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Why Science?
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Psychology trails behind biological and physical science in terms of years
Science
o The use of Systematic Observation in order to acquire knowledge
• Systematic Observation is the core of science
o An approach to inquiry that is tied to actual measurement and observation
Essential elements of science
o Systematic observation is the core of science
o Observation leads to hypotheses we can test
o Science is democratic
• People form their own opinion rather than just listening to leaders
o Science is cumulative
Ethics
o Informed consent- people should be aware and should agree with what will happen to them
before participating
o Confidentiality- information about individuals may not be shared with the public without
that individual's consent
o Privacy- researchers should not make observations of people in private places without
consent
o Benefits- researchers should weigh cost vs
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• Participants should also be aware of the cost vs
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75, r=-
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20
• The closer you are to 1, the stronger the correlation
• Positive and Negative correlation
• Weak, moderate and strong correlation
Surveys
o Aren't always accurate because people aren't great at evaluating their behavior
• Influenced by outside sources
o Benefits
• Inexpensive, easy to distribute, large numbers
Quasi-Experimental Design
o No random assignment- used when not possible

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Diseases, biology
Fixed variables- things you can't change
o Problems
Longitudinal Designs
o Long period of time (months, years, etc
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o Neurons- How the CNS Communicates (Label a neuron for test!! And identify the basic
functions of each part)
Dendrites receive information
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• Soma, cell body, holds the nucleus and genetic info
• Axon- sends information
• Synapse- connects the axons and dendrites so that they can communicate with each
other
• Neurotransmitters- the message being sent to where it needs to go
• The Brain
o Cerebral Cortex- Conscious thought
o Brain Stem- Instinctive movements (heart beating, breathing)
• Connects brain and spinal cord
o Cerebellum- Maintain balance and equilibrium
• "Little brain"
o Limbic System- Emotions, related to motivation and emotional association with memory
(Happy feeling you get when you think of a happy memory and vice versa)
• Amygdala- Emotion, survival instincts and emotion associated memories
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Biopsychology
o More than one type
• Glial cells
▪ Outnumber neurons 10-1
▪ Give physical and metabolic support to neurons
▪ Help neurons line up with one another
▪ Provides insulation
▪ Transports nutrients and waste
• Neurons
▪ Interconnected information processes
▪ Types
• Sensory (Afferent)- carry info to sensory receptors like from the eyes to
brain
• Motor (Efferent)- carry info from brain/spinal cord to muscles and glands
• Interneurons- form a connection between other neurons
o Messages
• Inhibitory message- prevents a receiving neuron from firing
▪ Hot pan but I made these nice cookies
o Action potential- electrical signals that travel across neurons, receiving, analyzing
How does a neuron fire?
o Resting potential- slightly negative charge
o Reach threshold when enough neurotransmitters reach dendrites
o ALL OR NOTHING

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Refractory period
Nervous system
o PNS
• Carries info to and from the rest of the body
• Somatic- controls sensory input and motor output
▪ Controls voluntary movements
• Automatic- controls internal organs and the automatic functions of the body
▪ Sympathetic- mobilizes the body during periods of emotion or stress, initiates
fight or flight instinct
• Dilate pupils
• Accelerates heartbeat
• Improve airflow
▪ Parasympathetic- operates the body when we are relaxed
• Facilitates digestion
• Slows heartbeat
• Constricts pupils
• Not using as much energy, needs relaxed time
• Para= parachute which slows us down***
o CNS
• Spinal cord - transmits neural signals between brain and rest of body
▪ Some sensory messages are immediately acted on without any input of the
brain
• Knee jerk reaction
• Hot pan
• Brain
▪ 2 hemispheres
▪ Cerebral cortex- surface
▪ Gyri- folds or bumps
▪ Sulci- grooves
▪ Longitudinal Fissure- Deep groove (or Sulcus) that separates the brain into two
hemispheres, external
▪ Corpus Callosum- connects hemispheres and allows info to pass, internal
• Left brain controls right side (including vision)
▪ Split brain procedure
• Sever Corpus Callosum
• Reduced epileptic seizures
• Messed up other thing
• When Corpus Callosum was severed, when a patient was presented with
an image on left visual field he could not see anything but if he was able
to feel around, he could pick out the correct things
▪ Left brain=Language
▪ Brain Stem
• Medulla
• Heart rate, breathing, sneezing, swallowing, digestion, blood
pressure
• Pons
• Forms bridge between cerebellum and the cerebrum
• Regulates breathing, taste and automatic function

