Psychology notes

Chapters 9-12

Chapter 9

Intelligence Testing – university intelligence testing include the GRE, LSAT, and MCAT

The Anthropometric Approach: created by Sir Francis Galton.

• Anthropometrics: a term referring to the method of measuring physical and mental variation in humans. 

  • Measured sensory indicators as an indicator of intelligence

  • Social darwinism

Binet-Simon Approach: Binet and Simon defined intelligence as the ability to think, understand, reason, and adapt

• Mental age: the average intellectual ability score for children of a specific age. Current ability relative to age, but changeable

Stanford-Binet Test: Terman developed a test intended to measure innate (genetic) intelligence

• Incorporated intelligence quotient (IQ) : mental age/chronological age*100 (MA → divided by CA → times 100)

• Set the stage for misguided use of intelligence tests

The Wechsier Scale and Raven’s Matrices

• Sample calculation: the formulation of early intelligence tests assumed that intelligence continually increases. Scores stabilize around the age of 16.

• The Wechster Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS):the most commonly used intelligence test used on adolescents and adults 

• Deviation IQ: compares a person’s IQ with the average score for that age group (WAIS score → divided by average score → times 100)

• Distribution of scores: standardized intelligence scores show a normal distribution

• Breaking up IQ

Full Scale IQ

• General Ability Index: People’s ability to solve problems without worrying about how quickly. Asks the question : Can you solve the problem?

  • Verbal Comprehension Index: vocabulary similarity information

  • Perceptual Reasoning Index: matrix reasoning – patterns

• Cognitive Proficiency Index: does factor in how quickly. Asks the question: How quickly can you solve the problem?

  • Working Memory Index: math digit span

  • Perceptual Speed Index: trials with time limit

• Raven’s Progressive Matrices: intelligence test that emphasizes problems that are ‘intended’ not to be bound to a particular language or culture. Scores correlated to WAIS

A Racist History

• A Troubling Past: IQ testing and eugenics – The Sexual Sterilization Act : Indigenous peoples in Canada were subject to take IQ tests and if they were unsatisfactory to the government they were forced into sterilization, mainly women (info from History essay); racial differences in IQ, persistent even in Raven’s Matric’s.

• “The Bell Curve”: argued that society consisted of cognitive elites and the less intelligent and those with lower IQs should not receive assistance from social programs

• Race as a Concept: race is a social construct, not a biological construct. Social conceptions of race have evolved over time and are based on “folk taxonomies”.

• Problems with the Racial Superiority Interpretation: culturally biased  test content. Runner:marathon; envoy:embassy; martyr:massacre; oarsmen:regotta; referee:tournament; horse:stable

• The Many Sources of Bias: culturally biased test process; Stereotype threat: occurs when negative stereotypes about a group cause group members to underperform on ability tests

Is Intelligence Changeable?

• Beliefs About Intelligence

  • Entity theory: the belief that intelligence is fixed and relatively difficult to change (or impossible)

  • Incremental theory: the belief that intelligence can be shaped by experiences, practice, and effort (more likely to reach potential if you have incremental belief)

• A more useful trait: grit

  • Perseverance of effort: working hard despite set backs 

  • Consistency of Effort: sticking to a goal, even when other goals seem more attainable

The Philosophy of Intelligence

• Intelligence as a Single Ability: Spearman’s general intelligence factor “g”. Thought to represent a person’s “mental energy”

• Does “g” tell the whole story?

  • Savants: individuals with low mental capacity in most domains but extraordinary abilities in other specific areas such as music, mathematics, or art.

Multiple Intelligences

• Intelligence as Multiple Abilities

  • Spearman’s Two Factor Model: “g” – general, overarching intelligence; “s” – specific-level, skill based intelligence. Thurstone reexamined Spearman’s general intelligence tests and found 7 primary mental abilities

  • Hierarchical Model of Intelligence: lower level abilities (like “s” and those proposed by Thurman) are nested within a general intelligence (like folders within a computer, one can be within another. Ex- school folder has separate folders for history, psych, and anthro within it.)

• Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence

  • Fluid intelligence: a type of intelligence that is used to adapt to new situations and solve new problems without relying on previous knowledge

  • Crystallized intelligence: a form of intelligence that relies on extensive experience and knowledge and, therefore, tends to be relatively stable and robust

• Multiple Intelligences Gone Awry

  • Gardner’sMultiple Intelligences Model: proposed eight different forms of intelligence exist. Led to the popular idea of learning styles (e.g. visual learners learn best with visual materials); there is very little scientific support

Intelligence And the Brain

• Brain Size and Intelligence

  • Brain size was once believed to be related to intelligence, however there is evidence to support otherwise. For example Einstein’s brain was actually smaller than average. What was present in his brain was well-developed white matter pathways.

