Ch 1 – Introduction to the Science of Psychology

Psychology – the science of the mind & behavior

Behavior: the outwardly observable acts of a person, alone or in a group
• Mental events affect a person’s behavior
• Describe & explain, and predict & control

3 Levels of Analysis
Level of the Brain
• involve the activity, structure, and properties of the organ itself – brain cells and their
connections, chemical solutions in which they exist, and genes
Level of the Person
• involve the function (mental processes) and content of the mind
• mental contents: knowledge, beliefs, desires, and feelings
• mental processes: operations that work together to carry out a function – attention,
perception, and memory
Level of the Group
• events that involve relationships between people (love, competition, cooperation) and
relationships among groups and culture

Evolution of Psychology
• Structuralism: the school of psychology that sought to identify the basic elements of
consciousness
o First organized “school of thought” in psychology
• Introspection: “looking within” – observing your mental events as (or immediately after)
they occur
o Problems with introspection: no way to resolve disagreements, things cannot be
accessed via introspection
• Functionalism: school of psychology that sought to understand how the mind helps
individuals to adapt to the world around them – WHY, not WHAT/HOW
o Influenced by Darwin
• Gestalt psychology: focuses on the idea that the whole is more than the sum of the parts
o The study of perception

Psychodynamic Theory
Sigmund Freud stressed that the mind has separate components
• Some are unconscious – outside conscious awareness and not able to be brought into
consciousness at will
Psychodynamic theory refers to the continual push-and-pull interaction among
conscious/unconscious thoughts and feelings

• Behavioralism – focuses on how a specific stimulus evokes a specific response

• Humanistic psychology – assumes people have positive values, free will, and deep inner
creativity, the combination of which allows them to choose life-fulfilling paths to
personal growth
• Cognitive psychology – attempts to characterize the mental events that allow information to
be stored & operated on internally
o Cognitive neuroscience: blends cognitive psychology & neuroscience when
attempting to specify how the brain gives rise to mental processes that store and
process information
• Evolutionary Psychology – Assumes that certain cognitive strategies and goals are so
important that natural selection has built them into our brains

Psychologists
• Clinical psychologist – the type of psychologist who is trained to provide psychotherapy and
administer/interpret psychological tests
o Psychotherapy: helping people learn to change so they can cope with
troublesome thoughts, feeling, and behaviors
• Counseling psychologist – trained to help people with issues that arise naturally during the
course of life
• Psychiatrist – physician with special training in treating mental diseases
• Social worker – mental health professional who may use psychotherapy to help families
and individuals or help clients to use the social service systems in their communities
• Psychiatric nurse – nurse with masters degree and a clinical specialization in psychiatric
nursing who provides psychotherapy and works with medical doctors to
monitor/administer medications
• Academic psychologists – focus on teaching & research
• Applied psychology – use the principles, finding, and theories of psychology to improve
products and procedures, and who conduct research to help solve specific practical
problems

The Research Process

Scientific method:
1. Systematically observing events (collecting & replicating data)
 2. Formulating a question
3. Forming a hypothesis
i. Propose that one variable cause another
4. Testing the hypothesis
i. Operational definition: specifies how a concept is measured or manipulated
5. Formulating a theory
i. Focusing on underlying reasons a relationship may exist
6. Testing the theory
i. Theories produce predictions – new hypotheses that should be confirmed if the
theory is correct

Descriptive research: focuses on step 1

• Naturalistic observation – observe events as they naturally occur in the real world
• Case studies – focusing on a single participant and their psychological characteristics in
detail
• Surveys – set of questions that people are asked about their beliefs, attitudes,
preferences, activities
Correlation Research
• Correlation coefficient between -1 and 1, indicates how closely related two measured
variables are
• ** Correlation does not imply causation
Experimental Research
• Independent variable – deliberately varied while another aspect is measured
• Dependent variable – measured as the independent variable is changed
• Hope is to discover which factor is causing an effect
• Problem: confounding variables – vary with the independent variable and could be the
actual cause of what is measured
o Experimental group receives the complete treatment while the control group is
held constant
o Eliminate differences in groups: random assignment
Quasi-Experimental Design
• Participants are not randomly assigned – because they can’t be (ie in an earthquake / not
in an earthquake)
Meta Analysis : allows researchers to combine results from different studies on the same topic

Bias - experimenter expectancy effects (conscious or unconscious)

 • Response bias – participants tend to respond a certain way, regardless
• Sampling bias – participants selected so that an attribute is over or under represented
• Double-blind design – participant is “blind” to the predictions of the study,
experimenter is “blind” as to which group the participant is in

Psychology vs. Pseudopsychology

• Pseudopsychology = theories/statements that look like psychology but are unsupported
by science
o E.g. astrology
Ch 2 – The Biology of Mind and Behavior
Brain Circuits: Making Connections
The Neuron: A Powerful Computer
• Mental contents comprise knowledge, beliefs, desires, and feelings
• Mental processes are sets of operations that work together to carry out a function
• Neuron – a cell that receives signals from sense organs or other neurons, processes these
signals, and sends the signals to muscles, organs, or other neurons. The basic unit of the
nervous system.
o Sensory neuron – responds to signals from sensory organs and transmits those
signals to the brain and spinal cord
o Motor neuron – sends signals to muscles in order to control movement
o Interneuron – connected to other neurons, not to sense organs or muscles
• Neurons are organized into brain circuits – sets of neurons that work together to receive
input, operate on it in some way, and produce specified output
Structure of a neuron
• Cell body : the central part of a neuron
• Cell membrane : the skin that surrounds a cell
• Axon : conducts the nerve impulse away from the cell body
• Terminal button : release chemicals into the space between neurons when their neuron has
been triggered
• Dendrites : the treelike part of a neuron that receives messages from the axons of other
neurons
Neural Impulses
• While at rest, a neuron maintains a negative charge called the resting potential
• The shifting change in the electrical charge that moves down the axon is the action
potential
• All-or-none Law : states that if the neuron is sufficiently stimulated, it fires, sending the
action potential all the way down the axon and releasing chemicals from the terminal
buttons
o Either the action potential occurs or it doesn’t
• Most axons are covered in myelin – a fatty substance that helps impulses efficiently travel
down the axon

Neurotransmitters: Bridging the Gap

• Synapse – the site where communication between neurons occurs
o Includes the sending portions of an axon, the receiving portions of the receiving
neuron, and the space between them
Chemical Messages
• Neurotransmitters – A chemical that carries a signal from the terminal button of one
neuron to the dendrite or cell body of another (Neurotransmitter substance)
• Endogenous cannabinoids are neurotransmitters released by the receiving neuron that then
influence the activity of the sending neuron
Receptors
• Receptors – a site on a dendrite or cell body where a neurotransmitter molecule attaches
itself
o Neurotransmitters can have two effects
! Excitatory : receiving neuron more likely to have an action potential
! Inhibitory : receiving neuron less likely to have an action potential
• Not all of a neurotransmitter is taken up by receptors
o Special chemical reactions are required to reabsorb / reuptake the excess
neurotransmitter into the vesicles of the sending neuron
Unbalanced Bran : Coping with Bad Chemicals
• Agonist – a chemical that mimics the effects of a neurotransmitter by activating a certain
type of receptor
• Antagonist – a chemical that blocks the effect of a neurotransmitter
• Other drugs may increase the amount of a neurotransmitter in a synapse (by blocking
reuptake)
o Selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)

Glial Cells: More than the Neuron’s Helpmates

• Glial cell – a type of cell that helps neurons to form both synapses and connections
when the brain is developing, influences the communication among neurons, and
generally helps in the “care and feeding” of neurons
Neurons and Glial Cells
• Neurons stimulate glial cells to release specific chemicals
• Glial cells can regulate how strongly one neuron affects each other, and produce neurons
to form additional synapses
Glial Networks
• Glial cells communicate by passing chemicals directly through their walls to adjoining
glia or by releasing molecules that affect both neurons and other glia

The Nervous System: An Orchestra with Many Members

• 2 major parts:
 o central nervous system
o peripheral nervous system

The Peripheral Nervous System – (PNS) allows the brain both to affect the organs of the body and
to receive information from them
• Autonomous Nervous System (ANS) – controls the smooth muscles in the body and some
glandular functions, and many of the body’s self-regulating activities
o Sympathetic Nervous System – “fight or flight” responses
! More oxygen flow to brain, speeds up heart, dilates the pupils, decreases
salivation, relaxes the bladder
o Parasympathetic Nervous System – tends to counteract the effects of the
sympathetic system
• Sensory-Somatic Nervous System (SSNS) – receives information from the outside world and
allows you to act on it
o Includes the somatic motor system : nerves that are attached to muscles that can
be used voluntarily, or striated muscles

The Central Nervous System – (CNS) The spinal cord and the brain
 • The spinal cord: the flexible rope of neurons and their connections that runs inside the
backbone, or spinal column
o Reflex – an automatic behavioral response to an event
• The visible brain
o Meninges – three protective layered membranes that cover the brain
o Cerebral hemisphere – a left or right half-brain
!Corpus callosum – the large bundle of axons that connects the two
halves of the brain
o Each hemisphere is divided into 4 major lobes:
! Occipital lobe
! Temporal lobe
! Parietal lobe
! Frontal lobe
o Cerebral cortex – the outer layer of the brain where most mental processes arise
o Subcortical structures – parts of the brain located under the cerebral cortex
o Creases in the brain called sulci and the areas that bulge up are called gyri

Spotlight on the Brain: How it Divides and Conquers

• Brain system: a set of brain circuits that work together to accomplish a particular task

The Cerebral Cortex

Occipital Lobes
• Located at the back of the head
• Concerned entirely with different aspects of vision
Temporal Lobes
• Brain lobes under the temples, in front of the ears
• Among its many functions are processing sound, entering new information into
memory, storing visual memories, and comprehending language
Parietal Lobes
• Located at the top, rear of the brain
• Attention, arithmetic, touch, and registering spatial location
• Somatosensory strip – the gyrus immediately behind the central sulcus
o Registers sensations on the body and is organized by body part
Frontal Lobes
• Located behind the forehead
 • Involved in planning, memory search, motor control, speech control, reasoning, and
emotions
• Motor strip – the gyrus immediately in front of the central sulcus
o Controls fine movements and is organized by body part
o Primary motor cortex

The Dual Brain

Split Brain Research
• Split-brain patient : a person whose corpus callosum has been severed for medical
reasons, so that neuron signals no longer pass from one cerebral hemisphere to the other
Hemispheric Specialization
• When the hemispheres differ in their functions, they typically differ in the ability to
perform very narrow, specific tasks

Beneath the Cortex: The Inner Brain

• The forebrain = the thalamus limbic system, and basal ganglia
Thalamus
• Subcortical structure that receives signals from sensory and motor systems
• Plays a crucial role in attention, sleep, and other functions critical to daily life
• Often thought of as a switching center
Hypothalamus
•Sits under the thalamus
•Plays a central role in controlling eating and drinking, in regulating the body’s
temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, sexual behavior, and hormones
Hippocampus
• Subcortical structure that plays a key role in allowing new information to be stored in the
brain’s memory banks
Amygdala
• Subcortical structure that plays a special role in fear and is involved in other types of
strong emotions
• Limbic system – a set of brain areas (hippocampus, amygdala, hypothalamus, and others)
o Involved in key aspects of emotion and motivation
o Fighting, fleeing, feeding, sex
Basal Ganglia
• Subcortical structures that play a role in planning, learning, new habits, and producing
movement
Brainstem
• The set of structures at the base of the brain that feed into and receive information from
the spinal cord
o Midbrain, medulla, pons
• Medulla – the lowest part of the brainstem
o Automatic control of breathing, swallowing, and blood circulation
• Reticular formation – a collection of small structures in the brainstem, organized into two
main parts
o The reticular activating system
o Another part that is important in producing autonomic nervous system reactions
• Pons – a bridge between the medulla and midbrain, which also connects the upper parts
of the brain to the cerebellum
Cerebellum
• A large structure at the base of the brain
• Physical coordination, estimating time, paying attention
• Hindbrain – a unit of the brain that includes the medulla, pons, cerebellum, and parts of
the reticular formation
• Midbrain – a unit of the brain that includes parts of the reticular formation as well as the
brainstem structures that lie between forebrain and hindbrain

The Neuroendocrine and Neuroimmune Systems

The Neuroendocrine System
• Hormones – chemicals that are produced by a gland and can act as a neurotransmitter
substance
o Neuroendocrine system makes hormones, and provides the central nervous
system with information
• Some hormones affect sexual development/functioning
o Testosterone, estrogen
• Other hormones play a crucial role in the fight-or-flight response
o Cortisol – helps body cope with extra energy demands of stress
• Pituitary Gland – the “master gland” that regulates other glands but is itself controlled by
the brain, primarily via connections from the hypothalamus
The Neuroimmune System
• Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis – activated by stress, injury, and infection
that works to fight off infection
Probing the Brain
The Damaged Brain
• Lesion – a region of impaired brain tissue
• Stroke – a cause of brain damage that occurs when blood fails to reach part of the brain,
and neurons in that area die

Recording Techniques
• Electroencephalograph – a machine that records electrical activity in the brain
• Electroencephalogram (EEG) – a tracing of brain waves of electrical fluctuation over
time
• Magnetoencephalography (MEG) – a technique for assessing brain activity that relies on
recording magnetic waves produced by neural activity
• Single-cell recording – the technique in which tiny probes called micro-electrodes are
placed in the brain and used to record neural firing rates

Neuroimaging
• Brain-scanning techniques that produce a picture of the structure or functioning of
regions of the brain
Visualizing Brain Structure
• Computer-assisted tomography (CT, formerly CAT) – a neuroimaging technique that
produces a three-dimensional image of brain structures using x-rays
• Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) – a technique that uses magnetic properties of atoms
to take sharp pictures of the three-dimensional structure of the brain
Visualizing Brain Function
• Positron emission topography (PET) – a neuroimaging technique that uses small
amounts of a radioactive substance to track blood flow or energy consumption in the
brain
• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) – a type of MRI that detects the amount
of oxygen being brought to particular places in the brain, which indicates how active
those neurons are

Stimulation: Inducing or Inhibiting Neural Activity

• Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) – a technique in which the brain is stimulated
from outside by putting a coil on a person’s head and delivering a magnetic pulse (or
series of magnetic pulses)
o The magnetic fields are so strong that they make neurons under the coil fire
Genes, Brain, and Environment: The Brain in the World
Genes as Blueprints
• Mendelian inheritance – the transmission of characteristics by individual elements of
inheritance (genes)
• Gene – a stretch of the DNA molecule that produces a specific protein
o Genotype: the genetic code within an organism
o Phenotype: the observable structure/behavior of an organism
• Complex inheritance / polygenetic inheritance – the transmission of characteristics by
the joint action of combinations of genes working together
Tuning Genetic Programs
• Genes cannot program the structure of the brain entirely in advance
• Pruning – the process of eliminating neural connections that are not useful – “use it or
lose it”
• Interaction with the environment can also cause new connections to form
• Pruning and adding new connections are examples of the brain’s plasticity – its ability to
change as a result of experience
Genes and Environment
• Interactions with the environment cause many genes to be turned on and off
Environment and Genes
• There are three ways that genes and environment interact:
o Passive interaction – occurs when genetically shaped behavioral tendencies of
parents or siblings produce an environment that is passively received by the child
o Evocative ( or reactive) interaction – occurs when genetically influenced
characteristics (both behavioral and physical) induce other people to behave in
particular ways
o Active interaction – occurs when people choose, partly based on genetic
tendencies, to put themselves in specific situations and to avoid others

