PSYU1104:

Introduction to Psychology
I

Semester 1 2020

Topics
History & Methods
Motivation - Appetite
Learning
Personality
Social Motivation
Psychological Problems
Cross Cultural & Indigenous Psychology
Biological Bases
History & Methods
● Psychology is a vast discipline, encompassing the study of perceptions, emotions,
thoughts and observable behaviours from an enormous array of perspectives.
○ Scientific study of the mind brain and behaviour
● Levels of analysis​ - the lower rungs tied most closely to biological influences and the
higher rungs tied most closely to social influences
○ “Neurons to Neighbourhoods” - span molecules to brain structures on the lower
rungs to thoughts, feelings and emotions and to social and cultural influences on
the higher rungs,
● Empirical ​- ​based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather
than theory or pure logic
○ Rough starting point for psychological knowledge
● Theories are general explanations, whereas hypotheses are specific predictions derived
from those explanations
● Confirmation bias​ - tendency to seek out evidence that supports our beliefs and neglect
or distort evidence that contradicts them
● Belief perseverance​ - tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence
contradicts them
● Good scientists do not claim to prove their theories and try to avoid committing to
definitive conclusions unless the evidence for them is overwhelming.
● Pseudoscience ​- Set of claims that seem scientific but are not
○ Lacks the safeguards against confirmation bias and belief perseverance that
characterise science.
○ Over use of ad hoc immunising hypotheses
○ Lack of self correction
○ Over reliance on anecdotes
● Scientific sceptic​ -- evaluates all claims with an open mind, but insists on persuasive
evidence before accepting them.
● Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - whenever you evaluate a
psychological claim, ask yourself whether this claim runs counter to many things already
known and, if it does, whether the evidence is strong enough to warrant the claim.
● Testing predictions​ - whenever you evaluate a psychological claim, you should ask
yourself how in principle you could test it. What novel predictions does it make that
differentiate it from other theories?
● Occam’s razor​ - whenever you evaluate a psychological claim, ask yourself whether the
explanation offered is the simplest explanation that accounts for the data or whether
simpler explanations can account for the data equally well.
● Replicability​ - whenever you evaluate a psychological claim, ask yourself whether
independent investigators have replicated the findings that support this claim; otherwise,
the findings might be a one-time-only fluke.
● Ruling out rival hypotheses​ - whenever you evaluate a psychological claim, ask
yourself whether you have excluded other plausible explanations for it.
● Correlation is not necessarily causation​ - we should remember that a correlation
between two things does not necessarily demonstrate that there is a causal connection
between them.
● Structuralism ​- structure of the mind
● Functionalism ​- practical use of the mind, commonalities and individual differences
● Evolutionary Psychology ​- psychological processes as evolutionary adaptations
● Psychodynamic perspective ​- unconscious mind (behaviours, health symptoms etc)
● Behaviourism ​- physical behaviour, rejected the concept of the mind; instead ​Tabula
Rasa (​ blank slate), control the conditions can change behaviour
● Humanism ​- actualisation of the self, reaching potential in therapy and other activities
● Cognitive perspective ​- perceive, processes, retrieve and utilize information
Motivation
● Drive reduction theory (Hull, Hebb)
○ certain drives—like hunger, thirst and sexual frustration— motivate us to act in
ways that minimise aversive states
○ These drives are unpleasant, but that satisfaction reduces tension and results in
pleasure.
○ motivated to maintain a given level of psychological homeostasis (equilibrium)
○ Inadequate - repeatedly engage in behaviours despite satisfaction of drives
● Yerkes Dodson law
○ Under arousal cause stimulus hunger - drive for simulation, increase curiosity
● Clashing drives
○ Approach approach conflict
○ Avoidance avoidance conflict
○ Approach avoidance conflict
● Incentive theories
○ Motivated by positive goals
○ distinguish intrinsic motivation, in which people are motivated by internal goals,
from extrinsic motivation, in which people are motivated by external goals.
○ when we see ourselves performing a behaviour to obtain an external goal, we
conclude that we were not all that interested in that behaviour in the first place
and our intrinsic motivation for that behaviour decreases
○ Contrast effect - once we receive reinforcement for performing a behaviour, we
anticipate that reinforcement again. If the reinforcement is suddenly withdrawn,
we are less likely to perform the behaviour
● Maslow's Hierarchy of needs
○ we must satisfy physiological needs and needs for safety and security before we
can progress to more complex secondary needs.
■ Physiological needs
■ Safety and security
■ Love and belonging
■ Self esteem
■ Self actualisation
○ As we progress up, we move away from needs produced by drives and towards
needs produced by incentives.
○ not based on biological reality as it omits important evolutionary needs like sexual
and parenting drives

● lateral hypothalamus plays a key role in initiating eating

● Glucostatic theory
○ our blood glucose levels drop, hunger creates a drive to eat to restore the proper
level of glucose
○ our self-reported hunger and desire for a meal are better predictors of our energy
intake in our meals over a 3-day period than our glucose levels
● Leptin (stored in fat cells) signals the hypothalamus and brainstem to reduce appetite
and increase the amount of energy used
○ obese people seem resistant to the effects of leptin.
○ The mere sight, taste, smell and thought of plentiful food in our environment can
trigger the release of neurotransmitters, including serotonin, that activate the
brain’s pleasure circuits
○ Provides comfort or distraction to counter negative emotions
○ More fat = More leptin, suppressing appetite
○ Less fat = Less leptin, allowing food intake to increase
● Set point
○ A value that establishes a range of body fat and muscle mass we tend to
maintain
○ When we eat too little and drop below our set point, regulatory mechanisms kick
in to increase our appetite or decrease our metabolism. In this way, our body
defends against weight loss.