• Convolutions of the Cortex

  • Convolutions of the brain associated with scores on WAIS. The number and size of gyri greater  in species with more complex and cognitive abilities

  • However, avian brains lack convolutions, yet they are also capable of complex cognition

• Relative Brain Size

  • Relative brain size, neuron density, and organization all combine to allow complex cognitive processes

  • Humans have the largest brain relative to body size

Sex Differences

• There is no difference in average intelligence scores

• Slight difference in sub-scores

  • Verbal vs spatial abilities

  • Statistical vs practical significance

• Some research finds more variation in men IQ scores

Intelligence and Brain Injury

• Concussion: Diagnosed when there is a disturbance of consciousness with no evidence of contusion or other structural damage

  • Broad scale brain trauma

• Post-Concussion Syndrome: it was previously believed that concussions resulted in no long-term damage. However, post-concussion symptoms can last for weeks, months, or even years. 

  • 10-20% of patients have symptoms for >1 month

Chronic Traumatic Ecephalopathy

• CTE (punch-drunk syndrome): repeated sub-concussive hits accumulate brain damage over time

  • Dementia and cerebral scarring

• CTE has been detected in 18 year old football players

• 29% of high school football players who had died showed signs

• Cognitive, behaviour, mood, and motor symptoms

• Concussion and Academics

  • Cognitive rest: reducing activities which require concentration and attention (school, work, video games)

    • Adequate sleep and daytime rest

    • Gradual return to activities once symptom-free

  • 80-90% of concussions resolve in 7-10 days for adults

  • Increased susceptibility to future concussions

  • Repeat concussions linked with depression and dementia

Genetics and Intelligence

• Genetic Contributions

  • Twin and adoption studies: as genetic relatedness increases, so does similarity in IQ scores

• Studying Genes Directly

  • Gene knockout vs. transgenic mouse models

    • Knocking out a gene from a mouse or inserting a gene into a mouse

The Role of Environment

• Birth Order Effects: First born children get the benefits of teaching

• Socio-Economic Status

  • Access to high quality schools

  • Low income households more likely to have stressors that distract them from learning

  • IQ decreases in children during summer months, because of loss of access to enriching materials

  • Adoption studies

• SES and Language

• Language skills contribute to scores on many intelligence tests, but depend on opportunities provided by our environment

• Health and Nutrition

  • Healthy students attend school more frequently

  • Effect of diet on IQ even among affluent households

• The Flynn Effect

  • The steady population increases in intelligence test scores over time

    • Familiarity with standardized testing

    • Information processing

    • Improved environment

  • Negative Flynn Effect

    • Increase also drops/decreases; can’t continue to go up, must plateau

Chapter 10

Lifespan Development

• Developmental Psychology

  • The study of change of physical, cognitive, social and behavioural characteristics across the lifespan

  • “Normal” trends for age groups

  • Staged vs. continuous changes

    • Stages of abrupt transitions, noticeable →crawling→walking

    • After aging changes are less noticeable – continuous

• Measuring Development

  • Cross-sectional design: used to measure and compare samples of people at different ages at a given point in time

    • Risk of cohort effects – confounding variable that prevents us from concluding that the ability we are measuring is changing because of time, age, development

  • Longitudinal design: follows development of the same set of individuals through time

    • Long and costly, risk of attrition

Prenatal Development

• Zygotes to Infants

1. Germinal stage (0-2 weeks): formation of zygote and cell division

2. Embryotic stage (2-8 weeks): Embryo begins developing major physical structures such as the heart, nervous system, and the beginnings of arms, hands and feet.

3. Fetal stage (8+ weeks): skeletal, organ, and nervous systems become more developed and specialized.

• Fetal Brain Development

  • Division between forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain apparent at 4 weeks

  • By 11 weeks differentiation between hemispheres, cerebellum, and brain stems

  • During final month myelination occurs 

    • Fatty conductive tissue that wraps around neurons, speed up electrical signals

• Nutrition

  • Pregnant women require about 20% increase in energy intake

  • 1944 Dutch Famine (Nazis blockade food supply)

    • Children born to malnourished mothers were later more likely to have various health problems

• Teratogens

  • Substances capable of producing physical defects

  • Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: abnormalities in mental functioning, growth, and facial development

  • Smoking increases risk of miscarriage, death during infancy, and premature birth

Auditory and Visual Development

• Hearing

  • By 7-8 months of gestation, fetus actively listening 

  • Babies prefers maternally associated sounds immediately after birth

  • Babies cry with an accent indicating they are attending to the language structure of the surrounding environment

• Vision

  • Can see 12-15 inches at birth

  • Immediately prefer to look at face-like stimuli

  • Colour division develops around 2 months

  • Depth perception develops around 4 months

  • 20/20 by 6-12 months

Smell, Taste, and Touch

• Smell and Taste

  • Infants cringe at foul colours 

  • Innate preference for sweet and aversion to bitter

  • Preference for flavours in maternal diet

• Touch

  • Most developed sense at birth

  • Sense of pain develops before the third trimester

  • Touch decreases anxiety, improves outcomes for preterm babies

Motor and Brain Development

• Early Motor Development

  • Reflexes: involuntary muscular reactions to specific types of stimulation

  • Provides infants with a basic set of responses for feeding and interacting with caregivers

    • The rooting reflex, the moro reflex, the grasping reflex

• Motor Development

  • Some reflexes set the stage for more controlled motor skills

  • Unlike reflexes, motor skills depend on practice

  • Cultural differences influence when children meet milestones

• Post-Natal Brain Development

  • Cortex thickening through myelination (birth brain ¼ weight of adult brain)

  • Areas thickening order:

1. Sensory

2. Motor

3. Perceptual

4. “Higher-order”

• Increases conduction velocity of those neurons

• Synaptogenesis: forming of new synaptic connections

• Synaptic pruning: loss of weak connections through competitive elimination →increases neural efficiency. 

