INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY Complex

 entire neurosystem involves.

PSYCHOLOGY  Multi-tasking
 Psyche (soul or mind) & logos (word)  Ex. Musical performances - synchronize &
 It is literally defined as the study of the mind or harmony with music
soul (until the early 1900s)
 In 1920s, refusing the idea that the mind is Simple
unobservable, implies object or thing and  involves few of number of neurons
emphasized that mental activity is a process.  You do not have to concentrate
 Early 1900’s, it is defined as the study of
behavior. Voluntary
 Systematic study of behavior and mental  Behaviors done with full volition
processes.  doing without being asked
 define psychology as the systematic study of  It is your will, decision
behavior and experience.
 Is the systematic, scientific, study of behaviors Involuntary
and mental processes.  no control over it.
 Reflexes, organs
Metal Processes - internal processes through  Ex. Blinking - protect your eyes from foreign
behavior but not all the time. object/s.
- subjective, cognitive  Internal processes
 Ex. Breathing, digestion, cardiovascular
You are trained to observe people, not judge.
GOALS OF PSYCHOLOGY
TYPES OF BEHAVIOR
1. Describe - to describe the different ways that
Overt organisms behave.
 Behaviors that are directly observation using  Through observations, use scientific tools
your naked eyes
2. Explain - to explain the causes of behavior.
Covert  Why children experience such condition?
 hidden behavior, motives  Factors / Causes
 Something to do with brain
Conscious
 done within your level of awareness 3. Predict - to predict how organisms will behave in
 Awake, alert, and enthuastic certain situations.
 easier to response  Set rules, modify the environment
 Based on descriptions and explanation
Unconscious
 embedded within your level of awareness 4. Control - to control an organism’s behavior.
 not aware  When you predict, you know how to control
 sleeping, under comatose
How do Psychologist answer questions?
Rational
 done with apparent reason An approach refers to a focus of perspective,
 Everything we do have reason which may use a particular research method or
 Rational/logical technique.

Irrational Biological Approach - focuses on how our genes,

 no explanation, explainable hormones, and nervous system interact with our
 You do not know the reason why you’re environments to influence learning. personality,
doing something. memory, motivation, emotions, and coping
 Ex. Talking to compact powder. techniques.
  Development of the brain
 Genes, heredity aspects
 Protective Factors - Faith, Family, Support
 Talking Therapy - the more you talk about it,
the lessen you will feel the bad
feelings/emotions.
Cognitive Approach - examines how we process,
store, and use information and how this
information. influences what we attend to,
perceive, learn, remember, believe, and feel.
 Unsual autistic
Behavioral Approach - studies how organisms
learn new behaviors or modify existing ones,
depending on whether events in their
environments reward or punish these behaviors.
 Reward rather than punishment (negative
reinforcement)
 Aversives Stimulus - sinampal
Psychoanalytic Approach - stresses the influence
of unconscious fears, desires, and motivations
on thoughts, behaviors, and the development of
personality traits and psychological problems
later in life.
 What was the childhood experiences?
 Oral, Anal, PHAlic, LAtent, GEnetal
(OAPHALAGE) - 1-5 years of a child is
important
Humanistic Approach - emphasizes that each
individual has great freedom in directing his or
her future, a large capacity for personal growth, a
considerable amount of intrinsic worth, and
enormous potential for self-fulfillment.
 You can do everything/anything regardless of
who you are.
 You are limitless, and have the freedom to
strive more.
 Actualize despite challenges and difficulties.
Cross-Cultural / Sociocultural Approach -
studies the influence of social and cultural factors
on psychological and behavioral functioning.
 Supertitous beliefs, nature beliefs
 Culture
Evolutionary Approach - studies how
evolutionary ideas, such as adaptation and
natural selection, explain human behaviors and
mental processes.
 Unique behavior help someone to adapt
Psychoanalytic Approach - is based on the belief
that childhood experiences greatly influence the
development of later personality traits and
psychological problems. It also stresses the
influence of unconscious fears, desires, and
motivations on thoughts and behaviors.
Biopsychosocial Approah - studies how
biological, psychological, and social influences
explain human health and illness.
General Points
It Depends
Progress Depends on Good Measurement
Confidence in the Conclusions should Depend on
the strength of the Evidence
Major Philosophical Issues in Psychology
FREE WILL VS DETERMINISM
Free will - the belief that the behavior is caused by
a person’s independent decisions.
Determinism - the idea that everything that
happens has a cause, or determinant, that
someone could observe or measure.
MONISM VS DUALISM
Monism - the view that the conscious experience
is inseparable from the physical brain.
Dualism - the mind is separate from the brain but
somehow controls the brain and therefore the rest
of the body.
NATURE VS NURTURE
Nature - the view that the behavior is caused by
our genetic instructions.
Nurture - the belief that environment greatly
contributed to human behavior.
WHAT PSYCHOLOGIST DO?
Service Provides to Individuals
 Clinical Psychologist
 Psychiatrist
 Psychoanalyst
 Psychiatric Nurse
 Clinical Social Workers
  Counseling Psychologist
 Forensic Psychologist
Servise Providers to Organizations
 Industrial Psychologist
 Human Factor Specialist
 Military Psychologist
 Scholl Psychologist
Psychologist in Teaching and Research
 Developmental Psychologist
 Learning and Motivation
 Cognitive Psychologist
 Biological Psychologist
 Evolutionary Psychologist
 Social/Cross-Cultural Psychologist
The Early Era
Wilhelm Wundt and the first Psychological
Laboratory (Father of Psychology)
 Devoted to uncovering the basic structures that
make up the mind.
 The mind consists of three basic
elementssensations, feelings, and images-
which combine to form experience.
 Introspection: Reporting one’s own conscious
experience
Edward Fichener and Structualism
 Devoted to uncovering the basic structures that
make up the mind.
 Structuralism, an attempt to describe the
structures that compose the mind, particularly
sensations, feelings, and images
 Example of Application: Present subjects
with sights and sounds and describe
sensations and feelings
William James and functionalism
 Functionalism : instead of seeking the
elements of consciousness, he preferred to
learn how people produce useful behaviors.
Darwin and the Study of Animal Intelligence
 Darwin argued humans and other species
share a remote common ancestor. If so, then
other animals should share features in
common with humans, including some degree
of intelligence
Francis Galton and the Intelligence
 was among the first to try to measure
intelligence and to ask whether intellectual
variations were based on heredity
Alfred Binet
 intelligence test
Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler
 Emphasizes the tendency to organize
perceptions into wholes and to integrate
separate stimuli into meaningful patterns.
 Learning or problem solving is accomplished
by insight or the sudden recognition of
perceptions.
Behaviorism - John Watson
 Limits studies of humans to solely
observable events
Focuses on…
 Response - a movement or other observable
reaction to stimuli.
 Stimuli - something causing or regarded as
causing a response
 Examples of application: simple observation of
stimuli and responses
Ivan Pavlov - dog and bell
BF Skinner - Operant Conditioning, based on
Thorndike's law of effecr
Edward Tolman - studies of learning in rats using
mazes
 cognitive learning
 reinforcement and punishment
Albert Bandura - social learning theory (observe)
 Post Traumatic experiences
Psychoanalysis
 Founded by Sigmund Freud. Emphasizes the
importance of unconscious motives and
conflicts as determinants of human behavior.
 Examples of application: hypnosis, free
association, talk therapy
 INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY

MAJOR PARTS OF THE BRAIN

Cortex or “Gray Matter” [back of the hand]

- Outer layer of the brain
- The outside of the brain is darker than the inside
because it's lined with neuron cell bodies or soma
- cell bodies keep the neuron healthy and
functioning

Neuron Axons [muscles inside your hand]
- White matter is made up of neuron axons
- Axons carry information from one neuron to
another (neurons really not touch)
Brainstem [wrists]
- sits at the very bottom of your brain
- most basic part of your brain and regulates
important life functions like breathing, heart rate,
sleeping, eating and more
- this is also where signals from the right side of
your body cross over to your left brain and where
signals from the left side of your body cross over to
your right brain

Fist looks like brains (right & left)

Spinal cord [arms]
- extends down your back
- sends and receives information from the rest of
your body

LEFT HEMISPHERE

Frontal Lobe [front fingers]

- part of brain that responsible for complex and
Corpus Callosum [are of where two hands
abstract thought
touch]
- it sits right behind your forehead and is the most
- The area where they touch represents the corpus
advanced part of your brain
callosum
- frontal lobe helps you to make plans, imagine
- It is a bundle of nerves that connect the two
possible futures, and helps you to control your
hemispheres of the brain
emotions
- help them to communicate with each other
- doesn’t finish developing until your mid 20’s which
(Golden Gate bridge of the brain)
is why a lot of kids and teenagers can do impulsive
things
 INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY

Parietal Lobe [extending the index and middle

Take a closer look at the temporal lobe, we’ll find
finger]
the limbic system
- integrates all the sensory information in your body
- responsible for emotions, learning and
(sense of space, navigation, and touch all get
memory
relayed here)
- But your brain doesn’t prioritize each part of your
body equally

Inside you’ll find the amygdala [below your

thumbnail]
Homunculus “map” of the primary motor cortex - almond-shaped structure
of the brain - Responsible for basic emotions
- Brain prioritizes information from your hands
and face

Occipital Lobe [two hands look like eyes]

Further inside is the hippocampus [near the bone
- area responsible for visual information
of your thumb]
- located in your back of your brain
- Responsible for learning and memory

Temporal Lobe (thumb)