● In about 6% of cases of severe obesity, a mutation in a major melanocortin-4 receptor
gene is responsible - People born with this mutation never seem to feel full
● Binge eating disorder - 3% (9-18% obese)
● Bulimia - 1-3%
● Anorexia - 0.5%; mortality rate - 5-10%
● Dieting - usually end in failure
○ Relies on conscious regulation of food intake, which needs masses of self-control
○ Too short
○ Most lost weight is regained
● Energy levels
○ Short term - glucose
○ Long term - fat
● Sensation
○ Flavour food drives intake
○ Sensory specific satiety slows intake of a meal

● Digestive organs
○ Signals
■ Stomach is distended or empty
■ Gut and stomach taste receptors
■ Stomach is emptying its nutrient rich content (chyme) into the small
intestine
■ Gut bacterial signals of fat content
○ Communicated through
■ Nerves
■ Hormones
■ Nutrients
● Neurochemicals
 ○ Modulate eating - serotonin, dopamine
○ Events in the body - Leptin (from fat cells) stimulates release of CRH in the brain
(corticotropin releasing hormone) suppressing appetite, Ghrelin (from stomach)
stimulates release of NY (neuropeptide Y) in the brain increasing appetite
○ Locations
■ Hypothalamus - Ventromedial nucleus (stop eating), Lateral
hypothalamus (start eating)
■ Cortical - Frontal (impulsivity), Insula (interoception)
■ Limbic system - Hippocampus (memory)
● Food
○ A potent means of getting you eat is to show you food - cannot escape in today's
society
● Time and place
○ Habit bound - usually eat at the same time then this becomes associated with
eating and thus trigger hunger and eating
● People and leisure
○ How many people we are with impacts how much we eat
● Portion and plate
○ People tend to eat what is in front of them
● the brain ultimately controls how much we eat, so when control of eating breaks down,
this is a brain-related problem
○ When and how much we eat seems to be mainly driven by environmental factors
that we are not usually aware of – mindless eating – environment/brain
○ Biological factors are probably only important at the extremes (starvation/gross
over-indulgence) – body/brain
○ Conscious control of food intake probably only plays a small role – self-brain

● Gene that produces DRD4 (related to dopamine transmitters) is correlated with sexual
desire and arousal
● Approximately 20% of population possess the mutation for increased sexual desires and
70% depresses sexual desire
● Men - desire sex more frequently and experience more sexual arousal; have a greater
number and variety of fantasies; think about sex more; masturbate more, want more
sexual partners; desire sex earlier in a relationship
● Sexual response cycle (Masters & Johnson)
1. Desire - Initiated with whatever prompts sexual interest
2. Plateau/Excitement - Sexual tension builds
3. Orgasam - Sexual pleasure and physical changes peak
4. Resolution - Returning to unstimulated state, relaxation and sense of well being
● People's sexuality is deeply embedded in their relationships and feelings for one another
○ Experience more frequent and consistent orgasms when they love their partner
and feel loved in return
● Early in relationship - twice a week
● 40-80 yrs - 79.4% of men and 69.3% of women
● By 80, women have less opportunity to find partners - for every 100 women there are 39
men
● Men - 1.6% homosexual, 0.9% bisexual
● Women - 0.8% gay, 1.4% bisexual
● Triangular theory of love
1. Intimacy
2. Passion
3. Commitment
● If we can learn to hate we can also unlearn it
Learning
● Habituation ​- respond less strongly over time to repeated stimuli
● Acquisition ​- Gradually acquire conditioned response
● Extinction ​- conditioned response decreases in magnitude and eventually disappears
when the conditioned stimuli is repeatedly presented alone
○ Active process - conditioned response does not vanish, it is overshadowed by the
new behaviour
● Spontaneous recovery​ - seemly extinct conditioned response reappears if the
conditioned stimuli is presented again
● Stimulus generalisation​ - conditioned stimuli is similar to the original eliciting a the
conditioned response
● Stimulus discrimination​ - echibit less pronounced response that diifers from original
● Contiguity theory​ - when two stimuli are presented together in time, associations are
formed between the two
○ suggests that in order to form a CR, one merely needs to put the two stimuli
together in time
○ a US may not always follow a CS – but the CS can still elicit a conditioned
response
● Operant conditioning​ - behaviour is shaped by what comes after it

● Law of effect​ - if we are rewarded for a response to a stimulus, we are more

likely to repeat that response to the stimulus in the future.
● Reinforcement ​- any outcome that strengthens the probability of a response
● Positive reinforcement​ - we administer something pleasant
● Negative reinforcement​ - take away something unpleasant
● Punishment ​- outcome that weakens the probability of a response
● Positive punishment ​- administering a stimulus that they want to avoid
● Negative punishment ​- removal of a stimulus that they wish to experience
● Sequence of CS-US presentation
○ Delayed conditioning - CS comes on first and overlaps with the US
coming on
■ yes, the CS predicts the US
■ Large amounts of conditioning are observed
■ In general the best type of learning
○ Trace conditioning- a gap between the CS and US
■ yes as long as the gap is not too large
 ■ Memory traces predict the US
■ Some conditioning is observed
○ Simultaneous conditioning- CS and US come on at the same time and go
off at the same time
■ The CS does not predict the US very well
■ Why try to predict the US based on the CS when the US is there
itself
■ Very little conditioning
○ Backward conditioning- US comes before the CS
■ No predictability
■ CS cannot predict anything about the US
■ Almost no conditioning at all
■ Can get inhibitory conditioning where the “learner” recognises that
the CS means the US is over and won't be coming again – though
can’t predict when
● Opponent-Process Theory
○ Emotional after-reaction – an emotional stimulus creates an initial
response that is followed by adaptation, then opposite response.
○ With repeated exposure to the stimulus, the pattern changes
■ The primary affective response (a-process) habituates - initial
reaction: plot positive side of graph regardless of whether you find
the experience pleasant or not. Onset of the stimulus causes a
sudden emotional reaction, which quickly reaches its peak. Lasts
as long as the stimulus is present, then ends quickly
■ The after-reaction (b-process) strengthens - after reaction: the
offset of the stimulus causes an emotional after reaction that in
some sense is the opposite of the initial reaction. Is more sluggish
in its onset and decay than the initial reaction.
○ assumes that neurophysiological mechanisms involved in emotional
behaviour serve to maintain emotional stability
1. Emotional reactions are biphasic; a primary reaction is followed by
an opposite after-reaction
2. The primary reaction becomes weaker with repeated stimulations
3. The after-reaction is strengthened

● SOR ​- stimulus, organism, response

○ an organism's response to a stimulus depends on what this stimulus means to it.