Behavioral Genetics
• The field in which researchers attempt to determine the extent to which the differences
among people’s behaviors and psychological characteristics are due to their different
genes or to differences in their environment
Heritability
• The degree to which the variability of a characteristic or ability in a population is due to
genetics – given a specific environment
Twin Studies
• Studies that compare identical and fraternal twins to determine the relative contribution
of genes to variability in a characteristic or ability
• Identical twins are monozygotic
o From the same egg and having virtually identical genes
• Fraternal twins are dizygotic
o From different eggs and sharing only as many genes as any pair of siblings – on
average, half
• When identical twins are more similar than are fraternal twins on a given characteristic or
ability, this indicates that genes play a role in that characteristic or ability
Adoption Studies: Separating Genes and Environment
• A study in which characteristics of children adopted at birth are compared to those of
their adoptive parents or siblings vs their biological parents or siblings

Evolution and the Brain

Natural Selection
• Individuals with inherited characteristic that contribute to survival have more offspring,
and over time those characteristics come to be more widespread
• Adaptation – an inherited characteristic that increases an organism’s ability to survive
and reproduce successfully
• Two important principles
o Environment
o Variation
Not Just Natural Selection
• It is not easy to sort out which characteristics are a product of natural selection and
which are not
• We shouldn’t assume that there is a sound evolutionary reason for everything that people
do
Ch 3 – Sensation and Perception
Sensation – the result of neural responses that occur after physical energy stimulates a receptor cell,
but before the stimulus is organized and interpreted by the brain
Perception – the result of neural processes that organize and interpret information conveyed by
sensory signals

Vision
Phases of vision
1. Organizing into coherent units
2. Identifying what and where

Visual sensation
Psychophysics
• The field in which researchers study the relation between physical events and the
corresponding experience of those events
• Threshold – the point at which stimuli activate receptor cells strongly enough to be
sensed
o Absolute threshold – the magnitude of stimulus needed, on average, to allow an
observer to detect it half the time that it is present
o Just-noticeable difference (JND) – the size of the difference in a stimulus
characteristic needed for an observer to detect a difference between two stimuli
or to detect a change in a single stimulus
o Weber’s Law – the same percentage of a magnitude must be present in order to
detect a difference between two stimuli or a change in a single stimulus
• Signals
o Signal detection theory – a theory of how people detect signals, which
distinguishes between sensitivity and bias
! Based on the idea that signals are always embedded in noise, and thus the
challenge is to distinguish signal from noise
o Sensitivity – the amount of information required to detect a signal
o Bias – the willingness to decide that you have detected a target stimulus
! You change your bias by adjusting your criterion
How do objects enter the mind
• Light is a form of electromagnetic radiation
o Amplitude – the height of the peaks in a light/sound wave
o Frequency – the number of light/wound waves that move past per sec
o Wavelength – the distance between peaks
The brain’s eye
• Transduction – the process whereby physical energy is converted by a sensory receptor
cell into neural signals
o Pupil – where light enters the eye
o Iris – circular muscles that adjusts the size of the pupil
o Cornea – transparent covering over the eye, which focuses light onto the back of
the eye
o Retina – tissue at the back of the eye which converts light to neural signals
! Rods – sensitive to light, only register shades of gray
! Cones – respond most strongly to one of the three wavelengths of light,
play a key role in producing color vision
! Fovea – the small central region of the retina with the highest density of
cones and the highest resolution
o Optic nerve – the large bundle of axons carrying neural signals from the retina
into the brain
! There are no rods/cones here, so you have a blind spot
• Accommodation – the automatic adjustment of the eye for seeing at particular distances,
which occurs when muscles adjust the shape of the lens so that it focuses incoming light
toward the retina
• Dark adaptation – the process that leads to increased sensitivity to light after being in the
dark
Color vision : Mixing and Matching
• Colors vary along three different dimensions
o Hue, saturation, lightness/brightness
• Color mixing
o Trichromatic theory of color vision – the theory that color vision arises from the
combinations of signals from three different types of sensors which each
respond maximally to a different range of wavelengths
o Mixed colors on TV have hues of each color added
! Red, green, blue " white
o Mixed colors in the world have hues of each color subtracted
! Red, green, blue " black
• Color tug-of-war?
o Opponent process theory of color vision – for some pairs of colors, the presence
of one inhibits our sensing the other in the same location on the retina
! Red inhibits green, yellow inhibits blue, black inhibits white
 o Afterimage – image left behind by a previous perception
o Cones feed into opponent cells in the retina/thalamus
! Opponent cells respond to one color from a pair at a time and inhibit
seeing the other color
o Color blindness – either cannot distinguish between two or more hues, or cannot
see hue at all
! Those cones have the same colored filter, leading two hues to appear the
same
! Small number of people are actually missing a type of cone

Phase 1: Organizing the Visual World

• Goal of phase 1 is to separate figure from ground
o Figure – a set of perceptual characteristics (shape, color, texture) that typically
corresponds to an object
o Ground – in perception, the background
Perceptual Organization
• The brain organizes information into regions of space where adjacent points have similar
characteristics
• Also must specify the edges of objects
o Neurons in the occipital lobe are topographically organized to do this efficiently
• Once regions/edges are specified, they need to be organized into shapes
• Gestalt laws of organization –
o Proximity: characteristics near each other tend to be grouped together
o Continuity: fall along a smooth curve or straight line tend to be grouped together
! - - - - - - vs _ _ _ - - -
o Similarity: similar visual characteristics
o Closure: the visual system tends to fill in missing parts of a shape
o Good form: forming a single shape will group things together
! [] vs [_
• Ambiguous figures – a figure that can be organized and perceived in more than one way
Perceptual Constancies
• Perceptual constancy – the perception that characteristics of objects remain the same
even when the sensory information striking the eyes changes
o Size constancy – occurs when you perceive an object as the same actual size even
when it is seen from different distances
 o Shape constancy – occurs when you see an object as having the same shape, even
when you view it from different angles
o Color constancy – occurs when you see colors as constant, even when the
lighting changes
! May occur because we see the lightest thing in a scene as white, and
everything else as relative to that
Knowing the distance
• Static cues – Extracted when both you and the object are standing still
o Binocular cues – arise from both eyes working together
! Convergence – the degree to which the eyes swivel toward the center
when a person focuses attention on an object
!
Retinal disparity – the difference between the images striking the retinas
of the two eyes
o Monocular static cues – can be picked up with one eye
! Texture gradient – an increase in the density of the texture of the object
with increasing distance
• Motion cues – specify the distance of an object on the basis of its movement
o Motion parallax – the way objects seem to shift with movement

Phase 2: Identifying Objects and Positions

• Phase 2 allows you to:
o Identify objects
o Identify spatial relations
Identifying Objects
• Once an object is identified, you know more about it (from memory) than what is
available purely from looking at the object
Informed Perception
• Bottom-up processing – triggered by light waves that strike the retina, which in turn
leads to the events in phase 1 processing
• Top-down processing – guided by knowledge, expectation, or belief
o In most cases, does not change how you see an object, but makes it easier to
organize/interpret it
• Perceptual set – the sum of assumptions and beliefs that lead a person to expect to
perceive certain objects or characteristics in particular contexts
Coding Space in the Brain: Identify “where”
 • Coordinate spatial relations specify continuous distances from your body or another
object that serves as an “origin” of a coordinate space

Attention
• Attention – the act of focusing on particular information, which allows that information
to be processed more fully than information that is not attended to
• Two reasons we pay attention to things
o The stimulus grabs our attention (bottom-up)
o We are actively searching for it (top-down)
• Selective attention allows you to pick out and maintain focus on a particular
characteristic, object, or event
What grabs attention?
• Certain qualities or features automatically pop-out
o Occurs when a stimulus differs from other present stimuli in its perceptual
quantities, such as color or size
Active searching
• The ability to maintain attention as you anticipate an event is called vigilance
Seeing without awareness
• Blindsight – when blind people/animals can still perceive things
• Repetition blindness – the inability to see the second instance of a stimulus when it
appears soon after the the first instance
• Attentional blink – a rebound period in which a person cannot pay attention to a second
stimulus after having just paid attention to another one

Hearing
Auditory Sensation
Sound Waves
• Pitch – how high or low a sound seems; higher frequencies of pressure waves produce
the experience of higher pitches
• Loudness – the strength of a sound; pressure waves with greater amplitude produce the
experience of louder sound
The Brain’s Ear
• Pressure waves move the eardrum, which moves three bones in the middle ear, which
cause the basilar membrane (inside the cochlea) to vibrate
o Hair cells – receptor cells with stiff hairs along the basilar membrane, which
produce neural signals when moved
 • Frequency theory – the theory that higher frequencies produce higher rates of neural
firing
• Place theory – the theory that different frequencies activate different places along the
basilar membrane
Deafness
• Conduction deafness – a type of deafness caused by a physical impairment of the outer
or middle ear
• Nerve deafness – a type of deafness that typically occurs when the hair cells are
destroyed by loud sounds

Phase 1: Organizing the Auditory World

Sorting out sounds
• Speech-segmentation problem – the problem of organizing a continuous stream of
speech into separate parts that correspond to individual words
• Categorical perception – automatically grouping sounds as members of distinct
categories that correspond to the basic units of speech
Locating sounds
• Hearing makes use of the differences in stimuli reaching the two ears to assess the
distance of a source sound
o E.g. difference in loudness

Phase 2: Identifying Objects and Positions

More than meets the ear
• Phonemic restoration effect – auditory “filling-in” effect
Hearing without awareness
• Cocktail party phenomenon – the effect of not being aware of other people’s
conversations until your name is mentioned, and then suddenly hearing it
• Dichotic listening – a procedure in which participants hear different stimuli presented
separately to each of the two ears, and are instructed to only listen to sounds presented
in one ear
o Still register some information from the ignored ear
Specifying positions
• Auditory spatial processes and visual spatial processes rely on the same portions of the
parietal lobe

Sensing and Perceiving in Other Ways

Smell
• Chemical senses – smell/taste which rely on sensing the presence of specific chemicals
Distinguishing Odors
• Lock and key – molecules and receptors
• Smell is bound tightly to emotions and memories
Pheromones: Another kind of scent?
• Pheromones – chemical substances that serve as a means of communication
o Released outside the body, in urine and sweat

Taste
• Taste buds – the receptor cells for taste, which are microscopic structures on the bumps
on the tongue surface, on the back of the throat, and inside the cheeks
Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter, etc
• A fifth taste = umami (MSG)
• In addition, dendrites of neurons in the mouth are irritated by spicy foods
Taste and Smell
• People have a much harder time detecting most flavors when smell is blocked

Somasthetic Senses
• Senses that produce the perception of the body and its position in space
Kinesthetic Sense
• The sense that registers the movement and position of the limbs
Vestibular Sense
• The sense that provides information about the body’s orientation relative to gravity
Touch
• Skin = largest organ
• The larger the portion of somatosensory cortex devoted to a particular area of the skin,
the more sensitive we are to stimulation of that area
Temperature
• There are distinct spots on your skin that register only hot or only cold
Pain
• Double pain – the sensation that occurs when an injury first causes a sharp pain and later
a dull pain
o The two kinds of pain arise from different neural pathways sending their
messages at different speeds
• Endorphins – pain killing chemicals produced naturally in the brain
 • Gate control (of pain) – the mechanism that allows top-down processing to inhibit
interneurons that send pain signals to the brain

Other Senses?
Magnetic Sense
• BIRDS (and some mammals)
Extrasensory Perception (ESP)
• The ability to perceive and know things without using the ordinary senses
o Telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition
• Scientist are skeptical
o Failure to replicate
o Lack of brain mechanism
o Lack of signals
o Alternative explanations (other non-verbal communication)
Ch 4 – Learning
Learning – the acquisition of information or a behavioral tendency that persists over a relatively long
period of time
Habituation – the learning that occurs when repeated exposure to a stimulus decreases an organism’s
responsiveness to that stimulus

Classical Conditioning
• A type of learning that occurs when a neutral stimulus becomes pared with a stimulus
that causes a reflexive behavior, and in time this neutral stimulus is sufficient to elicit that
behavior

Pavlov’s Experiments
• Ivan Pavlov (Pavlovian Conditioning) was the first person to investigate classical
conditioning methods
Phases of Classical Conditioning
• Unconditioned stimulus (US) – elicits an automatic response
• Unconditioned response (UR) – reflexive or automatic response elicited by a US
• Conditioned stimulus (CS) – neutral stimulus trained to produce a response
• Conditioned response (CR) – the response produced by the CS
o Acquisition: the initial learning of the conditioned response
Variations of the procedure
• Forward conditioning: CS begins before US
• Backward pairing: US before CS
• Simultaneous conditioning: US and CS at the same time

Classical Conditioning: Variations on a theme

• Avoidance learning – classical conditioning with a CS and an unpleasant US that leads
the animal to try to avoid the CS
Conditioned emotions : gut response
• Conditioned emotional response (CER) – an emotionally charged conditioned response
elicited by a previous neutral stimulus
• Phobia – an irrational fear of a specific object or situation, can arise from CS/CR
Preparedness and contrapreparedness
• Biological preparedness – a built-in readiness for certain previously neutral stimuli to
come to elicit particular conditioned responses
o Means that less training is necessary to produce learning when the neutral stimuli
are paired with the appropriate unconditioned responses
 • Contrapreparedness – a built-in disinclination (or inability) for certain stimuli to be
conditioned to elicit particular conditioned responses
Extinction and Spontaneous recovery
• Extinction – the process by which a CR comes to be eliminated through repeated
presentations of the CS without the presence of the US
o New learning occurs “on top” of previous learning
• Spontaneous recovery – the restored ability of the CS to elicit the CR after extinction
Generalization and Discrimination
• Stimulus generalization – a tendency for the CR to be elicited by neutral stimuli that are
similar but not identical to the CS
• Stimulus discrimination – the ability to distinguish among stimuli that are relatively
similar to the CS and to respond only to the actual CS
Cognition and the Conditioned Stimulus
• CS provides information by heralding the upcoming US (and therefore UR)
o Conditioning occurs because animals learn this behavior
• Placebo effect occurs when the placebo conveys information that a future response is
likely, so the animal expects that the placebo will lead to a response

Dissecting Conditioning: Brain Mechanisms

Learning to be Afraid
• Stimuli are registered by the brain, then the amygdala reacts – with conditioning sets of
neurons in the amygdala become linked
• Whenever the CS later occurs, the amygdala automatically triggers the CR
More than one type of conditioning
• Each type of conditioning relies on different underlying brain mechanisms

Classical Conditioning Applied

Drug use and Abuse
• A user who typically takes a drug in a particular setting develops a CR to that place
• Drug taken in a new setting doesn’t have the body’s response to that
Therapy Techniques
• Systematic desensitization – the structured and repeated presentation of a feared CS in
circumstances designed to reduce anxiety
o After this, the CS no longer elicits the CS
• Exposure – presents a fear-eliciting CS, but without first inducing relaxation as in
systematic desensitization
Advertising
• “Sex appeal”
• evaluative conditioning – promoting consumers positive attitudes about products
Food and Taste Aversion
• Food or taste aversion – occurs when an unpleasant experience during or after eating a
particular food leads an animal to avoid that food in the future
Conditioning and the Immune System
• Immune systems can also be affected by CS

Operant Conditioning
• The process by which a stimulus and response become associated with the consequences
of making the response

The Roots of Operant Conditioning

• Operant conditioning requires the animal to “operate” in the world, to do something
• Classical conditioning usually involves involuntary reflexes, whereas operant
conditioning involves voluntary, nonreflexive behavior
Thorndike’s Puzzle Box
• Cat put in box w/ lever to open and fish outside
• Cat learned to open the box
o “trial-and-error” learning
• Law of Effect: actions that subsequently lead to a “satisfying state of affairs” are more
likely to be repeated
The Skinner Box
• Box that could feed rat and record the frequency of their responses
• Rat in a box with a lever; pressing lever releases food pellet

