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HPS121 Psychology Notes
TOPIC #1 Human Development: Infancy and Childhood (chapter 11)


Developmental psychology – Study of changes in physiology, cognition and social behavior
over the life span

What Shapes a Child?


Human development follows a predictable progression



Environment influences development

Development Starts in the Womb


Development process begins at the moment of conception till birth (prenatal period)



Sperm from male unites with eggs from female to create the zygote



Zygote – A single celled organism, carries genetic blueprint for



From 0 – 2 weeks = Germinal stage, rapid cell division leads to creation of embryo



Migrates to uterus, placenta begins to form



From two weeks to two months the developing human is known as an embryo



During embryo stage, internal organs begin to form (heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, sex organs,
and nervous system)



Arms, hands, legs, feet, fingers, toes eyes, ears also emerge



Embryo is highly vulnerable and it is a critical period of development



After two months, it is known as a fetus



Foetal stage involves lots of physical growth (8-38 weeks)
o

6-9 months mark rapid cerebral development

o

Respiratory and digestive systems mature

o

Bones and muscles form

o

Capable of movement



Basic brain areas begin to form by week 4



Cortex develops by week 7



Thalamus and hypothalamus week 10



Left and right hemispheres week 12



By month 7, the fetus has a working nervous system



Brain development does not stop at birth; it continues to develop throughout childhood and
adulthood and into old age
...




Exposure to a teratogen at 4 weeks can interfere with brain development



Thalidomide = deformed limbs



If exposure occurs during germinal period = death



If exposure occurs during embryotic period = structural damage



If exposure occurs during foetal period = functional damage



Excessive consumption of alcohol can lead to fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)



Causes low birth weight, face and head abnormalities, mental retardation and behavioral
and cognitive problems
...




Myelinated axons form synapses with other neurons



Then synaptic pruning occurs



Synaptic pruning – A process whereby the synaptic connections in the brain that are
frequently used are preserved, and those that are not are lost
...




When placed in a strange situation (new surroundings) the infant would use the cloth
mother as a base and explore the room going back to the cloth mother for comfort and
security
...




If infants cannot use disparity information to perceive depth they will only see a random
collection of dots



To determine whether or not infants can see stereograms Robert Fox devised an experiment
where babies would sit on their parents lap and wear special viewing glasses to look at a
screen



Babies with binocular disparity should be able to see a 3D rectangle moving back and forth



Babies without binocular disparity should only see a field of dots with no movement
...
5 – 6 months

Auditory Perception


When a rattle is shook near an infant’s left or right ear, they turn towards the direction of
the sound indicating that they have heard the sound and know where its coming from



Analysis’ have shown that at 6 months, infants have nearly an adults level of auditory
function



Infants also have a memory for sounds



Infants can recognize sounds that they have heard before



Eg: newborns altered their sucking patterns in order to hear their mother’s voice more often



From the first three months to adulthood, there is a continuity in how the brain processes
speech

Memory Improves over Childhood


Development of memory also helps children learn about the world as new information
builds on what they already know



Carolyn Rovee-Collier showed that infants possess some types of memory, even though it is
quite rudimentary



In experiments, an infant was placed in a crib with a mobile above him/her and a ribbon
attached to the baby’s ankle



The infant learned that he could move the mobile by kicking



Later when the infant was tested, the ribbon was no longer attached to the mobile but was
still attached to the infants ankle



The baby would recognize the mobile and would kick faster than the previous test to try
make the mobile move



Infants ranging from 2-18 months were trained and tested at different lengths of time



Findings showed that older infants remembered longer some up to several weeks
...
Not actual memories of the
events



Children are also known to confabulate (make things up)



Happens when asked about personal experiences



Eg: children were asked if they had ever gotten their fingers cought in a mousetrap



10 weeks later, a new interviewer asked the same question and 60% of children presented a
false story with great detail



Many disputed memories between siblings and twins, happen during preschool years when
source memory is still developing

Piaget Emphasized Stages of Development


Is development continuous or stagelike?



Jean Piaget founded a theory about the development of thinking



Paid specific attention to how children made errors rather than how they succeeded on
tasks
...
The child is then asked to guess where sally will look for the
marble when she comes back into the room?



Most children are able to solve this problem by age four or five as they have sufficient
language skills and the ability to coordinate deliberate actions with beliefs



Children’s success at this test seems to coincide with the maturation of the brain’s frontal
lobes



This finding is culturally universal meaning that it is more influenced by biological
maturation rather than cultural practices



Frontal lobe importance is also supported by research with adults



When asked to think about others mental states, brain scans show that the frontal lobe
activates

Moral Reasoning and Moral Emotions


Concerns the way people learn to decide between behaviours with competing social
outcomes



Psychologists have theorized that moral reasoning depends on cognitive processes and
moral emotions



If people lack adequate cognitive abilities, their moral emotions may not translate into moral
behaviours



Lawrence Kohlberg developed a stage theory, he tested morality by asking people to
respond to hypothetical situations where the main character was faced with a moral
dilemma (eg: having to steal drugs to save his wife)



Kohlberg also devised three levels of moral reasoning:



Preconventional level



o

Earliest level of moral development

o

Self interest determines what is moral

o

Eg “he should steal the drug if he really likes his wife”

Conventional level
o

Middle stage of moral development

o

Rules and the approval of other determines what is moral

o

Conforms to the rules of law and order

o

Eg “he shouldn’t take the drug because it is wrong to steal and everyone will think
he’s a bad person”





Post conventional level
o

Highest stage of moral development

o

Decisions depend on abstract principals

o

Complex reasoning

o

Eg “sometimes people have to break the law if the law is unjust”

Some critisise the heavy reliance on cognitive processes noting that emotions have a heavy
influence too



Research on moral behaviour’s emotional components have largely focused on empathy and
sympathy



Empathy arises from understanding another’s emotional state and feeling what the other
person is feeling or would be expected to feel



Sympathy involves feeling for the person



Pity, sorrow, concern (sympathy)



Moral emotions form early in life but emerge after primary emotions eg: happiness and
anger



They are therefore known as secondary emotions



Research has shown that parent’s behaviours can influence children’s level of both moral
emotions and prosocial behaviour



Parents of sympathetic children tend to have certain characteristics such as high in
sympathy and they allow their children to express negative emotions in ways that do not
harm others



Promote an understanding and focus on others



On the other side, parents are more lax in discipline, display more frequent anger



If parents show inductive reasoning “you made Chris cry, its not nice to hit” it promotes
children’s sympathetic attitudes

Psychological Basis of Morality


People have a visceral response to real or imagined outcomes and that this response aids
decision making



Antonio Damasio found that patients with damage to the prefrontal cortex fail to become
emotionally involved in decision making



He studied to individuals that had had prefrontal damage during infancy



Both individuals showed deficiencies in moral and social reasoning



They lacked somatic markers

Language Develops in an Orderly Fashion


Communication allows humans to learn a lot about each other



Enables us to live in complex societies



As the brain develops, so does the ability to speak and form sentences



Although there is some variation, the stages of language development are remarkably
uniform across individuals



Michael Tomasello states that early social interactions between infant and caregiver are
essential to understanding other people



Ability to speak can be disrupted by social isolation and lack of exposure to language (eg:
Genie’s Case)

From Zero to 60,000


Language is a system of using sounds and symbols according to grammatical rules



Sentences can be broken down into smaller units or phrases



Which can be then broken down further into words



Each which consists of morphemes



And then phonemes (basic sounds)



System of rules that govern how words are combined is a language’s syntax



Up to six months of age a baby can discriminate all the speech sounds that occur in all
natural languages



Experimenters use a habituation techniques to study how infants learn speech sounds



They distract the baby with a toy on one side and speech sounds were emitted from a box
on the other side eg : ba ba ba



Then a new speech sound was introduced la la la and if the baby turned towards the new
sounds, the researchers determined that the baby could tell the difference between ba and
la



During the first months of life, newborn’s actions generate all their sounds (cries, gurgles or
grunts)