● cognitive conditioning​ - our interpretation of the situation affects conditioning, suggests
that conditioning is more than an automatic, mindless process
● latent learning​ - learning that is not directly observable
● latent learning research of Tolman and others challenged strict behavioural models of
learning because their work suggested that learning could occur without reinforcement.
○ refuted the claim that reinforcement is necessary for all forms of learning
● Cognitive map​ - spatial representation
● important variant of latent learning is observational learning - learning by watching others
○ watch someone else being reinforced for doing something and take our cues
from them.
● Mirror neurons​ - cells in the prefrontal cortex that become activated when an animal
performs an action or observes it being performed - these neurons are ‘imagining’ what it
would be like to perform the behaviour
● Law of effect​ - Thorndike’s rule is that the probability of an action being repeated is
strengthened when it is followed by a pleasant or satisfying consequence
● Skinner emphasised reinforcement and punishment are always defined after the fact
(consequences)
● Skinner’s “Radical behaviourism”
○ The factor controlling an organism’s behaviour was the consequence of that
behaviour
○ There was no need to hypothesise internal processes
○ The only appropriate object of study is overt, observable behaviour
○ The laws governing “learning” via operant conditioning were the same for all
organisms
● Contingencies reflect conditions that must be met in order for reinforcement to be given -
reinforcement must be meaningful to the organism and follow the behaviour
● Consequence is used when there is a contingent relationship between a behaviour and
an event - a consequence is an event that is CAUSED by a behaviour
● Consequences include events that may involve
○ the presentation of a stimulus
○ the removal of a stimulus that is already present
● Positive contingency​ - when a response causes the presentation of a stimulus.
● Negative contingency ​- when a response causes the removal of a stimulus that is
already present
● Different types of stimulus events
○ Pleasant (desired; appetitive)
○ Unpleasant (undesired, aversive)
○ Neutral
● Discriminative stimulus: when present a response will be followed by reward or
punishment
● Shaping ​- procedure in which reinforcement is delivered for successive approximations
of the desired response
● Variables That Affect Operant Conditioning
○ Reinforcer magnitude
■ The larger the reward - the faster the acquisition of learning
■ The quality of the reinforcer is also important
○ Delay of reward
■ The greater the delay - the weaker the learning
○ Frequency of reward
● Reinforcement Contingencies
○ Continuous reinforcement: reinforcing the desired response each time it occurs
■ Problems - reinforcement loses quality and organism becomes sated with
the reinforcer
○ Intermittent Reinforcement: periodic administration of the reinforcement
○ Partial (Intermittent) Reinforcement
■ Maintains behaviours with fewer reinforcement trials following initial
learning
■ reinforcing a response only part of the time
■ results in slower acquisition
■ greater resistance to extinction
● Schedules of reinforcement - Reinforcement depends on the number of responses made
(ratio schedules)
○ Fixed Ratio (FR)
■ reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses
■ faster you respond the more rewards you get
■ different ratios – very high rate of responding
■ Eg piecework
○ Variable Ratio (VR)
■ reinforces a response after an unpredictable number of responses –
average ratio
■ very hard to extinguish because of unpredictability
■ Eg playing poker machines
○ Interval schedules
■ Based on the amount of time between reinforcements. The first response
following the minimum time is reinforced
○ Fixed Interval (FI)
■ reinforces a response only after a specified time has elapsed
■ response occurs more frequently as the anticipated time for reward draws
near
■ Eg pay cheque every two weeks
○ Variable Interval (VI)
■ reinforces a response at unpredictable time intervals
■ produces slow steady responding
■ checking your emails at random times to see if you have a new message,
waiting for an appropriate wave to catch, buying petrol on a cheap(er) day
● Premack Principle​ - Using a desired or high frequency behaviour to reinforce a less
desirable or lower frequency behaviour
○ A more-preferred activity can be used to reinforce a less preferred activity
● Issues of punishment
○ does not usually result in long term behavioural change - effects are temporary
○ does not promote better, alternative behaviour
○ Typically leads to escape behaviour
○ Learner may learn to fear the administrator rather than the association between
their behaviour and the punishment
○ may not undo existing rewards for a behaviour – unless it is delivered every time
○ Punitive aggression may lead to modelling of aggression
● Learned helplessness - no (perceived) relationship between the individual’s behaviour
and punishment (PTSD)
● Applications of operant conditioning - Behavioural therapy
● Social facilitation​ – One’s behaviour prompts similar behaviour of another
● Local or Stimulus enhancement​ – Behaviour of one person/animal directs attention of
others to an object
● True imitation​ – When an animal imitates a behaviour that it has never done before.
True imitation can be defined as duplicating a novel behaviour (or sequence of
 behaviours) in order to achieve a specific goal, without showing any understanding of
the behaviour
● Observational learning process
○ Attention
○ Retention
○ Reproduction
○ Motivation
● Key features of the model
○ Appropriateness
○ Similarity
Personality
● Personality ​- people’s typical ways of thinking, feeling and behaving.
● Nomothetic approach​ - approach to personality that focuses on identifying general laws
that govern the behaviour of all individuals
○ typically allows for generalisation across individuals but limited insight into the
unique patterning of attributes within one person
● idiographic approach​ - approach to personality that focuses on identifying the unique
configuration of characteristics and life history experiences within an individual
○ reveals the richly detailed tapestry of one person’s life, but allows for limited
generalisability to other people
● Broad set of influences
1. Genetic factors
2. Shared environmental factors
3. Non shared environmental factors
● shared environment generally plays some role in childhood personality, but this impact
generally dissipates as we grow older
Freud
● Psychoanalytic theory rests on three core assumptions
1. Psychic determinism - assumption all psychological events have a cause,
claiming we are not free to choose our actions because we are at the mercy of
powerful inner forces that lie outside our awareness (dreams, neurotic symptoms,
‘freudian slips’)
2. Symbolic meaning - no action is meaningless, they are all attributable to
preceding mental causes, even if we cannot figure out what they are.
3. Unconscious motivation - we rarely understand why we do what we do, although
we quite readily cook up explanations for our actions after the fact
● ID​ (basic instincts) - entirely unconscious and is the reservoir of our most primitive
impulses and desires, operating by the pleasure principle
● Ego ​(boss) - boss of the personality and principal decision maker with much of its
operations unconscious. Governed by the reality principle which strives to delay
gratification until it can find an appropriate outlet
● Superego ​(moral standards) - our sense of morality and right and wrong which we have
internalised from interactions with society, it is partly unconscious and largely formed in
childhood
● when neurotic conflict becomes too extreme, the result may be mental illness.