- (similarity) can lift away from the rest of your fist
but remains attached to your hand
- back of the temporal lobe is connected to the
parietal and occipital lobes, but the front section
can be lifted away from the rest of the brain
- responsible for understanding sounds and speech
(for talking)
 BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY
BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF BEHAVIOR
- Hormones can be found in Endocrine glands
- It is called physiological psychology
- Study of the biology of behavior, focuses on the
nervous system, hormones and genetics
- Examines the relationship between mind & body,
neutral mechanisms, and the influence of heredity
on behavior
NERVOUS SYSTEM
- Basis of our ability to perceive, adapt to, and
interact with the world around us
- All stimulation is being processed to our nervous
system in order to respond
NEURON (100 billions)
- very basic unit of nervous system
- fundamental unit which makes up a nerve
pathway, neural firing (neurotransmitter release)
- takes place of the level of the neuron, and many
aspects of the physiology-behavior relationship
- has the ability to communicate with one another
NERVOUS SYSTEM CELLS
• Glia
- that support the neurons in many ways
such as by insulating them, synchronizing activity
among neighboring neurons, and removing waste
products
The approximately 360 billion glial cells make up 80
to 90 percent of all cells found in the central
nervous system. Additional glia are found in the
peripheral nervous system. Glia are generally
categorized by size. The macroglia are large
varieties of glial cells, and the microglia are
relatively small
- 900 billions (it is like a glue)
- serves as scaffolding (framework)
- helps in transmission of neurons
- janitor of neurons
STRUCTURE OF NEURON
Cell body (soma)
- contains the nucleus of the cell
- The one reduces the chemicals that needed
to function (most important)
Dendrites (from a Greek word meaning “tree”)
- are widely branching structures that receive
input from other neurons
- Receives the electrochemical form of raw
information (attached to sensory organs)
*electrochemical messages- neurons can only read
through neurotransmitters [messenger]
Axon
- is a single, long, thin, straight fiber with branches
near its tip
Myelin
- an insulating sheath that speeds up the
transmission of impulses along an axon
- made out of fatty sheets
- 200 miles/hr - transmission of message
End bulbs or terminal bulbs (Axon terminal)
- look like tiny bubbles that are located at the
extreme ends of the axon’s branches
• The Action Potential
- Action potential, an excitation that travels
along an axon at a constant strength, no matter
how far it travels
- a tiny electric current that is generated when the
positive sodium ions rush inside the axon.
1. Feeling a sharp object
2. Axon Membrane
- The axon membrane has chemical gates (shown
in red) that can open to allow electrically charged
particles to enter or can close to keep out
electrically charged particles.
3. Ions: Charged Particles
- Ions are chemical particles
that have electrical charges.
Ions follow two rules: Opposite
charges attract (figure above),
and like charges repel.
4. Resting State: Charged Battery
- The resting state means that the axon has a
charge, or potential; it resembles a battery. The
charge, or potential, results from the axon
membrane separating positive ions on the outside
from negative ions on the inside
5. Action Potential: Sending Information
- The action potential is a tiny electric current that is
generated when the positive sodium ions rush
inside the axon. The enormous increase of sodium
ions inside the axon causes the inside of the axon
to reverse its charge. The inside becomes positive,
while the outside becomes negative.
• Synapses
- The synapse (SIN-apse) is an infinitely
small space (20–30 billionths of a meter) that exists
between an end bulb and its adjacent body organ
(heart), muscles (head), or cell body.
The transduction is a process of
converting the physical/chemical energy to
electrochemical messages
* Sense organs receive the raw form of message
* Sensory receptors (receive the converted
message)
The nerve impulse refers to the series of
separate action potentials that take place segment
by segment as they move down the length of an
axon. (messages that axon tries to carry)
The all-or-none law says that, if an action
potential starts at the beginning of an axon, the
action potential will continue at the same speed,
segment by segment, to the very end of the axon.
Neurotransmitter and Behavior
- neurotransmitter, is a chemical
substance that is released from a nerve cell and
then transmits an impulse from a nerve cell to its
target. A target can be another nerve, muscle,
organ, or other tissue
.
Brain and Behavior
ORGANIZATION OF THE BRAIN
(under central NS)
BRAIN REGION
(Forebrain, Midbrain & Hindbrain)
FOREBRAIN
- the largest part of the brain has right and left sides
that are called hemispheres. The hemispheres
connected by a wide band of fibers, are responsible
for an incredible number of function, including
learning and memory, speaking and language,
having emotional responses, experiencing
sensations, initiating voluntary movements,
planning and making decisions
Basal Ganglia - responsible for movement (motor)
Limbic system - composed of diff. Structures
(responsible for emotions, learning and memory)
MIDBRAIN
- has a reward or pleasure center which is
stimulated by fod, sex, money, music, attractive
faces, has areas for visual and auditory reflexes
such as automatically turning your head toward a
noise, and contains the reticular formation, which
arouses the forebrain so that it is ready to process
information form the sense (Holroyd & Coles, 2002)
HINDBRAIN
The cerebellum which is located at the very back
and underneath the brain involved in coordinating
motor skills, initiating voluntary movements.
- Cooperates with occipital & ears
The medulla, which is located at the top of the
spinal cord, includes a group of cells that control
vital reflexes, such as respirations, heart rate and
blood pressure. Damage of this result to death.
Pons functions as a bridge to transmit
The Cerebral Cortex (CEREBRUM)
(Frontal, Parietal, Temporal, Occipital Lobe)
● FRONTAL LOBE
- The anterior portion of the cerebral cortex, rostral
to the parietal lobe and dorsal to the temporal lobe.
- located in the front part of the brain, includes a
huge area of cortex
- involved in many functions:
 • performing, voluntary motor movements,
interpreting, performing emotional behaviors,
behaving normally in social situations, maintaining
a healthy personality, paying attention in the
environment, making decisions & executing plans
The body’s parts (muscles) are individually
controlled by the motor cortex
- Narrow strip of cortrex
- Contralateral
- involved in the planning, control, and
execution of voluntary movements
What happened to Phineas Gage
- through the accident, function of the brains was
discovered
Frontal Lobotomy - surgical procedure in which
about ⅓ of the front part of the frontal lobe was cut
away from the rest of the brain
- after recovering there is effect in emotion
regulation and personality changes
Broca’s Area
- left frontal lobe
- Paul Broca (post mortem autopsy)
- necessary for combining sounds into words &
arranging words into meaningful
Broca’s Aphasia (speech sound)
- Cannot speak fluent sentences but can
understand spoken words
● PARIETAL LOBE (pa rye i tul)
- The region of the cerebral cortex caudal to the
frontal lobe and dorsal to the temporal lobe
- located directly behind the frontal lobe
- functions:
• processing sensory information from body
parts,
• includes touching, locating positions of
limbs & feeling temperature & pain
• carrying out several cognitive functions
such as attending to & perceiving objects
The somatosensory cortex is a narrow strip of
cortex that is located on the front edge of the
parietal lobe and extends down its side.
- Processes sensory information about
touch, location of limbs, pain and temperature.
(contralateral)
● TEMPORAL LOBE (tem por ul)
- The region of the cerebral cortex rostral to the
occipital lobe and ventral to the parietal and frontal
lobes.
- located directly below the parietal lobe
- involved in hearing, speaking, coherently, and
understanding verbal & written material
Primary auditory cortex
- processing the raw information coming from ears
(filtering the raw form)
- located at the top edge of each temporal lobe
- receives electrical signals from receptors in the
ears and transforms these signals into meaningless
sound sensations such as vowels & consonants
Auditory association
- located directly below the primary auditory cortex
- transforms basic sensory information
Wernicke’s Area
- Left temporal lobe
- Carl Wernicke
- necessary for speaking in coherent sentences &
for understanding speech
Wernicke’s Aphasia - difficulty in
understanding spoken or written words & in putting
words into meaningful
● OCCIPITAL LOBE (ok sip i tul)
- The region of the cerebral cortex caudal to the
parietal and temporal lobes.
- Located very back of the brain
- involved in processing visual information
- Process raw information
- Functions:
• Seeing colors, perceiving and recognizing
objects, animals and people.
Primarily Visual Cortex
- receives electrical signals from receptors in the
eyes & transforms these signals into meaningless
basic visual sensation such as lights, lines,
shadows, colors and textures (back of occipital)
Visual Association Area
- transforms basic sensations such as lights into
complete, meaningful visual perceptions
The Hemispheres
Measuring Brain Activity
EEG results show changes in brain
activity that may be useful in
diagnosing brain conditions,
especially epilepsy and other seizure
disorders. An electroencephalogram
(EEG) is a test that detects electrical
activity in your brain using small,
metal discs (electrodes) attached to
scalp.
It is used to examine the brain's
functional anatomy, (determine which
parts of the brain are handling critical
functions), evaluate the effects of
stroke or other disease, or to guide
brain treatment. fMRI may detect
abnormalities within the brain that
cannot be found with other imaging
techniques.
A positron emission tomography
(PET) scan is an imaging test that
helps reveal how your tissues and
organs are functioning. A PET scan
uses a radioactive drug (tracer) to
show this activity. PET scans can be
used to evaluate certain brain
disorders, such as tumors,
Alzheimer's disease and seizures.
- an unlearned, involuntary reaction to some
stimulus. The neural connections or network
underlying a reflex is prewired by genetic
instructions. It is embedded, program in our body
AMYGDALA
- tip of the temporal lobe
- receives input from all the senses
- evolution of the emotional stimuli
- reason of why people suffers from autism
(fears)