Cooing and laughing appear three to five months



5-7 months see babbling



And 7-8 months they babble in syllables



By the first year, the syllables are mixed and then they begin to take on the sounds and
rhythms of the infants native language



Babbling may be an infants way of testing out the system, checking out the basic parts and
how they’re put together
...
All gone



Roger Brown often referred to these as telegraphic speech as the child speaks as though
they are sending a telegram



Just basic necessary words



At ages 3-5 children may begin to make errors by over applying grammatical rules



I “runned” or “holded” or “mouses” and “mans”



These are rare, however reflect an important aspect of language acquisition

Acquiring Language with the Hands


Deaf babies have also been found to acquire sign language as quickly as spoken languages



Laura Ann Petitto observed deaf babies of deaf parents in households using two different
signed languages



They found that the babies exposed to signed languages from birth acquired these
languages on an identical maturational timetable as hearing babies

Universal Grammar


Noam Chomsky argued that language must be governed by universal grammar or innate
knowledge of a set of universal and specifically linguistic elements and relations that form
the heart of all human languages



Before this , linguistics focused on analyzing language and identifying basic components of
grammar



All languages have similar elements such as nouns and verbs but how they are arranged
varies



Deep structure – the implicit meaning of sentences



Surface structure – the way the sentence is arranged



Research shows that we remember a sentences deep structure, not its surface structure



Environment heavily influences a child’s aquisiion of language



Creole Language – a language that has evolved from mixing of languages



Develops out of rudimentary communication where a population that speaks several
languages attempt to understand each other

Learning To Read


Two major schools of thought in teaching children to read



Phonics teach an association between letters and their phonemes or sounds



Children learn to spell out words by how they sound



But due to the complexity of English language, some educators use the whole language
approach



Emphasizes the words meaning and how words are connected in sentences



In the phonic method, children learn a small number of simple words that teach the sounds
of letters for most of the other words



However they then learn the exceptions to these general rules



Research has shown that this method is superior to the whole language approach



But the whole language approach motivates children by making reading fun and encourages
students to be thoughtful

Animal Communication


Animals have ways of communicating with each other, yet none of them use languages like
humans do



Scientists have tried to teach chimps how to speak however they lack the vocal ability to
speak aloud



So studies have used sign language or visual cues to determine whether they understand
words or concepts



Although they tried to teach a chimp (Neam Chimpsky aka Nim) American Sign Language,
Nim could never truly grasp the language, he was able to use basic signs such as eat play and
more, however was never able to construct sentences
...




Also proposed that parents have no long term effects on the development of children’s
personality



Harris argued that a child’s peers are the most important influence when it comes to
socialization



Her work is based mainly on group socialization theory



Group socialization theory – proposes that children learn two sets of behaviours, one for
inside the home and one for outside



Behaviours learned inside the home in early life are not useful in outside social contexts



According to Harris, only behaviours learned outside the home have long-term effects on
personality



In contrast, research has also shown that parents have a substantial influence on an
individuals life



Researchers have concluded that neither play a dominant role, rather they complement
each other



Branford Brown argued hat it is the parents influence that affects social development by
influencing decisions made about what kind of social group to join



Parents play a major role in realigning social groups that are consistent with family norms

Parental Style Can Affect Children’s Well-Being


Longitudinal study conducted by Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas



Study ran for 6 years and included 141 children from upper middle class families



Chess and Thomas focused on what they thought was the crucial factor in child/parent
interaction: each child’s biologically based temperament (typical mood, activity level and
emotional reactivity)



The study found that the fit between the child’s temperament and the parent’s behaviours
is most important in determining social development



Eg: parents often have a hard time raising a difficult child who tends to have negative moods
and do not adapt well to new situations



Parents who openly demonstrated their frustration may unwittingly encourage more
negative behaviours
o

If the child is uneasy about a new setting, pushing the child can lead to behavioural
problems

o

If the child is distracted easy, forcing them to concentrate for long periods may lead
to emotional upset



It was found that parents who responded to the child calmly, firmly, patiently and
consistently tended to have the most positive outcomes



These parents did not engage in self blame and managed to cope with their own frustration
and disappointment



It was also noted that overprotectiveness can encourage a child’s anxiety and escalate the
child’s distress



Overall it was found that the best style of parenting was dynamic and flexible



Other research has shown that parents can influence a child’s attitudes, values and religious
beliefs
...




They are also more likely to get divorced as adults



Divorce may damage a child’s relationship with one or both parents and they potentially
loose a important source of both emotional support and guidance



However, children who live in houses filled with conflict may have psychological problems
even if their parents stay together



Although children with two parents fare the best, children who lose a parent through death
have few problems than children of divorce



Children raised by single mothers also have similar problems as children of divorce have



Overall evidence suggests that the absence of a biological father is associated with many
negative outcomes



Girls raised without fathers were more likely to initiate early sexual activity and were much
more likely to become pregnant at a young age



However having a stepfather does not necessarily resolve these problems



Often with divorce, mothers are forced to work considerably more as financial resources
leave with the father
...




These messages provide information for children about how they should and shouldn’t
behave



Situational factors can also contribute to gender specific behaviour



A study where women were observed talking to their boyfriends and talking to their male
friends showed that when talking to their boyfriends, their voices changed to a higher pitch
and became softer and more relaxed



It also took on a more babyish, feminine and absentminded tone

Biological Bases of Sexual Identity


In 1966 Janet and Ron Reimer took their 7 month old twins Bruce and Brian to a hospital for
routine circumcision



Bruce was operated on first however his penis was severally damaged and as a result had to
be removed



The Reimer family under the recommendation of John Money decided to raise Bruce as a girl
and renamed him Brenda



Money reported that that the sexual reassignment was successful and Brenda was well
adjusted



This case also led him to conclude that gender was the result of socialization rather than
biology



However John Colapinto published a book in 2000 that indicated that Brenda’s sexual
reassignment was a failure from the start



Brenda grew her hair long and wore dresses however was not comfortable or happy being a
girl



She was constantly teased and bullied at school and was extremely uncomfortable when she
received hormones at age 11 to initiate the development of her breasts



She developed depression by age 15 and became almost suicidal



She was told the truth and immediately decided to revert back to being a boy



She changed her name to David, married and was stepfather to three children



However after a while, his marriage broke down, he lost his job and with the death of his
twin brother (OD) he committed suicide in May 2004 at the age of 38



This case shows us that gender identity is not only shaped by social influences



Biology has a strong effect on whether people identify as a female or male

People Define Themselves in Terms of Race and Ethnicity


Studies have shown that at three months of age, infants can discern racial differences in the
faces of strangers



Infants generally look longer at faces from their own race



However infants who did not do this were children of African descent but were living in a
predominantly Caucasian culture



Researches attribute this to the fact that the children have high levels of contact with both
races during their early years



When children enter middle childhood, they have an awareness of their ethnic identities



Many researches believe that children in ethnic minority groups often engage in additional
processes aimed at ethnic identity formation



These days, more and more people refuse to be pigeonholed into one category of ethnic
identity

What Brings Meaning to Adulthood?


