The Self of Thoughts,

Feelings and Behaviors

MODULE #1
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

TSU TSU PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT

The Self of…
Thoughts

Feelings

Sensations and Behaviors

To understand the self as a holistic being with interconnected
thoughts, feelings, sensations and behaviors
THE THINKING
SELF
Ponder on these…
What’s on your mind?

Why do you think about it?

How do you assess about how

you think?

TSU PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT

Case #1
Your nephew describes his new girlfriend as a student who is artistic
and loves poetry. With no other information to go on, it is more
likely that she is studying:
A.) Chinese Literature
B.) Business Management

 How did you arrive at that thought?

*Even if every female student of Chinese Literature is artistic and loves poetry,
the population of Business Management students is so much larger.
( Burkeman , 2011)
Case #2
Imagine you’re a doctor, faced with the choice of operating on a
cancer patient or recommending a course of radiation instead. In the
long term, operating is best. But in this case, there is a 10% risk of
mortality in the first month following the operation.
Do you take the risk? Why?

*Only half the doctors asked a similar question would operate. But when the
10% mortality rate was rephrased as “90% survival rate,” 85% of the doctors
chose to operate. ( Burkeman , 2011)
TWO SYSTEMS OF THINKING
SYSTEM 1 SYSTEM 2
Fast Slow
Intuitive Deliberate
Emotional Reflective
Automatic Analytical
Less cognitive effort Complex
(due to practice) Effortful
Reflective
System 1: Examples
• Detect that one object is more distant than another.
• Orient to the source of a sudden sound.
• Complete the phrase “bread and . . .”
• Make a “disgust face” when shown a horrible picture.
• Detect hostility in a voice.
• Answer to 2 + 2 = ?
• Read words on large billboards.
• Drive a car on an empty road.
• Find a strong move in chess (if you are a chess master).
• Understand simple sentences.
• Recognize that a “meek and tidy soul with a passion for detail” resembles an
occupational stereotype.
System 2
• Brace for the starter gun in a race.
• Focus attention on the clowns in the circus.
• Focus on the voice of a particular person in a crowded and noisy room.
• Look for a woman with white hair.
• Search memory to identify a surprising sound.
• Maintain a faster walking speed than is natural for you.
• Monitor the appropriateness of your behavior in a social situation.
• Count the occurrences of the letter a in a page of text.
• Tell someone your phone number.
• Park in a narrow space (for most people except garage attendants).
• Compare two washing machines for overall value.
• Fill out a tax form.
• Check the validity of a complex logical argument.
Stroop Effect
Are the
horizontal
lines straight
or not?
 Functions of the Systems
•System 1 is capable of making quick decisions, based on very little
information
 Fleeting impressions, and the many other shortcuts you’ve developed
throughout your life, are combined to enable System 1 to make these
decisions quickly, without deliberation and conscious effort.

• System 2 is usually engage in types of decisions that require attention and

slow, effortful, considered responses.
Situations like choosing which college to attend, which house to buy, or
whether to change careers would likely require much more thoughtful and
rational approach than just using your gut feeling
Remember…
 Bothsystems have respective functions and that one is not
necessarily better than the other

While writing a detailed list of pros and cons may be an appropriate

approach for choosing a college or career path (in line with System
2),
applying this approach to the hundreds of tiny decisions we make
every day would prevent us from ever taking action. This is where
System 1 comes in.
Ponder on these…

• Identify situations which you employ Systems 1 and 2

thinking
How well did you understand?

Which thinking
2x2= ??? process/system would
300 + 450= ??? you use in this situation?
 Caughtbetween empty and
heavy lane, which road would
you take???

Which thinking process/system

might you use in this situation?
In filling up
an
application
form, which
system
would you
use?
How can you focus on the voice
of the person you are talking to
in a crowded and noisy room?

Which system of thinking would

you engage in?
 INTERACTION OF SYSTEMS 1 & 2
Scenario 1: When there is a problem to be solved
Was the problem solved?

SYSTEM 1 - YES
PROBLEM assesses the
situation -tries to
solve it NO SYSTEM 2
-approaches the
problem in a logical
way
 INTERACTION OF SYSTEMS 1 & 2
Scenario 2: When there is NO problem (or when stakes are low)
SYSTEM 2 -biased to
SYSTEM 1 DOUBT &
-biased to BELIEVE QUESTION... (but is
Everyday situations
with limited often busy & lazy)
information (e.g.
meeting a new Form opinions & jump
person) into conclusions
Adopt suggestions
with little
modification

INTUITIONS --------- BELIEFS

Situations wherein the systems are
employed
The CRT mathematical test has shown that intuition is a dominant
force in the minds of medical students. (Tay, Ryan, Ryan, 2016)

Psychology researchers have found that the more complex a task is,
the more likely people are to engage in System 2 decision making.

One interesting experiment, performed by Alter et al., found that

simply decreasing the legibility of the font used in a common
cognitive test made people more likely to switch to System 2.
Market researchers should keep in mind that the more complex the
research collection process becomes (more question types, complex
answer matrices, thought experiments etc.), the more likely they are to
collect responses generated by System 2.

In situations where there is social pressure to respond in a particular

way, System 2 may even filter these rationalizations to create
“appropriate” responses.
COGNITIVE BIASES
Implications:
• Thinking may be prone to systematic errors.

• Some beliefs might not be based on evidence, but we continue to

consider them as “truths.”