● Dreams are the ‘royal road to the unconscious mind’ 5) because they not only reveal the
inner workings of our id in action, but also illustrate how ego and superego cooperate to
keep the id’s wishes in check - all dreams are wish fulfilments; that is, expressions of the
id’s impulses
● A principal function of the ego is to contend with threats from the outside world and from
the id - when danger is present, the ego experiences anxiety, signalling it to undertake
corrective actions
 ● Freud’s stages of psychosexual development
○ Oral stage
○ Anal stage
○ Phallic stage
○ Latency and genital stages
● Major criticisms
○ Untestability
○ Failed predictions
○ Questionable concept of the unconscious
○ Reliance on unrepresentative samples
○ Flawed assumption of shared environmental influence
● Neo Freudian theories
○ Less emphasis on sexuality as a driving force of personality and more on social
drives
○ more optimistic concerning the prospects for personality growth throughout the
lifespan
Alfred Adler
● principal motive in human personality is not sex or aggression, but the striving for
superiority, to be better than others
● Style of life - each person’s distinctive way of achieving superiority
● Inferiority complex - feelings of low self-esteem that can lead to overcompensation for
such feelings
Carl Jung
● collective unconscious - memories that ancestors have passed down to us across the
generations
● Archetypes - cross-culturally universal emotional symbols
● Shared experiences rather than shared genes may account for commonalities in
archetypes across the world
Karen Horney
● took aim at those aspects of Frreud’s theory that she saw as gender-biased.
● women’s sense of inferiority stems not from their anatomy but from their excessive
dependence on men, which society has ingrained in them from an early age.
● Oedipus complex - symptom rather than a cause of psychological problems because it
arises only when the opposite-sex parent is overly protective and the same-sex parent is
overly critical
● Behavioural views of determinism - believe all of our actions are products of pre-existing
causal influences
● Behavioural views of unconscious processing - often do not understand the reasons for
our behaviour
○ For Skinner, we are ‘unconscious’ of many things because we are often unaware
of immediate situational influences on our behaviour
○ Freudian unconscious, which is a vast storehouse of inaccessible thoughts,
memories and impulses.
● Locus of control - extent to which people believe that reinforcers and punishers lie inside
or outside of their control
● Clinical approaches
○ Focus - involves the systematic, in-depth research of individuals
○ Methods - Observation (and self-report)
○ Strengths
■ Does not assume that everyone has the same degree of insight into their
own functioning as self-report questionnaire measures do
■ Insight is a hugely important individual difference - we all differ on it
depending on the topic, the day, our mood, our anxiety/esteem level
■ Observes a great variety of phenomena
■ Considers the functioning of whole person
■ Generates new hypotheses
○ Weaknesses
■ Difficult for others to confirm observations
■ May be difficult to formulate lab-style tests of hypotheses
■ Hard to replicate with questionnaires
■ Tends to distrust trust self-report
● Correlational approaches
○ Focus - establishes association between sets of measures on which people have
been found to differ - Not studying person as a whole, but relationships between
elements
○ Methods - Measurement based on self-report
○ Assumes - trait is fundamental unit of personality
○ Aim - Sought periodic table of elements of personality
○ Strengths
■ Restricts self-report to set items and asks is this true of you?
■ Easy to use on large groups, cost effective
■ Compares individual to the norm via numerical scores
 ○ Weaknesses
■ Correlation does not equal causation
■ Factor analysis has subjective elements e.g. what items left in, how
factors are named
■ Vulnerable to potential distortions of self-report, eg.self-deception, social
desirability, response style
■ Can't tap into unconscious processes (i.e. you can't report on what you
don't know)
■ But what you don't know about yourself may still influence your behaviour
/bodily symptoms
● Experimental approaches
○ Focus - Involves the systematic manipulation of variables to establish causal
relationships and not so much individual differences as general laws
○ Methods - experimental manipulation (neither of the other two approaches have
this) and direct experimental control
○ Strengths
■ Close to scientific ideal
■ No need to worry about whether subject knows truth about self or is telling
truth since don't rely on self-report
○ Weaknesses
■ Can you bring important features of personality into the lab (e.g.
fantasies, romantic relationships?)
■ Not in the context of the ‘whole person’
■ Participants bring own expectations into lab
■ Participants alert to demand characteristics (i.e. what does the
experimenter want them to do?)
■ Experiment is a social situation
● Temperament - has as significant genetic component and strong claims for consistency
across life span
○ temperament variables are quite influenced by genes, they are notoriously
difficult aspects of personality to change
○ Temperament variables
■ How one does something
■ Inhibition to the unfamiliar
■ Reactivity
■ Impulsivity
■ One’s vigour or energy level
■ The strength of one’s actions
■ Temporal features of a response
■ The rhythm of responding
○ 10% of children exhibit shyness, anxiety when faced with novel stimuli
■ those who show this pattern from about 4 months are
 ● More fearful when confronted with novel stimuli at ages 9, 14 and
21 months
● More fearful about a range of common situations at age 7 1/2
○ Children who did change tended to have mothers who were not over protective
and who placed reasonable demands on them
● Those described as impulsive at age 3 more likely to be diagnosed with an antisocial
personality at age 21 - Impulsivity linked with aggression, psychopathy, anti-social
behaviour, addictions
● The personality construct being tested may not encompass all the relevant personality
parts that influence a particular behaviour
● One of the problems with using self-report measures is that they rely on the person
having good self-awareness and being truthful
● Strengths of self report tests
○ Some tests are valuable predictors of behaviour
○ Have been successfully used for many important purposes
○ Are cheap and quick
○ Some tests do seem to capture characteristics that endure over time, in a way
that offsets the influence of various biases. Such tests are very valuable tools for
assessing those traits
● Weaknesses of self report tests
○ Open to response biases
■ order effects
■ faking good
■ fatigue,
■ patterns of responding
○ Responses may differ from one time to the next (i.e., low reliability)
○ Open to influence from many variables – e.g., environment mood, and recent
experiences
○ Assume good self-awareness
○ May not measure what we think they measure (i.e., low validity)
○ Meanings may differ across cultures
● OCEAN
○ Openness to experience - curious and unconventional in interests and outlook
○ Conscientiousness - careful and responsible
○ Extraversion - social and lively
○ Agreeableness - sociable and easy to get along with
○ Neuroticism - tense and moody
● intuitive ideas concerning personality traits and their associations with behaviour
● there may be limits to the Big Five’s cross-cultural universality, raising the possibility that
the manifestation of personality may be shaped in important ways by culture
○ some investigators have found dimensions in addition to the Big Five
● personality traits may be less predictive of behaviour in collectivist than individualistic
cultures, probably because people’s behaviour in collectivist cultures is more influenced
by social norms
● Only about 60% of people in individualist cultures possess individualist personalities and
only about 60% of people in collectivist cultures possess collectivist personalities
● Big ‘three’ alternative - impulse control/fearfulness, extraversion, neuroticism
● Humanistic psychologists rejected the strict determinism of psychoanalysts and
behaviourists and embraced the notion of free will
○ propose that the core motive in personality is self-actualisation - the drive to
develop our innate potential to the fullest possible extent.