Recently researchers have discovered that the most important aspects of development do
not stop after the age of twenty, but can continue throughout adulthood into old age



Many contemporary psychologists have considered development from a life-span
perspective looking a how mental activity and social relations change over the entire course
of life



Although aging is associated with significant cognitive and physical decline, its an important
part of life and can be meaningful



Erik Erikson proposed a theory of development emphasizing age-related psychological
processes



He proposed that identity development consists of 8 stages ranging from infants first years
to old age



Each stage has a developmental ‘crisis’ or developmental challenge to be confronted



Infancy (0-2 years)



o

Trust and mistrust

o

Children learn that the world is safe and that people are loving and reliable

Toddler (2-3 years)
o

Autonomy versus shame and doubt

o

Encouraged to explore the environment, children gain feelings of independence and
positive self esteem



Preschool (4-6 years)
o

Initiative versus guilt

o

Children develop a sense of purpose by taking on responsibilities, but also develop
the capacity to feel guilty for misdeeds









Childhood (7-12 years)
o

Industry versus inferiority

o

By working successfully with others, children learn to feel competent

Adolescence (13-19 years)
o

Ego identity versus role confusion

o

By exploring different social roles, adolescents develop a sense of identity

Young Adulthood (20s)
o

Intimacy versus isolation

o

Young adults gain the ability to commit to long-term relationships

Middle Adulthood (30s – 50s)
o

Generativity versus stagnation

o

Adults gain a sense that they are contributing to the future and caring for future
generations



Old Age (60s and beyond)
o

Integrity versus despair

o

Older adults feel as sense of satisfaction that they have lived a good life and
developed wisdom



The sixth stage young adulthood where individuals tackle intimacy versus isolation involves
the challenge of maintaining committed friendships and romantic relationships



Seventh stage generativity versus stagnation takes place during middle life and involves
producing or giving back to society



Includes parenthood or engaging in activities such as volunteering



Finally the last stage refers to a sense of honesty about oneself



Older adults reflect on their lives and either respond positively or negatively

Adults are affected by Life Transitions
Career


Most find it difficult to find a career they hope will be satisfying



Most people work approximately 100,000 hours in their lives



Careers play an important role in overall happiness



A “good job” not only provides material rewards, but also brings a sense of accomplishment
and purpose



According to Erikson, the desire for generativity inspires us to want to give back to the
society

Marriage


People devote a lot of time and effort into achieving and maintaining satisfying relationships



Searching for the right partner is an important feature in contemporary western culture



Marriage has health advantages (eg: longevity)



Married couples support each other, encourage healthy habits and assist each other in
meeting life’s demands

Having Children


One way people can satisfy the challenge of generativity is through having children



Parents often become immersed in their children’s lives and can be a central characteristic
of their self definition



However children can strain marriages and research shows that couples with children report
less marital satisfaction than those who are childless



Although satisfaction is lower, marriages appear to be more stable

Aging can be Successful


In western societies people are living longer and it is now common for people to live beyond
100



Populations are aging and by 2030 1 in 5 Americans will be over age 65



Much more attention has been focused on the lives of people over age 60



40% of federal judges are over 65 in the US



Many older adults work productively well past their 70s



However the mind and body do inevitably start to deteriorate at age 50



Graying, whitening of the hair and wrinkling skin



More serious changes affect the brain, frontal lobes shrink proportionally more than other
brain regions



Researchers once believed that memory loss and confusion was inevitable



Now many older adults remain alert but just slower



Dementia can occur where thinking, memory and behaviour deteriorate progressively



Dementia can be caused by excessive alcohol intake and HIV but the main cause for adults
are Alzheimer’s disease and small strokes that affect the brain’s oxygen supply



After age 70, the risk increases every year



3-5% or people will develop Alzheimer’s disease by age 70-75



Cause of Alzheimer’s is not known however evidence has suggested that cholesterol genes
may be a factor



Initial symptoms are minor memory impairments but the disease eventually progresses to
more serious difficulties such as forgetting daily routines



Eventually the person loses all mental capacities including memory and language



However some individuals thrive in old age, especially those with good financials and good
health



Older adults also report to be more satisfied with life, more so than younger adults



Except for dementia, older adults have fewer mental health problems, including depression



According to Laura Cartensen’s socioemotional selectivity theory, as people grow older they
perceive time to be limited and thus adjust their priorities



They experience more positive emotions

Cognition Changes during Aging


Although it is a known fact that cognitive abilities decline with age, it is difficult to pinpoint
exactly what causes the decline



Could be the slowing of mental processing speed



Some sensory perceptual changes occur with age

Memory


Older people find it difficult to juggle multiple pieces of information at the same time



Tasks in which attention is divided also prove difficult (eg: driving and listening to radio)



Researchers believe that these deficits reflect a decreased ability to store multiple pieces of
information in working memory simultaneously



Frontal lobes shrink which play an important role in working memory



Long term memory is less affected by aging however certain aspects appear to suffer in
advanced age



Older people may need more time to learn new information, but once learnt can recall it as
effectively as younger people



Elderly are better at recognition than at retrieval tasks

Intelligence


Fluid intelligence – the ability to process new general information that requires no prior
knowledge



Fluid intelligence seems to peak early in adulthood and slowly decline as we age



Crystallized intelligence refers to more specific knowledge, must be learned or memorized
(eg: vocabulary, knowledge of specialized information)



This type of intelligence usually increase throughout life and breaks down only when other
cognitive abilities prevent new information from being processed



The Seattle Longitudinal Study tracked adults from 25-81 over 7 years and found that
intellectual decline does not occur until people are in their 60s or 70s



Also that people who were healthy and remained mentally active demonstrated less decline



Although memory and the speed of processing may decline, older people can still learn new
information



New research has also shown that active social engagement may help older adults maintain
their cognitive abilities

TOPIC #3 Basic Statistics (chapter 2)
How are data analyzed and evaluated?
Good Research Requires Valid, Reliable and Accurate Data


Validity – The extent to which the data collected address the research hypothesis in the way
intended



Eg: to investigate whether physically abused children are more likely to use drugs, one could
do a longitudinal study or they could use court and medical records
...
Having someone with a
stopwatch is less reliable than using a computer to collect data from the viewer’s tv remote



Accuracy – the extent to which an experimental measure is free from error



Although a measure may be reliable and valid, it may not be accurate



Two forms of errors, random and systematic



If the error is introduced into each measurement and its value differs each time, then it is
known as RANDOM ERROR



If the error introduced into the measurements is constant, then it is a SYSTEMATIC ERROR



Systematic errors are worse than random ones as they tend to average out over time

Descriptive Statistics provide a summary of the Data


First step is to inspect the raw values and look for errors in data recording



Look for responses that are especially unlikely



Then they summarize the basic patterns using descriptive statistics



Descriptive statistics – Overall summary of the study’s results



Central tendency – (measures of central tendency) a single value that describes a typical
response or the behaviour of the group as a whole



Mean – measure of central tendency that is the arithmetic average of a set of numbers



Median – A measure of central tendency that is the value in a set of numbers that falls
exactly halfway between the lowest and highest values



Mode – most frequently occurring number in a data set



Variability – how widely dispersed the values are about the mean



Standard deviation – how far each value is, on average from the mean



If the average mean for an exam is 75% and the SD is 5, then most people scored between
70-80%
...
0 to +1
...
0)
o



Graph rises to the right

Negative Correlation – as one variable decreases, the other does too (value of -1
...
05



Effect size indicates the magnitude of the experimental effect or the strength of a
relationship

TOPIC #4 Personality (chapter 13)
How Have Psychologists Studied Personality?


“What must we know to know a person well?”



Some personality psychologists emphasize biological and genetic factors



Others emphasize culture, patterns of reinforcement, or mental and unconscious processes



Personality – “The dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical
systems that determine his characteristic behaviour and thought (Gordon Allport)



Organization – indicates that personality is not just a list of traits, but a coherent whole

Psychodynamic Theories Emphasize Unconscious and Dynamic Processes


Sigmund Freud’s psychodynamic theory of personality is that unconscious forces influence
behaviour



He referred to these psychic forces as instincts
o



He proposed that people satisfy the life instinct by following the pleasure principle
o



Mental representations arising out of biological or physical need
Directs people to seek pleasure and to avoid pain

Energy that drives the pleasure principle is the libido

Topographical Model of Mind


Freud theorized that mental activity occurred in three zones
o

Unconsciousness

o

Preconscious

o

Conscious



A lot of human behaviour is influenced by unconscious processes



At conscious level, people are aware of their thoughts



Preconscious level consists of content that is not currently in awareness but that could be
brought to awareness (like long term memory)



Unconscious level contains material that the mind cannot easily retrieve
o

Wishes, desires, motives

o

Sometimes this info leaks into consciousness (Freudian slip)

o

Person accidently reveals a hidden motive

Development of Sexual Instincts


Early childhood experiences have a major impact on the development of personality