Principles of Operant Conditioning

• Reinforcement – the process by which the consequences of a response increase the
likelihood that the response will occur again when the stimulus is present; the response
becomes associated with its consequences
• Response contingency – the circumstance in which a consequence depends on the
animal’s producing the desired response
• Reinforcer – an object or event that, when it follows a response, increases the likelihood
that the animal will make that response again when the stimulus is present
Reinforcement: Increasing responses
 • Positive reinforcement – a desired reinforcer is presented after a response
o Increases likelihood of that response in the future
• Negative reinforcement – an unpleasant object or event is removed after a response, also
increasing likelihood in the future
Punishment
• Punishment – an unpleasant object or event is presented after a response
o Decreases the likelihood of that response in the future
• Positive punishment – response leads to undesired consequence
• Negative punishment – response leads to a pleasant object or event being removed
• Punishment is likely to lead to learning when it is:
o Swift, consistent, and not so aversive as to create high levels of fear, anxiety,
injury, or new undesired activities
Primary and secondary reinforcers
• Primary reinforcers – events or objects that are inherently reinforcing
o Food, water, relief from pain
• Secondary reinforcers – not inherently reinforcing, but have acquired their value through
learning
o Attention, praise, money, good grade, promotion
• Behavior modification – a technique in which behavior is changed through use of
secondary reinforcers
Immediate verses delayed reinforcement
• Immediate reinforcement – given immediately after the desired response
• Delayed reinforcement – given some period of time after the desired response is
exhibited
o Relationship between response and consequence less clear

Beyond Basic Reinforcement

Generalization and Discrimination
• Generalization – the ability to transfer a learned stimulus-response association to a new
stimulus that is similar to the old one’
• Discrimination – the ability to respond only to a particular stimulus and not to a similar
one
Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery
• Extinction (in operant conditioning) – when an animal has learned a behavior through
operant conditioning and the reinforcement stops
o Initially there is an increase in responding
 o Then the response lessens intensity and frequency until the animal no longer
responds
• Spontaneous recovery – after a period of time following extinction, the original response
that was reinforced will appear
Building Complicated Behaviors
• Shaping – the gradual process of reinforcing an animal for responses that get closer to
the desired response
• Successive approximations – the series of relatively simple responses involved in shaping
a complex response
Reinforcement Schedules
• Continuous reinforcement – reinforcement given for each desired response
• Partial reinforcement – reinforcement given only intermittently after desired responses
• Interval schedule – partial reinforcement schedule based on time
o Fixed interval schedule – reinforcement given for responses produced after a
variable interval of time
o Variable interval schedule – reinforcement given for responses produced after a
variable interval of time
• Ratio schedule – partial reinforcement based on a specified number of responses
o Fixed ratio schedule – reinforcement given for responses produced after a fixed
number of prior responses
o Variable ratio schedule – “gambling reinforcement schedule” – reinforcement
given for responses produced after a variable ratio of time

The Operant Brain

Operant Conditioning: the role of Dopamine
• Process of building up associations between stimulus, response, and consequences
depends crucially on the dopamine reward system
Classical vs. Operant Conditioning
• Similarities
o Extinction/Spontaneous recovery
o Generalization/discrimination
• Differences
o Passive vs. active
o Reflexes vs. voluntary behaviors
o No reinforcement vs. reinforcement
Cognitive and Social Learning
Cognitive Learning
• The acquisition of information that may not be acted on immediately but is stored for
later use
• Latent learning – learning that occurs without behavioral indicators
o Ie. learning the layout of a maze but not using that until you’re rewarded for
knowing it with food

Insight Learning – “Ah ha! experience”

• Learning that occurs when a person or animal suddenly grasps how to solve a problem
or interpret a pattern of information
o Then, incorporates that new knowledge into old knowledge

Observational Learning
• Learning that occurs through watching others, not through reinforcement
• Bobo doll

Learning From Models

• Avoid going through steps that learning usually requires
• Can produce both desired adaptive learning, and undesired maladaptive learning
Ch 5 – Memory
Encoding – the process of organizing and transforming incoming information so that it can be
entered into memory, either to be stored or to be compared with previously stored information
Storage – the process of retaining information in memory
Retrieval – the process of accessing information stored in memory

Encoding Information into Memory Stores

Types of Memory Stores
• Memory store – a set of neurons that serves to retain information over time

Sensory Memory: Lingering Sensations

• Sensory Memory (SM) holds a large amount of perceptual information for a very brief
time (<1 second)
• Have sensory memory stores for each of our senses

Short-Term Memory
• Short-term memory (STM) holds relatively little information for only a few seconds
(perhaps up to 30 sec)
The Duration of STM
• Rehearsal – the process of repeating information over and over to retain it in STM
The Capacity of STM
• The limits of STM can be measured in terms of chunks
o Chunk – an organized unit of information (digit, letter, word)
• STM can generally handle 5-9 separate items, or 4 chunks
o However, this depends in part on the type on information
STM and Consciousness
• You are conscious only of info present in STM
• SM can retain info very briefly, and slow process of encoding to STM can’t store all the
information
Working Memory (WM)
• a memory system that uses STM to reason or to solve problems
• the theory of WM distinguishes between different types of STM
o visuospatial sketchpad - holds visual/spatial information
o articulatory loop - holds verbally produced sounds
• includes a central executive – a set of processes that transforms and interprets information
in the two STMs when you plan, reason, or solve a problem
Long-Term Memory
• Long-term memory (LTM) stores a huge amount of information, for a long time (hours
to years)
LTM and Meaning
• In order for a stimulus to be meaningful, it must activate relevant info in LTM
• Retrospection – looking behind, to the past
• Prospection – looking ahead to the future (making predictions based on stored
information)
Information flow between STM and LTM
• The contents of working memory are typically drawn from LTM, not STM
• Relevant info from LTM is sent to STM to process
Distinguishing between STM and LTM
• Memory curve – you are more likely to remember the first/last items in a list
o Primacy effect – remembering first few stimuli (stored in LTM)
o Recency effect – remembering the last few stimuli (stored in STM)

Making Memories
Coding
• Code – a particular method for specifying information
o Ability to use different codes allows us to retain info more effectively
• Concrete words retained better than abstract words
o Concrete words can be stored using dual codes
Consolidation and Reconsolidation
• Consolidation – the process of converting information stored dynamically in LTM into a
structural change in the brain
o Dynamic memory : if it is not continually active, it is lost
o Structural memory : no longer depends on dynamic activity
• After you recall information, you may need to reconsolidate it in order to retain it
o Process of stabilizing stored information again as a stored structure
o Memories can be altered during this process – which can disrupt or distort them
Variations in Processing: Why “thinking it through” is a good idea
• Depth of processing – the number and complexity of the mental operations used when
you process information
o Deeper processing occurs when more or more complex operations are used
during encoding
• Most effective processing is tailored to the reasons the material is being learned
 o Attention – what you pay attention to plays a key role in what is encoded into
your memory
o Comparability – knowing the ways in which you later will use stored information is
critical for knowing how best to encode it
o Transfer of appropriate processing : you will be able to remember info more
easily if you use the same type of processing when you try to retrieve it as you
did when you originally studied it
• Breadth of processing – processing that organizes and integrates new information into
previously stored information, often by making associations
o Elaborative encoding – strategies that produce great breadth of processing
• Intentional learning – learning that occurs as a result of trying to learn
• Incidental learning – learning that occurs without the intention to learn
Emotionally Charged Memories
• Participants remember emotion-inducing stimuli (both positive and negative) better than
neutral ones
o Neurotransmitter noradrenaline is released during strong emotion
o Increase in emotional memory reflects the activity of the amygdala
• Flashbulb memory – an unusually vivid and detailed memory of a dramatic event
o Only events that have important consequences for a person are stored as
flashbulb memories
o People actually remember non-emotional aspects of the situation (where they
were, etc.) better than emotional aspects

Retaining Information: Not Just One LTM

Modality-Specific Memories
• Different types of memories are stored in modality-specific memory stores
o Each retains information from a single perceptual system (visual, auditory,
olfactory) or from a specific processing system (such as touch, movement,
language)

Semantic vs. Episodic Memory

• Semantic memories – memories of the meaning of words, concepts, and general facts
about the world
o Generally don’t remember when/where/how you learned these facts
• Episodic memories – memories of events associated with a particular time, place, and
circumstance
Explicit vs. Implicit Memories
• Explicit memories – can be voluntarily retrieved from LTM and brought into STM
• Implicit memories – are unconscious, cannot be voluntarily accessed.
o They predispose you to process information or behave in specific ways
Five types of implicit memories:
• Classically Conditioned Responses
o Neutral stimulus paired with unconditioned stimulus that produces an
unconditioned response, leading the neutral stimulus to produce the same
response
• Nonassociative Learning
o The response to the stimulus itself changes, without any new associations
between stimuli/responses being formed
• Habits
o A well learned response that is carried out automatically
• Skills: Automatic vs. controlled processing
o A set of habits that can be coordinated in a range of ways
o Controlled processing: requires paying attention to each step of a task and using WM
to coordinate the steps
o Automatic processing: allows you to carry out a sequence of steps without having to
pay attention to each one
• Priming of Perception or Behavior
o Occurs when having performed a task predisposes you to perform the same or
an associated task again in the future
o Repetition priming – makes the same information more easily accessed in the
future
Genetic Foundations of Memory
• Different genes are used when we form different types of memories
o Studied using knockout mice

Stressed Memories
• Stressed animals (such as when fight-or-flight is triggered) produce cortisol, which
affects hippocampal neurons and the ability to encode new explicit memories
• Effects of stress on hippocampus may be reversed if the environment changes

Retrieving Information from Memories

The Act of Remembering
• We store in episodic memory only bits and pieces of a given event, and use other stored
information to fit the pieces together and fill in the gaps

Recall vs. Recognition

• Recall – the act of intentionally bringing explicit information to awareness
• Recognition – the act of successfully matching an encoded stimulus to information
about that stimulus that was previously stored in memory
o When you recognize something, you have access to information that is associated
with the object or event
The Roll of Cues: Hints on Where to Dig
• Cues – stimuli, thoughts, or feelings that trigger or enhance remembering
• A helpful cue directs you to relevant info stored in LTM
Mental State and Cues
 • State-dependent retrieval – memory retrieval that is better if it occurs in the same
psychological state that was present when the information was first encoded
• In some cases, hypnosis can help people recall information, but has issues:
o Increases people’s confidence in their recollections but not their actual accuracy
o Can implant beliefs, leading the hypnotized person to believe that suggested
events happened

When Memory Goes Wrong – and What to do About it

False Memories
• Memories of events or situations that did not occur
Implanting Memories
• False memories can arise from the inferences we draw, and can also be directly
implanted by other people
• Some false memories are easier to create than others
o Strong emotions make memories more vivid, so people expect that if a highly
emotional event had happened they would remember it
Distinguishing Fact from Fiction
• The presence of associated perceptual information is a useful sign that a memory is real
• Reality monitoring – paying attention to characteristics that distinguish actual from
imagined stimuli

Forgetting: Many Ways to Lose It

• Forgetting curve – shows the rate at which information is forgotten over time
 • An encoding failure results if you do not process information well enough to ensure that
it is fully entered into LTM
Decay: Fade Away
• The loss of memories over time because the relevant connections among neurons are
lost
Interference: Tangled up in Memory
• Interference occurs when information disrupts encoding or retrieval of other
information
o Retroactive interference – when new learning disrupts memory for something learned
earlier
o Proactive interference – when information already stored in memory makes it
difficult to learn something new
• The more similar the already known and to-be-learned information, the more
interference there is
Intentional Forgetting: Out of Sight, Out of Mind
• Intentional forgetting doesn’t make the information truly forgotten if it was successfully
encoded, rather it becomes not easily accessible
• Your left frontal lobe will not work as hard to store the memory
Amnesia
• A loss of memory over an entire time span
 • Organic amnesia – arises after the brain has been damaged by a stroke, injury, or disease
• Functional amnesia – arises after psychological trauma or extreme stress
• Retrograde amnesia – disrupts previous memories
• Anterograde amnesia – leaves intact memories that were already consolidated but prevents
the storing of new facts
o Affects all explicit memories and produces massive encoding failure

Repressed Memories: Real or Imagined?

• Memories of actual events that were pushed into the unconscious because they are
emotionally threatening

Improving Memory: Tricks and Tools

Enhancing encoding
• Organize material so that you integrate it
o Chunk it – organize the material into units
o Bundle associated chunks
• Process it
o Think it through – think about implications/meanings of facts/ideas
o Match it to the way you will be tested on it
o Study in distributed sessions, spread out over time
• Mnemonic tricks
o Visualize interacting objects
o Visualize “in location”
Enhancing memory retrieval
• Remember the context
• Structure the environment
• Focus
• Keep trying
• Seize fragments
Ch 6 – Language, Thinking, and Intelligence
Language
The Essentials: What Makes Language, Language?
• Language production – the ability to use words, phrases, and sentences to convey
information
o Generative – we create countless combinations and novel sentences (don’t just
simply retrieve and repeat stored sentences)
• Language comprehension – the ability to understand the messages conveyed by words,
phrases, and sentences
• Four distinct types of building blocks and the rules for combining them distinguish
language from other communicative sounds
Phonology
• Phonology – the structure of the sounds of the words in a language
o The sounds of all words are build from phonemes – a small, fixed set of basic
sounds that humans are capable of producing
o Humans = ~100 phonemes, English = ~45
Syntax
• Syntax – the internal organization of a sentence, the arrangement of words, which is
determined by the grammar of a language
o Grammar = the rules for how words in a language can be organized into
sentences (grammar determines the proper syntax)
Semantics
• Semantics – the meaning of a word, phrase, or sentence
o Morphemes – the smallest unit of meaning in a language (i.e. –ing, -ed)
• Specific events in the past have a lot to do with how particular words got their meanings
• Different parts of the brain are involved in processing syntax/semantics
Pragmatics
• Pragmatics – the ways that words and sentences convey meaning indirectly, by implying
rather than asserting
Interlocking Mechanisms
• The four aspects of language (phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) constantly
interact

Bilingualism
• Brain areas behave differently for those who learn the language as children than for
those who learn the language as adults
 • Second language as adult: activated part of left frontal lobe (working memory) – a person
must deliberately think through that material
o Whereas languages learned as a child are automatic
• Adults can pick up vocabulary well, but not grammar and phonology

Means of Thinking
• Mental images – mental contents like those that arise during perception, but they arise
from stored information rather than on immediate sensory input
• Thinking relies on mentally manipulating information

Words: Inner Speech and Spoken Thoughts

Putting Thoughts Into Words
• Words are often ambiguous, but thoughts are not
o Trouble putting thoughts into words implies that speech isn’t just talking to
yourself
• Animals can think, but don’t use language
Does Language Shape Thought?
• Linguistic relativity hypothesis – the idea that language shapes our perceptions and
thoughts, and thus people who speak different languages think differently
• Language can enhance memory – if you can describe something you can more easily
remember it

Mental Imagery: Inner Perception

Visual Mental Imagery
• Spatial extent – an object’s specified portion of space
o People “scan” objects in their minds to get from one side to another
o Spatial extent is specified by patterns of activation in particular brain areas
• Limited field of view
o The larger an object, the more space it takes up in a mental field of view
• Limited resolution
o People require more time to “see” properties of objects that are visualized at
small sizes than those visualized at larger sizes
Other Types of Imagery
• We also have auditory images, motor images, spatial images
• We can manipulate objects in our mental images
 • Mental imagery relies on brain mechanisms used for perception and controlling
movement
Limitations of Mental Images as Vehicles of Thought
• Images have limitations, are not the only means of thought
o Abstract concepts
o Ambiguity
o Individual differences