Cognitive Development

• Piaget’s Cognitive Development

  • Jean Piaget (1896-1980): knowledge accumulation through:

    • Assimilation: occurs when new information is added but interpreted based on previous knowledge (added to one schema)

    • Accommodation: occurs when belief structures are modified based on experience (creating new schema)

  • Cognition develops through 4 distinct stages: sensorimotor, preparational, concrete operational, formal operational

  • time frame of stages can be inaccurate, but the progression is always the same

  • Sensorimotor Stage (approx. birth-2 years)

    • Infants’ understanding of the world is based on sensory experiences and actions they perform on objects

      • Learning about the world through senses and motor skills. Progression from simple reflexes → coordinated movements

    • Object permanence is the major milestone of the sensorimotor stage

      • Infants struggle with A-not-B errors until the end of the stage (children look for a toy where they’ve found it before even if the person moved it to a different place in front of them)

  • Preoperational Stage (approx. 2-7 ya)

    • Stage marked by:

      • Centration during conservation tasks (children have tendency to focus on one aspect of a stimulus and ignore all others)

      • Scale errors

      • Difficulty with perspective-taking

  • Concrete Operational Stage (approx. 7-11 ya)

    • Children develop skills in using and manipulating numbers, as well as logical thinking about ‘concrete’ properties

      • Transitivity: if A>B, and B>C, then A>C

      • However, still struggle with more abstract thinking

  • Formal Operational Stage (approx. 11+ ya)

    • Development of advanced cognitive processes such as abstract reasoning and hypothetical thinking

      • Scientific thinking (imagining hypothesis/scenarios)

      • Shift from learning by trial-and-error to deductive reasoning and simulating potential outcomes before acting

      • Metacognition (aware of your own knowledge, if you know you know the answer or if you’re guessing)

Evaluating Piaget

• Underestimated the abilities of children, had lack of today’s resources

• Core knowledge hypothesis: infants have inborn abilities for understanding some key aspects of their environment

  • Evidence from violation of expectation paradigm

    • When you add a teddy bear behind a barrier when there already was one, infants look longer when the barrier is taken away and only one is revealed than if two were revealed

  • Evidence from habituation-dishabituation method

    • Habituation: a decrease in responding with repeated exposure to an event 

    • Dishabituation: an increase in responsiveness with the presentation of new stimulus

      • The return of the ‘problem of other minds’

• Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development

  • Development is ideal when a child attempts skills that are just beyond what they can do alone, but with guidance from an adult.

  • Scaffolding: the approach to teaching in which the teacher matches guidance to the learner’s needs

    • A: tasks that the learner can do without assistance

    • B. tasks that the learner can do with assistance

    • C. tasks that the learner cannot do even with assistance

    • B is the best for development

• Screen Time

  • Screens are poor substitutes for face-to-face learning (lack of scaffolding)

  • Increased screen time is associated with worse cognitive and social development

  • When used, should be in combination with adult presence who can reinforce the learning during and after the screen learning

Attachment

• An enduring emotional bond between individuals 

• Important for babies to bond with their caregivers because they are unable to survive on their own

• Harry Harlow’s (unethical) monkey experiment

  • Wire mother / cloth mother – the monkeys preferred the cloth mother despite the wire mother being the provider of food

• The Strange Situation

1. Child plays in room with caregiver and stranger present

2. Caregiver leaves momentarily

3. Behaviour of child categorized during caregiver’s absence and upon return

• Types of Attachment (based on strange situation)

  • Secure attachment:

1. Child may or may not cry during caregiver’s absence

2. Seeks contact upon return

• Insecure Attachment:

  • Anxious/Ambivalent

1. Child is upset when caregiver leaves 

2. Child is angry or resists caregiver’s attempts to soothe them

• Avoidant

1. Child is not upset when caregiver leaves

2. Does not seek contact upon caregivers return

• During our childhood we are learning whether or not we can depend on people; shapes our responses to situations

Prosocial Behaviour

Prosocial tendencies evident very early in development

• Instrumental helping: providing practical assistance

  • We begin this by our first birthday – ex. Picking something up something dropped

• Empathetic helping: help to make someone feel better

  • Happens by second birthday – ex. Comforting someone sad

Judging Right from Wrong

• Some research suggests that tendencies we ascribe to sophisticated moral reasoning are present in infants