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Cerebellum
• Balance posture
• Sequence learning
• Coordination of voluntary movement
▪ 4 Lobes
• Frontal- cognitive abilities, motor control and language, most advance
• Temporal- memory, language, hearing, perception, on the sides bottom
• Occipital- back, vision
• Parietal- sensory info, association, top of middle and back of brain
▪ Motor cortex
• Located in the rear of Frontal lobe, and front of parietal lobe
• Controls fine and gross motor skills
• Fine- fingers
• Gross- running, walking
▪ Sensory cortex
• Front of parietal
• Touch and sensation
▪ Wernicke's Area- language, left temporal lobe
• Language comprehension, understanding what someone is saying, not
just hearing
▪ Broca's Area
• Left frontal lobe
• Muscle movements in speech production
• Sally can understand what you are saying but cannot respond
▪ Thalamus- relaying sensory and motor info (everything but smell), memory,
alertness, consciousness, perception and cognition
▪ Amygdala- fear, emotion processing, learning, fight or flight, reward processing
▪ Hippocampus- early memory stage, long term memory
• Spatial navigation
▪ Hypothalamus
• Internal temp gage
• Hunger
• Sleeping
▪ Talking and walking= Broca's and frontal lobe
Early brain study focused on people with partially damaged brain
▪ Phineas Gage
• Worked on railroad
• Rod went through his brain and skull, survived
• Damage to the prefrontal cortex, that control judgement and decision
making
▪ Lesion method- intentional destruction of small animal brains
▪ CT (computerized Tomography)
• X-rays of a particular section of brain or body
• Detect tumor or brain atrophy
▪ PET
• Measure biochemical activity of the brain by being injected with a slightly
radioactive tracer
▪ EEG- electrical activity of the brain, shows overall brain activity

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MRI- structure of the brain
fMRI- changes in blood flow and oxygen levels
Schizophrenic patients use temporal lobe more than healthy patient

Review
• Location of things in brain and neuron
• Go through notes, consolidate
• Difference between quasi and experimental
o The independent variable can not or is not randomly assigned
• Marriage vs
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Graduation)
Semantic memories- pulling info based on facts that you've learned and general knowledge
Implicit memories- doesn't require recognition, the recall of activities seem effortless and
unconscious
• Procedural- stores info on how to do things
▪ riding a bike, music, tying shoes

• Emotional conditioning memory- scary clown vs
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Jaws, star wars)
Habituation- repeatedly presenting a stimulus reduces its effect on behavior (you don't really
notice that you are wearing pants 100% of the time)
o Habituation can occur to rewards
o People cease to notice background noises
o Favorable things lose value over time (songs on radio)
o May be the prime cause of unhappiness (people acclimate to most circumstances)
o May be a prime cause of achievement (people are striving for something better)
Classical conditioning
o 1899 while conducting research into the digestive system of dogs
o He was actually interested in the salivary of secretions in the digestion of food
o Pavlov use an apparatus to measure the amount of saliva from a dog, food was given to dog
and saliva immediately occurred
o Salvation was involuntary
o Observed that dog salivated not only at the food, but soon at the sight of the lab assistant
that always prepared food
o Provided clear evidence of a form of learning based on the repeated association of 2
different stimuli
o Stimulus- is any event that elicits a response from an organism
o A response is a reaction by an organism to a stimulus
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Whenever she wears it, the fur tickles her nose, causing her
to sneeze
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After several treatments, some patients develop nausea when they see the
nurse
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As an adult, whenever you smell chocolate chip cookies baking, you
feel happier
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Over time, you begin to jump back automatically after hearing the
flush, before there is any change in the water temperature
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Now, she becomes nauseous whenever she
sees or smells mac and cheese
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Want to stop nail biting, paint nails with unpleasant tasting nail polish
• Used to treat alcoholism
• Limitations
• learned aversion often fails to generalize, stop drinking beer works but
not all alcohol
o Systematic desensitization- attempts to replace an anxiety or fear response with a
relaxation response through CC procedure
• The client associates being relaxed with the anxiety or fear-arousing stimulus by
means of a series of graded steps
• Basic principle is that the client is gradually desensitized to anxiety or feararousing objects, activities or situations
o Wolpe's procedure: fear of flying
• An example of Systematic Desensitization
• Person taught to relax
• Break fear into logical sequence of steps from least frightening to most
frightening
Operant Conditioning- a type of learning in which learning is strengthened followed by
reinforcement or diminished by punishment
o Punishment = decreases the chance of behavior reoccurrence
o Reinforcement = increases the chance of behavior reoccurrence
o Difference between positive and negative
Classical vs
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Every time the dog sits, it gets a treat
▪ Partial reinforcement
• Reinforcing the response only part of the time
• The acquisition process is slower
• Greater resistance to extinction
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If a dog poops in the house, I yell at him
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When the dog barks at a friend, he gets put in timeout
Observational learning- learning by watching others and then imitating or modeling what they
do or say
o Doll experiment
• Two groups of kids watched how adults treated a doll, half were shown the
adult being nice to the doll and the other half were shown the adults punching
the doll
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living in poverty