Concepts: Neither Images nor Words

• Concept – the idea that underlies the meaning of a word or image; depending on the
language, some concepts may be expressed by a single word or may require a phrase or
two to be fully expressed
o Unambiguous, either concrete or abstract
• Difference between words/concepts
o The same word can convey more than one concept
o The same concept can be expressed by different words or phrases
• Difference between images/concepts
o The same image can express different concepts
o More than one image can sometimes express the same concept
The Nature of Concepts
• Aristotle: a given concept is defined by a set of features
• Typicality – how representative an entity is of the concept
• Prototype – the most typical example of a concept
o Concept = set of features that describe the prototype
o Only a percentage of these features need to be present in any particular member
in order to apply the concept
• Some concepts are not stored as prototypes
o Sets of examples
o Functions
How are Concepts Organized?
• Basic level – an intermediate level of specificity that is usually the most likely to be
applied to an object
o More general concepts above it, more specific concepts below it
o i.e. “granny smith” " “apple” " “fruit”
• basic level = as general as possible, while still being limited to objects that have similar
shapes
Problem Solving and Reasoning
• Problem solving – devising a way to overcome an obstacle that stands between the
present situation and a desired goal
• Reasoning – deciding what follows from an idea, ideas, or a situation

How to Solve Problems

• Problem – an obstacle that must be overcome to reach a goal
Solving the Representation Problem
• Representation problem – the challenge of how best to formulate the nature of a
problem
• Functional fixedness – becoming stuck on one interpretation of an object or aspect of a
situation
Algorithms and Heuristics
• Strategy – an approach to solving a problem
o Two types: algorithms/heuristics
• Algorithm – a set of steps that, if followed methodically, will guarantee the correct
solution to a problem
• Heuristic – a rule-of-thumb strategy that does not guarantee the correct solution to a
problem but offers a likely shortcut to it
Solving Problems by Analogy
• Analogy – a type of heuristic that relies on finding points of correspondence with
previously solved problems and their solutions
Overcoming Obstacles to Problem Solving
• Represent the problem effectively
• Focus on the problem
• Don’t restrict the resources
• Consider alternative types of solutions
o Don’t get stuck on a mental set – an approach to solving a problem that worked
for a similar problem in the past, which leads to a fixed way of thinking about
how to solve a present problem
• Take a fresh look

Logic, Reasoning, and Decision Making

• Logic – a set of rules that determines which conclusions follow from particular
assumptions
Are people logical?
• Two types of reasoning
o Deductive reasoning – applies the rules of logic to a set of assumptions to discover
whether certain conclusions inevitably follow from those assumptions (general
" particular)
o Inductive reasoning – uses examples to discover a rule that governs them (particular
" general)
• Logical errors
o Affirming the consequent – assuming that a specific cause is present because a
particular result has occurred
o Confirmation bias – a bias to seek information that will confirm a rule but not to
seek information that would refute it
Heuristics and Biases
• Representativeness
o Representativeness heuristic – the strategy in which we assume that the more
similar something is to a prototype stored in memory, the more likely it is to
belong to the category
o Base-rate rule – if something is chosen at random from a set, the chance that the
thing will be a particular type is directly proportional to the percentage of that
type in the set
• Availability
o Availability heuristic – the strategy in which we judge objects or events as more
likely, common, or frequent if they are easier to retrieve from memory
Emotions and Decision Making
• Sometimes emotion can help reasoning
o Negative emotions (fear, anger) can disrupt reasoning

Intelligence
• Intelligence – the ability to reason and solve problems well and to understand and learn
complex material

Measuring Intelligence: IQ
• IQ = Intelligence quotient
A Brief History of Intelligence Testing
• Binet and Simon
o goal to identify children in public schools who needed extra help
 o assigned a “mental age” to children based on what tests they could pass
o children with lower mental age than chronological age were considered slow
• Terman and Wechsler
o Stanford-Binet test – used to test people from age 2 " adults
o Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) – designed to test adults more
accurately, has four parts:
! Verbal comprehension
! Perceptual comprehension
! Working memory
! Processing speed
Scoring IQ Tests
• William Stern developed idea of an IQ:
o IQ = (MA/CA) x 100
o Disadvantage: mental age stops developing, but chronological age moves
forward
• IQ now computed by comparing particular person to the average of other people the
same age
o Test is given to a large standardized sample
o Then norm the test – set mean/standard dev
• Test must be reliable and valid
IQ and Achievement
• Only about a quarter of the variation in job success can be predicted by IQ

Analyzing Intelligence
IQ, g, and Specialized Abilities
• Spearman’s g Factor
o g – “General factor”, a single intellectual capacity that underlies the positive
correlations among different tests of intelligence
o factor analysis – a statistical method that uncovers the particular characteristics
that make scores more or less similar
o s – “Specific factors”, or aspects of performance that are particular to a given
kind of processing – and distinct from g
• Thurstone’s primary mental abilities
o Primary mental abilities – according to Thurstone, seven fundamental abilities
that are the components of intelligence and are distinct from other abilities
• Cattell and Horn’s Fluid and Crystallized Intelligences
 o Fluid intelligence – the kind of intelligence that underlies the creation of novel
solutions to problems
o Crystallizes intelligence – the kind of intelligence that relies on knowing facts and
having the ability to use and combine them
• Carroll’s three-stratum theory of cognitive ability
o Relations among test scores are structured into a 3-tiered hierarchy
o At the top is g, then eight broad cognitive abilities, and under each of those is a
set of narrow abilites
Emotional Intelligence
• Emotional intelligence (EI) – the ability to understand and regulate emotions effectively
• 4 branches:
o perceiving emotion
o facilitating thought with emotion
o understanding emotion
o managing emotion
Multiple Intelligences
• Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences – hold there are at least 8 distinct forms of
intelligence
o Linguistic, spatial, musical, logical/mathematical, bodily/kinesthetic,
intrapersonal, interpersonal, naturalist, existential
• Sternberg’s analytical, practical, and creative intelligences
o IQ = only a measure of analytical intelligence

Smart Genes, Smart Environment

Genetic Effects
• An adopted child’s IQ correlates more highly with biological mother than adopted
mother’s IQ
o And, IQ of identical twins more similar than fraternal twins
• IQ is highly correlated with the amount of gray matter in the frontal lobes
Environmental Effects
• Aspects of the prenatal environment affect later IQ
• Microenvironment – the environment created by a person’s own presence, which
depends partly on his or her appearance and behavior

Group Differences in Intelligence

Within-Group vs. Between-Group Differences
 • Heritability estimates only tell us about the effects of genes in a certain environment, not
about the possible effects of genes in other environments
Race Differences
• IQ: Asian > White > Hispanic > Black
• Test bias? Features of test items or test design that lead a particular group to perform
well or poorly
• Environmental differences, inferior schooling, effects of the microenvironment?
• Stereotype threat – threat that occurs when people believe that a negative stereotype
addresses characteristics important to them and that others will see them as conforming
to that stereotype
Sex Differences
• Verbal reasoning : females > males
• Spatial reasoning : males > females

Diversity in Intelligence
Mental Retardation
• IQ < 79
• “significant limitations” in two or more everyday abilities, such as communication, self-
care, self-direction
• the presence of the condition since childhood
• Genetic influences
o Down syndrome – a type of mental retardation that results from the creation of
an extra chromosome during conception
• Environmental influences
o Fetal alcohol syndrome – a condition that includes mental retardation and is
caused by excessive drinking of alcohol by the mother during pregnancy
The Gifted
• Gifted – refers to people with IQ > 145
• Prodigies – children with immense talent in a particular area
Creative Smarts
• Creativity – the ability to produce something original of high quality or to devise an
effective new way to solve a problem
• Involves an interplay between divergent and convergent thinking
What Makes a Person Creative?
• Keep options open, don’t make snap decisions, good at seeing multiple vantage points
• Tend to have high intelligence, wide interests, highly motivated, driven to create
• Less desirable quality of creative people : mental instability
Ch 7 – Emotion and Motivation
Emotion
• A physical state with four components
o A positive or negative subjective experience
o Bodily arousal
o The activation of specific mental processes and stored information
o Characteristic overt behavior

Types of Emotion
Basic Emotions
• Emotions that are innate and shared by all humans
o Surprise, happiness, anger, fear, disgust, sadness
• Idea that there is a fixed set of basic emotions has proven controversial
• Role of culture in shaping emotion
o People generally can recognize emotions in their own racial group
o Depended on whether their own group was the majority
Separate but Equal Emotions
• Positive and negative emotions are not opposite, but separate
o Can occur at the same time

What Causes Emotions?

James-Lange Theory
• We feel emotions after our bodies react
o Support: some emotions are accompanied by a particular pattern of heart rate,
body temperature, etc.
o Facial feedback hypothesis – you feel emotions in part because of the way your
muscles are positioned in your face
o Evidence against – people with spinal cord injuries (receive no feedback from
their bodies) report having emotions
Cannon-Bard Theory
• Bodily arousal and the experience of emotion arise at the same time, neither causes the
other
o Studies of fear: bodily reactions triggered at the same time as the conscious
experience of emotion
o According to this theory, arousal is arousal – which has been shown to not be
the case (some emotions have particular patterns of heart rate, body temperature,
etc.)
Cognitive Theory
• An emotion arises when you interpret the situation – and the “situation” can include
your bodily state in the context of everything that surrounds it
• Misattribution of arousal – the failure to interpret signs of bodily arousal correctly, which
leads to the experience of emotions that ordinarily would not arise in that particular
situation
• Not all emotions rely on cognitive interpretation – e.g. fear
The Emerging Synthesis
• Different brain systems underlie different categories of emotion
o Some are reflexive pathways (independent of thought/interpretation)
o Others are dependent on thought and interpretation
• Core affect – the “simplest raw feelings”
o Unconsciously categorize changes in core affect
Fear: The Amygdala and You
• After you have learned to fear an object, fear of that object can be an “emotional reflex”,
with no cognitive interpretation
o Amygdalae send signals to other brain areas which trigger autonomic responses
• Once you learn to associate fear with an object/situation, you will always do so
o The emotion of fear is always associated with the stimulus, even though
extinction has eliminated the behaviors associated with that emotion
• Mental processes can alter how easily the fear response occurs
• The amygdala does not play a direct role in producing the emotional “feel” of fear
• Neither the amygdala nor any other single brain area always gives rise to a particular
emotion
Positive Emotions
• Happiness
o Leads people to broaden the scope of attention
o Once someone has risen above the level of poverty, money doesn’t play a role in
happiness
o Life circumstances, personality, social support, realistic expectations can lead to
happiness
• Positive states of mind can promote resilience – the ability to bounce back from
adversity
o Can boost the immune system
o Promote effective coping strategies
Expressing Emotions
Culture and Emotional Expression
• Display rules – culture-specific rules that indicate when, to whom, and how strongly
emotions can be shown
Body Language
• Posture and body movement; a form of nonverbal communication
• Culture affects the nature of body language, but some arises from innate factors
Emotion Regulation
• We have some ability to prolong the experience of certain emotions
o And, likewise, we can voluntarily reduce our emotional reactions
• Consequences
o If emotions not regulated, behaviors arising from them may be
undesirable/problematic (i.e. anger/aggression issues)
o Suppressing behavior that arises from emotions (not the emotions themselves)
can lead to temporarily reduced cognitive abilities
o Regulating emotion prevents the negative cognitive effects of suppressing the
emotionally driven behaviors
o Different emotions selectively affect different aspects of cognition, esp. working
memory

Perceiving Emotions
Reading Cues
• The ability to read nonverbal communication is at least partly determined by experience
Perceiving by Imitating
• When we perceive an emotional expression, we subtly move our muscles so that we can
imitate that expression
Lie Detection
• Based on the idea that guilt and fear have a biological signature
• Polygraphs – monitors the activity of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous
systems
o Changes in how easily the skin conducts electricity, breathing, heart rate
o Relevant/irrelevant information
o Control question technique
o Guilty knowledge test – questions only the person guilty would know the answer
to
" too often leads to the classification of honest responses as lies
 • Different neural systems were involved when participants use different methods to tell
lies
o “on the fly” vs. a made-up alternate reality
• Common signs of deception:
o Frequent eyeblinks, sideways glances, stiff body posture combined with direct
eye contact, larger pupil size, rising pitch of voice, exaggerated facial expressions,
increased grammatical errors, slower and less fluent speech than normal,
repetition of words/phrases

Motivation and Reward

Getting Motivated
• Motivation – the set of requirements/desires that leads an animal to behave in a
particular way at a particular time and place
o Some motives based on biological needs/drives (food/sex), others based on
learning (i.e. wanting a promotion)
Instincts
• Instinct – an inherited tendency to produce organized and unalterable responses to
particular stimuli
• It is not clear which goals are explained in terms of evolution vs. importance in present
society
Drives and Homeostasis
• Drive – an internal imbalance that pushes you to reach a particular goal, which in turn
will reduce that imbalance (such as hunger/thirst)
• Homeostasis – the process of maintaining a steady state
o Bodily substances and conditions are kept within the range in which the body
functions well
o Often involves active behavior, not simply the passive registering of the
environment
Arousal Theory
• We seek to maintain an intermediate level of stimulation, for best performance
• The Yerkes-Dodson Law:
Incentives and Rewards
• Incentives – stimuli or events that draw animals to achieve a particular goal in
anticipation of a reward
• We tend to behave in ways that experience has shown us will produce a desirable
outcome
Learned Helplessness
• Occurs after an animal has an aversive experience in which nothing it does can affect
what happens to it, and so simply gives up and stops trying to change the situation or to
escape

Needs and Wants

• Need – a condition that arises from the lack of a necessary substance or condition
• Want – a state that arises when you have an unmet goal that does not arise from a lack of
necessary substance or condition
Types of Rewards
• Deprived reward – occurs when an animal lacks a substance or condition necessary for
survival, and an action then produces this substance or condition
• Non-deprived reward – occurs when the rewarding system or activity is not something
that is necessary and lacked
o Need " drive " reward (deprived)
o Want " incentive " reward (non-deprived)
Types of Needs
• Psychological needs
o Need for achievement – need to reach
goals that require skilled performance or
competence to be accomplished
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
o Lower-level needs = more essential to life
o Top = less basic, you can live without
them
o Once a need is met, it becomes
unimportant and needs higher up become
important
Needs/Wants in Individualist vs. Collectivist Cultures
• Individualist cultures – emphasize the rights and responsibilities of the individual over
those of the group
• Collectivist cultures – emphasize the rights and responsibilities of the group over those
of the individual
• Different types of cultures affect the achievement goals

Hunger and Sex

Eating Behavior
• Metabolism – the sum of the chemical events in each of the body’s cells, events that
convert food molecules to the energy needed for the cells to function
Is Being Hungry Opposite of Being Full?
• The brain recognizes two major types of food molecules : glucose, fatty acids
• The stomach contains detectors that register the food value of its contents
Appetite
• Appetizer effect – if the first bites are good, your appetite is stimulated
• Changes in your appetite based on what you have eaten already are linked to the activity
of the hypothalamus
o After the neurons stop responding to one food, they can still be stimulated by
another
• When people eat in groups, they often don’t vary the size of the portions to reflect their
degree of hunger
• Insulin – a hormone that stimulates the storage of food molecules in the form of fat
Why Does it Taste Good?
 • People can develop cognitive taste aversion
• Seeing a food in contact with something disgusting " disgusting food
• If a food resembles something repulsive it will be unappealing

Overeating
Set Point: Your Normal Weight
• Animals settle at a particular body weight that is easiest to maintain – set point
Obesity
• Fat personalities – people have weak characteristics? Not true
o But some people prone to eating when stressed, or aroused
• Fat genes – weight differences may be up to 70% heritable
• Fat environment – USA in general
Dieting
• Seriously, eat less to lose weight. Its that simple.