● Roger’s model of personality - consists of 3 major components
1. Organism - genetic blueprint which he viewed as inherently positive and helpful
2. Self - set of beliefs about who we are
3. Conditions of worth - the expectations we place on ourselves for appropriate and
inappropriate behaviour
a. result in incongruence between self and organism - we are not our true
selves because we are acting in ways that are inconsistent with our
genuine potentialities
● Maslow - characteristics of self actualised people - 1-2% of people
○ may have fallen prey to confirmation bias
● Humanistic models are also difficult to test definitively
● Basic tendencies are underlying personality traits, whereas characteristic adaptations
are their behavioural manifestations
○ people can express their personality traits in dramatically different outlets
depending on their upbringing, interests and skills.
● Longitudinal studies demonstrate that prior to age 30, personality traits sometimes do
change over time, sometimes substantially
○ Openness, extraversion and neuroticism tend to decline a bit from the late teens
to early 30s, whereas conscientiousness and agreeableness tend to increase a
bit
○ the levels of most traits do not change much after age 30 and they change even
less after about age 50
● Walter Mischel - Behavioural inconsistency
○ found low correlations among different behaviours presumed to reflect the same
trait.
○ Criticism
■ Correct that personality traits are not highly predictive of isolated
behaviours, such as lying or cheating in a single situation
■ Many studies showed personality traits are often highly predictive of
aggregated behaviours - composites of behaviour averaged across many
situations
■ personality traits can be useful for predicting overall behavioural trends
● trait models are primarily efforts to describe individual differences in personality rather
than to explain their causes
● Errors in personality assessment
○ Phrenology - detect people’s personality traits by measuring the patterns of
bumps on their heads
○ Physiognomy - claimed to detect people’s personality traits from their facial
characteristics
● Structured personality tests
○ paper-and-pencil measures consisting of questions that respondents answer in
one of a few fixed ways - choosing between true and false answers or selecting
options on a scale
○ Easy to administer and score, allow researchers to collect data from many
participants simultaneously
○ Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) - used to detect symptoms of mental
disorders
■ many MMPI and MMPI-2 items possess low face validity
■ MMPI items differentiated among criterion groups, they ended up with
some items that bear little obvious connection with the disorder they
supposedly assess
○ MMPI-2 contains three major validity scales - detect various response sets, which
are tendencies to distort responses to items
■ MMPI L (Lie) Scale consists of items assessing the denial of trivial faults
■ F (Frequency) Scale consists of items that people in the general
population rarely endorse - high scores can indicate malingering or
severe psychological disturbance or carelessness
■ K (Correction) Scale - items that are similar to, although subtler than,
those on the L Scale; this scale measures defensive or guarded
responding
○ Extensive research supports the reliability of most MMPI-2 scales, as well as
their validity for differentiating among mental disorders
○ Many of its scales are correlated highly and are therefore largely redundant with
each other - probably because they are all contaminated with a broad dimension
of emotional maladjustment.
○ California Psychological Inventory (CPI) - is designed primarily for assessing
personality traits in the normal range, such as dominance, flexibility and
sociability, making it a popular measure in tertiary counselling centres and
industry.
○ Many of the CPI scales are highly correlated and largely redundant with each
other
○ rationally/theoretically constructed tests - approach requires test developers to
begin with a clear-cut conceptualisation of a trait and then write items to assess
that conceptualisation (not empirical)
● Projective tests - asks examinees to interpret or make sense of ambiguous stimuli such
as inkblots, drawings of social situations or incomplete sentences.
○ Projective hypothesis - assumes that in the process of interpreting ambiguous
stimuli, people inevitably project aspects of their personality onto the stimulus.
○ Rorschach inkblot test
■ Test-retest reliabilities of many of its scores are unknown
■ inter-rater reliabilities - extent to which different people scoring the test
agree with each other are often problematic
■ The lone major exceptions to the low validity of the Rorschach are
conditions marked by abnormal thinking, such as schizophrenia and
bipolar disorder - modestly valid when we treat it simply as a measure of
thinking and examine the extent to which people’s responses deviate from
reality
■ evidence that respondents can successfully fake schizophrenia,
depression and perhaps other disorders on the Rorschach - does not
contain scales to detect malingering
■ the lack of evidence for its incremental validity - extent to which a test
contributes information beyond other, more easily collected, measures
○ Thematic Apperception test (TAT)
■ Most clinicians interpret the TAT on an ‘impressionistic’ basis, meaning
that they inspect the content of the examinee’s stories and analyse them
using clinical intuition alone
■ Scores derived from the TAT have often failed to distinguish psychiatric
patients, such as people with clinical depression, from non-patients, or to
correlate in predicted directions with personality traits
■ moderately valid for assessing what psychologists call object relations
perceptions of others,
○ Human figure drawings
■ correlations between human figure drawing signs and personality traits
are low to non-existent
○ Graphology - the psychological interpretation of handwriting
● P.T Barnum effect - tendency of people to accept descriptions that apply to almost
everyone as applying specifically to them
○ Demonstrates that personal validation is a flawed method of evaluating a tests
validity
● illusory correlation - perception of non-existent statistical associations between variables
Social Motivation
● Bonobo - model for prosocial behaviour
● Chimpanzee - model for antisocial behaviour
● Victims of bullying, sexual abuse and domestic violence often report that others who
were aware of their suffering and could have intervened opted not to do so.