DIVISION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM

CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM

- made up of the brain and spinal cord

Subcortical Areas - perception happens/sensation in sensory organs
- from the bottom of the brain emerges the spinal
LIMBIC SYSTEM (part of forebrain system) cord, which is made up of neurons & bundles of
- A collection of forebrain structures that participate axons and dendrites that carry information back &
in emotional behavior, motivated behavior, and forth between the brain & the body.
learning. Fantomlin pain - not existing.
- humans became humane because of this
PERIPHERAL NERVOUS SYSTEM
THALAMUS
- A structure in the diencephalon that processes
- made up of nerves that branch off from the spinal
sensory information, contributes to states of
cord and extend to all parts of the body.
arousal, and participates in learning and memory.
- carry messages to and from various muscles,
- relaying station (like ways)
glands, and sense organs located throughout the
- receiving sensory information, doing some initial
body.
processing, and then relaying the sensory
information to areas of the cortex, primary auditory
Difference: CNS are encapsulated by bones (skull
cortex, and primary visual cortex
for brain and spinal column for spinal cord)
because they do the most sophisticated and
HYPOTHALAMUS
complex job. It means that damage to the brain &
- Regulation of autonomic nervous system Control
spinal cord are irreversible. While the PNS has the
the anterior and posterior pituitary glands Four Fs:
capacity to regenerate.
feeding, fleeing, fighting and mating
- regulates many motivational behaviors, including
2 Divisions of PNS
eating, drinking, and sexual responses, emotional
behaviors, such as arousing the body when fighting
SOMATIC NERVOUS SYSTEM
or fleeing and the secretion of hormones such as
- Network of nerves that connect either to sensory
occurs at puberty.
receptors or to muscles that you can move

HIPPOCAMPUS
AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM
- Part of the limbic system which is involved in
- Regulates involuntary physiological processes
memory and learning
including heart rate, breathing, blood pressure,
- red structure inside the temporal lobe
digestion, hormone secretion and other functions
- involve in saving many kinds of fleeting memories
- Usually functions without conscious effort, which
by putting them into permanent storage in various
means that only a few of its responses.
parts of the brain
2 Divisions of Autonomic Nervous System
PONS AND MEDULLA
- responsible for cardiovascular activities and
SYMPATHETIC NS
controlling the muscles from the head
- The division of the autonomic nervous system that
coordinates(physiological) arousal
CEREBELLUM
- prepares your body for action (fight-or-flight)
- a structure highly involved in coordinated
- triggered by, challenging, physical stimuli
movement and balance
PARASYMPATHETIC NS
REFLEX
- The division of the autonomic nervous system
- Rapid and automatic response to stimulus
responsible for rest and energy storage
- returns the body to a calmer, relaxed state
 SENSATION AND PERCETION
SENSATION AND PERCEPTION
➢ sensation happened on the brain
➢ sensation is meaningful without
perception
TRANSDUCTION
➢ process of converting the
physical/chemical to electrochemical
messages
➢ process in which a sense organ
changes, or transforms physical energy
into electrical signals that become
neural impulses, which may be sent to
the brain for processing.
ADAPTATION - refers to the decreasing
response of the sense organs, the more they
are exposed to a continuous level of
stimulation
➢ your ears/eyes adjusted to the
stimulation
➢ no conscious effort/no control
➢ happens in the physiological
phenomena
HABITUATION (habituated but not adapted)
➢ happens in attentional phenomena
➢ you can control
JND (Just Noticeable Difference)
➢ if you’re adapted & there is a sudden
change
➢ there is certain level
SENSATION – are relatively meaningless bits
of information that result when the brain
processes electrical signals that come from
the sense organs
PERCEPTION – are meaningful sensory
experiences that result after the brain
combines hundreds of sensation
Bottom-up
➢ based on the texture geometrical
➢ starts from the object
Top-down
➢ perception is being influenced by your
prior knowledge
5 SENSE ORGANS
1. VISION (eye) – one of the most sense
organs
➢ you can easily perceive things using
sense of sight.
➢ majority of our behavior are highly
dependent to the vision/eyes
➢ pre-condition for vision is light
SUN
➢ major sense of light
➢ our vision is affected by light
DIFFERENT STRUCTURE OF EYES
PUPIL – round opening at the front of your eye
that allows light waves to pass into the eyes
interior
➢ Controls the amount of light
➢ Emotions are associated with the size
of pupil. (positive/negative)
PUPILLARY RESPONSES/REFLEXES –
changes/movement of pupils
➢ don’t need conscious control
➢ control by our brain stem
CORNEA – classic cornea(?)
➢ refract the light waves
➢ rounded, transparent, covering over the
front of your eye. As the light waves
pass through the cornea its curved
surface bends, or focuses the waves
into narrower beam
IRIS
➢ color of the eyes, contact lenses
➢ circular muscle that surrounds the
amount of light entering the eye
LENSES – opposite refraction
➢ accommodation – accommodate
distance of object
➢ problem with the lenses can be
corrected
➢ transparent, and structure whose
curved surface bends
PRESBYOPIA – old sightedness
RETINA
 ➢ very black of the eyeball
➢ sensitive to light
➢ photo receptors
➢ highly special receptors that one
responsible to transduction
➢ thin (paper) layer (3 layers) optical
nerves
➢ thalamus – occipital lobe (relaying
station)
RODS – are photo receptors that contain a
single chemical called rhodopsin
➢ light structure, stendrical(?)
➢ we can see at night because of it
CONES – cone shape
➢ allowed us to see colors
➢ daytime & color vision
➢ sensitive to light
Colorblindness – damaged of rods & cones
➢ Male – manifest
➢ Female is the carrier
➢ Y is much deeper & smaller
➢ Prone to colorblindness & such
Monochromatic – totally colorblind, B&W
Dichromats – problems with cones
➢ red and green difficulty in (blue &
yellow) identifying
2. AUDITION (ear)
➢ Presence of sound or create sound
waves through the vibration of object
➢ Sense of hearing
OUTER EAR – 3 structures:
➢ External ear
➢ Auditory canal
➢ Tympanic membrane
PINNA – collect the sound waves
THE EXTERNAL EAR – is an oval shaped
structure that protrudes from the side of the
head.
THE FUNCTION OF EXTERNAL EAR – is to
pick up sound waves & send them down a
long narrow tunnel called the auditory canal.
THE AUDITORY CANAL – is a long tube that
tunnels sound waves down its length so that
the waves strike a thin, taut membrane – the
eardrum or tympanic membrane.
THE TYMPANIC MEMBRANE – is a taut,
thin structure community called eardrum.
OSSICLES – tiny bones (group of bones)
➢ Hammer
➢ Anvil
➢ Stirrup
3. GUSTATION (tongue) – sense of taste
(gustation)
➢ tongue contains sensors (taste buds)
for live tastes pre-condition liquid
form(?)
➢ 10,000 taste buds all scattered all over
the mouth
➢ not all can be found in tongue
5 BASIC TASTE
➢ Sour
➢ Salty
➢ Sweet
➢ Bitter
➢ Umami taste (savory)
Surface of the tongue
Taste buds → Transduction → Thalamus
HYPOGEUSIA – lessen the capacity to taste
food
OLFACTION (nose) – sense of smell
➢ Pre-condition: suspended in the air tiny
particles
➢ Olfactory bulbs contain olfactory cells
that change dissolved molecules into
electrical messages
➢ Beneath the brain happens
FLAVORS (combination of sense of taste &
smell)
It creates temperature – spicy (hotness)
Olfactory cells
Different types of smell
Anosmia – loss of smell
 STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Sleep Walking
Circadian Rhythm
 The term circadian comes from Latin words for
"about a day."
 Circadian rhythms are 24-hour cycles that are
part of the body’s internal clock, running in the
background to carry out essential functions and
processes. One of the most important and well-
known circadian rhythms is the sleep-wake cycle.
Zeitgebers
 Zeitgebers are light, temperature, eating or
drinking patterns, etc. These external cues help
the internal biological clock to be consistent with
the rhythmic cycle.
Individual Variations in Sleep Patterns
Do you have family members or roommates who
wake up at the crack of dawn? Other people you
know might have difficulty getting to sleep before
midnight and struggle to awaken in time for work or
school.
LARKS CATCH THE EARLY WORM
 Larks are people who have an underlying
preference to wake up early in the morning and
go to bed at a reasonable hour. They
understand that business gets done before noon
and they value breakfast as the most important
meal of the day. There's a reason why
complimentary breakfasts at hotels around the
world end at like, 9:00 AM. They're catering to
the Larks among us.
Owls Burn the Midnight Oil
 If you regularly find yourself up late at night
doing work, or going out with friends and
dreading the call of morning, you might be an
Owl. Though not proven, some believe Owls
might have a higher IQ than Larks, due to late
night activities being an evolutionary novel
behavior, and thus enacting our brain in ways
not naturally intended.
HUMMINGBIRD
 Hummingbird people have no set preference on
what hours of the day they engage in the various
activities of life. They could wake up early one
morning to go on a hike with friends and then the
next night go to a concert to see their favorite
band, not getting home until 4:00 AM. People
who are in between Lark and Owl sleep patterns.
If you find yourself on a changing schedule and
no serious side effects like fatigue or sleep
deprivation, you may very well be a
hummingbird type person. Many successful
people are Hummingbirds due to their relentless
working around the clock, which is a forced
behavior that they've adopted for themselves.
 SHIFT MALADAPTATION SYNDROME
Workers on the 11 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. night shift
frequently experience disturbed sleep and a
cluster of symptoms referred to as shift
maladaptive syndrome.
 CIRCADIAN RHYTHM SLEEP WAKE
DISORDER
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorder (DSM-V) recognizes "circadian rhythm
sleep-wake disorders-shift work type" as
featuring both excessive sleepiness at work and
impaired sleep at home on the part of workers
who work outside the normal day shift (8 a.m. to
6 p.m.).
 SHIFT WORKERS
Shift workers obtain 1.5 hours less total sleep
than workers on other shifts, leading to frequent
health, personality, mood, and interpersonal
problems.
 JETLAGS
Conflicts between internal clocks and external
zeitgebers also result in the unsettling
experience of jetlag.
 CHRONIC JET LAG
After crossing time zones, people often
experience fatigue, irritability, and sleepiness.
Chronic jet lag might have more serious
consequences. Airline flight attendants who
crossed time zones at least once a week for four
or more years had reduced reaction times and
made 9 percent more mistakes on memory task
than local crews who did not cross time zones.
Suprachiasmatic Nucleus
The body's internal master clock is the
suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus,
the term suprachiasmatic comes from the
structure's location above (supra) the optic chiasm.
Input to the SCN comes from axons of special cells
known as intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion
cells (ipRGCs), which leave the optic nerve and
project to the SCN, forming the retinohypothalamic
pathway. The ipRGCs do not process information
about visual images. The ipRCGs contain a
photopigment known as melanopsin that is related to,
but different from, the other photopigment involved in
vision.
As light decreases in the
evening, accompanied by
reduced SCN activity, less
input from the sympathetic
neurons allows the pineal
gland to synthesize and
release more MELATONIN, a
neurochemical that modulates
brainstem structures related
to waking and sleep.
The SCN also manages other sleep-related changes,
including body temperature, hormone secretion,
production of urine, and blood pressure changes.
 Biochemistry of Circadian Rhythms
MELATONIN levels are very low during the day,
begin to rise in the hours before sleep, and usually
peak at about 4 a.m., a time when nearly everybody
finds it very difficult to stay awake.
We can evaluate waking and sleep using
electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings. EEG
provides a general measure of overall brain activity.
DESYNCHRONOUS brain activity arises from the
relatively independent action of many neurons and is
correlated with alertness.