Sexual Behavior
•Studies of sexual behavior are often flawed
o Selection bias – a certain type of person will talk about their sexual endeavors
o Response bias – people don’t respond accurately
Sexual Responses
•Excitement " plateau " orgasm " resolution
•Sexual response cycle
o Sexual attraction " sexual desire " sexual excitement (arousal) " possible
sexual performance
The Role of Hormones
• Androgens – “male hormones” (like testosterone)
• Estrogens – “female hormones”
• Androgen insensitivity syndrome – XY (genetically male) but androgens don’t develop
properly, so they develop as females with no uterus or ovaries
o Develop and behave as females
• Oxytocin = hormone that increases in women immediately after giving birth
Sexual Motivation
Mating Preferences
• Parental investment – finding somebody to raise your babies with you

Sexual Orientation
• Heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual
A Gay Hypothalamus?
• Part of the hypothalamus was half the size in gay vs. straight men
Other Biological Differences
• Clicking sounds in ears – difference?
In the Genes?
• Inheritance of homosexuality seemed to be related to homosexuality in the mother’s
family
• Boys with older brothers more likely to be gay
o Level of testosterone in the mom
Ch 8 – Personality
Personality - a set of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral tendencies that people display over time
and across situations and that distinguish individuals from each other

Personality: Historical Perspectives

Freud’s Theory: The Dynamic Personality
• Psychological determinism – the view that all thoughts, feelings, and behavior ultimately
have an underlying psychological cause
o Sex and aggression = primary motivating forces of human behavior
The Structure of Personality
• Consciousness can be divided into three levels:
o The conscious - normal awareness, (thoughts, feelings, motivations)
o The preconscious – info that we can bring into awareness but are not aware of
most of the time
o Unconscious – thoughts/feelings/motivations that cannot voluntarily be brought
into consciousness
• Three mental structures
o Id – exists from birth, houses sexual/aggression drives, physical needs, and
simple psychological needs
! Lies in the unconscious
! Pleasure principle – wants pleasure and immediate gratification
o Superego – sense of right and wrong, based on internalization of parental and
cultural morality
! Mostly unconscious
! Tries to prevent expression of id’s inappropriate impulses
! Causes feelings of guilt
o Ego – tries to balance id, superego, and reality
! Preconscious/conscious levels
! Reality principle – assesses what is realistically possible in the world
Personality Development
• Psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital
o A fixation results from incomplete resolution of an earlier stage
o Fixation can create a neurosis – an abnormal behavior pattern that arises from a
conflict between the ego and either the id or the superego
• Castration anxiety – a boys fear that, as punishment for loving mother and hating father,
his father will cut off his penis
• Girls at this stage have penis envy (according to Freud, who isn’t a girl…)
 o Girls remain fixated at the phallic stage and have less well-developed superego,
less ego strength, etc.
Defense Mechanisms
• Defense mechanisms – various unconscious processes that prevent unacceptable
thoughts or urges from reaching conscious awareness—and thereby decrease anxiety
o Denial
o Intellectualization – think about threatening thoughts/emotions rationally
o Projection – threatening thoughts projected onto others
o Rationalization – justification
o Reaction formation– unconsciously change unacceptable feeling to its opposite
o **Repression (most important) – blocking threatening thoughts, impulses,
memories from entering consciousness
o Sublimation – direct threatening impulses into socially acceptable activities
o Undoing
Freud’s Followers (neo-Freudians : Jung, Adler, Horney)
• Jung – collective unconscious
• Adler – feelings of inferiority
• Horney – parent-child interactions
Critiquing Freudian Theory
• It isn’t a good science

Humanistic Psychology: Thinking Positively

• Self-actualization – an innate drive to attain the highest possible emotional and
intellectual potential
• Unconditioned positive regard – acceptance without any conditions
o Have a need for it because our self-concept is in part a reflection of how others
see us

What Exactly Is Personality?

• Personality trait – a relatively consistent tendency to think, feel, or behave in a
characteristic way across a range of situations

Personality: Traits and Situations

• Some personality traits can be grouped as central traits that affect a wide range of behavior
The Power of the Situations
 • The more similar the situations, the more likely it is that a person will behave in similar
ways
• Situationism – a person’s behavior is mostly governed by the particular situation, not by
internal traits
Interactions Between Situation and Personality
• Interactionism – the interaction between personality and the situation
o The same objective situation is experienced differently by people who have
different personalities
o Our personalities partly create our situations
o People can often choose their situations

Factors of Personality
• Personality dimension – a set of related personality traits
• Factor analysis takes a set of correlations and derives dimensions (“factors”) that
underlie those correlations
o Cattell – proposed 16 basic personality factors
o Can be reduced to five superfactors - OCEAN
! Extroversion / sociability
! Neuroticism / emotionality
! Agreeableness
! Conscientiousness / dependability
! Openness
o Eysenck – 3 superfactors: extraversion, neuroticism

Measuring Personality
• Four methods to asses and infer personalities:
o Inventories, projective tests, observations, and interviews
Inventories
• Personality inventory – a lengthy questionnaire that requires those being assessed to read
statements and indicate whether each is true or false about themselves, or how much
they agree/disagree
• Personality profile – often a graphical summary of the scores of different traits that
constitute someone’s personality
• Advantages:
o Easy to administer, easy to score w/computer programs
o Easy to compare same personality traits among different people
 • Drawbacks:
o Limits types of information obtained
o Responses can be biased
! People say ‘agree’ more than ‘disagree’
! Social desirability – answer questions in a way that makes yourself look
good
• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory 2 – commonly used to assess
psychopathology
Projective Tests
• Projective test – presets a person with ambiguous stimuli and asks the person to make
sense of the stimuli
o Person’s personality can be revealed by what they project onto ambiguous stimuli
• Rorschach test – inkblots, 10 cards with ambiguous shapes
o May not be valid/reliable?
• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) – set of 31 black and white drawings, people are
asked to tell a story about what each illustrates

Biological Influences on Personality

Temperament
• Temperament – an inclination to engage in a certain style of thinking, feeling, or
behaving
• Initially arises from the effects of genes/biology, and a person’s environment moderates
these effects
• Four dimensions of temperament:
o Sociability – preference for being in company of others rather than alone
o Emotionality – inclination to become aroused in emotional situations
o Activity – preference for a particular activity level (vigor, tempo)
o Impulsivity – tendency to respond to stimuli immediately, without reflection or
concern for consequences
Shyness
• Infants who are more reactive/sensitive to the environment tend to be shy later in life
• The environment can play a role in either diminishing or maintaining shyness into
adulthood
Sensation Seeking
• Sensation seeking – the pursuit of novelty or highly stimulating activities (i.e. skydiving,
fast driving) or occupations
 o More likely to: send angry emails, surf vs. golf, etc.

Biologically Based Theories of Personality

Behavioral Activation and Inhibition Systems
• Behavioral activation system (BAS) – mechanism based on the activation of a behavior
and on the effects of reward on behavior
o Activated by incentives/rewards
• Behavioral inhibition system (BIS) – mechanism based on the inhibition of behavior and
on the effects of punishment on behavior
o Activated by threat-related stimuli/punishment
Eysenck’s Theory
• Personality dimensions are composed of specific traits
o Extraversion – cerebral cortex less easily aroused
o Neuroticism – easily and intensely emotionally aroused
o Psychoticism – less control over emotions (aggressive, impulsive)
Cloninger’s Theory
• Four personality dimensions:
o Reward dependence
o Harm avoidance
o Novelty seeking
o persistence
Zuckerman’s Theory
• Set of dimensions known as the “alternate five”
o Sociability
o Neuroticism-anxiety
o Impulsive sensation seeking
o Activity
o Aggression-hostility
Comparing the Biologically Based Theories
• Similarities

Genes and Personality

• Behavioral genetics – focuses on sorting out the influence of hereditary vs. environment
on thoughts, feelings, behavior
o Compare people who share different percentages of genes
o Sets of twins separated at birth vs. raised together
 o Identify specific genes with a personality dimension/trait
Heritability of Personality
• Different dimensions are influenced by genetics differently
o Criticism: womb environment of identical twins is more similar
Heritability of Specific Behaviors
• Different genes may underlie variations in happiness for men and women
• Genes can affect personality directly and indirectly
o But also shaped by personal experience
Genes and the Family Environment
• A shared family environment does not contribute very much to personality
• Exceptions: social closeness, positive emotionality
How Do Genes Exert Their Influence?
• Most aspects of personality are affected by numerous genes
• Variations in a single gene may affect more than one aspect of personality
• The effects of any one gene are subtle

Contributions of Learning and Cognition to Personality

Learning to Have Personality
• Learning influences personality by creating:
o Classically conditioned behaviors
o Operantly conditioned behaviors
o Behaviors learned through observation

The Sociocognitive View of Personality

• Expectancies: what you expect to happen has a powerful influence on your thoughts,
feelings, and behaviors (and, in turn, your personality)
Locus of Control
• Locus of control – a person’s perception of the source of control over life’s events when
the cause of events is is ambiguous
o Internals – more likely to see control coming from within themselves and feel
personally responsible
o Externals – see control coming from outside forces, feel less personally
responsible
• Internals and externals have different responses to success and failure
o Internals – increase expectancies after success, lower expectancies after failure
o Externals – lower expectancies after success, increase expectancies after failure
Self-Efficacy
• Self-efficacy = the sense of having the ability to follow through and produce desired
behaviors
o High self-efficacy – believe they will be able to behave a specific way if they want
to

Sociocultural Influences on Personality

Birth Order: Are You Number One?
• First-borns more likely to support parental authority, see things the way their parents do,
be less open to new ideas/experiences
• Younger siblings are more likely to be open to new ideas/experiences
• Middle-borns are less likely to defend their self-identities by their families
o Like word “friends” > “brothers”
o Identify self with first, not family, name

Sex Differences in Personality: Nature and Nurture

• Women score higher on social connectedness, neuroticism, empathy
• Men score higher on traits reflecting individuality/autonomy, anger/aggression,
assertiveness
Sociocultural Explanations
• Social role theory – boys/girls learn different skills and develop different beliefs based
on the social roles of males/females
• Expectancy also plays a role – different responses to behaviors that are seen as
appropriate/inappropriate for typical gender roles
Biological Explanations
• Men have more testosterone
• Women are evolutionarily more attached to their children because they can have less of
them
• BUT differences between men/women are not as large as differences within each sex

Culture and Personality

• Consistent differences in peoples personality traits over time and across countries
Personality Changes Within a Culture, Over Time
• Indicate the powerful influence of environmental factors
Culture and Personality Differences
• Collectivist vs. individualist cultures
 o Humility, honoring the family, efforts to maintain the social order
o Vs. individual freedom, equality, enjoyment

Attachment
• Attachment style – the way of relating to significant others
o Stems from the way a person interacted with parents during infancy
o Mold an internal working model about relationships
• Three categories of adult attachment style: secure, anxious, avoidant
• The relationships we have as adults can change our attachment style
o Unique environmental factors—rather than genetics—have the greatest influence
on adult attachment styles
Ch 9 – Psychology Over the Life Span
In the Beginning: From Conception to Birth
Prenatal Development
From Zygote to Birth
• Maturation: the developmental process that produces genetically programmed changes in
the body, brain, or behavior with increasing age
• Zygote: new cell created when sperm fertilizes an egg
• The developing baby starts off as a zygote, becomes an embryo when a tube that
specifies the head-to-toe axis of the body is present, and then becomes a fetus when all
major body structures are present
Learning and Behavior in the Womb
• Fetuses heart ad movement patterns become coordinated, become sensitive to sound
and light (20-25 weeks), change movements when stimulated externally (28 weeks)
• Infants know their own mother’s voice
Teratogens: Negative Environmental Effects
• Teratogen : an external agent, such as a chemical, virus, or type of radiation, that can
cause damage to the zygote, embryo, or fetus
o Maternal illness – chicken pox/ rubella, HIV
o Alcohol and drugs – fetal alcohol syndrome, heroin/cocaine can lead to physical
and developmental defects
o Caffeine and smoking – sudden infant death syndrome
o Diet and pollution
o Maternal stressors – affects maternal blood flow and maternal cortisol levels
Positive Environmental Events
• Eating chocolate?
• Playing music leads to better motor control, vocal abilities

The Newborn
• Human brain not developed at birth
• Abilities to think/feel/behave differ from older children and adults
Sensory Capacities and Reflexes
• Reflex – an inborn and automatic response to a stimulus
o Moro Reflex- startled babies throws arms wide, as if to grab hold of someone
o Babinski reflex- baby’s big toe flexes while other toes fan out
o Many of these reflexes disappear as the baby develops
Temperament
• Babies demonstrate differences in temperament
 • Aspects of temperament may arise from early nurturing experiences
o Gently touching infants can enhance growth and development, reduce EEG
activation associated with depression, boost immune function

Infancy and Childhood

Physical and Motor Development
• 2-5 months: follow movements with eyes, lift head/chest, hold objects
• 6-9 months: roll over, sit upright, pick up objects, shift objects between hands, crawl
• 10-12 months: pull to stand and “cruise”
• 13-18 months: walk unaided, scribble, throw a ball
• Some aspect of motor control involve specific opportunities to learn about the body and
the world

Perceptual and Cognitive Development

Perceptual Development
• Infant visual perception – “visual cliff” experiment
o Habituation technique: if a baby looks at a shape long enough, it will no longer
be interesting
o Infants prefer eye contact to no eye contact
• Infant auditory perception – auditory perception appears to be more fully developed at
an earlier age
• After the first year – by age 11, children have perceptual abilities similar to those of
adults
Language Development
• How is language acquired?
o Behaviorists believe that language is entirely the result of learning – children
acquire words/combinations of words through imitation, these utterances are
reinforced, etc.
o Nativism – the view that people are born with some knowledge
! Language acquisition device (LAD) – an innate mechanism that contains
a set of grammatical rules common to all languages and allows language
acquisition
o Interactionist – language acquisition relies on social events, draws on relatively
general cognitive abilities
• Foundations of language
 o Child-directed speech (CDS) – speech by caregivers to babies that relies on short
sentences with clear pauses, careful enunciation, exaggerated intonation, and a
high-pitched voice
o ~6 months, infants ignore distinctions not used in their surrounding language –
begin babbling which then develops into speech
• by 6 yrs, children know 10,000 words
o overextensions – an overly broad use of a word to refer to a new object or
situation, i.e. “dog” for any animal
o underextensions – using words too narrowly, i.e. “animal” only for dogs
• grammar – the set of rules that allows users of the language to combine words
o telegraphic speech – speech that packs a lot of information into a few highly
informative words, typically omitting words such as the, a, and of
o children can grasp the rules of grammar because most verbs in a language are
regular, i.e. play " played, work " worked, etc.
! overregularization error – a mistake that occurs in speech when the child
applies a newly learned rule even to cases where it does not apply
• Critical period – a narrow window of time when a certain type of learning or some
aspect of development is possible
Long-Term Memory Development
• Infant explicit memory – even 3mo olds have explicit memories
• Infants can store implicit memories – tendencies to perceive or behave in specific
ways/contexts
• Children’s verbal reports of events were constrained to the vocabulary they knew at the
time of the event
Stages of Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Theory
• Cognitive development : the gradual transition from infant to adult mental capacity
• Piaget’s theory: babies begin with very simple, innate schemas – mental structures that
organize sensory and perceptual input and connect it to the appropriate responses
o Assimilation – the process that allows the uses of existing schemas to organize
and interpret new stimuli and respond appropriately
o Accommodation – the process that results in schemas’ changing or the creation
of new schemas, as necessary to cope with a broader range of situations
• Piaget: 4 major periods of cognitive development
1. Sensorimotor (0-2 yrs) – the child acts on the world as perceived, is not capable of
thinking about objects in their absence
 • Failure to have object permanence – the understanding that objects continue
to exist when they cannot be immediately perceived
2. Preoperational (2-7) – words/images/actions used to represent information mentally
• Children do not understand conversation – the principle that properties
such as amount or mass remain the same even when the appearance of
the material or object changed
• Egocentrism – the inability to take another person’s point of view
3. Concrete operations (7-11) – reasoning is based on logic that is tied to what can be
perceived. Capable of organizing info into categories and can reverse mental
manipulations.
• Concrete operations – manipulating mental representations in much the
same way as they can manipulate the corresponding objects
4. Formal operations (11) – reasoning based on a logic that includes abstractions, which
leads to systematic thinking about hypothetical events
• Formal operations – reversible mental acts that can be performed even
with abstract concepts
The Child’s Concepts: Beyond Piaget
• Researchers have shown that infants have capacities beyond those claimed by Piaget
Information Processing and Neural Development
• Information-processing approach – based on the idea that perception and cognition rely
on a host of distinct processes in the brain, and hence these capacities develop as the
relevant parts of the brain develop
o A quantitative change in capacity (increase in working memory) can lead to a
qualitative change in performance
• Brian undergoes growth spurts around the ages of Piaget’s transitions
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory: Outside/Inside
• Vygotsky emphasized the role of social interactions during development
o First, learn rules and customs of your culture, which then serve to guide behavior
• Culture affects the brain and vice versa