Children go through developmental stages corresponding to their pursuit of satisfaction of
libidinal urges



In each of the psychosexual stages libido is focused on one of the erogenous zones
o

Mouth, anus or the genitals



Oral state (birth to 18 months), pleasure is sought through the mouth, pleasure with sucking



Anal phase (2-3 years old), toilet training gets them to focus on the anus



Phallic stage (3-5 years) children discover the pleasure of rubbing their genitals even though
they have no sexual intent



According to Freud, children desire an exclusive relationship with the opposite-sex parent



Because the same-sex parent is thus considered a rival, children develop hostility toward
that parent



Oedipus complex



After the phallic stage, children enter a brief latency stage in which libidinal urges are
suppressed or channeled into doing schoolwork or building friendships



Finals stage is the genital stage where adolescents and adults attain mature attitudes about
sexuality and adulthood



Progression through psychosexual stages profoundly affects personality



Some people become fixated at certain stages



Oral stage fixation = pleasures through the mouth, smoking, excessively needy



Anal stage fixation = anal retentive personalities, stubborn and highly regulating
o

Result of strict toilet training or excessively rule based child rearing

Structural Model of Personality


Feud proposed an integrated model of how the mind is organized



Id – completely submerged in the unconsciousness



o

Operates according to the pleasure principle

o

Acts on impulses and desires

o

Sex and aggression drive the id

Superego – acts a brake on the id
o

Internalization of societal and parental standards of conduct

o



o

Developed during the phallic phase

o

Super ego is a rigid structure of morality or conscience

Ego – mediates between superego and id
o

Tries to satisfy the wishes of the id while being responsive to the dictates of the
superego

o


Acts according to the reality principle

Conflicts between id and superego results in anxiety



Ego copes with this through various defense mechanisms which are unconscious mental
strategies that the mind uses to protect itself from conflict and distress



Eg: rationalize, excuses
...
F Skinner argued that patterns of reinforcement determine response
tendencies which are the basis of personality



Humanistic approaches – emphasize personal experience and belief systems; they propose
that people seek personal growth to fulfill their human potential



Self actualization – greater self understanding



Humanism focuses on subjective human experiences (phenomenology)



Views each person as inherently good



Abraham Maslow believes that the desire to become self actualized is the ultimate and most
important human motive



Person-centered approach- developed by Carl Rogers, emphasizes people’s personal
understandings of phenomenology



Parental treatment affects personality development



Rogers encouraged unconditional positive regard – children are accepted, loved and prized
no matter how they behave



Thus they will develop a healthy sense of self esteem and will become a fully functioning
person



Positive psychology movement launched by clinical psychologist Martin Seligman
encourage the scientific study of qualities such as faith, values, creativity, courage and hope

Type and Trait Approaches Describe Behavioural Dispositions


Personality types – discrete categories of people based n global personality characteristics



Implicit personality theory – our tendency to assume that certain personality
characteristics go together and therefore to make predictions about people baed on
minimal evidence



Eg: we think that introverts dislike parties, like books and are sensitive



Trait approach – an approach to studying personality that focuses on the extent to which
individuals differ in personality dispositions



Gordon Allport found almost 18,000 different personality traits



Cattell reduced the traits into groups according to their similarities



Eg: all the terms that related to friendliness (nice, pleasant, cooperative)



Cattell identified 16 basic dimensions of personality



These terms are no longer used

Eysenck’s Hierarchical Model


Further reduced the number of basic traits



Produced a hierarchical model of personality



Basic structure begins at the specific response level (observed behaviours)



Habitual response level



If the person is observed to behave that way on many occasions, then they are characterized
as possessing a trait





Traits can be then viewed as components of superordinate traits
o

Introversion/extroversion

o

Emotional stability

o

Psychoticism

Introversion/Extroversion – coined by Car Jung, refers to the extent to which people are
shy, reserved and quiet versus sociable, outgoing and bold



Emotional stability – extent to which people’s moods and emotions change; those low in
emotional stability, neurotic people



Psychoticism – mix of aggression, impulse control and empathy; those high in psychoticism
are more aggressive, impulsive and self centered
o

Constraint - people range from restricted to disinhibited

The Big Five


Openness to experience – imaginative and independent/down-to-earth and conformist



Conscientiousness– how careful and organized one is



Extraversion – social vs
...
sober



Agreeableness – extent to which one is trusting and helpful



Neuroticism – worried vs
...
secure, self pitying vs
...
F Skinner viewed personality as mainly learned responses to
patterns of reinforcement



Psychologists have also turned towards cognition (George Kelly)



Emphasizes the importance of people’s understandings or personal constructs
o



Personal theories of how the world works

Kelly theorized that people viewed the world as if they were scientists, constantly testing
out their theories by observing ongoing events and then revisiting theories based on what
they observe



Julian Rotter built further on the cognitive approach



Introduced the idea that behaviour is a function of people’s expectancies for reinforcement



Albert Bandura argued that humans possess mental capacities such as beliefs,



thoughts and expectation that interact with environment to influence behaviours



Walter Mischel proposed that personality traits often fail to predict behaviour across
different circumstances



According to his cognitive affective personality system (CAPS) people’s responses are
influenced by how they perceive a given situation, their affective (emotional) response to
the situation, their skills in dealing with challenges and their anticipation of the outcomes of
their behaviour

How Is Personality Assessed and What Does it Predict?
Personality Refers to Both Unique and Common Characteristics


Allport divided the study of personality into two approaches
o

Idiographic approaches – person centered in that they focus on individual lives and
how various characteristics are integrated into unique persons

o

Nomothetic approaches – focuses on characteristics common among all people but
on which individuals vary

Idiographic Approaches


Idiographic approaches assume all individuals are unique



Central traits – especially important for how individuals define themselves



Secondary traits – less personally descriptive or not applicable



Central traits are more predictive of behaviour



Idiographic researches use case studies



Another idiographic approach considers a human life as a narrative



To study personality, narrative psychologists pay attention the stories people tell about their
lives

Nomothetic Approaches


Focuses on common traits such as agreeable/disagreeable



Compare people using common trait measures



Eg: questionnaires or other similar methods



Individuals are unique because of their unique combinations of common traits

Researchers Use Objective and projective Methods to Assess personality
Projective Measures


According to psychodynamic theory, personality is influenced by unconscious conflicts



Projective measures explore the unconscious processes by having people interpret
ambiguous stimuli



Roschach inkblot test –people look at a meaningless inkblot and describe what it looks like to
them



Does a poor job of diagnosing specific psychological disorders and finds many normal adults
and children psychologically disturbed



Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) – studies achievement motivation



A person is shown an ambiguous picture and is asked to tell a story about it



Projective measures have been critisised for being too subjective and poorly validated

Objective Measures


These measures make no pretense of uncovering hidden conflicts or secret information



Measure only what the raters believe or observe



Self report questionnaires or observer ratings



However self reports can be affected by desires to avoid looking bad and by biases in self
perception



Subjective standards

Observers Show Accuracy in Trait Judgments


How well do observers’ personality judgments predict other’s behaviour?