● assumed that the non-responsiveness of bystanders was due simply to a lack of caring -
bystander effect was less a consequence of apathy than of ‘psychological paralysis’
● pluralistic ignorance - the error of assuming that no one in the group perceives things as
we do.
○ Even once we have recognised that the situation is an emergency, the presence
of others still tends to inhibit helping
● diffusion of responsibility - the presence of others makes each person feel less
responsible for the outcome.
● Participants more likely to seek or offer help alone than in a group - 90% of time
● bystander effect can apparently be eliminated when people know they might be watched
● Enlightenment effect - learning about psychological research can change real-world
behaviour for the better
● Social loafing - people slack of in groups
○ Believed to be variant of bystander non intervention as it appears to be due part
to diffusion of responsibility
● People in individualistic countries like Australia are more prone to social loafing than
people in collectivist countries like China, probably because people in the latter countries
feel more responsible for the outcomes of group successes or failures
● Altruism - helping others for unselfish reasons
● Situational influences
○ more likely to help others when they cannot easily escape the situation by
running away, driving away
○ Helped a person with a cane 95% of the time and someone clearly drunk 50% of
the time
● Individual and gender differences
○ Participants who are less concerned about social approval and less traditional
are more likely to go against the grain and intervene in emergencies even when
others are present
○ Extraverted people are also more prone to help others than introverted people
○ People with lifesaving skills, such as trained medical workers, are more likely to
offer assistance
○ Slight tendency for men to help more than women - not consistent across studies
● Aggression - situational influences
○ Interpersonal provocation
○ Frustration
○ Media influences
 ○ Aggressive cues - external cues associated with violence, such as guns and
knives, can serve as discriminant stimuli for aggression, making us more likely to
act violently in response to provocation
○ Arousal
○ Alcohol and other drugs - certain substances can disinhibit our brain’s prefrontal
cortex, lowering our inhibitions towards behaving violently
○ Temperature
● Individual, gender, an cultural differences
○ Personality
■ Certain personality traits can combine to create a dangerous cocktail of
aggression-proneness
■ People with high levels of negative emotions such as irritability and
mistrust), impulsivity and a lack of closeness to others are especially
prone to violence
■ Glucose may enable aggressive people to exert executive control over
their impulses.
○ Sex
■ when angered, men are more likely than women to want to exact revenge
against people who have offended them
■ In conjunction with biological sex, age plays a role - the rates of crime,
including violent crime, would drop by two-thirds if all males between the
ages of 12 and 28
■ Females are just as likely as males, if not more so, to express anger in
subtle ways
○ Culture
■ In some parts of the world, violence is especially directed at those
perceived to have dishonoured a group, including ‘honour killings’ of one
family member by others
● Friendships
○ Involve close bonds and are similar to familial relationships.
○ Might come from a long history of connection and 'enmeshment'.
○ Might involve reciprocal acts of altruism (e.g., when we help each other move
house).
○ Are sources of emotional support and advice.
○ Require trust, reliability and support
Psychological Problems
● Statistical rarity​ - we cannot rely on statistical rarity to define mental disorder because
not all rare conditions are pathological, and many mental illnesses are quite common
● Subjective distress​ - not all psychological disorders generate distress
● Impairment - presence of impairment by itself cannot define mental illness because
some conditions can produce impairment but are not mental disorders.
● Societal disapproval​ - our attitudes towards the seriously mentally ill are often
profoundly negative and that deep-seated social prejudices towards them are
widespread and societal attitudes shape our view of abnormality
● Biological dysfunction​ - many result from breakdowns or failures of physiological
systems
● Middle Ages - many people in Europe and later in America viewed mental illnesses
through the lens of a demonic model
● Renaissance - more enlightened views and saw mental illness primarily as a physical
disorder requiring medical treatment
○ ‘bloodletting’, which was based on the mistaken notion that excessive blood
causes mental illness.
○ staff tried to frighten patients ‘out of their diseases’ by tossing them into a pit of
snakes
● Advocates of moral treatment insisted that the mentally ill be treated with dignity,
kindness and respect.
● Early 50s - chlorpromazine
● Psychiatric diagnoses
○ Help us pinpoint the psychological problem a person is experiencing - easier to
give treatment
○ Make it easier for mental health professionals to communicate
● Valid diagnosis
○ distinguishes that diagnosis from other, similar diagnoses
○ predicts diagnosed individuals’ performance on laboratory tests, including
personality measures, neurotransmitter levels and brain-imaging findings
○ predicts diagnosed individuals’ family history of psychiatric disorders
○ predicts diagnosed individuals’ natural history—that is, what tends to happen to
them over time.
○ argued that a valid diagnosis ideally predicts diagnosed individuals’ response to
treatment
● Official system for classifying mental disorders - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM)
○ contains a list of criteria for diagnosing each condition and a set of decision rules
for deciding how many of these criteria need to be met
○ essential to ‘think organic’ - first rule out medical causes of a disorder when
diagnosing psychological conditions.
○ a valuable source of information concerning the characteristics, such as the
prevalence, of many mental disorders
 ○ Biopsychological approach
● Research Domain Criteria (RDOC)
○ RDoC aims to develop a broad framework for studying and classifying mental
disorders that incorporates multiple dimensions from genetics and neuroscience
to the nature of social interactions
● (8841 participants ) 14.4% met criteria for anxiety disorders - only a third sought
treatment
● Average onset for anxiety disorder - 11 years
● Substance disorder - 20 years
● Mood disorders - 30 years
● Somatic symptom disorders - conditions marked by physical symptoms that suggest an
underlying medical illness, but that are actually psychological in origin
● Generalised anxiety disorder - 2-3%
○ Spend 60% of the day worrying compared to 18% for rest of people
○ think anxious thoughts, feel irritable and on edge, have trouble sleeping and
experience considerable bodily tension and fatigue
● Panic disorder
○ sweating, dizziness, light-headedness, a racing or pounding heart, shortness of
breath, feelings of unreality and fears of going crazy or dying
○ About 20–25% of university students report at least one panic attack in a 1-year
period, with about half that number reporting unexpected attacks
● Phobias - intense fear of an object or a situation that is greatly out of proportion to its
actual threat
○ 1 in 9 have a phobia
○ Agoraphobia
■ 1 in 20 people
■ a fear of being in a place or situation in which escape is difficult or
embarrassing, or in which help is unavailable in the event of a panic
attack
○ Social anxiety disorder
■ intense fear of negative evaluation in social situations, such as while
eating, giving a speech, conversing with others and performing in public.