Social and Emotional Development

Attachment
• Attachment – an emotional bond that leads us to want to be with someone and to miss
him/her when we are separated
• The preference to seek comfort from something soft is innate, not learned
• Separation anxiety – fear of being away from the caretaker
 • Types of attachment:
o Secure attachment
o Avoidant attachment
o Resistant attachment
o Disorganized/disoriented attachment
• The type of early attachment can have long-lasting effects
Self-Concept and Identity
• Self-concept – the beliefs, desires, values, and attributes that define a person to himself
or herself
• Gender roles – culturally determined appropriate behaviors for males vs. females
o Freud: children identify with the same-sex parent and that is the main way in
which gender roles develop
o Maccoby: peer group interactions are key to learning gender roles
Moral Development
• Moral dilemmas – situations in which there are moral pros and cons for each set of
possible actions
• Kohlberg’s theory: identified three general levels of moral development
o Preconventional : focuses on authority figure to define what good/bad is
o Conventional : focuses on the role of rules that maintain social order – wants to be
perceived as a “good person”
o Postconventional : focuses on the role of abstract principles that govern the decision
to accept or reject specific rules

Adolescence
Physical Development: In Puberty’s Wake
• Puberty – the time when hormones cause the sex organs to mature and secondary sexual
characteristics to appear
• Adolescence – the period between the onset of puberty and, roughly, the end of the
teenage years

Cognitive Development
More Reasoned Reasoning?
• Major cognitive development of adolescence is the ability to reason abstractly
Adolescent Egocentrism
• Enhanced cognitive abilities of adolescents allow them to take other points of view and
to see themselves as others see them
 o Imaginary audience: view themselves as actors and everyone else as the audience
o Personal fable – story in which they are the star, and have extraordinary
abilities/privileges

Social and Emotional Development: New Rules, New Roles

“Storms and Stress”: Raging Hormones?
• Adolescents tend to have conflicts with their parents
• Tend to experience extreme mood swings
• May be prone to taking risks and may have a tendency to commit crimes, drive
recklessly, and have high-risk sex
Evolving Peer Relationships
• Not all relationships are positive; negative relationships can be as powerful as friendships
(i.e. “mean girls” type stuff)
Teenage Pregnancy
• Teenagers most likely to become pregnant typically are poor with no clear career plans,
and their father is likely to be absent

Adulthood and Aging

The Changing Body
• Aging has two aspects: genetic changes and things that come from the environment
• Environmental changes include (lack of) the following:
o Adequate nutrition
o Exercise
o Meaningful activities

Perception and Cognition in Adulthood

Perception
• Early/middle adulthood – worsening vision can be corrected with glasses
o Half of people >65 have cataracts
• Older adults have difficulty shifting attention rapidly
• After age 50, increased difficulty hearing high-frequency sounds
Memory
• Memory tends to become poorer during adulthood
• Semantic memory (facts/words/meanings) remains relatively intact into old age, and
older adults are able to store new episodic memories effectively
• Have difficulty when they must actively recall specific episodic memories
Cognition
• The harder the cognitive task, the larger the difference in time taken by older adults vs.
young adults
• Shortly before death, some people exhibit terminal decline – taking a dramatic turn for
the worse on a wide range of cognitive abilities
Intelligence and Specific Abilities
• Longitudinal studies: both fluid and crystallized intelligence are stable until somewhere
between mid-50’s and early 70’s, when both decline
• Cross-sectional studies: fluid intelligence declines as early as late 20’s, while crystallized
intelligence may increase with age and only decline late in life
o Thus, older adults think more systematically than do young adults

Social and Emotional Development During Adulthood

Theories of Psychosocial Stages in Adulthood
• Psychosocial development – the result of maturation and learning on personality and
relationships
• Three stages:
o Intimacy vs. isolation – young adult must develop deep and intimate relations
with others and avoid being socially isolated
o Generativity v. self-absorption – middle-aged people must think about the future
and decide what their contributions will be for their children/society
o Integrity vs. despair – older adults must be able to reflect back on life and feel
that it was worthwhile
Continued Personality Development
• Changes in perspective occur as a result of aging
• Changes in personality – does not change substantially during adulthood
Mature Emotions
• Older people are more “mature” in their emotional responses
Adult Relationships: Stable Changes
• Older people tend to change their outlook on life
o Focus on the limited time they have left, which in turn changes their motivations
o Older couples resolve their differences with less negative emotion than do
younger couples
Ch 10 – Stress, Health, and Coping 5/17/15 10:36 PM

Health psychology – the area of psychology concerned with the promotion of health and the
prevention and treatment of illness as it relates to psychological factors

What is Stress?
Stress: the Big Picture
• Stress – the general term that describes the psychological and physical response to a
stimulus that alters the body’s equilibrium
• Stressor – a stimulus that throws the body’s equilibrium out of balance
o Can be physical, psychological, or social
• Stress response – the bodily response to a stressor that occurs to help a person cope
with the stressor
o Also called the fight or flight response
o Body produces chemicals called endorphins and enkephalins
• Acute stressor – short term; chronic stressor – long term

The Biology of Stress

• General adaptation syndrome (GAS) – the overall stress response that has three phases:
alarm, resistance, and exhaustion
The Alarm Phase: Fight or Flight
• A stressor is perceived, fight-or-flight response is activated
• Set of brain areas (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis) initiates the release of
glucocorticoids such as cortisol
• Sympathetic nervous system releases neurotransmitters such as epinephrine and
norepinephrine
o Which then cause changes in the body that make strenuous physical activity
easier
The Resistance Phase (the adaptation phase)
• The body mobilizes its resources to adapt to the continued presence of the stressor,
cortisol is produced
• No new energy is stored during the stress response (can produce a sense of fatigue)
The Exhaustion Phase
• The continued stress response itself becomes damaging to the body
• Stress-related diseases: high blood pressure, some digestive problems
From Stressor to Allostatic Load: Multiple Stressors and Their Time Course
• Allostatic load – the cumulative wear and tear on the body necessary to maintain
homeostasis in the face of stressors
 • Greater allostatic load increases the risk of medical/psychological problems

Interpreting Stimuli as Stressors

Appraisal
• Physical stressors tend to be more objectively defined
• Varying perception alters the degree to which a stress response is experienced
• Two stage process of cognitive appraisal
o Primary appraisal: asses a stimulus for the likelihood of danger
o Secondary appraisal: determine the resources you have to deal w/the stimulus
• Coping – taking action to address a stressor or to counteract effects of a stressor
Perceived Control
• Your perception of whether you can control a stimulus determines whether it functions
as a stressor
o Actual control isn’t important, only perception
o Not having control " learned helplessness

Sources of Stress
Internal conflict
• The emotional predicament that people experience when making difficult choices
• Three categories:
o Approach-approach conflict – occurs when competing alternatives are equally
positive
o Avoidance-avoidance conflict – occurs when competing alternatives are equally
unpleasant
o Approach-avoidant conflict – occurs when a course of action has both positive
and negative aspects
Life’s Hassles
• Stress can arise form daily hassles – the “little things” and ongoing concerns that plague
daily life

Stress, Disease, and Sleep

The Immune System: Catching Cold
• The immune system defends the body against infection and disease
o B cells – white blood cells that mature in the bone marrow
o T cells – white blood cells that mature in the thymus
 ! Natural killer (NK) cells – type of T cell that detect and destroy damaged
or altered cells, such as precancerous cells
• Glucocorticoids hinder the formation of NK cells and some other types of white blood
cells, and kill yet other types of white blood cells
• Psychoneuroimmunology – focuses on the ways in which thoughts and feelings affect
the immune system
o People will “hold on” to live through the holidays

Stress and Cancer

• When the immune system is suppressed, NK cells do not work as well to prevent the
spread of tumor cells

Stress and Heart Disease

How Stress Affects the Heart
• Atherosclerosis – a medical condition characterized by the buildup of plaque on the
inside walls of the arteries
o Increased blood pressure causes damage to artery walls
o Plaque accumulates on the damaged spots (hardening of the arteries)
o Accumulating plaque causes arteries to narrow – makes heart work harder, more
damage to arteries, cycle continues
• If a piece of plaque breaks off:
o Can block artery to the heart " heart attack
o Can block blood supply to brain " stroke
Stress, Emotions, and Heart Disease
• Depression leads to a higher risk of developing heart problems
o When treated, high rate and blood pressure decrease
• Anxiety and fear " heart disease
• Hostility – a personality trait associated w/heart disease and characterized by mistrust, an
expectation of harm and provocation by others, and a cynical attitude
o High heart rate and blood pressure throughout the day
o Esp. in males interrupted while concentrating on the task
Lifestyle Can Make a Difference
• People can counter the effects of stress on heart disease by changing their lifestyles

Sleep
5 Stages of Sleep
 • 1 : Hypnogogic sleep – transition from relaxed wakefulness to sleep (~5 min), can
include the sensation of gentle falling or a sudden jerking of the body
• 2 : Sleep spindles – brief bursts of brain activity, more relaxed & less responsive (~20
min)
• 3&4 : slow-wave sleep (SWS) – brain produces delta waves
• 5 : REM sleep – characterized by rapid eye movements, marked brain activity, and vivid
dreaming
• You sleep in cycles, period of REM followed by some of the other stages
o Pattern of sleep changes with age
Sleep Deprivation
• REM rebound – the higher percentage of REM sleep that occurs following a night
lacking the normal amount of REM
• Sleep deprivation – more likely to report being impation/aggravated
o Performance on complex tasks declines after 2 nights of restricted sleep
o REM and slow-wave sleep facilitate the learning information that was
encountered during the day
The Function of Sleep
• Conserves energy
• Restores the body
• Facilitates learning
Why do we dream?
• Freud: wish fulfillment
o Manifest content of a dream: the obvious, memorable content of a dream
o Latent content: the symbolic content and meaning of a dream
• Activation-synthesis hypothesis – the theory that dreams arise from random bursts of
nerve cell activity that may affect brain cells involved in hearing and seeing
o Brain attempts to make sense of this hodgepodge of stimuli, resulting in the
experience of dreams
• Dreams are used to edit out unnecessary or accidental brain connections formed during
the day OR used to strength useful connections
• Dreaming stopped completely if a patient had damage that disconnected parts of the
frontal cortex from the brainstem and limbic system
o Dreaming may occur in response to arousal that activates brain structures
involved in motivation
Circadian Rhythms
• The body’s daily fluctuations in response to the cycle of light and dark
 • Suprachiasmic nucleus (SCN) – a small part of the hypothalamus just above the optic
chiasm that registers changes in light, leading to production of hormones that regulate
various bodily functions
• Larks and owls
o “larks” – morning people experience peak body temperature, alertness, and
efficiency in the morning
o “owls” – peak at night
• Even minor alterations in sleep schedules can have a noticeable effect on mood after
awakening
Troubled Sleep
• Insomnia – repeated difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, or waking up too
early
• Medical treatment
o Barbiturates: suppress REM sleep, is addictive, leads to REM rebound
o Benzodiazepine: suppress REM sleep less, and are less likely to be addictive with
short-term use (but can be addictive with long-term use)
o Nonbenzodiazepine: can induce sleepwalking, serious withdrawal symptoms,
REM rebound
• Psychological treatment
o Restrict your sleeping hours to the same pattern nightly
o Control bedtime stimuli
o Avoid ingesting substances known to interfere with sleep
o Try meditation or relaxation techniques
• Sleep apnea – a disorder characterized by a temporary cessation of breathing during
sleep, usually preceded by a period of difficulty breathing accompanied by loud snoring
o Continued Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) delivers compressed air through a
mask that covers the nose
o Surgery can shave off some of the tissue in the throat that obstructs airflow

Strategies for Coping

Coping Strategies
Problem-Focused and Emotion-Focused Coping
• Problem-focused coping – coping focused on changing the environment itself or the
way the person interacts with the environment
• Emotion-focused coping – coping focused on changing the person’s emotional response
to the stressor
Thought Suppression
• Intentionally trying not to think about something that is emotionally arousing or
distressing
• Trying not to think about something can have the effect of that thought coming into
consciousness more than it does when you are not trying to suppress it
Aggression
• Aggression – behavior that is intended to harm another living being who does not wish
to be harmed
• Hostile attribution bias – the tendency to misread the intentions of others as negative
• Most aggressors are people who think exceedingly well of themselves (have high self-
esteem) " narcissists
o For narcissists, any evaluation is a stressor that threatens their view of themselves
• External “background noise” like noise, heat, depression, pain can spark aggression
Drugs and Alcohol
• Substance use may change the perception of the stressor or the reaction to the stressor –
does not provide lasting change
• Substance abuse – drug or alcohol use that causes distress or trouble with functioning in
major areas of life, occurs in dangerous situations, or leads to legal difficulties
o Can lead to substance dependence – chronic substance use that is characterized
by at least three out of seven symptoms, the two most important being tolerance
and withdrawal
o Tolerance – the condition, resulting from repeated use, in which the same
amount of a substance produces a diminished effect
 o Withdrawal symptoms – the uncomfortable or life-threatening effects that may
be experienced during withdrawal
• types of substances that may be abused
o Depressants – substances that depress the central nervous system, thereby
decreasing behavioral activity and awareness (barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and
alcohol)
! Disinhibition – the inhibition of inhibitory neurons, which makes other
neurons more likely to fire and which usually occurs as a result of
depressant use
! Alcohol myopia – the disproportionate influence of immediate
experience on behavior and emotion due to the effects of alcohol use
# Can lead to date rape
! Blackout – a period of time for which an alcoholic has no memory of
events that transpired while he or she was intoxicated
o Stimulants – excite the central nervous system, stimulating behavioral activity and
heightened arousal (cocaine)
! Cocaine inhibits the reuptake of dopamine and norepinephrine
! Crack – cocaine in crystalline form, which is usually smoked in a pipe or
rolled into a cigarette
! Amphetamines (Benzedrine, Dexedrine), MDMA – synthetic stimulants
! Caffeine / nicotine – legal stimulants
o Narcotic analgesics – a class of strongly addictive drugs that relieve pain and dull
the senses (heroin)
! Heroin is an opioid – derived from the opium poppy
! Heroin and other opioids create a negative feedback loop
o Hallucinogens – substances that induce hallucinations, which are experiences in
which people perceive something that is not actually present (LSD, marijuana,
ketamine)
! Flashbacks – a hallucination that occurs without drug use, often long
after the user has taken a drug