• Aspects of human social and moral cognition are unlearned

• Learning to Meet the Needs of Others

  • Attachment behavioural system: psychobiological drive to meet one’s own needs for security

  • Caregiving behavioural system: psychobiological drive focused on meeting the needs of others

  • If one’s needs are not being met it is more difficult to activate the caregiving behavioural system

From Self to Other

• Self Awareness

  • The ability to recognize one’s individuality

    • Mirror mark rest – put a mark on a child’s face and put them in front of a mirror and see whether they are aware and try to remove it

    • Emerges around 18-24 months

  • Egocentric: world is interpreted and perceived in terms of one’s own perspective

• Theory of Mind

  • The ability to recognize that the thoughts, beliefs, and expectations of others are distinct from one’s own. Emerges around 4 years of age

  • False-belief tasks

    • Sally-Anne test

• Parenting Practices

  • Conditional approaches: sole use of operant techniques for adjusting children’s behaviour

    • Behaviour can become dependent on rewards

    • Increase introjection: internalization of the conditioned regard of significant others

  • Inductive discipline: explaining the consequences of a child’s actions on other people

Adolescence and Self-Control

• Emotional Challenges in Adolescence

  • Spike of hormones (onset of puberty)

  • Hypothalamus stimulates release of testosterone and estrogen

  • Volatile emotions

  • Male vs. female early developers

  • Increase risk of drug use and unwanted pregnancy

• Promoting Self-Control

  • Cognitive Reframing: learning how to look at our experiences through a different ‘frame’

  • Ability to delay gratification: putting off immediate temptations in order to focus on longer-term goals (patience)

Adolescent Social and Cognitive Development

• Social Identity

  • Major challenge during adolescence is between forming an identity and role confusion – state of uncertainty due to conflict between who you want to be and your surroundings

  • Adolescents may experience numerous identity crises

    • Personal qualities

    • Social qualities

    • Future goals

  • Friendships take prominence over family, emphasis on exploring romantic relationships

• Why do Teens do Stupid Things?

  • Sensation seeking machines

  • Hedonic Vs. Positive incentive value

    • Hedonic: how much reward you actually experience

    • Positive incentive: how much reward you anticipate to (higher)

    • The young brain has more excitatory synapses than inhibitory synapses

• Adolescent Decision Making

  • Ongoing changes in prefrontal cortex (myelination, synaptic, pruning) during adolescence

  • Impulse control, mood, planning, organizing, and reasoning 

  • Adolescents more likely to make risky decisions, especially with peers

Moral Development

• Kohlberg’s Moral Development

  • Trolley problem

    • He believed that we make our moral decisions by carefully reading the situation

    • Three stages of morality:

      • Preconventional: how children reasoned, characterized by self-interest in seeking reward or punishment, egocentric

      • Conventional: regards social conventions and rules for appropriate moral behaviour

      • Postconventional: considers rules and laws as relative. Right and wrong determined by abstract situations

• Social Intuitionist Model

  • Moral judgements are based on quick, intuitive, and emotional processes rather than more deliberate reasoning

  • We rationalize our gut instincts rather than using reason to reach best conclusion

  • Moral dumbfounding: insistence on a moral judgement for which no good reasons can be given

Adult Development

• Erikson’s adult stages of psychological development:

  • Young adulthood (18-40): major challenge is intimacy versus isolation

  • Adulthood (40-65): major challenge is generativity versus stagnation

  • Aging (65+): major challenge is integrity versus despair

• Social Development

  • Marriage associated with longer life, greater reported happiness

• Relationship Breakdowns

  • Around 40% divorce rates in Canada

  • Gottman’s ‘four horsemen of the relationship apocalypse’:

    • Criticism – critical of spouse, complaining about them, problem when it ceases to be constructive, blame

    • Defensiveness – couples fight and don’t react well, become defensive; take some responsibility

    • Contempt –  emergence in response of previous two, one spouse feels better than the other; try to acknowledge how the other is trying rather than how they have failed

    • Stonewalling – when one person emotionally shits down, interpreted as malicious even though they are often just emotionally overwhelmed

• Parenting

  • Parenting causes a drastic shift in identity, lifestyle

    • Myth that children save marriages

  • Marital satisfaction declines with children

  • Empty nest myth (marriage becomes happier)

Cognition and Aging

• Aging and Cognitive Change

  • Certain memory systems decline

    • Episodic (details of life) fade more than semantic (facts)

    • Fluid intelligence peaks early-mid adulthood, crystallized are stable and maintain throughout lifetime

  • Positive emotions tend to become more predominant with age 

  • Socioemotional selectivity theory – as we age we learn to better select which experiences and people make us happy

    • More likely to remember things that generate positive memories 

  • Decision-making becomes more conservative

• Maintaining Cognitive Health

  • Brain exhibits reduced plasticity

  • ‘Use it or lose it’