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Non-normative life events- specific, atypical events that occur in a particular person's life at a time
when they do not happen to most people
o Cancer as a teenager, auto accident
Key lifespan development
o Continuous change- gradual development in which achievements at one level build on those
of previous levels
• Changes achieved are a matter of degree, not kind
o Discontinuous change- development that occurs in distinct steps or stages
• Changes achieved are qualitatively different than behavior at earlier stages
Critical periods
o A specific time during development when an event has the greatest consequences
(interference with critical periods thought to interfere with development, often
permanently)
• Language development, exposure to disease
Sensitive period
o A point in development when an individual is especially susceptible to certain stimuli but the
absence of those stimuli does not always produce irreversible consequences
Focus on particular periods vs
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Nurture
o Nature refers to inherited traits, abilities, and capacities
o Nurture refers to the environmental influences that shape behavior
What do developmentalists believe today?
o That behavior is the result of nature and nurture combined
Theoretical Perspectives
o Psychodynamic- based on the view that behavior is motivated by unconscious/ inner forces,
memories, and conflicts (over which a person has little control or awareness)
• Most closely associated with Freud
▪ Freud's (1856-1839) psychoanalytic theory suggests that unconscious forces act
to determine personality and behavior
▪ Unconscious is the part of the personality about which a person is unaware; it is
responsible for much of our everyday behavior
• According to Freud, personality has 3 components (ID, EGO, and SUPEREGO)
▪ ID- Raw, unorganized, inborn part of personality present at birth, primitive
drives related to hunger, sex, aggression, and irrational impulses
▪ EGO- rational and reasonable part of the personality
• Acts as a buffer between the world and the primitive ID
• Operates on the reality principal
▪ SUPEREGO- the aspect of the personality that represents a person's conscience
• Evaluates right from wrong
• Develops about age 5 or 6
• Learned from parents, teachers, other significant figures
• Psychodynamic perspective according to Erikson
▪ Each stage emerges as a fixed pattern that is similar for all people
▪ Each stage presents a crisis or conflict

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No crisis is ever fully resolved, making life complicated
Unlike Freud, Erickson believed that development continued throughout the
lifespan
Assessing the Psychodynamic Perspective
o Pros
• Contemporary psychology research supports the idea that unconscious
memories have an influence on our behavior
• Erickson's view that development continues throughout the lifespan is highly
important and supported by research
o Cons
• Idea that people pass through stages in childhood that determine their adult
personality has little research support
• Freud's research based on a small sample of upper middle class Austrians
• Freud's theory is male focused/ sexist
• Both too vague to test, problems with operational definitions
Behavioral Perspective
o Understanding development through observable behavior and outside environmental
stimuli
o Behaviorists reject the idea that people universally pass through a series of stages
o Continuous exposure to specific factors in the environment
o The behavioral perspective believes that 2 main types of learning contribute to
development
• Classical conditioning
▪ Stimulus substitution
▪ Organism responds to a previously neutral stimulus in an atypical way
▪ Ex
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Punishment and Reinforcement
o Social- Cognitive Learning Theory
• Emphasizes learning by observation of another person (a role model)
• Ex
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You put a toy under a blanket and the baby
searches for it
• Stanger anxiety
▪ Preoperational stage
• 2-7 years old
• Representing things with words and images
• Pretend play ( the child understands that sword fights are
pretend)
• Egocentric thought
• Viewing the world entirely from one's own perspective
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You can melt a popsicle and then make a popsicle
out of what you melted
▪ Formal operational
• 12 years old- adulthood
• Thinking about hypothetical scenarios and processing abstract
thoughts
• Abstract logic
• Potential for mature moral reasoning
Human thinking is arranged into schemas (organized mental patterns
representing behavior and action)
The growth of children's understanding of the world can be explained by 2
principles
▪ Assimilation- new experience incorporated into current way of thinking
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A child is introduced to a dog and thinks that all small 4
legged animals are dogs, then they are introduced to a cat, they
have to change their way of thinking about dogs and cats
• Assessing Piaget's theory
▪ Thousands of studies provide support
▪ Some cognitive skills emerge earlier than Piaget suggested
▪ Some cognitive skills emerge according to a different timetable in nonwestern countries
▪ Some adults never reach his highest level of thought (formal, logical)
o Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory
• Emphasizes how development proceeds as a result of social interactions
between members of a culture
▪ Culture- a society's beliefs, values, customs and interests shapes
development
• Understanding of the world is acquired through their problem-solving
interactions with adults and other children
• He also argued that to understand the course of development we must consider
what is meaningful to members of a given culture
• Children learn new cognitive skills when guided by a more skilled partner
▪ Zone of proximal development (ZPD)
▪ Scaffolding
Which approach is right?
o Each emphasizes different aspects of development
• Psychodynamic approach emphasizes emotions, motivational conflicts, and
unconscious determinants of behavior
• Behavioral approaches emphasize overt behavior
• Cognitive approaches look more at what people think than what they do