David Funder found a surprising degree of accuracy for trait judgments under circumstances



A person’s close acquaintances may predict a persons personality better than others

People are sometimes Inconsistent


Walter Mischel proposed that behaviours are determined by situations more than
personality traits (situationism)



Shocked psychology community



Referred to studies where people were dishonest in one situation but completely honest in
another



Others argued that the extent to which a trait predicts behaviour depends on the centrality
of the trait



The aggregation of behaviours over time



And the type of trait



People tend to be more consistent in central traits

Behaviour Is Influenced by the Interaction of Personality and Situations


Evidence has shown that personality traits are predictive of behaviour



People high in neuroticsm tend to be more depressed and have more illnesses



Highly neurotic is the best personality predictor of marital dissatisfaction and divorce



Yet people are also highly sensitive to social context and most conform to situational norms



Few people break the law infront of a police officer



Situational influences can be subtle



Situations differ in the extent to which they constrain expressions of personality



Eg: shy and boistress, at a funeral you wouldn’t be able to tell, but maybe at a party you
could



Strong situations – elevators, religious services, job interviews, funerals



Weak situations - parks, bars, one’s house, parties



Interactionists – believe that behaviour is determined jointly by underlying dispositions and
situations

Evaluation of Personality Measures


Reliability is defined as the degree to which an obtained measure represent the true level of
the trait being measured
o

Repeated measurements (if similar, then test has high test-retest reliability)

o

Examine the relationships among the items themselves at a single point in time, if
items all correlate well with each other then test has high internal consistency
reliability

o


Obtain measurements from multiple observers, high inter-rater reliability

Validity refers to the extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure
o

Face validity – surface appearance to measure?

o

Predictive validity – whether the test predicts criteria external to the test

o

Convergent validity – whether a test correlates with other measures it should
correlate with

o

Discriminant validity – often evaluated simultaneously with convergent
...
2 (chapter 13)
Biological Bases of Personality
Animals Have Personalities


Sam Gosling and Oliver John summarized the findings of 19 studies that assessed multiple
personality traits in modestly large samples of nonhuman animals
o



Household pets, monkeys, pigs, donkey sand aquatic animals

Found evidence that traits similar to extraversion, neuroticism and agreeableness could be
seen in most species



Extraversion reflected different levels of energy, approachability and sociability



Neuroticism indicated differences in emotional reactivity, fearfulness and excitability



Agreeableness reflected differences in aggression, hostility and affinity for mates



Conscientiousness was only found among chimpanzees



Orangutans have four of the Big Five traits except conscientiousness

Personality is Rooted in Genetics


Nearly all personality traits have a genetic component (Plomin & Caspi)



Correlation in twins



Identical twins proved more similar than fraternal twins



Because identical twins share nearly the same genes



To ensure it wasn’t environmental factors, studies were done on twins raised apart



Identical twins still became more alike as they grew older

Adoption studies


Siblings who are adopted (not biologically related) and raise din the same household are no
more alike in personality than two strangers randomly picked
...




A gene that regulates one particular dopamine receptor has been associated with novelty
seeking



Some pairs of genes seem to work in opposite ways, such as making people more or less
neurotic thus cancel each other out



David Lykken provides the analogy of a poker hand

Temperaments are Evident in Infancy


Temperaments – Biologically based tendencies to feel or act in certain ways



Broader than traits



Most research on temperaments focus on infants because personality differences very early
in life likely indicate the actions of biological mechanisms



Arnold Buss and Robert Plomin have argued that three personality characteristics can be
considered temperaments
o

Activity level – overall amount of energy and of behaviour a person exhibits

o

Emotionality – intensity of emotional reactions

o

Sociability - tendency to affiliate with others

Long-term implications of temperaments


Early childhood temperaments significantly influence behaviour and personality structure
throughout a person’s development



Classifications at the age of three predicted personality structure and a variety of behaviours
in early adulthood

Gender and Temperaments


Differences in gender temperaments are noticed in early childhood



Girls demonstrated a stronger ability to control their attention and resist their impulses



Boys were more physically active and experienced more high intensity pleasure

Shyness and Inhibition


Research has shown that children as young as 6 weeks of age can be identified as likely to be
shy



Approximately 15-20% of newborns react to new situations or strange objects by becoming
startled and distressed, crying and vigorously moving their arms and legs
o

Kagan refers to these children as inhibited



These children showed traits of shyness at four years and well into their teenage years



Amygdala is involved in shyness

Personality is Linked to Specific Neurophysiological Mechanisms
Arousal and Extraversion/Introversion


Hans Eysenck believed that differences in cortical arousal produce the behavioural
difference between extraverts and introverts



Cortical arousal or alertness is regulated by the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS)



Extraverts seemed to constantly seek additional arousal



Where as introverts seemed to avoid arousal by seeking solitary quiet activities such as
reading



Each person prefers to operate at their optimal level of arousal , but for extroverts, this level
is a lot higher than for introverts



Level of arousability or reactivity to stimuli differentiates introverts from extroverts

Neurophysiology of Extraversion/Introversion


Jeffrey Gray proposed that personality is rooted in motivational functions that have evolved
to help organisms respond efficiently to reinforcement and punishment



Behavioural approach system (BAS) – the brain system involved in the pursuit of incentives
or rewards (go system)



Behavioural inhibition system (BIS) – the brain system that is sensitive to punishment and
therefore inhibits behaviour that might lead to danger or pain (stop system)



Extraverts have a stronger BAS than BIS so they are more influenced by rewards than by
punishments



Introverts have a more active BIS



BIS is associated with activity in the frontal lobes



Those with damage to the frontal lobes, exhibit social incompetence, disinhibition, impaired
social judgment and lack of sensitivity to social cues



Amygdala is also another brain region involved in both social sensitivity and the processing
of cues related to possible punishment



People who are anxious show a heightened amygdala response when observing pictures of
neutral facial expressions

Personality is Adaptive


Personality traits useful for survival and reproduction may be favoured in the natural
selection process



David Buss argued that the Big Five personality traits emerged as foundational because each
one provides important information regarding mate selection



Why are people so different if natural selection is occurring?
o

Because the individual differences possibly result from random processes that were
of trivial importance over the course of evolution

o

Evolution has allowed for multiple strategies that are differently adaptive depending
on environmental demands

o

Human groups whose members possess diverse skills have a selective advantage
over other human groups


Eg: some cautious people, yet some risk takers to explore

Personality Traits are Stable over time


‘Give me a child until he is seven, and I will show you the man’ (7 Up series)



These films showed the apparent stability of personality over time



Child interested in stars and science becomes a professor of physics



Boy who finds his childhood troubling and consuming develops a apparent schizo-affective
personality



Consistency of personality is lowest in childhood and highest after the age of 50



Foundation of clinical psychology is that people can and do change important aspects of
their lives



Most research find personality traits to be remarkably stable over the adult life span



Findings have suggested that personality changes somewhat in childhood but becomes more
stable by middle age

Age Related Change


In general, as people age they become less neurotic, less extraverted and less open to new
experiences



They tend to become more agreeable and more conscientious



Seems to occur across cultures too

Characteristic Adaptions


McCrae and Costa emphasize an important distinction between basic tendencies of
personality and characteristic adaptions



Basic tendencies are dispositional traits that are biologically based



Characteristic adaptions are adjustments to situational demands



Changes in characteristic adaptions do no indicate changes in basic tendencies

How Do We Know Our Own Personalities?
Our Self-Concepts Consists of Self Knowledge


Answers commonly given to the question ‘who am I’ include gender, age, student status,
interpersonal style, interpersonal characteristics and body image



Self concept guides your attention to information relevant to you and that helps you adjust
to your environment

Self-Awareness


William James and George Herbert Mead were among the first to consider that nature of
the self



Both differentiated between the self as the knower (‘I’) and the self as the object that is
known (‘me’ – the objectified self)



Objectified self is the knowledge the subject holds about itself



Such as its best and worst qualities



Sense of self as the object of attention is the psychological state known as self awareness

o


When the ‘I’ thinks about the ‘me’

Duval and Wicklund introduced the theory of objective self awareness which leads people to
act in accordance with the values and beliefs they hold



One study showed that college students are less likely to cheat if they are sitting in front of
mirrors



Self Discrepancy Theory – awareness of differences between personal standards and goals
leads to strong emotions
o

Eg: seeing yourself as lazy but preferring to see yourself as hardworking can lead you
to feel disappointed, frustrated and depressed



Self awareness is highly dependent on normal development of the frontal lobes
o

Damaged frontal lobe patients tend to self reflect less and seldom report
daydreaming



Cannot sometimes recognize that they have a problem, cannot process information about
the self

Self-Schema


According to Hazel Markus the self-schema can be viewed as a network of interconnected
knowledge about the self



Helps us perceiver, organize, interpret and use information about the self



Helps filter information so that each of us will likely notice things that are self-relevant such
as our own names