● PTSD
○ Strongly associated with significant anxiety
○ Symptoms - Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, places, objects and conversations
that remind the person of the event; recurrent dreams of the trauma; and
increased arousal reflected in difficulty sleeping and startling easily
● OCD
○ repetitive and distressing thoughts and behaviours
○ Obsessions - persistent ideas, thoughts or urges that are unwanted and
inappropriate and cause marked distress
 ○ Compulsions - repetitive behaviours or mental acts that they undertake to reduce
or prevent distress or to relieve the anxiety, shame or guilt associated with the
obsessions
○ Postpartum OCD - 2-3%
● Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) - preoccupied with imagined or slight defects in their
appearance
○ One-third of patients with BDD also suffer from OCD
○ Celebrities may be particularly prone to BDD because our culture places a high
premium on physical attractiveness
● Tourettes - repeated automatic behaviours
○ Nearly 30% of individuals with OCD suffer from a tic disorder
● An inability to regulate or control negative emotions, together with an inability to
generate positive emotions or feelings of well-being, may contribute to catastrophising
and to a constant feeling of being on edge with worry
● anxious people have distinctive ways of processing information - biased towards
potential threats and tend to interpret situations in a negative light
● anxiety sensitivity - fear of anxiety-related sensations
● Genetic and biological influences
○ genes affect whether we inherit high levels of neuroticism - a tendency to be
highly strung and irritable
○ Brain scans reveal abnormalities in white matter and increased activity in portions
of the frontal lobes where information is filtered, prioritised an organised
● 20% of Australians will experience a mood disorder
● Major depressive disorder
○ less common in elderly adults than in younger people
○ Women are about twice as likely to experience depression than men
■ Could be underdiagnosis of mental illness in men
○ average person with major depression experiences five or six episodes over the
course of a lifetime lasting 6 months to a year
○ as many as a quarter or more of cases, depression is persistent and can be
present for as long as decades with no relief
○ Negative life events set us up to bring us down, but depression can create
problems in living
○ studies have replicated Coyne’s findings that people with depression seek
excessive reassurance and tend to stir up negative feelings in others
○ When depressed people try different things and receive no pay-off, they
eventually give up and stop participating in many pleasant activities, leaving them
little opportunity to obtain reinforcement from others
○ cognitive model of depression - depression is caused by negative beliefs and
expectations
○ cognitive distortions - skewed ways of thinking
○ learned helplessness - tendency to feel helpless in the face of events we cannot
control and argued that it offers an animal model of depression
 ○ People prone to depression attribute failure to internal as opposed to external
factors and success to external as opposed to internal factors.
○ Cultural factors influence people's ideal emotions
■ Size of the gap between ideal and actual emotion is positively correlated
with depression
○ Twin studies show that genes have a moderate effect on the risk of major
depression
■ have suggested that specific variations in the serotonin transporter gene
(which affects the rate of reuptake of serotonin) play a role in depression,
especially in conjunction with life experiences
■ Depression also appears linked to low levels of the neurotransmitter
noradrenaline and diminished neurogenesis (growth of new neurons)
which brings about reduced hippocampal volume
○ The discovery of previously unknown lymphatic vessels linking the immune
system to the brain may both provide a means for understanding how a
dysfunctional immune system could impact on the brain and produce or worsen
mental disorders
● Bipolar disorder
○ manic episode - experience marked by dramatically elevated mood, decreased
need for sleep, increased energy, inflated self-esteem, increased talkativeness
and irresponsible behaviour
○ More than half the time, a major depressive episode precedes or follows a manic
episode
○ Equally common in men and women
○ heritability ranges from about 60% to as high as 85%
● Suicide
○ Over a third of people with bipolar have attempted suicide
○ best predictor of suicide is a previous attempt because 30–40 per cent of all
people who kill themselves have made at least one prior attempt
● Schizophrenia symptoms
○ Delusions 
○ Hallucinations 
○ Disorganised speech 
○ Catatonic behaviour 
○ Lack of self care
● Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) 
○ provides individuals with tools to manage their thinking and, in turn, their mood - 
strategies to recognise negative thoughts and then they will work on developing 
ways to reduce them 
● Psychotherapy 
○ individual explores elements of their history that might have led to their present state 
 
 
● Interpersonal therapy 
○ individual works through how they could better relate to the people around them and 
how they might help their present situation 
Cross Cultural & Indigenous Psychology
● Culture - s​hared rules and understandings that shape behaviour, norms, and co-existence 
○ values, attitudes, beliefs, worldview, and in artefacts, social structures, norms, 
interpersonal relationships 
● Race - anthropologically awkward term 
○ No particular population 
○ No substantial and reliably definitive genetic differences 
○ No mechanisms limiting interbreeding between different groups 
● Ethnicity 
○ sense of "personhood", a means by which people identify with a larger group 
○ reflect lingual, geographic, or even physical similarities, and notions of origin/descent 
● Cultural blindness 
○ Taken for granted 
○ Ignored 
○ Little credit 
● Indigenous cultures are the oldest living cultures in the world, going back between 50,000 
and 65,000 years 
● Aboriginal people 
○ 3x more likely to develop diabetes 
○ 10x more likely to develop kidney disease 
○ 5x more likely to be murdered 
○ 17x more likely to be assaulted 
○ 13x more likely to be imprisoned 
○ 2.5x more liely to commit suicide 
○ 4x less likely to finish school 
○ 3x less likely to find employment 
○ Life expectancy 11 years younger than non aboriginal 
● Mental health issues associated with indigenous Australians 
○ Rural & remote areas 1 in 3 people suffer from a mental illness 
○ Drug/alcohol abuse 
○ Spiritual and emotional poverty - passed down 
○ Racism - depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, heart disease, smoking, alcohol 
and substance abuse, poor employment and education 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Biological Bases 
● Sensory Neurons - convey external information that you sense in the world around you (
from the body's sense receptors back to the brain.