Social and Personality Disorder
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Differential Emotions Theory
o Emotional expressions not only reflect emotional experiences but also help in the regulation
of emotion itself
• Infants are born with an innate set of emotions
• As they grow up, they expanded and modify these basic expressions, become better
at control
• Overall, infants do display emotions, but range at birth is restricted (get more complex
with age)
Stranger anxiety- the caution and wariness displayed by infants when encountering an unfamiliar
person
o Appears in the second half of the first year
o Infants with more experience with strangers tend to show less anxiety
o Infants tend to show less anxiety with female strangers and other children than males
o The same cognitive advances that allow infants to respond so positively to those with whom
they are familiar also means they are able to recognize people who are unfamiliar
Separation Anxiety- the distress displayed by infants when a customary care provider departs
o Usually begins around 8-9 months and peaks at 14 months
o Starts slightly later than stranger anxiety
o Largely attributable to the same cognitive skills as stranger anxiety

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Both stranger and separation anxiety represent important social progress, they reflect cognitive
advances in the infant, and growing emotional and social bonds
Emotions
o The infant's first smiles are relatively indiscriminate (smile at anything)
o By 6-9 weeks, babies exhibit the SOCIAL SMILE, smiling in reference to other individuals
o By 18 months, social smiling is directed more towards moms and other caregivers
o Infants are able to discriminate facial and vocal expressions of emotion early in infancy
(sensitive to the emotional expressions of others by the end of the second year)
o Infants can imitate adult facial expressions (but not necessarily understand them at first)
o These imitative abilities pave the way for future nonverbal decoding abilities
o Infants learn early to encode and decode emotions important in helping them express and
understand emotion
o Social referencing- the intentional search for information to help explain the meaning of
uncertain circumstances and events (modeling others, mimicking expressions)
• First occurs in infants at about 8-9 months
• Infants make particular use of facial expressions in their social referencing
• Social referencing is most likely to occur in uncertain and ambiguous situations
The development of self
o The roots of self-awareness, knowledge of self, begin to grow around 12 months
o Self-awareness is assessed by the mirror and rouge task
o Most infants touch their nose to attempt to wipe off the rouge at 17-24 months
o Crying, when presented with complicated tasks, also implies consciousness that infants lack
capability to carry out tasks
Understanding Mental Processes
o Infants have a THEORY OF MIND, knowledge and beliefs about the mental world, at a fairly
early age (explanations used by children to explain how others think)
o Infants see others as compliant agents, being similar to themselves who behave under their
own power and respond to the infant's request
o Children's capacity to understand internationality and causality grow during infancy
o By age two, infants demonstrate EMPATHY, an emotional response that corresponds to the
feelings of another person
o By age two, children can "pretend"
Forging relationships
o The most important form of social development that occurs during infancy is ATTACHMENT,
the positive emotional bond that develops between a child and a particular individual
Attachment
o Early researchers studied bonds between parents and children in the animal kingdom to
understand attachment
o Lorenz studied Imprinting in animals, the rapid, innate learning that takes place during a
critical period and involves attachment to the first moving object observed
o Freud suggested that attachment grew out of a mother's ability to satisfy a child's oral needs
(the need for food)
o Harlow showed, with monkeys, that food alone is insufficient to bring about attachment
• In spite of the fact that the wire monkey provided food, the infant monkeys preferred
clinging to a warm terry cloth monkey
o The earliest work on humans was carried out by John Bowlby who suggested that
attachment had a biological basis