 Totally blind people experience a melatonin SYNCHRONOUS activity occurs when neurons are
peak at a different time each day, often leading firing more in unison and characterize deep stages of
to sleep difficulties. sleep. Consider the contrast between a typical
 People with pineal gland tumors or other medical afternoon activity at the community swimming pool
conditions affecting melatonin report sleep (desynchronous) and the actions of a team of
problems. synchronized swimmers (synchronous)
 Melatonin supplements have been reported to
improve cases of a number of sleep disorder.
BRAIN WAVE
Levels of the hormone CORTISOL also fluctuate with
patterns of waking and sleeping, cortisol levels are
normally high early in the morning and lower at night.
Higher levels of cortisol are associated with higher
blood pressure, higher heart rate, and the
mobilization of the body's energy stores.

In addition to normal daily fluctuations, cortisol is also

released during times of stress. As a result, stress
induced high cortisol levels during the night are
correlated with poor sleep quality.

Major Depressive Disorder with

Seasonal Pattern

During the winter months at higher latitudes (areas

closer to the poles of the earth), the reduction in
daylight hours can interfere with the CIRCADIAN
RHYTHMS and thus lead to MAJOR DEPRESSIVE
DISORDER (MDD) with seasonal pattern, patients
with this condition were diagnosed with SEASONAL
AFFECTIVE DISORDER (SAD).

Several mechanisms appear to lead to seasonal

depression. Serotonin levels typically drop in the fall
and winter, and people vulnerable to seasonal
depression might experience a greater than normal
decrease.

LIGHT THERAPY

Light therapy—or phototherapy,

classically referred to as
heliotherapy—consists either of
exposure to daylight or some
equivalent form of light as a
treatment for seasonal affective
disorder, or exposure of the skin
to specific wavelengths of light
using polychromatic polarised
light to treat a skin condition.

Electroencephalogram Recordings of Waking Researchrs found that each night, over the course of
and Sleeping the first hour or so of sleep, the brain progresses
through a series of stages during which brain waves
slow down. This period of slow wave sleep is
accompanied by relaxation of the muscles and the
eyes. Heart rate, blood pressure, and body
temperature all fall. If awakened during this time,
most people recall only fragmented thoughts, not
active dreams.

NREM and REM
Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep
 A period of sleep characterized by
desynchronous brain activity, muscle paralysis,
eye movement, and story like dream behavior.
non-REM (NREM) sleep
 A period of sleep characterized by slow,
synchronous brain activity, reductions in heart
rate, and muscle relaxation.
Stage 1 NREM - sleep is disturbed occasionally by
a muscle jerk, in arm or leg, referred to as myoclonia.
Stage 2 NREM - reduction in heart rate and muscle
tension occur.
Stage 3 & 4 NREM - body temperature, breathing,
blood pressure, and heart rate are at very low levels
due to the activity of parasympathetic nervous
system.
Stage 5 REM - Most dreaming takes place in stage
five as a result of heightened, desynchronized brain
waves, almost similar to being awake. This stage of
sleep revitalizes the brain, supporting sharp and alert
daytime function.
BENEFITS OF SLEEP
Getting sufficient sleep is one the most important
driver of health, according to adults in the Philippines
as well as their counterparts across the region. While
Filipino adults would ideally like to get 8.2 hours of
sleep a night, in reality they only sleep 6.8 hours on
average.
1. Sleep can boost your Immune System.
2. 8 hours of sleep can help prevent weight gain.
3. Sleep can strengthen your heart.
4. Better Sleep = better mood.
5. Sleeping can increase productivity.
6. Lack of sleep can be dangerous. literally.
7. Helps in emotional regulation.
8. Sleep improves memory.
COMMON SLEEP DISORDER
INSOMIA
 The most common sleep-wake disorder is
insomnia, in which a person has difficulty
initiating or maintaining enough sleep to feel
rested. Individual needs for sleep vary widely. In
one case of "healthy insomnia;' an elderly
female participant slept only one hour per night
without any apparent detrimental effects (Meddis,
Pearson, & Langford, 1973).
 Onset insomnia occurs when a person is
unable to go to sleep. Sleep can be delayed by
multiple factors, including stress, anxiety, and
use of stimulant drugs.
 Maintenance insomnia occurs when sleep is
frequently interrupted or early waking occurs.
Frequent waking can result from stress,
substance use, or psychopathology.
Narcolepsy
 Probably the most dramatic of the sleep-wake
disorders is narcolepsy. Narcolepsy consists of
extreme levels of daytime sleepiness and "sleep
attacks;· in which aspects of REM sleep intrude
into wakefulness (Dahl. Holttum, & Trubnick,
1994).
 These sleep attacks usually last from 10 to 20
minutes, although they can continue for as long
as an hour. In a sleep attack, people with
narcolepsy enter REM sleep immediately and
awaken feeling refreshed. Sleepiness soon
returns, however, with attacks occurring
approximately every two to three hours.
Breathing-Related Sleep Disorders
 The breathing-related sleep disorders include
obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea and central
sleep apnea (APA, 20 13). In hypopnea, the
person experiences shallow breathing or a very
low rate of breathing, while in apnea, breathing
stops more completely.
 Obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea is typically
caused by obstruction of the airways, while
central sleep apnea is caused by deficits in the
brain functions that maintain breathing during
sleep.
Sleep Talking and Sleep Walking
 Sleep talking typically occurs in lighter stages of
sleep of both REM and NREM. Sleep talking is
most common in young people and diminishes
with age. The talking person is often responsive
to external stimuli.
 Sleepwalking is probably a deep NREM
phenomenon because episodes occur during the
first three hours of sleep, awakened individuals
show considerable disorientation, and the
paralysis accompanying REM makes walking
during this stage unlikely.
 INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Case of Alex
• For the first 3 years of his life, Alex was raised in
an orphanage in Romania where the number of
infants and children greatly exceeded the number
of caregivers.
• At the orphanage, Alex was given adequate
nutrition allowing him to develop well physically, but
the affection, stimulation, and comfort he received
were far from adequate.
• Alex, like other children living in Romanian
orphanages, spent most of his days alone in a crib
with almost no interaction with others. When he
cried, no one came to hold or soothe him. He was
never given the opportunity to bond with a
caregiver.
• When Alex was 3 years old, a family living in the
United States adopted him. His adoptive mother
described him as being friendly and engaging, but
also “self-abusive” and having a “dark side.”
• For instance, Alex would make himself go into a
seizure by slamming his head on the floor.
• He was also aggressive toward others, one time
attacking his younger sister, “beating her
senseless.”
• When asked if he wanted his adoptive mother to
love him, he said to her, “I never want you to love
me.”
• When his adoptive mother asked him if he loved
her, he replied, “No, I don’t love anybody.”
• After years of exhausting every treatment option
and still unable to feel loved by Alex, his adoptive
parents arranged for Alex to live with another family
(Jarriel & Sawyer, 1997).
Reactive attachment disorder is a psychiatric
illness characterized by serious problems in
emotional attachments to others beginning before
age 5.
Some symptoms children may show include
resisting comfort and affection by parents, being
superficially engaging and overly friendly with
strangers, having poor peer relationships, and
engaging in destructive behavior to themselves and
to others (American Psychiatric Association, 2000;
G.C. Keck & Kupecky, 1995).
The nature-nurture question asks how much
nature (genetic factors) and how much nurture
(environmental factors) contributes to a person’s
biological, emotional, cognitive, personal, and
social development.
Developmental Psychology - study of a In contrast, if a single ovum splits into two parts
person’s biological, emotional, cognitive, personal,
and social development across the lifespan, from
infancy through late adulthood
Prenatal Period: Three Stages
➢ The prenatal period extends from
conception to birth and lasts about 266
days (around nine months).
➢ It consists of three successive phases: the
germinal, embryonic, and fetal stages.
➢ During the prenatal period, a single cell will
divide and grow to form 200 billion cells.
1. GERMINAL STAGE
The germinal stage is the first
stage of prenatal development
and refers to the two-week
period following conception.
Ovulation is the release of an
ovum or egg cell from a
woman’s ovaries.
How does conception takes place?
If no sperm are present, there can be no
fertilization, and the ovum, together with the lining
of the uterus, is sloughed off in the process called
menstruation. If, however, sperm have been
deposited in the vagina (100–500 million sperm
may be deposited with each act of intercourse),
they make their way to the uterus and into the
fallopian tubes in search of an ovum to be fertilized.
Conception, or fertilization, occurs if one of the
millions of sperm penetrates the ovum’s outer
membrane. After the ovum has been penetrated by
a single sperm, its outer membrane changes and
becomes impenetrable to the millions of remaining
sperm.
Once the ovum has been fertilized, it is called a
zygote, which is a single cell that is smaller than
the dot in the letter i. The zygote begins a process
of repeated division and, after about a week,
consists of about 150 cells. After two weeks, it has
become a mass of cells and attaches itself to the
wall of the uterus. Once the zygote is implanted, or
attached to the wall of the uterus, the embryonic
stage begins.
* Uterus is the best environment to develop a baby
* Ectopic pregnancy- the baby is outside the uterus
If two separate ova are released and fertilized,
the result is fraternal twins/dizygotic twins (they
are no more genetically alike than any other two
children of the same parents)
after fertilization, the result is identical
twins/monozygotic twins, whose genes are
almost indistinguishable.
*Menstruation cycle - the average is to have
periods every 28 days (28-35)