  • Importance of an active and enriching lifestyle

• Neurodegenerative Decline

  • Alzheimer’s disease: most common cause of dementia

1. Forgetfulness/disorientation

2. Profound memory loss/confusion

3. Loss of basic bodily functions

Chapter 11

Motivation and Emotion

• Motivation: the physiological and psychological processes underlying the initiation of behaviours towards a goal

• Drives: the physiological triggers that signal we may be deprived of something (biological)

• Incentives: stimuli we seek to reduce the drives such as social approval and companionship, food, water, and other needs (psychological)

• Example – drinking: water for thirst = drive; to be social = incentive 

Hunger

• Physiological Aspects of hunger

  • Satiation: the point in a meal when we are no longer motivated to eat

  • Lateral hypothalamus: on switch – if you stimulate it it initiates eating behaviours

  • Ventromedial hypothalamus: off switch – when stimulated it reduces motivation to eat

  • Damage to the areas can result in disordered eating behaviours

  • Glucose: a sugar that serves as primary energy source for the brain and the rest of the body

  • Insulin: hormone secreted by the pancreas which helps cells absorb glucose for future use

  • Cholecystokinin (CCK): released by neurons as intestines expand – peptides get released – tells brain to slow down

• Satiety Effects

  • Specific satiety: motivation to eat can be reinstated by novel foods – tired of eating same food so feel full, but when a new food is introduced you can eat it

• Food and Desire

  • Dopamine released in two-stage process:

1. When we taste food

2. When we digest food

• Greater dopamine release for more desirable foods

Attention and Social Influences

• Attention and Eating

  • Unit bias: the tendency to assume that the unit of sale of portioning is an appropriate amount to consume

    • Portion sizing

    • Delboeuf illusion – amount of food on different sized plates, smaller plates seem to have more

• Social Influences

  • Social facilitation: eating more around people

  • Impression management: eating less around people – manage other peoples’ impression of you

  • Modeling: conforming to social settings – if people are eating more, you eat more, less - less, etc.

Problematic Eating

• Over-Eating

  • Hyper-palatable foods – lots of sugar, salt, and fat

  • Abundance of energy-rich, nutrient-poor foods – not burning the same energy as we used to

  • Food diversity maintains incentives to eat

• Anorexia Nervosa

  • Self-starvation

  • Intense fear of weight gain

  • Distorted perception of body

  • Denial of serious consequences of severely low weight

  • Often happens to people who come from dysfunctional homes, already stressed/possibly anxiety and depression, a way to bring back control

• Bulimia Nervosa

  • Cycle

1. Food deprivation

2. Binge-eating

3. Purging

• Characterized by impulsiveness and recognition of disturbing behaviour

• Shame; stress and lack of control causes

• Unrealistic Body Standards

  • Lifetime Prevalence of Anorexia: Women – 0.9% / Men – 0.3%

  • Lifetime Prevalence of Bulimia: Women – 1.5% / Men – 0.5%

  • More common in places with unrealistic body standards

  • Unnecessary airbrushing – look to media for what is “normal”

Sexual Motivation

• Evolution of Sexual Behaviours

  • Many human sexual behaviours do not seem related to the biological purpose of sex

  • Humans vs. non humans

    • Bonobos

  • Sex as a social communication tool

• Sexual Behaviour

  • Libido: motivation for sexual activity/pleasure

  • Importance of anonymity and confidentiality

  • Gender differences

  • Traits found desirable

Studying Sex

• The Beginnings of Sexology

  • Kinsley Reports (1948, 1953)

    • Sexual behaviour of the Human Male; HUman Female

    • High rates of homosexual behaviour

  • Methods were poor by modern standards

    • Lots of sex workers, pedophiles

  • Kinsley scale

    • Range of attractions, uncontrollable

• Physiological Measures of Sex

  • William Masters and Virginia Johnson (1966)

  • Sexual Response Cycle: the phases of physiological change during sexual activity

1. Excitement

2. Plateau

3. Orgasm

4. Resolution

• More variability in females

• Measure heart rate and blood pressure

• Subjectively experience sex the same way

• Motivations for Sex

  • College students identify a variety of motivations for sex

  • Physical, personal, and social factors emerged

  • Other (non-college) populations listed:

    • Nurturance, stress relief, having children

  • Sexual behaviour persists into old age

• Cultural Influences

  • Gender roles: the accepted attitudes and behaviours of males and females in a given society

  • Sexual scripts: the set of rules and assumptions about the sexual behaviours of males and females

  • Sex guilt: negative emotional feelings for having violated culturally accepted standards of appropriate sexual behaviour

Sexual Orientation

• Consistent preference for sexual relations with members of the opposite sex (heterosexuality), same sex (homosexuality), or either sex (bisexuality)

• Proposed (bad) explanations:

  • Freud (1905): Domineering mother, weak father

  • Ellis and Ames (1987): Early seduction

• Sexual Orientation and the brain

  • More recently: Choice vs Biology

    • Born with or product of environment (choose to do it)