Coping and Social Support

• Social support – the help and support gained through interacting with others
o Can buffer the adverse effects of stress
• Perceived social support – the subjective sense that support is available should it be
needed
 • Enacted social support – the specific support that is provided to the person
o Perceived, not enacted, support provides the buffer against stress

Mind-Body Interventions
• Engage the mind in particular ways in order to influence the body’s functioning
o Hypnosis, meditation, yoga, biofeedback, visual mental imagery, prayer
The Effects of Mind-Body Interventions
• Allow you to adapt to the stimulus by altering heart and breathing rates, hormone
secretion, and brain activity
o Improved mood, lung function, control of pain, less stress, fewer heart problems
The Placebo Effect as a Mind-Body Intervention
• Placebos can be effective in decreasing stress and arousal

Gender, Culture and Coping

Gender Differences in Stress and Coping
• Women typically experience more stress than do men
• Women " emotion-focused coping strategies, men " problem-focused
Cultural Differences in Coping
• Culture influences what you perceive as a stressor, and how you cope with stressors
Voodoo death: after a shaman has put a curse on someone, that person is more likely to die
• If a person expects to become ill, they are more likely to become ill
• Nocebo effect = placebo effect but produces a negative outcome
o Three factors: classical conditioning, expectations, attributions
Ch 11 – Psychological Disorders
Identifying Psychological Disorders
Defining Psychological Abnormality
• Psychological disorder – a mental condition characterized by cognitive, emotional, and
behavioral symptoms that: create significant distress, impair work, school, family,
relationships or daily living, or lead to significant risk of harm
Distress
• Some forms of distress are immediately evident, others are not
Impairment
• Disability or impairment in some aspect of life
Risk of Harm
• Can occur when a psychological disorder causes a person to put life (his/her own, or
another’s) at risk, either intentionally or accidentally
Cultural and Social Influences
• What is considered “unconditional” or “deviant” varies from culture to culture
• Psychosis – a severely impaired ability to perceive and comprehend events accurately,
combined with grossly disorganized behavior
o Hallucinations – mental images (in any sensory modality but mainly
visual/auditory) so vivid that they seem real
o Delusions – unshakable but false beliefs that are often bizarre

Categorizing a Psychological Disorder

History of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)
• First manual of mental disorders designed to help clinicians diagnose/treat patients,
based on psychodynamic theory
• Five axes – types of info that should be considered
o Axis I – most clinical disorders (anxiety, schizophrenia)
o Axis II – personality disorders and mental retardation – arise in childhood,
persist throughout life
o Axis III – medical conditions that might be relevant to diagnosis in I or II
o Axis IV – social/environmental problems
o Axis V – patient’s highest level of functioning in major areas of life w/in past
year
Advantages and Disadvantages of the DSM
• Previously normal problems are now considered abnormal
• Categories that define medical problems as psychological disorders
• Some of the criteria of different disorders overlap substantially
 • However, there is a large reliability (consistency) in diagnosis

Explaining Psychological Abnormality

The Brain
• Increasing evidence that genes can predispose some people to develop some disorders
• Genes affect neurotransmitters and other aspects of brain function, as well as affecting
the structure of the brain itself
The Person
• Classical/operant conditioning can cause certain psychological disorders
o People learn maladaptive behaviors when those behaviors, a response to a
stimulus, are intentionally or inadvertently reinforced
• Certain mental events can:
o Bias what a person pays attention to
o Influence the pattern of a person’s thoughts
o Affect the attributions that a person makes about the causes of positive
/negative events
The Group
• Family/peers/culture at large have an influence
Interacting Factors
• The factors interact, it is the net effect of these factors that ultimately gives rise to a
disorder
• Diathesis-stress model – an explanation for how psychological disorders develop, in
which a predisposition to a given disorder (diathesis) and specific factors (stress)
combine to trigger the onset of the disorder
• Biophsychosocial approach – an explanation for how psychological disorders develop, in
which all three types of factors are considered separately, in addition to understanding
their influences on each other

Axis I: An Overview of Selected Disorders

Mood Disorders
• Characterized by persistent or episodic disturbances in emotion that interfere with
normal functioning in at least one realm of life
Major Depressive Disorder
• MDD – a mood disorder characterized by at least 2 weeks of depressed mood or loss of
interest in nearly all activities, along with sleep or eating disturbances, loss of energy, and
feelings of hopelessness
 • In developing countries, prevalence of men/women with MDD the same, but in US and
developed countries, rate for women = 2-3x rate for men
Bipolar Disorders
• Manic episode – a period of at least 1 week during which an abnormally elevated,
expansive, or irritable mood persists
• Bipolar disorders – a set of mood disorders characterized either by one or more episodes
of mania, or by alternating episodes of hypomania and depression
Explaining Mood Disorders
• Bipolar disorder and MDD may arise from a set of common underlying factors
• Level of the brain
o Genes play a role in predisposing someone to develop depression
o Some neurotransmitters do not function normally in depressed people
o Depressed people have unusually low activity in one area of the left frontal lobe
that has direct connections to many brain areas involved in emotion
o People with bipolar disorder are likely to have an enlarged amygdala
o When manic, people with bipolar disorder have shifts in the activity of their
temporal lobes that do not occur during other mood states
• Level of the person
o Negative triad of depression:
! Negative view of the world, self, and the future
o They have developed cognitive distortions – systematic biases in how they think
about events and people, including themselves
! May be based on early learning experiences like heavy criticism in
childhood
! Attribution style – a person’s characteristic way of explaining life events –
affects the risk of depression
• Level of the group
o Stressful life events
o Social isolation – less time for social reinforcement
o “Punishing” social relationships
o Cultural factors, sex differences
o First episode of bipolar disorder is typically preceded by significant stress

Anxiety Disorders
• Anxiety disorders – a category of disorders characterized by intense or pervasive anxiety
or fear, or extreme attempts to avoid the feelings
 • Generalized anxiety disorder – an anxiety disorder characterized by excessive anxiety and
worry that is not consistently related to a specific object or situation
Panic Disorder
• Panic attacks – episodes of intense fear, anxiety, or discomfort accompanied by physical
and psychological symptoms such as heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, chest pain,
nausea, sweating, dizziness, fear of going crazy or doing something uncontrollable, fear
of impending doom, or a sense of unreality
• Panic disorder – when a person endures frequent, unexpected panic attacks or fears
additional panic attacks and thus changes aspects of his or her life in hopes of avoiding
them
• Fear or avoidance of places that might be difficult to leave should symptoms of panic
arise " agoraphobia
• Genetic disposition : panic attacks may arise from having a sensitive locus coeruleus
which triggers components of the fight-or-flight response
• People who have anxiety sensitivity (belief that bodily arousal can have harmful
consequences) are more likely to experience uncued panic attacks
Phobias
• Phobia – an exaggerated, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that
leads the person to go to extreme lengths to avoid the feared stimulus
o Social phobia (social anxiety disorder) – the fear of public embarrassment or
humiliation, which in turn leads the person to avoid social situations likely to
arouse this fear
o Specific phobia – focused on a specific type of object or nonsocial situation
! Usually recognize that these fears are irrational but continue to have
them
• Humans are biologically prepared to develop phobias of certain stimuli – such as snakes
and heights
• Classical/operant conditioning can lead to some phobias
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
• OCD – an anxiety disorder characterized by the presence of obsessions and sometimes
compulsions
o Obsessions – a recurrent and persistent thought, impulse, or image that feels
intrusive and inappropriate and is difficult to suppress or ignore
o Compulsion – a repetitive behavior or mental act that a person feels compelled
to perform, usually in response to an obsession
• Relevant genes do not underlie OCD, but contribute to anxiety disorders more broadly
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
• PTSD – an anxiety disorder experienced by some people after a traumatic event, and
characterized by persistent re-experiencing of the trauma, avoidance of stimuli associated
with the trauma, and heightened arousal
o Type of trauma influenced whether PTSD will develop – i.e. women more likely
to develop PTSD after being victims of a crime than natural disaster
• Genes lead some people to be vulnerable
• Childhood trauma can enhance the fight-or-flight response, making it easier to trigger
and more pronounced
• Various brain structures could be abnormal (locus coeruleus, limbic system, hippocampi)

Schizophrenia
• A disorder that is characterized by symptoms of psychosis that profoundly alter the
patient’s affect, behavior, and thoughts
Symptoms
• Positive symptoms – involve an excess or distortion of normal functions
o Delusions (distortions of thought): delusions of persecution, grandeur, reference,
control
o Hallucinations
o Disorganized behavior
o Disorganized speech
• Negative symptoms – involve a lessening or loss of normal functions
o Flat affect: failure to express or outwardly respond to emotion
o Alogia: “poverty of speech” brief, slow, empty replies to questions
o Avolition: inability to initiate or persist in goal-directed activities
• Diagnosis requires two or more of the symptoms for at least a week, and other signs of
socially inappropriate behavior for at least 6 months
o Symptoms begin with prodromal phase – slowly deteriorating functioning, along
w/outbursts of anger, withdrawal, poor hygiene
Subtypes
• Paranoid : prominent delusions of persecution – best prognosis
• Disorganized : disorganized speech/behavior and flat aspect – worst prognosis
• Catatonic : catatonic motor symptoms
• Undifferentiated : none of the above
Why Some People and Not Others?
 • Genetics, abnormal brain structure and function, and hormonal/neurotransmitter
activity
• People with schizophrenia have many types of cognitive difficulties
• A higher rate of schizophrenia is found in urban areas and lower socioeconomic classes
o Social selection – the tendency of the mentally disabled to drift to the lower
economic classes
o Social causation – the view that chronic psychological and social stresses from
living in an urban environment may lead to an increase in the rate of
schizophrenia
• High expressed emotion – an emotional style in families in which members are critical,
hostile, and overinvolved

Eating Disorders
• A category of disorders that involves severe disturbances in eating
Anorexia Nervosa
• Characterized by the refusal to maintain even a low normal weight, along with an intense
fear of gaining weight
• Commonly “know” that they are underweight, but “see” fat that is not there, or generally
overestimate the body size
Bulimia Nervosa
• Characterized by recurrent episodes of binge eating, followed by attempts to prevent
weight gain
Explaining Eating Disorders
• Heritability of eating disorders varies widely across studies
• Abnormalities in the neurotransmitter serotonin

Axis II: Focus on Personality Disorders

Axis II Personality Disorders
• Personality disorder – a set of relatively stable personality traits that are inflexible and
maladaptive, causing distress or difficulty with daily functioning
• Three clusters:
o Cluster A – odd, eccentric behaviors
o Cluster B – emotional/dramatic behaviors
o Cluster C – anxious or fearful behaviors/symptoms

Antisocial Personality Disorder

 • ASPD – a personality disorder characterized by a long-standing pattern of disregard for
others to the point of violating their rights

Understanding Antisocial Personality Disorder

Level of the Brain
• Genetic predisposition, effects of genes depend on the environment
Level of the Person
• Difficulty controlling impulses/anger, understanding how others feel, lack of empathy
Level of the Group
• Insecure attachment to their primary caregiver
Ch 12 – Treatment 5/17/15 10:36 PM

Insight-Oriented Theories
• Therapist aims to remove distressing symptoms by leading the person to understand the
psychological causes of his or her symptoms, through deeply felt personal insights

Psychoanalytically Inspired Theories

• Psychoanalysis – an intensive form of therapy that is directly connected to Freud’s
theory of personality and based on the idea that psychological difficulties are caused by
unconscious conflicts
• Psychodynamic therapy – a less intensive form of psychoanalysis
Key Features of Psychoanalytic Theory
• Psychological difficulties are caused by conflicts among id, superego, and ego
o Id – a personality structure that exists at birth and houses sexual and aggressive
drives, physical needs, and simple psychological needs
o Superego – is formed during early childhood and houses the sense of right and
wrong, based on the internalization of parental and cultural morality
o Ego – develops in childhood, and tries to balance the competing demands of the
id, superego, and reality
Theory of Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Therapies
• Only after true insight is attained can people choose more adaptive, satisfying, and
productive behaviors
• Goal is to bring unconscious impulses and conflicts into awareness
Techniques of Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Therapies
• Free association – the patient says whatever comes to mind, and the train of thought
reveals to the therapist or psychoanalyst the patient’s issues and ways of handling them
• Dream analysis – the therapist examines the contents of dreams to gain access to the
unconscious
• Interpretation – the therapist deciphers the patient’s words and behaviors, assigning
unconscious motivations to them
o People are made aware of their defense mechanisms
o Freudian slips – when thoughts or urges slip out verbally
• Resistance – a reluctance or refusal to cooperate with the therapist, which can range
from unconscious forgetting to outright refusal to comply with a therapist’s request
• Transference – process by which patients may relate to their therapists as they did to
some important person in their lives
Psychoanalysis vs. Psychodynamic Therapies
• Vary in two ways
 o Intensity : psychoanalysis=4-5 times/week, at least 4 years; psychodynamic
therapy=1-2 times/week, as little as 12 sessions
o Modified goals : psychoanalysis focuses on past relationships, psychodynamic
theory focuses on current relationships

Humanistic Therapy (Client-Centered Therapy)

• Client-centered therapy – a type of insight-oriented therapy that focuses on people’s
potential for growth and the importance of an empathic therapist
Theory Underlying Client-Centered Therapy
• An individual develops psychological problems because they lack a coherent, unified
sense of self
• Incongruence – a mismatch between the person’s real self and their ideal self
Techniques of Client-Centered Therapy
• The therapist must empathize with the client
• Must provide unconditional positive regard toward the client
o Must convey positive feelings for the client, regardless\

Evaluating Insight-Oriented Therapies

Evaluating Psychodynamic Therapies
• Difficult to evaluate
o Not much research, and research generally focused on case studies (one patient),
therapist might not be correct
• Short-term psychodynamic therapy may be as effective as, but not superior to, other
short-term treatments
Evaluating Client-Centered Therapies
• People most likely to benefit are relatively healthy, articulate individuals interested in
knowing more about their own motivations

Cognitive-Behavior Therapy
• CBT – a type of therapy that is designed to help patients both to reduce problematic
behaviors and irrational thoughts and to develop new, more adaptive behaviors and
beliefs
• Uses techniques from behavior therapy and cognitive therapy

Behavior Therapy and Techniques

 • Behavior therapy – a type of therapy based on well-researched learning principles, that
focuses on modifying observable, measurable behaviors
o Classical and operant conditioning
o Focused solely on modifying behavior, and not finding “root cause”
Theory of Behavior Therapy
• Distressing symptoms are the result of learning, so clients can learn new behaviors to fix
the symptoms
• ABC’s: Antecedents (triggers), behavior, and consequence (reinforcement)
Techniques of Behavior Therapy
• Based on classical conditioning – include exposure, stimulus control, and systematic
desensitization
o Exposure – through repeated encounters with a stimulus the person becomes
less responsive to that stimulus
! Imaginal exposure, in vivo exposure, virtual reality exposure
o Exposure with response prevention – planned, programmatic procedure that
requires the client to encounter the anxiety-provoking object or situation but
prevents their usual maladaptive response
o Stimulus control – client controls how often they encounter a stimulus that elicits
a conditioned response, with the goal of decreasing/increasing the frequency of
the response
o Systematic desensitization – people are taught to be relaxed in the presence of a
feared object or situation
! First step: progressive muscle relaxation – a technique whereby the client
alternates tensing and relaxing muscles sequentially from one end on the
body to the other (usually feet " head)
! Second step: contact with the feared stimulus
• Based on operant conditioning – use reinforcement, extinction, self-monitoring, and
(less commonly) punishment " behavior modification
o Reinforcement/punishment – must set appropriate response contingencies, the
specific behaviors that will earn reinforcement
o Extinction – eliminate a behavior by not reinforcing it
o Self-monitoring techniques – help clients notice/record a problematic behavior
as well as the antecedents and consequences of it
o Token economies- behavior modification programs that use secondary
reinforcers (tokens) to change behavior
 ! Patients earn tokens which can be traded at a “token store” or for
privileges