* 46 chromosomes - individual
* Sex cells or Gametes - 26 chromosomes
* 22 autosomes - physical feature
* 23 chromosomes - XX (girl) or XY (boy)
* There are 22 autosomes & 1pair of chromosomes
2. Embryonic Stage
The embryonic stage is the
second stage of the prenatal
period and spans the 2–8 weeks
that follow conception; during
this stage, cells divide and begin
to differentiate into bone, muscle,
and body organs.
At about 21 days after conception, the beginnings
of the spinal cord and eyes appear; at about 24
days, cells differentiate to form what will become
part of the heart; at about 28 days, tiny buds
appear that will develop into arms and legs; and at
about 42 days, features of the face take shape.
* This is the time when most miscarriages occur
and when most major birth defects occur.
3. Fetal Stage
The fetal stage, which is the
third stage in prenatal
development, begins two
months after conception and
lasts until birth.
At the end of the fetal stage, usually 38–42 weeks
after conception (or roughly nine months), birth
occurs and the fetus becomes a newborn.
* The fetus develops vital organs, such as lungs,
and physical characteristics that are distinctively
human.
Prenatal Influences
During stage 2, the embryonic stage, and stage 3,
the fetal stage, the developing organism is
especially vulnerable to toxic agents and
chemicals.
The placenta is an organ that connects the blood
supply of the mother to that of the fetus. The
placenta acts like a filter, allowing oxygen and
nutrients to pass through while keeping out some
toxic or harmful substances.
A teratogen (teh-RAT-oh-gen) is any agent that
can harm a developing fetus (causing deformities
or brain damage). It might be a disease (such as
genital herpes), a drug (such as alcohol), or
another environmental agent (such as chemicals).
Birth defects and amniocentesis
Amniocentesis, which is a medical test done
between weeks 14 and 20 of pregnancy, involves
inserting a long needle through the mother’s
abdominal muscles into the amniotic fluid
surrounding the fetus. By withdrawing and
analyzing fetal cells in the fluid, doctors can
identify a number of genetic problems
Down syndrome results from an extra 21st
chromosome and causes abnormal physical
traits (a fold of skin at the corner of each eye, a
wide tongue, heart defects) and abnormal brain
development, resulting in degrees of mental
retardation. Most common type of chromosomal
abnormality
Newborn Reflexes
Moro reflex (startle reflex) - when a baby is startled
by a loud sound or movement. In response to the
sound, the baby throws back his or her head,
extends out his or her arms and legs, cries, then
pulls the arms and legs back in. Lasts until the baby
is about 2 months old.
Rooting reflex - when the corner of the baby's
mouth is stroked or touched. The baby will turn his
or her head and open his or her mouth to follow
and root in the direction of the stroking. Lasts about
4 months.
Grasp reflex - Stroking the palm of a baby's hand
causes the baby to close his or her fingers in a
grasp. Lasts until the baby is about 5 to 6 months
old.
Suck reflex - When the roof of the baby's mouth is
touched, the baby will start to suck. Doesn't start
until about the 32nd week of pregnancy and is not
fully developed until about 36 weeks.
Sensory Development
❑ Faces. Newborns show a preference for their
mother’s face over strangers’ faces in the first few
days after birth. Apparently newborns first learn to
recognize a person’s eyes, a process that occurs
through positive stimulation, such as caressing and
suckling (E.M. Blass & Camp, 2001).
❑ Hearing. One-month-old infants have very keen
hearing and can discriminate small sound
variations, such as the difference between bah
and pah. By 6 months, infants have developed the
ability to make all the sounds that are necessary
to learn the language in which they are raised
(Pascalis et al., 2002).
❑ Touch. Newborns also have a well developed
sense of touch and will turn their head when lightly
touched on the cheek. Touch will also elicit a
number of reflexes, such as grasping and sucking.
❑ Smell and taste. Researchers found that
1-day-old infants could discriminate between a
citrus odor and a floral odor (Sullivan et al., 1991).
Newborns have an inborn preference for both
sweet and salt and an inborn dislike of bitter-tasting
things.
❑ Depth perception. By the age of 6 months,
infants have developed depth perception, which
was tested by observing whether they would crawl
off a visual “cliff” (E.J. Gibson & Walk, 1960).
A visual cliff is a glass tabletop with a
checkerboard pattern over part of its surface; the
remaining surface consists of clear glass with a
checker- board pattern several feet below, creating
the illusion of a clifflike drop to the floor.
Motor Development
Motor development refers to the stages of
motor skills that all infants pass through as they
acquire the muscular control necessary for making
coordinated movements.
• The proximodistal principle states that parts
closer to the center of the infant’s body (proximo
in Latin means “near”) develop before parts farther
away (distal in Latin means “far”).
• The cephalocaudal principle states that parts of
the body closer to the head (cephalo in Greek
means “head”) develop before parts closer to the
feet (caudal in Greek means “tail”).
• Maturation refers to developmental changes
that are genetically or biologically programmed
rather than acquired through learning or life
experiences.
• Developmental norms refer to the average ages
at which children perform various kinds of skills or
exhibit abilities or behaviors
* Sitting up alone - average 5.5 months (range
4.5-8.0 months)
* Crawling - average 10 months (7.0-12.0 months)
* Walking alone - average 12.1 months (11.5-14.5
months)
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT:
Jean Piaget’s theory
Cognitive development refers to how a person
perceives, thinks, and gains an understanding
of his or her world through the interaction and
influence of genetic and learned factors.
Jean Piaget, who was both a biologist and a
psychologist. From the 1920s to his death in 1980,
Piaget (1929) studied how children solved
problems in their natural settings, such as cribs,
sandboxes, and playgrounds.
• A schema is an organized way of interacting with
objects. Example: sucking & grasping schema
• Assimilation means applying an old schema to
new objects or problems. The process by which a
child uses old methods or experiences to deal with
new situations.
• Accommodation means modifying an old
schema to fit a new object or problem. The process
by which a child changes old methods to deal with
or adjust to new situations. Adjustment.
• Equilibration means establishment of harmony or
balance between the assimilation and
accommodation.
Piaget’s cognitive stages refer to four different
stages— sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete
operations, and formal operations—each of which
is more advanced than the preceding stage
because it involves new reasoning and thinking
abilities.
STAGE 1: SENSORIMOTOR
• The sensorimotor stage (from
birth to about age 2) is the first of
Piaget’s cognitive stages.
• During this stage, infants interact
with and learn about their
environments by relating their
sensory experiences (such as
hearing and seeing) to their motor
actions (mouthing and grasping).
Behavior is mostly simple motor responses to
sensory stimuli—for example, the grasp reflex and
the sucking reflex
The Infant’s Concept of Object Permanence
Piaget argued that infants in the first few months of
life lack the concept of object permanence, the
idea that objects continue to exist even when we do
not see or hear them. That is, for an infant, “Out of
sight, out of existence.”
Object permanence refers to the understanding
that objects or events continue to exist even if
they can no longer be heard, touched, or seen.
STAGE 2: PREOPERATIONAL
• The preoperational stage (from
about 2 to 7 years old) is the second
of Piaget’s cognitive stages.
• During this stage, children learn to
use symbols, such as words or
mental images, to solve simple
problems and to think or talk about
things that are not present.