Self schema summarizes the relevant past information



Middle of the frontal lobes activate when we answer questions about ourselves

Working Self Concept


Sense of self varies from situation to situation



Eg: at a party you may think of yourself as fun loving rather than as intelligent



Thus your self descriptions vary depending on which situation you are in, which people you
are with and your role in that situation



When considering themselves or their personalities, people are especially likely to mention
characteristics that distinguish them from other people

Perceived Social Regard Self-Esteem


Self-esteem is related to self-concept



People can objectively believe positive things about themselves without liking themselves
very much



While people can like themselves very much and therefore have high self esteem even when
objective indicators do not support such positive self views



Reflected appraisal – people’s self esteem is based on how they believe others perceive
them



Carl Rogers promotes parent’s unconditional acceptance of their children but still show strict
parenting

Sociometer Theory


Mark Leary proposed that self esteem monitors the likelihood of social exclusion



Humans have a fundamental adaptive need to belong



Those who belonged to social groups have been more likely to survive and reproduce than
those who were excluded



Self esteem is a sociometer – an internal monitor of social acceptance or rejection

Self Esteem and Death Anxiety


One theory proposes that self esteem provides meaning for individuals by staving off anxiety
over their mortality



Terror management theory – self-esteem protects people from the horror associated with
knowing they will eventually die

Self Esteem and Life Outcomes


Roy Baumeister and his colleagues found that although people with high self esteem report
being much happier, self esteem is weakly related to objective life outcomes



High self esteem people consider themselves smarter, more attractive and better liked do
not necessarily have higher IQ’s and are thought highly by others



People may have high self esteem because they are successful or because they completed
high school with good grades
o

Correlation does not prove causation



Violent criminals often have high self esteem



School bullies also have high self esteem



Although high self esteem does make people happier, does not necessarily lead to successful
social relationships or life success



Narcissim- often associated with inflated self esteem

We Use Mental Strategies to Maintain Our Views of Self


Most people show favoritism to anything associated with themselves



People consistently prefer their belongings to things they do not own



They even prefer letters of their own names especially their initials



Positive views of self are sometimes inflated



o

90% of adults claim they are better than average drivers

o

Even if they have been hospitalized for injuries caused by car accidents

Of 800,00 college bound seniors, none rated themselves below average
o



25% rated themselves in the top 1 percent

Most people describe themselves as above average in nearly every way
o

Described as the better than average effect



High esteem people are more likely to do this



We use a number of unconscious strategies to help maintains a positive sense of self

Self-Evaluative Maintenance


People can feel threatened when someone close to them outperforms them on a task that is
personally relevant



To maintain your sense of self esteem, you would either distance yourself from the
relationship or select a different aspiration



Self evaluative maintenance causes people to exaggerate or publicize their connections to
winners and to minimize or hide their relations to losers

Social Comparisons


Occurs when people evaluate their own actions, abilities and beliefs by contrasting them
with other people’s



People with high esteem make downward comparisons contrasting themselves with people
deficient to make on relevant dimensions



Low esteem people tend to make upward comparisons



People also use a form of downward comparisons when they recall their own pasts (they
view their current selves as better than their former selves)

Self-Serving Biases


People with high self esteem tend to take credit for success but blame failure on outside
factors, a tendency called self serving bias



Students who do extremely well on exams explain it by referring to their skills or hard work



Students who don’t do so well might describe the test as an arbitrary examination of trivial
details



People with high esteem also assume that criticism is motivated by envy or prejudice



Members of minority groups maintain positive self esteem by taking credit for success and
blaming negative feedback on prejudice



In thinking about our failures, we compare ourselves with others who did worse, we
diminish the importance of the challenge we think about the things we are really good at



Some researchers argue that self serving biases reflect health psychological functioning



But too much could lead to narcissism

Cultural Differences in the Self


Collectivist cultures emphasize connections to the family, social groups and to ethnic groups
o

Conformity to social norms, and group cohesiveness



Individualist cultures emphasize rights and freedoms, self expression and diversity



Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama have noted that people in collectivist cultures have
interdependent self construals in which their self concepts are determined to a large extent
by their social roles



Independent self construals occur when parents and teachers encourage children to be self
reliant and to pursue personal success

Culture and Self Serving Bias


Some researchers have questioned whether self serving bias is truly universal across cultures



Steven Heine argues that it is more common in Western cultures than Eastern cultures



In a study, American students showed a bias for listing successes where as Japanese
students listed failures and successes equally



Americans used outside forces to explain failure but the Japanese students used them to
explain success



Self criticism has been argued to be the ore common social norm in Asian cultures

TOPIC #6 Disorders of the Mind & Bodypt
...


o

Each task requires an ability such as planning, coordinating, or remembering

Evidence Based Assessment


An approach to clinical evaluation in which research guides the evaluation of mental
disorders



Eg: scientific research indicates that many mental disorder occur together, a state known as
comorbidity



Depressed patients often have substance abuse disorders

Dissociative Identity Disorder Is a Controversial Diagnosis


Billy Milligan, convicted of robbery and three rapes
o

Successfully argued that he had multiple personalities



Had 24 separate personalities



Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) – The occurrence of two or more distinct identities in the
same individual



Symptoms: disruptions of identity, of memory and of conscious awareness



Most people diagnosed with DID are women who report being severely abused as children



The most common theory is that children cope with the abuse by pretending it is happening
to someone else and entering a trancelike state in which they dissociate their mental states
from their physical bodies



Over time these dissociated states take on their own identities



Sometimes only one identity is aware of the other



Separate identities usually differ substantially such as in gender, sexual orientation, age,
language spoken, interests, physiological profiles and patterns of brain activation



Even handwritings can differ



Some have ulterior motives for claiming DID



Diagnosis often occurs after a crime has been committed



Before the 1980’s these cases were rare



In the 1990’s numbers of cases went into tens of thousands



Therapists tended to use hypnosis



Sometimes the patient comes to believe what a therapist has said and develops DID



However it is still hard to verify if they do have it or not

Mental Disorders Have Many Causes


Diathesis-stress model – proposes that a disorder may develop when an underlying
vulnerability is coupled with a participating event



Individual has an underlying vulnerability or predisposition to a mental disorder (diathesis),
can be biological or environmental (eg: abusive childhood) and then a stressful circumstance
may trigger a mental disorder

Biological Factors


Focuses on how physiological factors such as genetics, contribute to mental disorders



Fetus is particularly vulnerable, prenatal problems such as malnutrition, exposure to toxins
and maternal illness



All of the above affect the central nervous system



Brain region differences



PET and fMRI scans have revealed brain regions function differently in individuals with
mental disorders



BUT biological factors only reflect vulnerabilities and situational factors play prominent roles

Psychological Factors


First edition of DSM heavily influenced by Freudian psychoanalytic theory



Freud believed that mental disorders were mostly due to unconscious conflicts



Family systems model proposes that an individual’s behaviour must be considered within a
social context, particularly within the family



Sociocultural model views psychopathology as the result of interaction between individuals
and their cultures



Schizophrenia is more common in lower socioeconomic classes where as anorexia nervosa
appear more common among the middle and upper classes

Cognitive Behavioural Factors


Cognitive behavioural approach is that abnormal behaviour is learned



Through classical conditioning



Fears are learned rather than innate

Sex Differences in Mental Disorders


Some mental disorders are more common for males and others for females



Differences can be explained through environmental and biological factors



Dependence on alcohol, drugs, antisocial personality disorders and childhood attentiondeficit/hyperactivity are more likely in males



BUT anorexia is 10 times more likely to occur in females



Panic disorders are more likely in females



Schizophrenia and bipolar are equal



Internalizing disorders – those characterized by negative emotions such as distress and fear



Externalizing disorders – those characterized by disinhibition such as alcoholism and
conduct disorders

Culture and Mental Disorders


Disorders with a strong biological component are more similar across cultures



Those heavily influenced by learning and context will more likely differ



Since 1994 DSM has included a section on culture-bound syndromes
o

Disorders mainly found in specific cultures or regions

Anxiety as the Root of Seemingly Different Disorders


For some, anxiety can be debilitating and can interfere with every aspect of life