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Viewed attachment as based on infant's needs for safety and security (especially from the
mother)
o Attachment viewed as critical for allowing the infant to explore the world
o Having a strong, firm attachment provides a safe base from which the child can gain
independence
o Based on Bowlby's work, Mary Ainsworth developed the AINSWORTH STRANGE SITUATION,
a sequence of 8 staged episodes that illustrate the strength of attachment between a child
and (typically) their mother
• The 8 stages of the AINSWORTH STRANGE SITATION
o Mother and baby enter an unfamiliar room
o Mother sits, letting baby explore
o Adult stranger enters the room and converses with the mom and then the baby
o Mother exits the room, leaving baby with stranger
o Mom returns, greets and comforts baby and stranger leaves
o Mom departs leaving baby alone
o Stranger returns
o Mother returns and stranger leaves
• Infants reaction to the strange situations vary considerably, depending on the nature of
attachment with mother
o 2/3 are SECURELY ATTACHED CHILDREN, who use mother as a safe base, at ease as long as
she presents, exploring when they can see her, upset when she leaves
o 20% are labeled AVIODANT CHILDREN who do not seek proximity to the mother; after she
leaves they seems to avoid her when she returns as if they are angered by her behavior
o About 12% are labeled AMBIVALENT CHILDREN who display a combination of positive and
negative reactions to their mothers; they show great distress when the mother leaves, but
upon her return they may simultaneously seek close contact but also hit and kick her
o A more recent expansion of Ainsworth's work suggests a fourth category; DISORGANIZEDDISORIENTED CHILDREN who show inconsistent, often contradictory behavior, such as
approaching the mother when she returns but not looking at her; they may be the least
securely attached children of all
o Infant attachment may have a significant consequences for relationships at later stages in
life
o Not all children who are not securely attached as infants experience difficulties later in life;
some research suggest that those who had avoidant and ambivalent attachment do quite
well later in life
• Parent Styles
o Uninvolved parent- neglectful, disinterested, self-absorbed
o Permissive parent- spoiling their kids, or perhaps somewhat blind to long-term expectations
for their children
o Authoritarian parent- helicopter parent, dictator, unresponsive, cold
o Authoritative parent- balanced, supportive through failures yet continuing to have high
expectations
• The origins of personality (the sum total of the enduring characteristics that differentiate one
individual for another) begin in infancy
• Temperament
o The patterns of arousal and emotionality that are consistent and enduring
characteristics of an individual
• Temperament refers to how children behave

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Temperamental differences among infants appear from the time of birth
Temperament shows stability from infancy through adolescence
o Easy babies have a positive disposition; their body functions operate regularly and they
are adaptable (40% of infants)
o Difficult babies have negative moods and are slow to adapt to new situations, when
confronted with a new situation, they tend to withdraw (10% of infants)
o Slow-to-Warm-Up babies are inactive, showing relatively calm reactions to their
environment; their moods are generally negative, and they withdraw from new
situations, adapting slowly (15% of infants)
o The remaining 36% cannot be consistently categorized
No temperament is inherently good or bad
o Long-term adjustment depends on the GOODNESS OF FIT, the notion that development
is dependent on the degree of match between children's temperament and the nature
and demands of the environment in which they are being raised

Emotion and Motivation
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Motivation- the factors that direct and energize behavior
o Intrinsic- motivation stemming from the benefits associated with the process of pursuing a
goal such as having a fulfilling experience
o Extrinsic- motivation stemming from the benefits associated with achieving a goal such as
obtaining a monetary award
Drive reduction theory
o Organisms experience arousal of a drive when an important need is not satisfied and they
engage in behavior to reduce arousal and satisfy the need
• Ex
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If you think the persuader is "like you", you
will be persuaded more easily
Associations
o Using a positive symbol to endorse whatever the persuader wants you to "buy" the idea is
that through classical conditioning, you will transfer the positive qualities of the endorser to
the product

Judgement and Decision Making
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Rational decision
o Define the problem
o Identify criteria necessary to judge
o Weigh the criteria
o Generate alternatives
o Rate each alternatives
o Compute optimal decision
System 1
o Fast unconscious
o Automatic
o Everyday decisions
o Error prone
System 2
o Slow conscious
o Effortful
o Complex decisions
o Reliable
Expectations- presumptions of people and situations
o Not having to assess from scratch
o Special attention to behaviors
o Interpret ambiguity
o Remember events consistent
o Sometime inaccurate
• Poor judgements and decisions