Cognitive Therapy and Techniques

• Designed to help clients think realistically and rationally in order to reinterpret events
that otherwise would lead to distressing thoughts, feelings, or behaviors
Theory of Cognitive Therapy
• Our interpretations of any stimulus/event determine our response to it
• When we persistently interpret stimuli/events in irrational or incorrect ways, we can
develop problems
• Albert Ellis – developed rational-emotive behavior therapy (REBT)
o Three processes that interfere with functioning: self-downing, hostility and rage,
low frustration tolerance
o Therapist persuades the client that their thoughts are irrational
• Aaron Beck – persistent irrational thoughts arise from cognitive distortions
o Cognitive distortions – systematic biases in the way a person thinks about events
and people, including oneself
o Encourages the client to view beliefs as a hypothesis to be tested
Techniques of Cognitive Therapy
• REBT techniques
o Help the client dispute the irrational beliefs and perceive their illogical/self-
defeating nature
o Sometimes argue with the client, or use role playing
• Beck’s techniques
o Cognitive restructuring – the process of helping clients view their situations in a
new light, which then allows them to shift their thinking from automatic,
distorted, negative thoughts to more realistic ones
o Daily record of dysfunctional thoughts – identify situation, rate emotional state,
write down thoughts, develop rational responses, rate emotional state
o Psychoeducation – the process of educating clients about therapy and research
findings pertaining to their disorders or problems

Cognitive-Behavior Therapy
• Combines the goals and techniques of both behavior and cognitive therapies

Biologically Based Treatments

Psychopharmacology
• The use of medication to treat psychological disorders and problems
Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders
• Antipsychotic medication – generally reduces psychotic symptoms but does not cure the
disorder
o First-generation antipsychotics – first wave of meds
!Can cause tardive dyskinesia – an irreversible movement disorder in
which the person involuntarily smacks his/her lips, displays facial
grimaces, and exhibits other symptoms
o Second-generation antipsychotics – affect dopamine and other neurotransmitters
! Can cause hyperglycemia and diabetes, but generally not tardive
dyskinesia
Mood Disorders
• Medications for depression
o Tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) – named for the three rings in its chemical
structure
o Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) – require users to not drink/eat
anything that contains tyramine, less effective for typical symptoms of depression
o Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) (Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil) – fewer
side effects, generally as effective
! Increased risk of suicide in children/adolescents
o Serotonin/norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) – affect both the
serotonin and the norepinephrine systems
• Placebo effect is a large part of why depression meds work
• Medications for bipolar disorder
o Mood stabilizers (lithium), and anticonvulsant medications
o Antidepressants can induce a manic episode in people with bipolar disorder
Anxiety Disorders
• Benzodiazepines – reduce symptoms of panic from an hour to 36 hours (Xanax,
Valium), can cause drowsiness
• Antidepressants can be prescribed to treat anxiety disorders long-term

Electroconvulsive Therapy
• A treatment in which an electric current induces a controlled brain seizure
o Potential for memory loss for events before, during, or after each treatment
 • Not all people with severe symptoms of depression, mania, or schizophrenia can take
medication or find it helpful

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

• An electromagnetic coil on the scalp transmits pulses of high-intensity magnetism to the
brain in short bursts
o Easier than ECT to administer, has minimal side effects

Treatment Variations and Issues

Modalities
• Modality – a form of therapy
• Individual therapy – therapy in which one client is treated by one therapist
Group Therapy
• Therapy in which a number of clients with compatible needs or goals meet together with
a therapist
• Offers information, support, and between-session homework assignments, as well as
interaction with other people
Family Therapy
• Therapist treats the family as a whole or some of its members
• Systems therapy – a client’s symptoms are viewed as occurring within a larger context or
system, and a change in one part of the system affects the rest of the system
o Typically focuses on a family’s structure, who has power and how it is used, and
ways that family members communicate with each other
Self-Help Therapies
• Self-help groups – a group in which members focus on a specific problem or disorder
and that does not usually have a clinically trained leader
o 12-step programs such as AA
• Bibliotherapy – the use of self-help books and audio and video information for
therapeutic purposes

Innovations in Psychotherapy
Eclectic Therapists
• Employ a variety of theoretical approaches and types of techniques
• Based on the client’s specific problems and goals of treatment, the therapist will employ
techniques from one or more theoretical approach
Manual-based Treatments
 • Therapy protocols – detailed session-by-session manuals that provide specific
procedures and techniques to treat a particular disorder from a certain theoretical
orientation
• Interpersonal therapy (IPT) – type of manual-based treatment that helps clients to
understand how aspects of current relationships can affect their mood and behavior
Incorporating Technology Into Therapy
• Self-monitoring – smartphone apps
• Reminding
• Delivering therapy

Issues in Psychotherapy Research

• Outcome research – research that addresses whether, after psycho-therapy, clients feel
better, function better, live more independently, or experience fewer symptoms
• Issues include:
o What to measure
o When to assess
o Appropriate control group
! Typically clients who are on a waiting list for treatment but have not yet
received the treatment
! Must be as similar as possible to those in the treatment group

Therapy, Medication, or Both?

Depression
• CBT and IBT effectively reduce depression
• Medication has two main drawbacks:
o after taking it, you will stop when you feel better and then relapse
o antidepressants have side effects
• CBT/IBT reduce risk of relapse
Anxiety Disorders
• Exposure/exposure with response prevention
• CBT prevents symptom relapse
Other Disorders
• Eating disorders – anorexia: family-based treatments, bulimia: CBT and IBT
• Schizophrenia/Bipolar – medication is better, but psychotherapy can make patients
accept they need medication, teach relationship skills, and identify triggers to prevent
relapse
Treatment of Ethnically Diverse Population
• Must understand a symptom’s cultural context : i.e. ataques de nervios in Puerto Rican
women

How to Pick a Therapist and Type of Therapy

• If your problem is clearly identified (i.e. depression/anxiety), its better to see someone
who has experience in treating people with that problem
• Find types of treatment that are a good fit for your problem
• Find several appropriate therapists
• Feel comfortable with your therapist
Ch 13 – Social Psychology
Social psychology – the area of psychology that focuses on how people think about other people and
interact in relationships and groups

Social Cognition: Thinking About People

• Social cognition – the ways that people perceive the social world and how they attend to,
store, remember, and use information about other people and the social world
Attitudes and Behavior
• Attitude – an overall evaluation of some aspect of the world: people, issues, or objects
o Feelings about, behavior towards, belief about
Attitudes and Cognitions
• Attitudes determine what information we pay attention to, process, and remember
• Find information contrary to attitudes unconvincing, and may try to disprove it
Predicting Behavior
• Attitude is likely to shape behavior if it is strong, relatively stable, directly relevant to the
behavior, important, or easily accessed from memory
Behavior Affects Attitudes
• When people are asked to champion an attitude on a given topic, they are more likely
later to behave in ways consistent with that attitude
Cognitive Dissonance
• Cognitive dissonance – the uncomfortable state that arises from a discrepancy between
two attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors
• The less reason a person has to engage in a behavior that is counter to an attitude, the
stronger the dissonance
• Methods of reducing dissonance:
o Indirect strategies
o Direct strategies
o Trivialize an inconsistency
Attitude Change: Persuasion
• Persuasion – attempts to change people’s attitudes
• Two routes to persuasion : central and peripheral
o Peripheral use includes the attractiveness/expertise of the source, number of
arguments presented, information about other people’s responses
o Central use relies on the content of the argument
• Mere exposure effect – the change, generally favorable, in an attitude that results form
simply becoming familiar with something or someone
• Persuasive people
 o Identity (attractive/expert), fast talking, seems honest
• If an attempt at persuasion elicits strong emotions (like fear), it works better
Tapping Into the Social Brain
• Social cognitive neuroscience – the area of psychology that attempts to understand social
cognition by specifying the cognitive mechanisms that underlie it and by discovering
how those mechanisms are rooted in the brain
• You don’t need to be consciously aware of the causes of cognitive dissonance in order to
try to reduce it

Stereotypes and Prejudice

• Stereotype – a belief or set of beliefs about people from a particular category
o May be positive, neutral, or negative
Stereotypes as Cognitive Shortcuts
• Stereotypes are caricatures and are sometimes incorrect
o Less likely to attend to/remember information inconsistent w/stereotypes
• If the discrepancy is too large to be ignored, people don’t change the stereotype
o Create a subtype within it
o Because of this, stereotypes can be difficult to change or eliminate
Prejudging and Discriminating
• Prejudice – an attitude, generally negative, toward members of a group
o Cognitive component, emotional component
Prejudice and Discrimination
• Prejudice often leads to discrimination – negative behavior toward individuals from a
specific group that arises from unjustified negative attitudes about that group
Why Does Prejudice Exist?
• Realistic conflict theory – prejudice exists because of group competition for scarce
resources such as good housing, jobs, and schools
• Social categorization – leads people to sort others automatically as “us” or “them”, and
people think of their own group (the ingroup) favorably and the other group (the
outgroup) unfavorably
o The ingroup is actively favored, OR
o The outgroup is actively disfavored
o Once a member is classified as part of the outgroup, we induce that person to act
according to our stereotypes about the outgroup
• Social learning theory – once a prejudicial attitude is in place, it can be spread and passed
through generations as a learned stereotype
 o Through parents, peers, television, movies, and other aspects of culture
Changing Prejudice: Easier Said Than Done
• Contact hypothesis – increased contact between different groups will decrease prejudice
between them
o More likely to become aware of similarities
o People can change their stereotypes with enough inconsistent info
• Recategorization – shifting the categories of “us” and “them” so that the two groups are
no longer viewed as distinct entities
• Mutual interdependence – increase contact between individuals from different “groups”
and create new, integrated groups that require interdependence in order to achieve a
larger goal

Attributions: Making Sense of Events

• Attributions – explanations for the causes of events or behaviors
What is the cause?
• Internal attributions – explain a person’s behavior in terms of that person’s beliefs, goals,
or other characteristics
• External attributions – explain a person’s behavior in terms of the situation
Taking Shortcuts: Attributional Bias
• Attributional biases – tendencies to make certain types of attributions
o Generally outside our awareness
• Fundamental attribution error – the strong tendency to interpret other people’s behavior
as arising from internal causes rather than external ones
o Thus, attribute fault to the person, not the circumstance
• Self-serving bias – the inclination to attribute your own failures to external causes and
your successes to internal ones; BUT you attribute other people’s failures to internal
causes and their successes to external causes
• Belief in a just world – the assumption that people get what they deserve

Social Behavior: Interacting with People

• Social behavior – the wide range of behaviors that occur in and are affected by social
situations
Relationships
Liking
• Physical attraction
• Repeated contact
 • Similarity – in attitudes, activities, communication
Loving
• Types of love
o Companionate love – an altruistic type of love characterized by expending time,
attention, and resources on behalf of another person
o Passionate love – the intense, often sudden feeling of being “in love”, typically
involves sexual attraction, a desire for mutual love and physical closeness,
arousal, and a fear that the relationship will end
• Dimensions of love
o Triangular model of love – the theory that love has three dimensions: passion,
intimacy, and commitment

• Attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant

Mating Preferences
• Men are attracted by women who have a well-proportioned body and symmetrical
features " signal fertility and health
• Women are attracted to men who appear to be able to protect and nourish them and
their children
• When women achieve economic power, their preference in mates becomes more similar
to men’s " physical attractiveness more important

Social Organization: Group Rules, Group Roles

• Group – a social entity characterized by regular interaction among members, some type
of social or emotional connection with one another, a common frame of reference, and a
degree of interdependence
Norms: The Rules of the Group
• Norms – the rules that implicitly or explicitly govern members of a group
o Guides for behavior enforced by the group’s use of sanctions, or penalties
Roles: Expected Behavior
• Roles – the behaviors that members in different positions in the group are expected to
perform
o Apply only to those in specific positions
When Roles Become Reality: the Stanford Prison Experiment
• 24 students randomly assigned to be guards or prisoners
• guards wore mirrored sunglasses, had offices
o told to maintain “law and order” and command respect of prisoners
• prisoners behaved passively, guards very actively

Yielding to Others: Going Along With the Group

Conformity and Independence
• Conformity – a change in behavior in order to follow a group’s norms
• Informational social influence – occurs when we conform to others because we believe
that their views are correct or their behavior is appropriate for the situation
• Normative social influence – occurs when we conform because we want to be liked or
thought of positively
o Soloman Asch study – confederates and wrong answers
• Social support also influences conformity – if another group member openly disagrees
with the group consensus, conformity then decreases
o Conformity is higher in collectivist cultures than individualistic countries
Compliance
• Compliance – a change in behavior brought about by a direct request rather than by
social norms
• Principles of compliance
o Friendship/liking
o Commitment/consistency
o Scarcity
o Reciprocity
o Social validation
o Authority
• Compliance techniques
 o Foot-in-the-door technique – achieves compliance by beginning with an
insignificant request, which is then followed by a larger request
o Lowball technique – consists of getting someone to make an agreement then
increasing the cost of the agreement
o Door-in-the-face technique – begins by making a very large request, and then
when it is denied (as expected), makes a smaller request for what is actually
desired
Obedience
• Obedience – compliance with an order
• The Milgram study
o You are the “teacher” paired with a “learner”, you administer an electric shock
for each mistake
o 65% of participants went to the highest level
" people likely to comply with a request if it comes from someone in authority

Performance in Groups
Decision Making in Groups
• Majority-win rule : if a group is not initially unanimous in favor of a particular decision,
the view favored by the majority will typically prevail
• Truth-win rule : what began as the minority position eventually “wins”, which can arise
when there is an objectively correct answer
Group Polarization
• Group polarization- the tendency of group members’ opinions to become more extreme
after group discussion
o Many compelling reasons for initial views
o After an emerging consensus is seen, some members try to increase standing in
the group by taking consensus to extreme
o More extreme positions spend more time in the discussion
Groupthink
• Groupthink – the group process that arises when people who try to solve problems
together accept one another’s information and ideas without subjecting them to critical
analysis
o When the group is cohesive, it deters members from dissenting
o Without constructive questioning, the group’s discussion is less productive and
can lead to poor decisions
Social Loafing
 • Social loafing – occurs when some members don’t contribute as much to a shared group
task as do others and instead let other members work proportionally harder than they do
Social Facilitation
• Social facilitation – the increase in performance that can occur simply as a result of being
part of a group or in the presence of other people
o Only when performing well-learned, simple tasks

Helping Behavior
• Altruism – the motivation to increase another person’s welfare
Prosocial Behavior
• Prosocial behavior – acting altruistically, which includes sharing, cooperating,
comforting, and helping others
• Characteristics of the helper
o High agreeableness, high need for approval, predisposition to taking
responsibility, tendency to feel concerned for others, belief in a just world
o Less concern for your own welfare
• Characteristics of the helpee
o Similar to ourselves
o Is a friend or someone we like
o Believe they are not responsible for their predicament, or gives a socially
acceptable justification for their plight
Bystander Intervention
• Bystander effect – the decrease in offers of assistance that occurs as the number of
bystanders increases
• The five steps of bystander intervention
o Is an emergency noticed?
o Is the emergency perceived correctly?
!Evaluation apprehension – a fear that you might be embarrassed or
ridiculed if you try to intervene if there is no emergency
o Does the bystander assume responsibility to intervene?
! Influenced by number of bystanders " diffusion of responsibility
• Does the bystander know what to do, how to be helpful?
• Is the bystander motivated enough to help, despite possible negative consequences?