• Even though you know what the objective reality is,

it does not change the way you see the lines.
1. PEAK END RULE
REMEMBERING SELF
EXPERIENCING SELF
-writes, reads, and replays your
-Lives through the moment
autobiographical history

◦Peoplejudge an experience largely based on how they felt at its

PEAK and its END...
◦Total sum of pleasantness or unpleasantness is entirely disregarded!
What would you rather go
through:

◦Short period of intense joy > long period of moderate

happiness

◦Short period of intense, but tolerable suffering > longer

period of moderate pain
2. REPRESENTATIVENESS
◦when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or
event belongs to a category

◦assumption that any object (or person) sharing characteristics with

the members of a particular category is also a member of that
category.
 Ponder on these…
Tom is a college student in a state university. He is of high intelligence,
although lacking in creativity. He has a need for order and clarity, and
for neat and tidy systems in which every detail finds its appropriate
place. His writing is rather dull and mechanical, occasionally enlivened
by corny puns and flashes of imagination of the sci-fi type. He has a
strong drive for competence. He seems to have little sympathy for
others & does not enjoy interaction with others. But he does have a
deep moral sense.

What course in Tom most likely enrolled in?

 3. ANCHORING AND
ADJUSTMENT
“How old is person A?” / “What is person A’s weight?” “Was Mahatma
Gandhi more or less 144 years old when he died?”

Decision is based on:

-ANCHOR based on the given reference point
-ADJUST the anchor (either higher or lower)
◦ In making judgments under uncertainty, people start with a certain
reference point (anchor), then adjust it insufficiently to reach a final
conclusion.
GUARDING AGAINST COGNITIVE
BIASES

Recognize the signs that you are in a cognitive minefield, slow down, and ask for help
from System 2

Identify practices and tasks that you do and the kind of thinking they demand

“Listen to understand it, rather than listen to answer it.”

Summary:

INTERACTIONS
SYSTEMS COGNITIVE GUARDING AGAINST
BETWEEN
1&2 BIASES COGNITIVE BIASES
SYSTEMS 1 & 2
Assignment #1

Write about a personal experience in a third person’s perspective

THE FEELING SELF
Identify the emotion being evoked in
the following pictures
WHO IS PAUL EKMAN?
* Clinical Practice:
◦Depression
*Research:
◦Papua New Guinea: Facial expressions are
universal.

◦Studied patients who claimed they were not

depressed and later committed suicide:
MICROEXPRESSIONS
*Current Research:
◦How to respond to others’ emotions
◦Working with Dalai Lama
 EMOTIONS and its FEATURES
Physiological: biological reactions -
Cognitive: role of the nervous system (brain &
thought processes - neurotransmitters) in emotions
ANTECEDENT:
cause, trigger interpretation of an
event
Behavioral: expressions & response
- Display Rule: variations of
emotional expression across culture
Antecedent Condition
•Events, contexts, or situations
that trigger an emotion

•Universality of antecedent
events elicit same emotions
across cultures

•Cultural differences
Cognitive Appraisal

Thoughts and beliefs can

impact how you feel and
how you behave.
 Physiological
• distinctive patterns of biological activities for each basic emotion
• the role of:
◦ Autonomic Nervous System
◦ Central Nervous System
◦ Neurotransmitters & Hormones
Emotional Expressions
Display Rule
• cultural rules that dictate how emotions should be expressed;
when and where expression is appropriate

• may require people:

◦ to overtly show evidence of certain emotions even if they do not feel it
◦ to disguise their true feelings
Theories of Emotion
Theories of Emotion
EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE AS A
PROCESS
Activating Beliefs Consequences
Event - Evaluations - Emotions
- Actual event - Rational - Behaviors
- client’s - irrational - Other
immediate thoughts
interpretation
of events
APPLICATION: DEPRESSION
(Williams, et al.)
CONSEQUENCES
ACTIVATING EVENT BELIEFS
(emotions and
(antecedent) (cognition)
behaviors)

“I must be completely
competent in everything I
do, or else, I am worthless”
“It’s my fault”
“I am a failure”
 APPLICATION: DEPRESSION
(Williams, et al.)

NEW STRESSOR BELIEFS are CONSEQUENCES

reactivated! Depressive
symptoms

“What is wrong with me?’

“Why do I always fall into this
dark hole?”
“Why can’t I snap out of it”
“I am worthless” “I SHOULD NOT BE DEPRESSED!”
“It’s always my fault’
“I’m a failure”
 DOING MODE:
So a new cycle Problem Solving
begins…  BEING MODE: Accept
and allow
Interconnectedness Among The
Three Components Of The Self
To be that self which one truly is…

—Søren
Kierkegaard
Activity
Write about a personal challenge you are experiencing at present -
this may be a challenge in a relationship, or in school work, or some
other problem that is affecting your thoughts, feelings, and
behavioral responses or actions.

You are to write about this personal experience, IN THE THIRD

PERSON (i.e. using "he", "she", rather than "I" or "me").
Activity…
◦What patterns of thinking (e.g. Systems 1 and 2) does the
protagonist find himself or herself applying with respect to this
experience?
What cognitive biases are evident?
◦What basic emotions are present in this experience?
Describe the sequel of the emotional experience (i.e. What is the
protagonist’s cognitive appraisal or interpretation of the event?
What physiological reactions and behaviors are elicited by the
antecedent situation?).