● Motor Neurons - convey information from the central nervous system to the muscles and
organs in body
● Interneurons - relay information between neurons within the central nervous system
● Dendrites - receive incoming signals
○ Excitatory - increased probability of action potential
○ Inhibitory - decreased probability of action potential
● Cell body / Soma - collect all of the information being received by the dendrites
● Resting potential
○ Inside the neuron is more negative relative to the outside
■ Inside the neuron you will find lots of potassium (K+) molecules, and
these are positively charged.
■ The negativity inside the resting neuron is due to the presence of
electrically charged chemicals
○ Outside the neuron, the charge is more positive relative to the inside
■ Outside the neuron you will find lots of sodium ions (Na+), which have a 
positive charge 
■ total charge of the molecules outside are not as negative as the total charge 
of the molecules inside, and therefore the inside is still ​more​ negative 
○ -70mV inside the neuron 
○ sodium-potassium ion pumps are designed to keep the inside of the neuron more 
negative than the outside by pushing 3 Na+ ions out of the cell for every 2 K+ ions 
pulled in 
○ separate gateways for Na+ and K+ - When the neuron is at rest, these gateways are 
all closed 
● Action potential 
○ All or nothing 
○ Same size but rate of firing can change 
○ -55mV - action potential triggered 
○ Na+ gateways fly open and rapidly floods inside causing the inside of the cell to now 
become more positive than outside the cell (Depolarization) 
○ Na+ gates close as inside of the neuron reaches +40mV - peak 
● Neurotransmitter release 
○ calcium ions (Ca2+) rush inside and cause the vesicles to burst, releasing 
neurotransmitter into the synapse 
○ Some neurotransmitters are broken down by enzymes, others are transported back 
to the presynaptic buttons for recycling (Reuptake process) 
○ Neurotransmitter - key 
○ Receptor sites - lock 
● Agonists - synthetic compounds or drugs that mimic or enhance the function of a 
neurotransmitter 
● Antagonists - synthetic compounds or drugs that block or inhibit the function of a 
neurotransmitter 
● Spatial Summation - A postsynaptic neuron receives excitatory inputs from many different 
presynaptic neurons, causing it to reach threshold and fire 
● Temporal Summation - A single presynaptic neuron sends excitatory inputs in rapid 
succession, causing post-synaptic neuron to reach threshold and fire 
● Glial cells (Glue) 
● Central nervous system
○ Cortex
■ Frontal lobe - language and memory
■ Parietal lobe - integrate touch and vision
■ Temporal lobe - auditory information
■ Occipital lobe - vision
○ Basal ganglia
■ structures buried deep inside the cortex that help to organise sequences
of movement
○ Limbic system
■ Structures within generate emotions; responses to sensory events
■ Thalamus - sensory information first passes for initial processing
■ Hypothalamus - regulates and maintains constant internal bodily states
■ Amygdala - excitement, arousal, fear
■ Hippocampus - memory, spatial memory
○ Cerebellum
■ Balance and enable us to coordinate movement and learn motor skills.
○ Brain stem
■ Forms basic bodily functions to keep us alive
○ Spinal cord
● Cerebrum - 12-20 billion neurons, accounting for 40% of its volume
○ Corpus callosum - connects the two hemispheres and allows them to
communicate
● Peripheral nervous system
○ Somatic nervous system
■ carries messages from the CNS to muscles throughout the body,
controlling movement
○ Autonomic nervous system
■ controls the involuntary actions of our organs and glands, and, along with
the limbic system, it regulates our emotions
■ Sympathetic nervous system - neurons fire together during crisis
■ Parasympathetic nervous system - rest and digestion
● Endocrine system - network of glands that releases hormones into the bloodstream
● Pituitary gland - under control of the hypothalamus and directs other glans of the body
○ Oxytocin - reproductive functions, love, trust
● Adrenal gland - release adrenaline and cortisol during emotional arousal
 ○ Adrenaline
■ Contraction of heart muscles and blood vessels
■ Opening airways for more inhalation
■ Breakdown of fat - more fuel
■ Breakdown of glycogen - energy
■ Opening of pupils
○ Cortisol
■ Individuals with some anxiety disorders tend to have elevated levels of
cortisol and children with conduct problems, like lying, cheating and
stealing, tend to have low levels of cortisol
● Sexual reproductive glands
○ Testes - testosterone
○ Ovaries - oestrogen
○ Women make about one-twentieth the amount of testosterone as males
○ Adrenal gland makes low amounts of testosterone in both sexes
● Acetylcholine - arousal, selective attention, sleep, memory
○ Alziemers - neurons containing this are gradually destroyed
● Psychoactive - affect mood, thinking, arousal or observable behaviour
● EEG - device that measures the brain’s electrical activity at the surface of the scalp
○ Disadvantages
■ show averaged neural activity that reaches the surface of the scalp, they
tell us little about what is happening inside neurons.
■ not especially good for determining where in the brain the activity is
occurring
○ Advantages
■ Non invasive - can detect rapid changes in the electrical activity of the
brain occurring in the range of milliseconds
● CT scans and MRI - allow us to visualise the brain’s structure
○ CT scan - 3D reconstruction of multiple X-rays taken through a part of the body
○ MRI - measures the release of energy from water in biological tissues following
exposure to a magnetic field (detecting soft tissue)
● PET - measures changes in the brain’s activity in response to stimuli
○ Invasive - injection of radioactive molecules
● Functional MRI - measures the change in blood oxygen level
○ Advantage
■ ability to provide detailed images of activity in small brain regions and
over relatively brief time intervals of as little as two seconds
○ Disadvantage
■ extremely sensitive to motion
● TMS - applies strong and quickly changing magnetic fields to the skull to induce electric
fields in the brain
○ Can either enhance or interrupt brain function in a specific region
○ non-invasive brain-imaging technique that allows us to infer causation
● MEG - measures tiny magnetic fields on the skull’s surface, thereby displaying which
brain areas are becoming active in response to stimuli