view - first comes awareness, the comes physiological activity

• James - Lange theory - William James and Carl Lange, physiological activity precede the emotional experience 

  • Ex: fear → your heart beats then you feel scared

  • Ex: Startling someone

  • Evidence: speedy low road as seen through fmri (thalamus → amygdala → motor cortex)

• Cannon-Bard Theory - proposed that an emotion-triggering stimulus and the body’s arousal take place simultaneously 

  • Walter Cannon and Phillip Bard

  • Questioned James-Lange theory

  • Not much evidence

• Two- Factor Theory - proposes that our physiology and cognitions create emotions. Emotions have two factors: Physical arousal and cognitive label

  • Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer

  • Schachter and two-factor

  • Stimulus → Appraise and label → response

  • Spillover effect - something that upsets you will upset you more if you are already upset)

    • Ex: you’re already angry and something bad happens that makes you more angry than you usually would be

    • Ex: watching a horror movie and you get scared and then you get a call from your partner and you feel more in love with them than usual because you are happy to hear from them 

  • Evidence 1: crossing the bridge study → rating someone as more attractive if you had to go across a rickety bridge 

  • Evidence 2: Epinephrine study → rating the confederate as more annoying/ aggressive when given epinephrine shot rather than saline shot

  • Evidence 3: High road: stimulus → thalamus → sensory cortex → prefrontal cortex → amygdala → response 

01/24/2025 Notes

EBQ:

• 3 sources presented (can be the same or counter)

• Not necessary to make a counter argument/ acknowledge counter argument

• Make a claim based off of presented sources

• Must use at least 2 sources (name the source (ex: source 1, source 2)

• How to: 

  • State your claim

  • Name your source

  • Identify a relevant psych term and relate it to your source + your claim

  • Repeat until you’ve used at least 2 sources + 2 psych terms (you can use one of the psych perspectives in place of a psych term if necessary (ex: cognitive psychology))

• Simplified 3 paragraphs

• Explain how your example/ evidence supports the psych term you are using rather than defining it

01/27/2025 Notes

• Polygraph - measuring heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, galvanic skin responses 

  • Start with asking questions you know are true/ have true answers

    • Give questions you can corroborate to gather a baseline

  • Pre-polygraph environment is very controlled

  • Compare relevant responses/ changes in waves to baseline 

• All emotions have a physiological component

  • With guilt there is likely a physiological response

01/30/2025 Notes

• Initially the heart beats → james lange theory

• Paul Ekman 

  • Found the people, even experts, have a hard time figuring out a real smile

  • To spot a real smile you need to look at the side of eyes

• Universal facial expressions → smile, sad

• Innate → facial expressions are innate (you are born with them)

  • Izard isolated 10 emotions that she thinks are innate

• Melancholy = happy sad

• Alternative theories 

  • Eysenck - emotions are measured by valence and arousal 

  • Opponent process theory - every initial emotional reaction triggers and opposing emotion that diminishes the intensity of the initial emotional reaction

• Maslow Hierarchy of Needs 

  • Criticized for western bias, criticized for individualism 

  • Physiological needs, safety, then relationships, esteem/ approval needs, self actualization, contributing to society

• Yerkes-Dodson Law - Arousal in short spurts in adaptive. We perform better under moderate arousal, but optimal performance varies w task difficulty 

  • Easy task = high arousal, hard task = low arousal

• Optimal arousal - each person has their own level of optimal arousal that they need to satisfy (ex: sky divers, daredevil stuff)

  • Could be due to varying dopamine requirements across different individuals 

• Drive-Reduction Theory

  • Stage 1: you have a biological drive

  • Stage 2: you have a bodily TENSION due to drive (hangry, weak feeling, dizzy, etc)

  • Stage 3: you take steps to reduce tension and restore homeostasis 

• Incentive theory - incentives (external) push or pull you to do something

• Extrinsic motivation - outside motivation (ex: pay check)

• Intrinsic motivation - internal motivation, coming from you (because you enjoy it)

02/03/2025 Notes

• The 3 L’s - Lesion, Lateral, Loss

  • If you lesion the hypothalamus, you lose appetite

  • Stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus - increases/ brings back appetite

  • lesion/ destruction of the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) - increases appetite