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Self-fulfilling prophecy- when an initially inaccurate expectations leads to actions that
cause the expectation to come true
▪ Ex
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A meek and tidy soul, she has a need for order and structure, and a passion
for detail
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When you
speak to the teacher, he says, "sorry
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" When you
arrive home, you yell at your roommate because the house is messy
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The newscaster reports a terrible accident that has occurred in your hometown
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• Suppression
o Your friend enjoys smoking
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The food looks really
god, so you take two boxes, telling yourself, "I just won't have one the next time
• Rationalization
• Criticisms of Psychoanalytic Theory
o Theory is difficult to test
o Theory places an overemphasis on unconscious forces
o Inadequate evidence to support the theory (only a few case studies)
o Sexism may have tainted the theory
o Lack of cross-cultural support for theory
• Evaluating trait theory
o Trait theory, especially the Big 5 model, is able to describe personality
• Cross-cultural human studies find good agreement for the Big 5 model in many
cultures
• Three dimensions (extraversion, neuroticism and agreeableness) have cross-species
generality
o Problems with trait theory include
• Lack of explanation as to why traits develop
• Issue of explaining transient versus long-lasting traits
• Traits do not predict behaviors- consistency paradox
▪ Personality across time and across observers are the same while behavior of a
person across situation are not consistent
• Humanistic Theory
o Humanistic personality theories reject psychoanalytic notions
• Humanistic theories view each person as basically good and that people are striving
for self-fulfillment
• Argues that people carry a perception of themselves and of the world
• The goal for a humanist is to develop/promote a positive self-concept
o Issues for humanistic theory
• Naïve assumptions about human nature
• Humanistic theory suffers from poor testability
• Most humanists are not interested in scientific testing of theory (thus it suffers from
inadequate evidence)
• Theory does not attempt to account for all of human personality (narrowness aspect
of theory)
• Cognitive Learning Theory
o Personality is shaped by our environment and life experiences
o We behave the way we do based on what we have learned in life

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This theory stresses the processes through which people turn their sensations and
perceptions into organized impressions of reality
o Evaluating Cognitive Learning theory
• Emphasizes the interaction between the environment and the individual
• Meets the standards for scientific research by offering testable and objective
hypotheses
• Ignores unconscious and emotional component of personality
• Overlooks developmental aspects of personality
Determinism
o The view that suggests that behavior is shaped primarily by factors external to the
person
o Learning theorists are not interested in consistencies in behavior across time
• We are not consistent because we learn to behave differently in different
situations
o Reciprocal Determinism
• The idea that people's behavior influences their environment, which in turn
influences their behavior
Objective tests
o Advantages
• Capitalize on self-knowledge
• Simple, easy, cost-effective
o Disadvantages
• High-stakes testing
• Self-enhancement bias
• Reference group effect
o Informant report
• Ask someone who knows the individual to describe his or her personality
o Informant rating
• Pros
▪ Cons valid
▪ Can be combined
▪ Better sample of behavior
• Cons
▪ Limited access
▪ Sibling contrast effect
▪ Letter of recommendation effect
▪ Honeymoon effect
Projective tests
o Projective hypothesis- if a person is asked to describe or interpret ambiguous stimuli,
their responses will be influenced by nonconscious needs, feelings, and experiences
• Inkblot test
• Thematic Apperception test

Gender
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Gender Roles- Behaviors, attitudes, and traits designated as masculine or feminine in a culturebased on gender stereotypes
Gender identity- psychological sense of being male or female

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Sexual orientation- direction of one's emotional and erotic attraction to opposite, same, or both
sexes
Gender differences due to
o Actual gender differences
o Gender roles
o Gender Stereotypes
Girls are more likely to:
o Agree with the person they are talking to
o Offer praise
o Elaborate on other's comments
Boys are more likely to:
o Assert their opinions
o Offer criticism
o Engage in aggression
Developmental Intergroup Theory- adults' heavy focus on gender leads children to…
o Use gender as a key source of information about themselves and others
o Seek out any possible gender differences
o Form rigid stereotypes based on gender
Gender Schema Theory- children actively organize others' behavior, activities, and attributes into
gender specific categories or schemas
Social Learning Theory- gender roles are learned through reinforcement, punishment, and
modeling
Gender discrimination- differential treatment based on gender
Sexual harassment- unwanted treatment related to sexual behaviors or appearance
Ambivalent Sexism
o Hostile- the men are better than women because they are type of sexism (what we usually
think of as sexism)
o Benevolent- refers to the sexism in men that believe they need to protect women because
women are fragile and weak