Piaget refers to this period as the
preoperational stage because the child lacks
operations, which are reversible mental
processes. According to Piaget, three typical
aspects of preoperational thought are
egocentrism, difficulty distinguishing appearance
from reality, and lack of the concept of
conservation.
Conservation refers to the fact that even though
the shape of some object or substance is
changed, the total amount remains the same.
Example: cutting pizza
• Egocentric (ee-goh-SENtrick) thinking refers to
seeing and thinking of the world only from your
own viewpoint and having difficulty appreciating
someone else’s viewpoint.
STAGE 3: CONCRETE OPERATIONS
• The concrete operations stage
(from about 7 to 11 years) is the third
of Piaget’s cognitive stages.
• During this stage, children can
perform a number of logical mental
operations on concrete objects (ones
that are physically present).
• Conservation and classification is already
mastered/advanced.
According to Piaget, during the stage of concrete
operations, children perform mental operations on
concrete objects but still have trouble with abstract
or hypothetical ideas.
STAGE 4: FORMAL OPERATIONS
• The formal operations stage (from about 12
years old through adulthood) is Piaget’s fourth
cognitive stage.
• During this stage, adolescents and adults develop
the ability to think about and solve abstract
problems in a logical manner.
• Adolescents develop logical, deductive reasoning
and systematic planning.
• Formal operations stage welcomes the return of
egocentric thinking, which refers to the tendency
of adolescents to believe that others are always
watching and evaluating them, and the belief that
everyone thinks and cares about the same things
they do.
• Imaginary audience refers to the belief
adolescents have that everyone is watching all of
their actions. (“I think everyone is watching me.”)
• Personal fable refers to an adolescent’s belief
that he or she is invulnerable, unique, and special.
(“no one could understand me.”)
LEV VYGOTSKY
• According to Lev Vygotsky, children must learn
new abilities from adults or older children, but
only within their zone of proximal development.
• Zone of proximal development, the distance
between what a child can do alone and what is
possible with help.
PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Erik Erikson believed…..
● Development is social in nature and a result
of a desire to affiliate with other people.
● A person encounters 8 developmental
stages in life.
● Each stage presents individuals with a crisis
that must be faced.
● “The more successfully an individual
resolves the crisis, the healthier
development will be” (Santrock, 2008, p.
18).
Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages
The psychosocial stages are eight developmental
periods during which an individual’s primary goal is
to satisfy desires associated with social needs. The
eight periods are associated, respectively, with
issues of trust, autonomy, initiative, industry,
identity, intimacy, generativity, and ego integrity
Psychosocial Stages
1. Trust vs. Mistrust
This stage begins at birth continues to
approximately 18 months of age. During this
stage, the infant is uncertain about the world in
which they live, and looks towards their primary
caregiver for stability and consistency of care.
Age:Infancy: First year of life
Virtue: Hope
Question: Is the world a good and pleasant place
to live?
Characteristics: Infants need food, comfort, and
warmth to develop a sense of trust. If these needs
are not meet, a sense of mistrust will follow.
2. Autonomy vs. shame and doubt
This stage occurs between the ages of 18 months
to approximately 3 years. According to Erikson,
children at this stage are focused on developing a
sense of personal control over physical skills and
a sense of independence.
Age: Infancy: 1 to 3 years
Virtue: Will
Question: Can I do things by myself or must I
always rely on others?
Characteristics: Caregivers provide a strong
sense of security and encourage children to
accomplish self-sufficient behaviors such as
crawling, walking, changing clothes, and bathing. “If
restrained too much or punished too harshly, they
are likely to develop shame and doubt.”
3. Initiative vs. Guilt
During the initiative versus guilt stage, children
assert themselves more frequently through
directing play and other social interaction.
Age: Preschool: 3 to 5 years
Virtue: Purpose
Question: Am I good or bad?
Characteristics: Children are faced with new
challenges and learning to master the world around
them. They begin to act with purpose and also
experience guilt when a particular action does not
occur as planned. It is important not to belittle or
make a child feel anxious about their attempts.
4. Industry vs. Inferiority
Erikson's fourth psychosocial crisis, involving
industry (competence) vs. Inferiority occurs during
childhood between the ages of five and twelve.
Age: Elementary: 6 years to puberty
Virtue: Competence
Question: Am I successful or worthless?
Characteristics: Children begin mastering
knowledge and intellectual skills. This stage is
imperative to foster self-confidence. Children
should be encouraged to create and do things and
then receive praise. If children are made to feel
incompetent, they will develop feelings of inferiority
and may be unwilling to try new things.
5. Identity vs. Role Confusion
It occurs during adolescence, from about 12-18
years. During this stage, adolescents search for a
sense of self and personal identity, through an
intense exploration of personal values, beliefs, and
goals.
Age: Adolescence: 10 to 20 years
Virtue: Fidelity
Question: Who am I and what am I all about?
Characteristics: Adolescents try a variety of roles
to identify where they fit in. They must decide
who they are and decipher who society expects
them to be. They start using their
experiences to influence their future.
6. Intimacy vs. Isolation
This stage takes place during young adulthood
between the ages of approximately 18 to 40 yrs.
During this stage, the major conflict centers on
forming intimate, loving relationships with other
people.
Age: Early adulthood: 20s and 30s
Virtue: Love
Question: Am I loved or wanted by someone?
Characteristics: Upon establishing identity, people
are able to form long term commitments. Without
healthy friendships and intimate relationships,
isolation occurs.
7. Generativity vs. Stagnation
This stage takes place during middle adulthood
(ages 40 to 65 yrs).
Age: Middle adulthood: 40s and 50s
Virtue: Care
Question: Will I produce something of real value?
Characteristics “Generativity” is a concern for
helping the younger generation lead successful
lives. In contrast, feeling like they’ve done nothing
to help leads to stagnation.
8. Ego Integrity vs. Despair
This stage begins at approximately age 65 and
ends at death. It is during this time that we
contemplate our accomplishments and can develop
integrity if we see ourselves as leading a successful
life.
Age: Late adulthood: 60s onward
Virtue: Wisdom
Question: Was my life well spent?
Characteristics: A person reflects on the past. If a
person feels their life was well spent, they develop
a sense of integrity. If they look back on a life of
disappointments and missed goals, they develop a
sense of despair or gloom.
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Social development refers to how a person
develops a sense of self or a self-identity,
develops relationships with others, and develops
the kinds of social skills important in personal
interactions
SIGMUND FREUD’S PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES
The psychosexual stages are five different
developmental periods—oral, anal, phallic,
latency, and genital stages— during which the
individual seeks pleasure from different areas of
the body that are associated with sexual feelings.
Freud emphasized that a child’s first five years
were most important to social and personality
development.
Fixation is a persistent focus on an earlier
psychosexual stage. Until this conflict is resolved,
the individual will remain "stuck" in this stage
Psychosexual Stages
1. Oral Stage Period: Early infancy— first 18
months of life.
Potential conflict: The oral stage lasts for the first
18 months of life and is a time when the infant’s
pleasure seeking is centered on the mouth.
2. Anal Stage Period: Early infancy— 1½ to 3
years.
Potential conflict: The anal stage lasts from the
age of about 1½ to 3 and is a time when the infant’s
pleasure seeking is centered on the anus and its
functions of elimination
3. Phallic Stage Period: Early childhood— 3 to 6
years.
Potential conflict: The phallic (FAL-ick) stage lasts
from about age 3 to 6 and is a time when the
infant’s pleasure seeking is centered on the
genitals.
4. Latency Stage Period: Middle and late
childhood—from 6 to puberty. The latency stage,
which lasts from about age 6 to puberty, is a time
when the child represses sexual thoughts and
engages in nonsexual activities, such as
developing social and intellectual skills.
5. Genital Stage Period: Puberty through
adulthood. The genital stage lasts from puberty
through adulthood and is a time when the individual
has renewed sexual desires that he or she seeks to
fulfill through relationships with members of the
opposite sex.
EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Emotional development refers to the influence
and interaction of genetic factors, brain changes,
cognitive factors, coping abilities, and cultural
factors in the development of emotional behaviors,
expressions, thoughts, and feelings (Goldsmith,
2003).
Temperament refers to relatively stable and
long-lasting individual differences in mood and
emotional behavior, which emerge early in
childhood because these differences are largely
influenced by genetic factors.
Attachment is a close, fundamental emotional
bond that develops between the infant and his or
her parents or caregiver.
How Does Attachment Occur?
According to attachment theory, babies form an
attachment to their parents through a gradual
process that begins shortly after birth and continues
through early childhood. As newborns, infants have
a powerful social signal, crying, which elicits care
and sympathy. As 4- to 6-week-old infants, they will
begin social smiling (smiling at others), which will
elicit joy and pleasure in their parents. At about 6
months, infants begin to give their parents a happy
greeting (smiling, holding out their arms) when they
reappear after a short absence.
Separation anxiety is an infant’s distress— as
indicated by loud protests, crying, and agitation—
whenever the infant’s parents temporarily leave.
Kind of Attachments
• Secure attachment is characteristic of infants
who use their parent or caregiver as a safe home
base from which they can wander off and explore
their environments.
• Insecure attachment is characteristic of infants
who avoid or show ambivalence or resistance
toward their parent or caregiver.
_________________________________________
LEARNING
❖ Learning is a relatively enduring or permanent
change in behavior or knowledge that results
from previous experience with certain stimuli and
responses.
❖ The term behavior includes any observable
response (fainting, salivating, vomiting).
Three Kinds of Learning
(Classical Conditioning, Operant Conditioning,
Cognitive Learning)
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
► Early 1900s, Ivan P. Pavlov, a Russian
physiologist who had won a Nobel Prize in
physiology for his research on digestion, stumbled
upon an observation that offered a simple
explanation for learning
► “teasing” a dog with the sight of food produced
salivation that was as predictable and automatic -
conditioned reflex
► Pavlov’s Dogs – Famous Experiment
► He assumed that animals are born with
automatic connections—called unconditioned
reflexes—between a stimulus such as food and a