  • Early evidence of a smaller hypothalamus in homosexual men compared to heterosexual men

    • Looking at deceased men, most homosexual men had died of aids

  • Results have been difficult to replicate in humans, although supported by non-human animal research

• Testosterone and Development 

  •  Masculinization of brain and body upon exposure to testosterone in utero

  • Pattern of brain activation in medial preoptic area of hypothalamus 

• Cognitive Profiles

  • Homosexual men and women demonstrate cognitive tendencies typical of opposite sex

• Genetics and Sexual Orientation

  • Higher genetic correlations between identical twins than fraternal twins for gay males

    • May be less genetic influence in females

  • Adoption studies

    • Can see if children adopted by gay couples turn out gay – generally not the case, not being influenced

• Fraternal Birth Order Effect

  • Gay men tend to have more older male siblings

  • Due to prenatal environment, not experience of being raised with more male siblings

  • Maternal immune response

    • Antibodies against Y chromosome protein

  • Sparse evidence that sexual orientation is influenced by culture

Transgender and Intersex

• MAMAWAWA: men are men and women are women assumption

  • Developmental biology does not work like clockwork, there is no ‘recipe’ that is strictly followed

    • Testosterone and estrogen are found in both men and women

  • Biological processes are prone to producing variation

  • Biological sexes do not represent ‘opposites’ but rather the predominant parts of a continuum

• Transgender

  • Individuals who experience a mismatch between the gender they identify with and their biological sex

  • Possible for sex hormones to cause genitals to develop along the lines of one sex, while brain and gender develop along the other line

• Intersex

  • People that have reproductive anatomy, chromosomes, or hormones that do not fit the typical definitions of male or female

    • Cases of polysomy

Belongingness and Love

• The Need to Belong

  •  The motivation to maintain relationships that involve warmth, affection, appreciation, and mutual concern for each other’s well being

    • Fundamental needs

  • Predictor of health – Loneliness, sick more often, psychological

  • Quality and sense of permanence in relationships most important

• Types of Love

  • Passionate love: associated with a physical and emotional longing for the other person

    • Oxytocin and dopamine

  • Companionate love: related to tenderness and affection to a person with which one shares their life

    • Desire to want to be with a person

Achievement Motivation: The drive to perform at high levels and to accomplish significant goals

• Approach goals: enjoyable and pleasant incentives that we are drawn toward

• Avoidance goals: unpleasant outcomes such as shame, embarrassment, or emotional pain which we try to avoid

• Self-Determination Theory

  • Ability to achieve one’s goals and attain psychological well-being is influenced by the degree to which one is in control of the behaviours necessary to achieve those goals

  • High (have control) vs low self-efficiency (lack of control)

  • Extrinsic motivation: motives that are geared toward gaining rewards or public recognition (external sources of motivation)

  • Intrinsic motivation: the desire to understand or overcome a challenge (internal motivation )

• The Overjustification Effect

  • A decrease in intrinsic motivation with the delivery of rewards

    • Education outcomes and framing of praise

    • Ecological validity?

    • Give reward for good reason

• Contract Year Syndrome

  • NBA and MLB player performance compared pre- and post-contract

  • Role of rewards for generating intrinsic motivation

    • Performance decline post-contract

Emotion

• Physiology of Emotion

1. Subjective thought and experiences

2. Accompanying patterns of neural and physical arousal

3. Characteristic behavioural expressions

• The Initial Response: early brain activity ‘tags’ potentially important stimuli for further processing

• Autonomic nervous system

  • Amygdala, hypothalamus, pituitary gland

  • Activate motor cortex – fight or flight

  • Frontal cortex – understanding what’s happening

• Decision-Making

  • Somantic markers: ‘gut feelings’ that nudge us towards a decision

    • Orbitofrontal cortex damage – important for integrating emotions with higher order executive functions. Damage leads people to be almost incapable of making decisions

  • Affective forecasting: ability to predict one’s emotional response to a decision

  • Regret avoidance: people overestimate how much they will later regret their decisions and underestimate their ability to adjust 

Theories of Emotion

• Experiencing Emotions

  • Common Sense: Stimulus →conscious feeling →autonomic arousal

  • James-Lange: Stimulus → Autonomic arousal → conscious feeling

  • Cannon-Bard: Subcortical Brain activity →Conscious feeling

      →Autonomic arousal

• Facial Feedback Hypothesis

  • Some evidence that our emotional expressions can influence our subjective emotional states

    • Similar results not found for expressions of surprise

    • Results do not always replicate

• The Two-Factor Theory of Emotion

  • Our interpretation of why we are aroused creates the emotional responses

  • Interaction between physical reactions and cognition

  • Misattribution of arousal: the process by which people make a mistake in assuming what is causing them to feel aroused

• Misattribution of arousal

  • Many of our emotions share a similar pattern of physical arousal

  • Importance of being mindful about our bodily reactions and emotions

    • Explains cases of stockholm syndrome

Emotions and Culture

• Universal Emotions

  • Some emotional expressions shared across cultures

  • Important biological and evolutionary function – disgust restricts access of air flow. Fear – gathering more visual information, more air 