  • Stimulation of the ventromedial hypothalamus - decreases appetite 

• Human beings are very complex - hunger/ eating is not generalizable to populations

• Set point theory - the body has a weight range it tries to maintain and it induces hunger when the weight drops down

• Cannon and Washburn Study - Cannon ate a balloon to figure out if stomach has contractions

  • Stomach does contractions when you eat, contractions and brain signals are connected (your stomach contracts when you are hungry)

 STRESS

• An anxiety - anything that makes you nervous 

  • Doesn’t necessarily happen by choice 

• A frustration - anything that prevents you from reaching a goal

  • Could be a simple goal like getting to school on time

• A conflict - when you have a choice 

  • Approach - avoidance - not choosing between two difference things, just deciding yes or no

    • Ex: joining the musical or not 

  • Approach - approach - initially you see only good in both choices (you see nothing bad)

  • Avoidance - avoidance - both choices are bad

  • Double approach - avoidance - things have both good and bad qualities

02/04/2025 Notes

• Han Selye - GAS (General Adaptation Syndrome) 

  • 3 stages → ARE (you stressed)

  • A - Alarm → when you first see the stressor

  • R - Resistance → any type of action you are trying to do to address the stressor

  • E - Exhaustion → exhaustion after dealing w a stressor 

    • People getting sick → relates to this phase

• High Internal Locus of Control

  • Psychology as a whole is gonna say you need a high internal locus of control to be less depressed 

  • Rat Study 

    • Executive Rats - getting shocked but they can turn off the shocks by turning their tails

    • Subordinate Rats - same shocks as ER but can’t stop the shocks despite mimicking ER’s actions

    • Control Rat - rat does not get any shocks

    • Despite no shocks, control rat was still stressed out but less stressed than subordinate rat due to more stomach ulcers found in SR

• External Locus of Control

• Maro Seligman Study - Seligman wanted to combat the idea that people who give up have no grit or resilient and are weak

  • Argued that every living being has a limit → once you get to a certain point, you will give up

  • Both conditions, dogs know they can escape 

  • Condition 1 - dog jumps over when floor is shocked

  • Condition 2 - harnesses dog so they can’t escape even when the floor is shocked

  • Unharnesses dog but they still don’t escape the shock because of LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

    • Shocks were so traumatizing that the dogs freeze because they don’t believe their new situation is ok, there has to be some catch

  • If life beats someone down, there is a point where they give up as they have reached their limit

• Problem-focused coping - solving the situation/ problem

• Emotion-focused coping - if you can’t do anything about your situation, work on your emotional mindset

• Our bodies are meant to handle short-term stress but not long term stress

• Friedman and Rosenman Study - 

  • Type A = generally more organized, particular

  • Type B = more spontaneous and laidback

  • Study found that type A individuals were more stressed and had higher levels of cholesterol

    • Type A individuals with anger were connected to heart attacks

Chapter 10 Notes

• intelligence - the mental potential to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

• general intelligence (g) - a general intelligence factor that, according to Spearman and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.

• savant syndrome - a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing.

• emotional intelligence - the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.

• intelligence test - a method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores.

• achievement test - a test designed to assess what a person has learned.

• aptitude test - a test designed to predicta person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.

• mental age - a measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance. Thus, a child who does as well as an average 8-year-old is said to have a mental age of 8.

• Stanford-Binet - the widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet’s original intelligence test.

• intelligence quotient (IQ) - defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 (thus, IQ = ma/ca × 100). On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100.

• Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) - the WAIS and its companion versions for children are the most widely used intelligence tests; contain verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests.

• standardization - defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group.

• normal curve - the bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes.

• reliability - the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternative forms of the test, or on retesting.

• Validity -  the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to. (See also content validity and predictive validity.)

• content validity - the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest.

• predictive validity - the success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior. (Also called criterion-related validity.)

• Cohort - a group of people sharing a common characteristic, such as from a given time period.

• crystallized intelligence - our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.

• fluid intelligence - our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood.

• intellectual disability - a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence test score of 70 or below and difficulty adapting to the demands of life. (Formerly referred to as mental retardation.)

• Down syndrome - a condition of mild to severe intellectual disability and associated physical disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21.