response such as secreting digestive juices.
► The process by which an organism learns a
new association between two stimuli—a neutral
stimulus and one that already evokes a reflexive
response— is known as classical conditioning, or
Pavlovian conditioning.
► Stimulus and Response
● Neutral stimulus: a stimulus that do not
cause a particular response
● Unconditioned stimulus: a stimulus that
causes a response that is automatic, not
learned
● Unconditioned response: caused by an
unconditioned stimulus
● Conditioned response: a learned
response to a neutral stimulus
● Conditioned stimulus: a previously neutral
stimulus that causes a conditioned
response
Phenomena of Classical Conditioning
► The process that establishes or strengthens a
conditioned response is known as acquisition
● EXTINCTION. To extinguish a classically
conditioned response, repeatedly present
the conditioned stimulus (CS) without
the unconditioned stimulus (UCS).
● SPONTANEOUS RECOVERY is
temporary return of an extinguished
response after a delay
● STIMULUS GENERALIZATION is the
extension of a conditioned response
from the training stimulus to similar stimuli.
● DISCRIMINATION - to respond differently
to stimuli that predict different outcomes
OPERANT CONDITIONING
Psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike was one of
the pioneers in the research of Operant
Conditioning
A learning curve is a graph of the changes in
behavior that occur over the course of learning.
The law of effect states that behaviors followed by
positive consequences are strengthened, while
behaviors followed by negative consequences are
weakened
Reinforcement is the process of increasing the
future probability of the most recent response.
Operant conditioning (because the subject
operates on the environment to produce an
outcome) or instrumental conditioning (because
the subject’s behavior is instrumental in producing
the outcome).
Operant or instrumental conditioning is the
process of changing behavior by providing a
reinforcer after a response.
Reinforcement and Punishment
● Primary reinforcers (or unconditioned
reinforcers) that are reinforcing because of
their own properties, and
● Secondary reinforcers (or conditioned
reinforcers) that became reinforcing by
association with something else
Punishment
Punishment decreases the probability of a
response.
► Punishment is most effective when it is quick
and predictable
► Punishments are not always effective
► punishment produces no long-term effects.
Negative punishment vs. Positive punishment
Reinforcement increases the probability of a
behavior. Reinforcement can be either positive
reinforcement—presenting something such as
food, or negative reinforcement— avoiding
something such as pain
● Extinction occurs if responses stop
producing reinforcements
a ● Stimulus generalization the more similar a
new stimulus is to the original reinforced
stimulus, the more likely is the same
response
● If reinforcement occurs for responding to
one stimulus and not another, the result is
discrimination between them, yielding a
response to one stimulus and not the other.
Shaping is a technique for training subjects to
perform acts by reinforcing them for successive
approximations to the desired behavior.
Schedules of Reinforcement
The simplest procedure in operant conditioning is to
provide reinforcement for every correct
response, a procedure known as continuous
reinforcement.
Reinforcement for some responses and not for
others is known as intermittent reinforcement or
partial reinforcement
● Continuous - Reinforcement for every
response of the correct type
● Fixed ratio - Reinforcement following
completion of a specific number of
responses
● Variable ratio - reinforcement for the first
response that follows an unpredictable
delay (varying around a mean value) since
the previous reinforcement,.
SOCIAL-COGNITIVE LEARNING
Cognitive learning is a kind of learning that involves
mental processes, such as attention and
memory; may be learned through observation or
imitation; and may not involve any external
rewards or require the person to perform any
observable behaviors.
Social-learning approach (Bandura, 1977, 1986),
we learn about many behaviors by observing the
behaviors of others. vicarious reinforcement or
vicarious punishment—by substituting someone
else’s experience for your own
► Direct Modelling - exact imitation
► Indirect Modelling - imitation in your own way,
not exactly the same.
► Inhibitory Modelling Effect - you observe
something bad so you won’t continue
► Disinhibitory Modelling Effect - you observe
bad things but are not harmed so you still continue
doing it.
EDWARD TOLMAN
In the 1930s, about the same time that Skinner
was emphasizing observable behaviors, Edward
Tolman was exploring hidden mental processes.
A cognitive map is a mental
representation in the brain of
the layout of an environment and
its features
Bobo Doll Experiment
Procedure:
In one part of the room, preschool children were
involved in their own art projects. In another part of
the room, an adult got up and, for the next 10
minutes, kicked, hit, and yelled (“Hit him! Kick
him!”) at a large, inflated Bobo doll. Some children
watched the model’s aggressive behaviors, while
other children did not.
Results
Children who had observed the
model’s aggressive attacks on the
Bobo doll also kicked, hit, and yelled
(“Hit him! Kick him!”) at the doll.
Conclusion
Bandura’s point is that children learned to perform
specific aggressive behaviors not by practicing or
being reinforced but simply by watching a live
model perform behaviors. Observational learning
is called modeling because it involves watching a
model and imitating the behavior. Another finding of
the Bobo doll study is that a child may learn by
observing but then not perform the behavior.
This is called the learning–performance
distinction.
The learning–performance distinction means
learning may occur but may not always be
measured by, or immediately evident in,
performance.
________________________________________
MEMORY
• Memory – is the retention of information
• Hermann Ebbinghaus
- a German philosopher and psychologist who
pioneered numerous experimental studies of
memory
- He wrote out 2,300 syllables, assembled them
randomly into lists (GAQ,JEK) and then set out to
study memory
METHODS OF TESTING MEMORY
• Free Recall - all that you can recall, free writing.
- To recall something is to produce a response, as
you do on essay tests or short-answer tests.
- Free recall almost always understates the actual
amount you know.
• Cued recall - specific pairing (category) Easier to
remember if you have cue, ex. Pinoy Henyo
- receive significant hints about the material.
- recall through picture
• Recognition - used in multiple choices exams
- receive significant hints about the material.
• Savings or Relearning Method - how many
times you encountered, browsing
- detects weak memories by comparing the speed
of original learning to the speed of relearning.
Application: Suspect Lineups as Recognition
Memory and Children as Eyewitnesses
 The Information Processing View of Memory
• information-processing model compares
human memory to that of a computer:
Information that enters the system is processed,
coded, and store
Models of Memory Formation
The Atkinson-Shiffrin Model (1968)
1. Stimuli are recorded by our senses and held
briefly in sensory memory.
2. Some of this information is processed into
short-term memory and encoded through
rehearsal
3. Information then moves into long term
memory where it can be retrieved later.
Modifying the Model:
▪ More goes on in short-term memory besides
rehearsal; this is now called working memory.
▪ Some information seems to go straight from
sensory experience into longterm memory; this is
automatic processing.
MEMORY is the ability to retain information over
time through three processes: encoding (forming),
storing, and retrieving
• Memories are not copies but representations
of the world that vary in accuracy and are subject to
error and bias.
- Our memory is not that accurate and exactly as it
is.
1. Encoding. Encoding refers to making mental
representations of information so that it can be
placed into our memories.
- auditory (sounds) and visual (pictorial) encoding
- it is like typing on a computer
2. Storing. Storing is the process of placing
encoded information into relatively permanent
mental storage for later recall.
- it is like saving on a computer
3. Retrieving. Retrieving is the process of getting
or recalling information that has been placed into
short-term or long-term storage.
- accessing memory again
There are 3 types of memory stores that differ in
function, capacity and duration.
1. Sensory memory
2. Working or short-term memory
3. Long-term memory
❖ SENSORY MEMORY
Function: process for basic physical
characteristics
- what you are seeing, smelling, hearing, etc.
whatever you feel comes in sensory
memory
- receive info in sensory organs
Capacity: large capacity
- Can hold many items at once
- all it accept, filter because you attend to it
- accept it all at once
Duration: very brief retention of images
- 3 sec for visual info
- 2 sec for auditory info
- the moment you move out in your house, all
you met comes into your sensory memory
but you do not remember it all because you
did not put attention to it
- easier to remember if it catch your attention,
if not it easily disappear
Sensory memory refers to the immediate, very
brief recording of sensory information before it
is processed into short-term, working, or long-term
memory.
▪ We very briefly capture a sensory memory,
analogous to an echo or an image, of all the
sensations we take in.
▪ How brief? Sensory memory consists of about a 3
to 4 second echo, or a 1/20th of a second image.
▪ Evidence of auditory sensory memory, called
“echoic” memory, can occur after someone says,
“what did I just say?” Even if you weren’t paying
attention, you can retrieve about the last eight
words from echoic memory.
Sensory Memory is Divided into 2 Types
1. Iconic Memory (Visual Sensory memory) -
brief memory of an image or icon. (visual
information). Example: blinking
2. Echoic Memory (Auditory Sensory memory) -
bried memory of a sound or echo.
- Auditory sensory memories may last longer than
visual
- Attention is needed to transfer information to
working memory
❖ SHORT TERM OR WORKING MEMORY
Function: Conscious processing of information
(working). Where information is actively worked on.
Capacity: limited
- Holds [magic no.] 7+/-2 items (average)
when it comes to memory (according to
George Miller)
- 7 digits, 7 words
- Sharp-minded can hold 9 digits, while
weak-minded can hold only 5 digits
Duration: brief storage (about 30 secs)
some reader wants to hear it, rehearse auditory
- mas bilis matandaan kapag naririnig
The short-term memory is “working” in many ways.
- It holds information not just to rehearse it, but to
process it (such as hearing a word problem in math
and doing it in your head).
Working Memory, which uses rehearsal, focus,
analysis, linking, and other processing, has greater
capacity than short-term memory. The capacity of
working memory varies; some people have better
concentration.
* Consolidation—converting a short-term memory
into a long-term memory—does occur, but not all
short-term memories become long-term memories,
even after long rehearsal.
* Working memory- is a system for working with
current information. Working memory is almost
synonymous with your current sphere of attention.
* It also includes the executive functioning that
governs shifts of attention. The hallmark of good
working memory is the ability to shift attention as
needed among different tasks.
● Auditory rehearsal - repeating a password
to memorize
*Articulatory Suppression
- suppress of auditory rehearse.
- repeatedly say an irrelevant sound out loud
while being presented with a list of words to
recall shortly after.
- read/memory while saying 5 5 5 in your