  • Sighted vs blind emotions

  • Emotional Dialects: variations across cultures in how common emotions are expressed – embarrassment

• Display Rules: the unwritten expressions we have regarding when it is appropriate to show a certain emotion

  • Individualistic – cultures with more emphasis on the self; more expressive

  • Collectivistic – emphasis on larger social environment; more restrained

  • Display rules change within a culture over time

Concealing Emotions

• Polygraph: measures changes in heart rate and perspiration

  • Unreliable for lie detection

• Microexpressions: facial expressions made within a fraction of a second that can be detected before emotions are suppressed

Chapter 12

Personality

• What is Personality?

  • A characteristic pattern of thinking, interaction, and reacting that is unique to each individual, and remains relatively consistent over time and situations

• The Barnum Effect

  • Tendency to believe that vague descriptions of personality are tailored specifically to us

  • We manufacture examples from our life to make the descriptions fit

• Approaches to Studying Personality

  • Ideographic approach: focus on detailed descriptions of individuals and their unique personality characteristics

    • Criminal profilers – rich understanding of specific person

  • Nomothetic approach: examines personality in large groups, with the aim of making generalizations about personality structure

    • What traits emerge that can be measured in all people

Psychodynamic Approaches

• Psychodynamic Perspective

  • Focus on how personality arises through complex interactions involving unconscious processes that occur from early development through adulthood

• Freud’s Structure of Personality

  • Id: collection of basic biological drives (born fully developed)

  • Superego:  responsible for moral judgements (develops through life)

  • Ego: mediates between desires of id and superego (develops through life)

• Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

  • Freud believed our personalities were influenced by our progression, or lack thereof, through psychosexual stages (id was trying to manifest itself in certain ways)

  • Fixation: when an individual becomes preoccupied with obtaining the pleasure associated with a particular stage

    • Proposed some odd psychological tendencies, not supported by any imperial evidence

    • Oral stage  (0-2): infant achieves gratification by putting things in their mouth; if people didn’t grow out of this stage they would have oral fixation; addictive personality – smoking/drinking to soothe

    • Anal stage (2-3): children respond to demands of bowel and bladder control for gratification; parents were strict could cause fixation: anal retentive – overly organized – calling someone “anal”; if parents were hands off : anal exclusive – slobby

  • The Oedipal Complex

    • Children become aware of their genitals and become sexually attracted to the opposite sexed parent

    • Phallic stage  (3-7): child realizes the difference between sexes and are aware of sexuality

    • Freud believed women remained in the phallic stage with penis envy

    • During the final 2 stages, children learned to balance their basic urges with the need to conform to social norms

    • Latency stage (7-11): child continues development but sexual urges quiet

    • Genital stage (11-adult): growing adolescent shakes off dependencies and learns to deal maturely with the opposite sex

Defence Mechanism

• Unconscious strategies to reduce or avoid anxiety, guilt, and other unpleasant feelings

• Anna Freud focused on how defence mechanisms influenced child psychology

1. Repression: keeping distressing information out of consciousness (foundational defence mechanism)

2. Regression: falling back into a previous stage of development (regain sense of comfort)

3. Projection: remaining ignorant of one’s undesirable qualities by attributing them to others

4. Reaction formation: altering an impulse into its opposite (ex. Being attracted to someone who isn’t your partner and treating that person negatively)

5. Sublimation: transforming unacceptable impulses into acceptable ones (taking out aggression in sports)

Beyond Freud

• Alternative Psychodynamic Approaches

  • Carl Jung (1875-1961) – Analytical psychology: views personality as the result of unconscious archetypes derived from a ‘collective unconscious’ (shared repository from collective ancestors, unconscious archetypes. Things we readily understand. Come to this view from different countries’ mythologies.)

  • Alfred Adler (1870-1937) – Inferiority Complex: an abnormal personality that results from struggling with feelings of inferiority in one;s social environment

• Feminist Psychology

  • Karen Horney (1885-1952)

    • Started a movement in which the male-centric view of psychology was questioned 

      • Womb-envy (vs Freud’s penis envy)

    • Differences between men and women were not inherent but rather due to societal and cultural differences

• Projective Tests

  • Personality tests in which ambiguous images are presented to elicit responses that reflect unconscious desires or conflicts

  • Rorcharch inkblot test and thematic apperception test

    • Inkblot – interpret splotches of ink to determine unconscious thoughts/desires; thematic apperception – neutral pictures shown and told to be narrative

    • Methods lack validity and reliability

    • Different researchers come up with different interpretations from what patient sees

Humanism

• Humanistic Perspective

  • Emphasized the unique and positive qualities of human experience and potential

  • Abraham Maslow and Self-Actualization: reaching our fullest potential

  • Carl Rogers’ Person-Centered Perspective: people are basically good, and given the right environment their personality will develop fully and normally