• heritability - the proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied.

• stereotype threat - a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype.

Chapter 11 Notes

• motivation - a need or desire that energizes and directs behavior.

• instinct - a complex behavior that is rigidly patterned throughout a species and is unlearned.

• drive-reduction theory - the idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need.

• homeostasis - a tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state; the regulation of any aspect of body chemistry, such as blood glucose, around a particular level.

• incentive - a positive or negative environmental stimulus that motivates behavior.

• Yerkes-Dodson law - the principle that performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases.

• hierarchy of needs - Maslow’s pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with physiological needs that must first be satisfied before higher-level safety needs and then psychological needs become active.

• glucose - the form of sugar that circulates in the blood and provides the major source of energy for body tissues. When its level is low, we feel hunger.

• set point - the point at which your “weight thermostat” is supposedly set. When your body falls below this weight, increased hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may combine to restore the lost weight.

• basal metabolic - rate the body’s resting rate of energy expenditure.

• asexual - having no sexual attraction to others.

• testosterone - the most important of the male sex hormones. Both males and females have it, but the additional testosterone in males stimulates the growth of the male sex organs during the fetal period, and the development of the male sex characteristics during puberty.

• Estrogens - sex hormones, such as estradiol, secreted in greater amounts by females than by males and contributing to female sex characteristics. In nonhuman female mammals, estrogen levels peak during ovulation, promoting sexual receptivity.

• sexual response - cycle the four stages of sexual responding described by Masters and Johnson—excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.

• refractory period - a resting period after orgasm, during which a man cannot achieve another orgasm. 

• sexual dysfunction - a problem that consistently impairs sexual arousal or functioning.

• erectile disorder - inability to develop or maintain an erection due to insufficient bloodflow to the penis.

• female orgasmic disorder - distress due to infrequently or never experiencing orgasm.

• paraphilias - sexual arousal from fantasies, behaviors, or urges involving nonhuman objects, the suffering of self or others, and/or nonconsenting persons.

• AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) - a life-threatening, sexually transmitted infection caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). AIDS depletes the immune system, leaving the person vulnerable to infections.

• sexual orientation - an enduring sexual attraction toward members of one’s own sex (homosexual orientation), the other sex (heterosexual orientation), or both sexes (bisexual orientation).

02/10/2025 Notes

• Social darwinism - apply darwin’s ideas to society and cultures

• Hardliners vs softliners 

  • Hardliners - advocate for sterilization and extermination 

    • Harry Laughlin

  • Softliners - believe that there should be no welfare, no money given to education, the “feeble minded” will die off quickly 

    • Thomas Jefferson

• Charles Spearman - the ideas that general intelligence (g) comes from the work 

  • Uses intelligence the way we talk about athleticism (thinks it is a singular thing that can be measured)

  • Uses factor-analysis (aggregate a bunch of unrelated data and look for correlations)

    • Colleagues said his calculations were correct

    • Itelligence under his definition is a construct (not something you can physically interact with)

    • Reification - when you take a construct and treat it as a physical thing

• Thurstone (thirsty for knowledge) - had 7 mental abilities that cluster together (if you do well in one, you’ll probably do well in the other)

  • Moving toward multiple intelligences

  • Criticized Spearman, said that its a good start to use factor analysis but it should not be an end all be all

• Gardner - each of these intelligences are separate and independent

• Sternberg - agrees with gardner but believes there’s on three central intelligences

  • Conventional (analytical)

  • Creative Intelligence

  • Practical Intelligence

02/11/2025 Notes

• Principles of test construction 

  • Standardization (establishing norms)

    • Establishing norms means you have a random sample take your test so you have a basis to which you can compare the population’s results to (using the bell curve)

    • Standardized test (same instructions/ procedures, same conditions)

  • Reliability

    • consistency (different version reliability → different versions of the same test should yield the same or similar results)

    • Test - retest reliability → only applicable to some types of tests

    • Split-half reliability → scores on different halves of the test should be about the same 

  • Validity 

    • A test is supposed to test what it claims to 

    • Content validity (ex: permit exam)

    • Construct validity (athletics)

    • Predictive validity (ex: driving test that predicts what kind of driver you will be over time)