Anxiety disorders are characterized by excessive anxiety in the absence of true danger

Different Types of Anxiety Disorders


More than 1 in 4 will have some type of anxiety disorder



Those suffering from anxiety fell tense, anxious and apprehensive



Often depressed and irritable because they cannot see any solution to their anxiety



Sleep problems



And the constant arousal of the autonomic nervous system, it can also cause long term
problems
o

Increased blood pressure

o

Increased muscular tension



Exaggerated startle response



Excessive fidgeting

Phobic Disorder


Phobia is a fear of a specific object or situation



Fear is often exaggerated and out of proportion to the actual danger



Phobias are classified based on the object of the fear



Specific phobias involve particular objects and situations (1/8 people)



Social phobia – a specific phobia often called social anxiety disorder is fear of being
negatively evaluated by others
o

Develops around the age of 13

o

Involves fear of speaking in class, meeting new people, eating in front of others

Generalized Anxiety Disorder


Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) – a diffuse state of constant anxiety not associated with
any specific object or event



They worry about being worried



Results in distractibility, fatigue, irritability and sleep problems



Just under 6 percent of the population is affected by this disorder



Women more so than men

Panic Disorder


Affects an estimated 3 percent of the population in a given year, and women are twice as
likely to be diagnosed as men



Panic disorder involves sudden and overwhelming attacks of terror that seemingly come out
of nowhere



Last for several minutes



Sweat, treble, feels his/her heart racing, feels short of breath, chest pain, dizzy light headed
and numbness and tingly



Adolescences that experiences panic attacks are especially likely to develop other anxiety
disorders such as PTSD and generalized anxiety disorder



Agoraphobia – fear of being in situations in which escape is difficult or impossible (crowded
shopping mall) can experience panic attacks



Sometimes they confine themselves to their houses in the fear that they will have a panic
attack of they go outside

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder


1-2% of the population



OCD involves frequent intrusive thoughts and compulsive actions



More common in women and begins in early adulthood



Obsessions are recurrent, intrusive and unwanted thoughts or ideas or mental images
o



Often include fear of contamination, of accidents, or of one’s own aggression

Compulsions are particular acts that OCD patients feel driven to perfom over and over again
o

Cleaning, checking, counting



Eg: a person may constantly check if the door is lock because of an obsession that his home
might be invaded

Anxiety Disorders Have Cognitive, Situational and Biological Components


Cognitive factors – when presented with an ambiguous or neutral situation, anxious
individuals tend to perceive them as threatening



Anxious individuals also focus excessive attention on perceived threats



Situational factors – also play a role in the development of anxiety disorders
o

Monkeys develop a fear of snakes if they observe other monkeys responding to
snakes fearfully



Biological factors – children who have inhibited temperamental style are usually shy and
tend to avoid unfamiliar people and novel objects
o

More likely to have anxiety disorders



One theory is that OCD result from conditioning



Anxiety is paired with a specific event and the person engages in behaviour that reduces
anxiety and therefore is reinforced through operant conditioning



The reduction of anxiety is reinforcing and increases the likelihood of the behaviour
reoccurring



Eg: you are forced to shake hands with someone who has a bad cold and you have just seen
him wiping his nose with that hand, shaking it may make you feel anxious or uncomfortable
so as soon as it is over you run to the bathroom and wash your hands



However there is also evidence that it is biological, twin studies show that OCD runs in
families



The caudate, an area involved in suppressing impulses is smaller and has structural
abnormalities in people with OCD



Because this region is involved in impulse suppression, dysfunction may result in the leak of
impulses into consciousness, the prefrontal cortex become over active in an effort to
compensate



OCD can also be triggered by environmental factors



Streptococcal infection can cause severe forms of OCD in children

Are Mood Disorders Extreme Manifestations of Normal Moods?
Different Types of Mood Disorders


Mood disorders reflect extreme emotions



Depressive disorders feature persistent and pervasive feelings of sadness



Bipolar disorders involve radical fluctuations in mood



Although some of their characteristics overlap, they are two fundamentally different
disorders

Depressive Disorders


Major depression – a disorder characterized by severe negative moods or a lack of interest
in normally pleasurable activities



o

Depressed (often irritable)

o

Loss of interest in pleasurable activities

Other symptoms: appetite and weight changes
o

Sleep disturbances

o

Loss of energy

o

Difficulty concentrating

o

Feelings of self-reproach or guild

o

Frequent thoughts of death and suicide



Major depression affects about 6-7 percent of people in a given 12 month period



Approximately 16 percent will experience major depression at some point in their lives



Often persists and lasts many years



Women are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed



Dysthymia – a form of depression that is not severe enough to be diagnosed as major
depression



2-3 percent of the population diagnosed



Depressed mood most of the day



More days than not



For at least two years



Periods of dysthymia last from 2 – 20 or more years



Typically lasts 5 – 10 years



Because the moods are so long lasting, sometimes they are classified as personality
disorders



They may all be points along a continuum



Dysthymia often precedes major depression



Depression is leading risk factor for suicide with it claiming a million lives annualy



Top three causes of death for people between 15-35 years of age



Highest rates of depression are found in women in developing countries



Research suggests that women’s multiple roles in most societies as wage earners and family
caregivers cause stress



Not always just multiple roles, but the overworking aspect of it



Low income, lack of education, difficult family relationships



Women internalize, depression and anxiety



Where as men externalize = drugs, violence, alcohol

Bipolar Disorders


Bipolar disorder – a mood disorder characterized by alternating periods of depression and
mania



Manic episodes are characterized by elevated mood, increased activity, diminished need for
sleep, grandiose ideas, racing thoughts, extreme distractibility
o



Can lead to rash decisions and regret

Hypomanic episodes – less extreme, heightened creativity and productivity, not too
disruptive in people’s lives



Less common than depression, 4%



Bipolar is equal in men and women and commonly emerges during late adolescence or early
adulthood



It was mentioned by Kay Redfield Jamison that many great artists and writers had mood
disorders and raised the question that if this disorder was eradicated, would there be such
great art?

Mood Disorders have Cognitive, Situational and Biological Components


Mood disorders are very serious and can result in the loss of jobs, friends, family
relationships and life



Errors in judgment during manic episodes can have devastating effects



Studies of twins, of families and of adoptions support the notion that depression has a
genetic component



Concordance rates (percentage of twins that share same disorder) between identical twins
are 4 times higher than fraternal twins



Concordance for bipolar disorder in identical twins is more than 70% compared to 20% in
fraternal twins



Experiment on Amish adults showed that bipolar disorder ran in a limited number of families
and that all affected had a similar genetic defect



However it is not only linked to one gene



Studies of brain function have suggested that certain neural structures may be involved in
mood disorders



Damage to left prefrontal cortex can lead to depression



Damage to right does not



Depressed patients enter REM sleep more quickly and have more of it



Cyclical pattern of depression depending on the season seasonal affective disorder



Situational factors

o

Interpersonal loss

o

Negative life events



How an individual reacts to stress, however can be influenced by interpersonal relationships



Cognitive processes also play a role
o

Depressed people think negatively about themselves

o

Their situation, the future

o

Depressed people blame misfortune on personal defects while seeing positive
occurrences as the result of luck

o


Magnify the seriousness of bad events

Learned helplessness!