Social Psychology
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Why do people do what they do?
Social Psychology- the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings and behaviors are
influenced by other people
Social Psychology seems to explain…
o How people influence each other (descriptive)
o Why people influence each other (explanatory)
o Describes and explains social theory
Interdisciplinary Bridge
o Social psychology combines questions and elements from other areas within psychology as
well as from outside discipline
o Ex
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The feeling of fear at the sight of a person who hit you
• Habits rewarded by other people
▪ Ex
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Includes physical attributes, attitudes, beliefs, preferences, and
psychological traits
▪ The situation- events outside the person, these include both temporary features
such as environmental demands and long-lasting influences such as family and
culture
▪ Person-situation interactions- more accurately capture social psychology,
different social situations trigger different goals
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Most college students dress casually for classes
▪ Injunctive norms- norms that define what behaviors are typically approved or
disapproved
• Ex
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I am a tall bassoon player
▪ Collectivists define themselves in terms of groups to which they belong

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"you are generous") activates a favorable self-image
• This motivates the person to act in ways that are consistent with
that self-image (to be generous)
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Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination
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Prejudice- a generalized attitude toward members of a social group
o Can be positive or negative
Stereotype- a generalized belief about members of a group
If you were asked your opinions about Irishmen, Californians, or frat guys, that would tap…
o Explicit prejudice- positive or negative feelings of which you are aware of and are willing to
say
o But NOT implicit prejudice- feelings of which you are not aware or unwilling to say
Discrimination- behaviors directed toward others because of their group membership
Approximately 50% of women have been sexually harassed during their academic or working
lives
According to the law, sexual harassment takes two forms
o Quid pro quo harassment- attempts by the perpetrator to exchange something of value
for sexual favors (prostitution)
o Hostile environment harassment- creating a professional setting that is sexually
offensive, intimidating, or hostile
Institutional discrimination- the discrimination that has been built into the legal, political,
economic, and social institutions of a culture
Costs to prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination can be…

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Material- individuals may receive less pay or be less likely to be promoted
Psychological- increased self-consciousness about oneself, an impaired cognitive
functioning
Stereotype threat- the fear that one might confirm the negative stereotypes held by others
about one's group
o Sometimes leads people to disidentify with those arenas where society expects them to
fail
• Disidentify- to decide that the arena is no longer relevant to their self-esteem
o Ways to reduce stereotype threat
• Humor reduces anxiety associated with threat
• Role models who contradict stereotype
• Simply learning about stereotype threats can reduce them
Prejudicial feelings, stereotypical thinking, and discriminatory actions
o Help support and protect one's group
o Can provide social approval
o Can bolster personal and social identities
o Can help us navigate complex environments with an economy of mental effort
Ingroup bias- tendency to benefit members of one's own groups over members of other groups
Realistic group conflict theory- proposal that intergroup conflict, and negative prejudices and
stereotypes, emerge out of actual competition between groups for desired resources
o Example, members of different ethnic groups may compete for the same jobs or the
same farmland
Social dominance orientation- extent to which a person wants his or her own group to dominate
and be superior to other groups
o People scoring high in social dominance orientation are prejudiced against weaker
groups:
• Blacks and homosexuals (in the US)
• Natives and Asian immigrants (in Canada)
• Native Taiwanese (in Taiwan)
Seeking social approval
o To win approval from members of our group, we may conform to their negative views of
other groups
o A prejudiced social environment may also provide permission for people to express
bigoted opinions they already hold
o Extrinsic religiosity- worship is an opportunity to make friends, etc
...
Racial discrimination is wrong
• Descriptive norms- what we actually do or feel
• Ex
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All men are sports fans
o Compared to a neutral mood, stereotyping is enhanced by…
• Positive mood
• Anger or anxiety
• Simple physiological arousal from exercise
Interventions based on the ignorance hypothesis
o Ignorance hypothesis- stereotypes and prejudice due to lack of information
The goal-based approach- based on the assumption that prejudice, stereotyping, and
discrimination serve psychological needs
...
Imagining what it would be like to have AIDs
When contact helps
o Outgroup members have traits and abilities challenging negative stereotypes
o Contact is supported by local authorities and norms
o Groups are of equal status, at least in contact setting
o Contact is at individual level
o Contact is rewarding
o Groups work toward common goals