    • Opposed to Freud who said id was fully developed and we had to develop superego

• Positive Psychology

  • Uses scientific methods to study human potential and how to prompt well-being

    • Money and happiness (generally not how it works; as long as basic needs are met; rather social)

  • Flow: feeling of full immersion in an activity

    • ‘Being in the zone’

Traits and Factors

• The Trait Perspective

  • Personality traits: labels applied to specific attributes of personality

    • 18000 descriptors tallied by early studies

  • Factor analysis: reveals statistical similarities among a wide variety of items

• The Five Factor Model: a trait-based approach to personality measurement that includes:

  • Openness (less open to new things←→more open to new things)

  • Conscientiousness (messier←→organized, punctual)

  • Extraversion (introvert, shy←→extravert, social, thrills)

  • Agreeableness (set in ways, stubborn, assertive←→avoid conflict, efforts to get along, cooperative)

  • Neuroticism (stable←→emotionally volatile, anxious)

  • Sliding on a scale of low to high: low←→high

• Traits vs States

  • State: a temporary physical or psychological engagement that influences behaviour

  • Four general aspects of situations

    • Locations (where we are)

    • Associations (who is around us)

    • Activities (what we are doing)

    • Subjective states (our mood)

Predicting Personality

• Sex Differences

  • Differences overwhelmed by variability within each sex, rendering discussion moot

  • Statistically vs practical significance; small effect size – liberal + conservative differences

• Predicting personality

  • Home and office spaces predict personality

    • Lower in conscientiousness – messy; high conscientiousness – clean; openness

  • Online profile profiles: idealized self or reflection of actual personality?

The Darker Side of Personality

• The Personality of Evil?

  • Authoritarian Personality: tendencies to separate social world into ‘us’ and ‘them’ (justifies discrimination)

  • HEXACO: added Honesty-Humility to Big Five (OCEAN)

• The Dark Triad

  • Combination of three traits that comprise a socially destructive person likely to commit crime: Machiarellianism, psychopathy, narcissism

  • M: people who are scheming, P: shallow emotional response/lack empathy, N: believe yourself to be the best

• Right-Wing Authoritarianism (not relating to politics, whatever is the norm of the country)

1. Obeying orders; defense to authority

2. Supporting aggression against those who dissent and targets identified by authorities

3. Believe strongly in maintaining the existing social order

• Global change game: simulating UN, given countries and their resources, high right-wing authoritarians immediately made war

• More RWA in society may lead to more prejudice, aggression

Development of Personality

• Temperaments

  • Personality-like attributes present at birth; activity level, mood, attention span, distractability

  • Innate foundation on which personality is built 

  • Predicts adult personality; well-adjusted vs under-controlled and inhibited children

• Personality in the Lifespan

  • As personality changes, rank within population maintained

  • Personality stabilizes in middle age

• Social-Cognitive Theory

  • Reciprocal determinism: behaviour, internal factors, and external factors interact to determine one another

  • Internal cognition → behaviour → environment (reinforces internal cognition)

Cultural Aspects of Personality

• Are the Big Five Fixed?

  • Five factor model is a construct developed by studying participants from Western countries 

    • 96% of studies only represent 12% of population

  • Test-retest and alternate forms of reliability

  • Building up from each language: factor analysis on other language identify equivalents of big five, but also culture-specific personality dimensions

• Cultural Differences on Big Five

  • Differences emerge between cultures when using the Big Five factor model – Japan

  • Validity issues and response styles between individualistic (brag) and collectivistic (humble) cultures

  • Variability within cultures overwhelms any small cultural differences

  • Limited evidence of a ‘national character’ driven by underlying personality structures

Genetic Influences

• Genes and Personality

  • Gene code for brain chemicals related to personality, not personality itself

  • Genes regulating serotonin transport linked with anxiety – one or more short gene developed depression and anxiety

  • Positive/negative images shown

    • Two long genes look at the positive image longer

    • One or more short gene flip between positive and negative image

• Twin Studies

  • Personality correlations for monozygotic twins > dizygotic twins

  • Minnesota Twin Study: monozygotic twins reared apart have just as similar personalities as those reared together

Evolution of Personality

• Big five traits found in a number of species. Extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness reliably rated by human caregivers of chimpanzees. (Forcing our personality characteristics on animals)

• Novel environment and novel object tests: measures tendency to explore and shyness–boldness continuum

• Animals bold in one are usually bold in both; consistency

• Selection for Variation

  • Habitat-dependent selection hypothesis: certain personality types have fitness advantages in particular types of environment. (shy more likely to notice changes, bold more likely to gather resources)

Personality and the Brain

• Brain regions responsible for cognitive abilities related to each Big Five factor show activity differences between high and low scorers

• Extraversion – medial orbitofrontal cortex; conscientiousness – middle frontal gyrus

• Arousal theory of extraversion: extraversion determined by people’s threshold for arousal

• Ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) regulates arousal response

  • Extraverts: underactive; introverts: hyperactive