TOPIC #7 Disorders of the Mind & Body pt
...
5-1% of the population has schizophrenia



Schizophrenia is slightly lower in developing countries

Schizophrenia has Positive and Negative Symptoms


Characterized by a combination of abnormalities – motor, cognitive, behavioural and
perceptual



Results in impaired social, personal and/or vocational functioning



Positive symptoms – excesses in behaviour such as delusions and hallucinations



Negative symptoms – deficits in functioning such as apathy, lack of emotion and slowed
speech and movement

Subtypes of Schizophrenia


Paranoid type – preoccupied with delusions or auditory hallucinations, little or no
disorganized speech



Disorganized type – disorganized speech, behaviour



Catatonic type – extreme motor immobility, purposeless excessive motor activity, mutism,
extreme negativism



Undifferentiated type – doesn’t meet subtypes above but meets the symptom criteria for
schizophrenia



Residual type – Has experienced at least one episode of schizophrenia but currently does
not have prominent positive symptoms but shows negative ones
...
2 (chapter 12)
How Do Others Influence Us?
Groups Influence Individual Behaviour


Norman Triplett – cyclists pedal faster when riding with other people than when riding alone



Social facilitation – mere presence of other people leads to increased arousal which in turn
favours the dominant response



Also occurs in other animals such as horses, dogs, rats, birds fish and even cockroaches



All animals are genetically predisposed to become aroused by the presence of others of their
own species



This leads animals to emit a dominant response (the response most likely to be performed)



However if the dominant response is incorrect in current situation, then performance is
impaired



Eg: employees performing simple tasks such as database entry might work best in a fairly
open environment



However if they are performing more complicated tasks such as editing manuscripts, they
might better work in a private office since concentration is paramount

Social Loafing


Social loafing – the tendency for people to work less hard in a group than when working
alone



People’s efforts are pooled so that no one individual feels personally responsible for the
group’s output



Six blindfolded people wearing headphones were told to shout as loudly as they could



Some were told that they were shouting alone



Others were told they were shouting with other people



Participants did not shout as loudly when they believed others were shouting as well

Deindividuation


People sometimes lose their individuality when they become part of a group



Deindividuation occurs when people are not self-aware and therefore are not paying
attention to their personal standards



Deindividuated people often do things that they would not do if they were alone or self
aware

Group Decision Making


Being in a group influences decision making in curious ways



Psychologist James Stoner found that groups often made riskier decisions than individuals
did



Risky shift effect – accounts for why children in a group may try something dangerous that
none of them would have tried alone



Group polarization – groups tend to enhance the initial attitudes of members who already
agree

We Conform to Social Norms


Social norms- expected standards of conduct which influence behaviour



Conformity – altering of one’s opinions or behaviours to match those of others or to match
social norms



Auto kinetic effect - in which a stationary point of light appears to move when viewed in a
totally dark environment



Effect occurs because people have no frame of reference



Often people compare their reactions with others to judge what is appropriate



Size of the group influences chances of conformity

We are Compliant


Compliance – the tendency to agree to do things requested by others



People in good moods are especially likely to comply



Other explanations state that it is because we fail to pay attention and respond without fully
considering their options
o



Mental shortcut to avoid conflict

Foot in the door effect – people will more likely comply with a large and undesirable request
if earlier they have agreed to a small request



Once people commit to a course of action they behave in ways consistent with that course



Door in the face – people will more likely agree with a small request after they have refused
a large request



Low balling strategy – begins when a salesperson offers a product for a very low price, once
the customer agrees the salesperson may then claim that the manager did not approve of
the price but there will be additional charges



However often, the person will agree to still purchase the car

We Are Obedient to Authority


Stanley Milgram experiment was interested in the determinants of obedience



Shock generator experiment



Milgram found that almost all participants tried to quit, but nearly two thirds completely
obeyed all the experimenter’s directives despite believing they were administering 450 volts
to an old man with a heart condition





Milgram found that some situations produced less compliance
o

Eg: if the teacher could see or had to touch the learner

o

If the experimenter gave instructions oer the phone

A recent replica of the experiment found that 70% of participants were obedient up to
maximum voltage (Burger 2009)

When Do We Harm or Help Others?


Belonging to a group can also lead us to acts of altruism and of generosity



Support for the victims of the 2004 tsunami show this

Aggression can be Adaptive


Aggression – any behaviour or action that involves the intention to harm someone else



Physical aggression is common among young children but relatively rare in adults



Adults aggressive acts often involve words or other symbols, meant to threaten, intimidate
or emotionally harm others

Biological Factors


Stimulating certain brain regions or altering neurochemicals can lead to substantial changes
in behaviour



Stimulating or damaging the septum, amygdala or hypothalamus leads to corresponding
changes in the levels of aggression displayed



Stimulating a cats amygdala causes it to attack where as damaging it leads to passive
behaviour



Removing the amygdala’s of aggressive rhesus monkeys result in tame, friendly and easy to
handle monkeys



Kluver-Bucy Syndrome – behaviour associated with damage to the amygdala



Serotonin is also especially important in the control of aggressive behaviour



Enhancing the levels of serotonin lowered aggression



In New Zealand low serotonin levels were associated with violence

Individual Factors


Frustration-aggression hypothesis – frustration generally leads to aggression



Slow traffic



Frustration leads to aggression by eliciting negative emotions



Any other situations that induces negative emotions such as being insulted, afraid, overly
hot or in pain

Aggression has Social and Cultural Aspects


Data shows that violence varies dramatically across cultures and even within cultures at
times



Culture of honor – a belief system in which men are primed to protect their reputations
through physical aggression



Men in Southern US are raised to be ready to fight for their honor and to respond
aggressively to personal threats



Supports Bandura’s theory that aggressive behaviour is learned through vicarious social
observation of both reward and punishment

Many Factors May Influence Helping Behaviour


Prosocial – tending to benefit others



Doing favours, offering assistance, paying compliments



Prosocial behaviours promote positive interpersonal relationships



Daniel Batson argue that prosocial behaviours are motivated by empathy



Robert Cialdini argue that prosocial behaviours have selfish motives such as wanting to
manage one’s public image



Other propose that people have an inborn disposition to help others



Altruism – Providing of help when it is needed, without any apparent reward for doing so



People are altruistic towards those whom they share genes, phenomenon known as kin
selection



Maximize the number of common genes that will survive into future generations



Natural selection theory

Some Situations Lead to Bystander Apathy


Kitty Genovese



38 witnesses did not call the police or assist her



Bystander intervention effect – failure to offer help by htose who observe someone in need



A person will less likely help if other bystanders around



Reasons
o

Diffusion of responsibility, people expect other bystanders to help

o

People fear making social blunders in ambiguous situations

o

People will less likely help when they are anonymous and can remain so

o

People weigh how much harm to themselves they risk by helping against what
benefits they may have to forgo if they help

What Determines the Quality of Relationships?
Situational and Personal Factors Influence Friendships


The more students come into contact, the more likely they would become friends



Proximity has its effects because of familiarity, people like familiar things more than
unfamiliar ones



Generally humans fear anything novel (neophobia)

Birds Of A Feather


Another factor that increases liking is similarity



People with similar attitudes, values, interests, backgrounds and personalities tend to like
each other



In high school people tend to be friends with those of the same sex, race, age and year in
school



Most successful romantic couples also tend to be the most physically similar



Phenomenon called the matching principle

Personal Characteristics


Least likeable characteristics are dishonesty, insincerity, lack of persona warmth



Likable characteristics include kind, dependable and trustworthy



Generally people also like those who have a personal characteristic valuable to the group



Eg: competent people are more likeable



However, people who seem too competent or too perfect make others feel inadequate and
uncomfortable



Small mistakes can make a person seem more human and therefore more likeable

Physical Attractiveness


How people rate attractiveness is generally consistent across all cultures



Averaged faces seem more attractive



Possibly because of the mere exposure



Most people find symmetrical faces more attractive than asymmetrical



Physically attractive people are less likely to be perceived as criminals

Love is and Important Component of Romantic Relationships


Passionate love – state of intense longing and sexual desire



Compassionate love – strong commitment to car for and support a partner that develops
slowly over time
o

Based on friendship, trust, respect and intimacy



One theory of love is based on attachment theory



those



Those who believe their parents were warm, supportive and responsive report having
secure attachments in their relationship



Those who believe their parents were cold and distant report having avoidant attachments

Making Love Last Is Difficult


Half of marriages end in divorce or separation (often within the firs few years)



Passion typically fades over time

Jealousy and Possessiveness



---