Psychological Disorders
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Insane vs
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"not guilty by reason of insanity"
Psychopathology
o Disruptions in emotional, behavioral, or thought processes that lead to personal distress or
that blocks one's ability to achieve important goals (the field is also called abnormal
psychology)
Mental/psychological disorder- a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or
pattern that occurs in an individual and that is typically associated with either a painful symptom
(distress)or impairment in one or more important areas of functioning
Identifying disorders/abnormal behavior- 3 standards
o Statistical standard- evaluates behavior as abnormal when it deviates from average/
normative behavior in that particular culture
• Frequency, degree, intensity, duration, pattern
o Subjective discomfort standard- evaluates behavior as abnormal when the individual is/are
discontented with the person's own psychological functioning
• Distress or discomfort to self and others (anxiety, fears, depression, etc
...
To get rid
of these feelings, you might wash your hands repeatedly for hours at a time
• Symmetry
▪ You might feel the need to constantly arrange your shirts so that they are
ordered precisely by color
...
You may often use mental rituals such as reciting particular
words, counting in your head or praying to relieve the anxiety you experience
when you have these involuntary thoughts
• Harm
▪ You might imagine your house burning down and then continually drive by your
house to make sure there is no fire
...
The person might
attempt to contact the object of the delusion, and stalking behavior is not
uncommon

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Grandiose
▪ A person with this type of disorder has an over-inflated sense of worth, power,
knowledge, or identity
...
It is not uncommon for people with this type of delusional
disorder to make repeated complaints to legal authorities
• Somatic
▪ A person with this type of delusional disorder believes that he or she has a
physical defect or medical problem
Hallucinations- perceptions of things that do not exist
o Examples include hearing voices, seeing things that aren't there and smelling unusual
aromas that aren't there
Dissociative disorders
o In dissociative disorders, critical elements of personality split apart from significant aspects
of experience, memory or consciousness
• Dissociative identity disorder- developing separate personalities
• Dissociative amnesia- failing to recall or identify past experiences
▪ Dissociative fugue- leaving home and wandering off
Personality disorders
o An enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the
expectations of the individual's culture, is pervasive and inflexible, has onset in adolescence
or early adulthood, is stable over time, and leads to distress or impairment
o Paranoid personality disorder- a pattern of distrust and suspiciousness such that others'
motives are interpreted as malevolent
o Schizoid personality disorder- a pattern of detachment from social relationships and a
restricted range of emotional expression
o Schizotypal personality disorder- a pattern of acute discomfort in close relationships,
cognitive or perceptual distortions, and eccentricities of behavior
o Antisocial personality disorder- a pattern of disregard for and violation of, the rights of
others
o Borderline personality disorder- a pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, selfimage, and affect, and marked impulsivity
o Histrionic personality disorder- a pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking
o Narcissistic personality disorder- a pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of
empathy
o Avoidant personality disorder- a pattern of social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, and
hypersensitivity to negative evaluation
o Dependent personality disorder- a pattern of submissive and clinging behavior related to an
excessive need to be taken care of
o Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder- a pattern of preoccupation with orderliness,
perfectionism, and control

Treatment and Therapy
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Repressed memories
o Concept comes from Freud's Psychoanalysis
• No empirical support
o Basically, the individual has lost access to the source of the memory but held onto the
content
o Clinicians, through the mechanisms of psychotherapy, implant those beliefs in their patients
o Therapists often instigated the patient's efforts to find these memories
o Eventually, the therapist's theory is translated into the patient's reality
Therapy- an intervention into a person's life designed to change that person's functioning in some
way
o Through a helping relationship
o By a trained professional
Psychological therapies
o Focus on changing the faulty behavior we have learned and the words, thoughts,
interpretations, and feedback that direct our strategies for living
o Psychotherapy attempts to change:
• Disturbed thoughts
• Disturbed emotions
• Disturbed behaviors
• Interpersonal and life situation difficulties
• Biomedical disturbances
Therapeutic Process (may involve…)
o To reach a diagnosis, possibly putting a label on the problem
o To propose a probable etiology and/or identify the functions being served by the problem
behavior
o To make a prognosis or estimate the course the problem will take with or without treatment
o To prescribe and carry out some form of treatment designed to minimize or eliminate the
problem
Process of entering therapy
o Many people who might benefit from therapy do not seek professional help
...
Concern and respect for others are also important themes
o Client-centered therapy- rejects the idea of therapists as authorities on their client's inner
experiences

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