mind
● Executive Functions - choosing what to,
attend to, respond to. Plotting your memory
● Visuospatial “sketchpad” - rearranging
room furniture in your mind.
- Like a mini-projector in mind when recalling
or visualizing something.
- Eyes turn up- visualizing information/recall
Short-term memory integrates information from
long-term memory with new information coming in
from sensory memory.
DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES
➤ Maintenance Rehearsal/ Simple Repetition
- Mental or verbal repetition of information that
allows information to remain in working memory
longer than the usual 30 seconds.
*Selective Attention - Ability to select certain
information. Focusing on one information.
➤ Chunking
- Grouping small bits of information into larger units
of information
- expands working memory load
- easily remember memories if you divide it to a
more smaller group (categorizing)
❖ LONG-TERM MEMORY
Function: once information passes from sensory to
working memory, it can be encoded into long-term
memory.
Capacity: unlimited capacity
Duration: thought by some may be permanent
- if stored properly and no problem in brain, you can
still retrieve
EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT MEMORIES
• Explicit/"declarative" memories. These are
facts and experiences that we can consciously
know and recall.
Our minds acquire this information through
effortful processing. Explicit memories are formed
through studying, rehearsing, thinking, processing,
and then storing information in long-term
relationships.
- You can declare it
• Implicit memories, the ones we are fully aware
of and thus don’t “declare”/talk about it.
These memories are typically formed through
automatic processing. Implicit memories are
formed without our awareness that we are building
a memory.
*Priming Effect - multiple exposure to a certain
thing that subconsciously influences his response
to other events. It is an automatic process
Example: The movie of Will Smith “Focus”
AUTOMATIC VS. EFFORTFUL ENCODING
Automatic Processing
- Unconscious encoding of information
Effortful Processing
- Requires attention and conscious effort.
- Chunking- effortful processing strategy.
Regrouping words to easily remember
- A way to encode information into memory to
keep it from decaying and make it easier to
retrieve.
- Also known as studying
Examples: Chunking, Mnemonics,
Hierarchies/categories, rehearsal, deep processing,
semantic processing, making information
personally meaningful
 Effortful Processing Strategies
A mnemonic is a memory “trick” that connects
information to existing memory strengths such
as imagery or structure. Also known as acrostic.
A peg word system refers to the technique of
visually associating new words with an existing
list that is already memorized along with numbers.
For example, “due” can be pictured written on a
door, and door = 4.
FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE ENCODING
• primacy effect - is the tendency to remember
well the first items.
- refers to better recall, or improvement in retention,
of information presented at the beginning of a
task.
• recency effect - remember the final items
- refers to better recall, or improvement in retention,
of information at the end of a task.
• primacy-recency effect - refers to better recall of
information presented at the beginning and end of a
task.
• depth-of-processing principle (Craik &
Lovkhart, 1972), how easily you retrieve a memory
depends on the number and types of associations
you form.
• encoding specificity principle (Tulving &
Thomson, 1973), the associations you form at the
time of learning will be the most effective retrieval
cues later.
REHEARSAL AND DISTRIBUTED PRACTICE
Massed Practice refers to cramming information
all at once. It is not time-effective.
The spacing effect was first noted by Hermann
Ebbinghaus in the late 1800s. You will develop
better retention and recall, especially in the long
run, if you will use the same amount of study time
spread out over many shorter sessions.
Making Information Personally Meaningful
- We can memorize a set of instructions more
easily if we figure out
- Memorizing meaningful material takes one tenth
the effort of memorizing nonsense syllables.
- Actors memorize lines (and students memorize
poems) more easily by deciding on the feelings and
meanings behind the words, so one line flows
naturally to the next.
- The self-reference effect, relating material to
ourselves, aids in encoding and retention.
Memory Storage: Capacity and Location
▪ The brain is NOT like a hard drive. Memories are
NOT in isolated files, but are in overlapping neural
networks.
▪ The brain’s long-term memory storage does not
get full; it gets more elaborately rewired and
interconnected.
▪ Parts of each memory can be distributed
throughout the brain.
→ Memory of a particular ‘kitchen table’
may be a linkage among networks for
‘kitchen,’ ‘meal,’ ‘wooden,’ ‘home,’ ‘legs,’
and ‘sit.’
Retrieval Cues
▪ Retrieval challenge: memory is not stored as a file
that can be retrieved by searching alphabetically.
▪ Instead, it is stored as a web of associations:
▪ conceptual
▪ contextual
▪ emotional
Priming: Retrieval is Affected by Activating our
Associations
▪ Priming triggers a thread of associations that bring
us to a concept, just as a spider feels movement in
a web and follows it to find the bug.
▪ Our minds work by having one idea trigger
another; this maintains a flow of thought. Priming
Example: Define the word “bark.” Now what is the
definition of “bark”?
Context-Dependent Memory
▪ Part of the web of associations of a memory is the
context. What else was going on at the time we
formed the memory?
▪ We retrieve a memory more easily when in the
same context as when we formed the memory.
→ Did you forget a psychology concept?
Just sitting down and opening your book
might bring the memory back.
_________________________________________
EMOTION, STRESS, AND HEALTH
Defining the term emotion is difficult. Psychologists
usually define it in terms of a combination of
cognitions, physiology, feelings, and actions
(Keltner & Shiota, 2003; Plutchik, 1982). For
example, you might have the cognition “he was
unfair to me,” physiological changes that include
increased heart rate, a feeling you call anger, and
behaviors such as a clenched fist.
● Measuring emotions. Emotions are inferred, not
observed directly. Researchers rely on self-reports,
observations of behavior, and measurements of
physiological changes. (page 379)
● Emotions and autonomic arousal. Many
emotional states are associated with increased
arousal of the sympathetic nervous system, which
readies the body for emergency action. (page 380)
● James-Lange theory. According to the
James-Lange theory of emotions, the feeling
aspect of an emotion is the perception of a change
in the body’s physiological state. (page 381)
● Evidence supporting the James-Lange theory.
People who lose control of their autonomic
responses generally report weakened emotional
feelings. Molding someone’s posture and breathing
pattern into the pattern typical for some emotion
facilitates that emotion. (page 381)
● Schachter and Singer’s theory. According to
Schachter and Singer’s theory, autonomic arousal
determines the intensity of an emotion but does not
determine which emotion occurs. We identify an
emotion on the basis of how we perceive the
situation. (page 382)
● Do we have basic emotions? Certain
psychologists propose that we have a few basic
emotions. The main evidence is that people
throughout the world can recognize certain
emotional expressions. However, we seldom
recognize an emotion from facial expression alone;
we also consider posture, context, tone of voice,
and other information. Using such information, we
can identify a wider range of emotional states than
just a few. The fact that we recognize expressions
of disgust and surprise is not decisive for calling
them emotions, because we also recognize
expressions of sleepiness and confusion, which
most people do not regard as emotions. (page 384)
● Alternative views. Instead of speaking of a list of
basic emotions, an alternative is to consider
emotions as varying along continuous dimensions.
(page 388)
● Usefulness of emotions. Emotions call our
attention to important information and adjust our
priorities to our situation in life. (page 389)
● Emotions and moral decisions. When we face
a moral decision, we often react emotionally. Those
quick emotional feelings may be an evolved
mechanism to steer our behavior toward what is
usually the right choice. (page 389)
● Effects of brain damage. People with brain
damage that impairs their emotions have trouble
making good decisions, especially in situations
related to moral treatment of others. (page 390)
● Emotional intelligence. People need skills to
judge other people’s emotions and the probable
emotional outcomes of their own actions. The
ability to handle such issues may constitute
“emotional intelligence.” However, it is not clear that
current measurements of emotional intelligence
predict much that we could not already predict
based on academic intelligence and certain aspects
of personality. (page 390)
● Fear and anxiety. Anxiety can be measured
objectively by variations in the startle reflex after a
loud noise. (page 394)
● Anxiety and the amygdala. Variations in fear
and anxiety relate to activity of the amygdala.
People with damage to the amygdala are capable
of feeling fear, but they are impaired in processing
most types of information that might lead to fear.
(page 394)
● Polygraph. The polygraph measures the activity
of the sympathetic nervous system. The polygraph
is sometimes used as a “lie detector.” However,
because the responses of honest people overlap
those of liars, the polygraph makes many mistakes.
(page 395)
● Anger. Anger arises when we perceive that
someone has done something intentionally that
blocks our intended actions. (page 396)
● Positive psychology. Positive psychology is the
study of features that enrich life. (page 397)
● Happiness and joy. Happiness level is usually
fairly stable over time. However, it decreases for
years, sometimes permanently, after the death of a
close loved one, divorce, loss of a job, or a
disability. (page 398)
● Increasing happiness. Happiness increases
from changes in activities, such as listing things to
feel grateful about and helping other people. (page
399)
● Happiness and age. On average, people report
increased happiness and life satisfaction as they
grow older. In the United States, people born in
recent decades tend to report more happiness than
people born in previous decades. (page 399)
● Sadness. Sadness is a reaction to a loss. Crying
is a way of communicating sadness or distress to
others. (page 400)
● Other emotions. It is often helpful to distinguish
several types of positive emotion such as pride,
awe, and amusement. Embarrassment, shame,
guilt, and pride depend on how we believe others
will react to our actions. (page 400)
● Selye’s concept of stress. According to Hans
Selye, stress is “the nonspecific response of the
body to any demand made upon it.” Any event,
pleasant or unpleasant, that brings about change in
a person’s life produces some measure of stress.
However, this definition omits lifelong problems,
such as coping with racism. By an alternative
definition, stress is an event that someone
interprets as threatening. (page 402)
● Difficulties of measuring stress. Stress
checklists are problematic because many items are
ambiguous. They treat all types of stress as
interchangeable, although later research indicates
that the stress from feeling rejected is especially
hurtful. Furthermore, the stressfulness of an event
depends on the person’s interpretation of the event
and ability to cope with it. (page 403)
● Indirect effects on health. Stress affects health
indirectly because people exposed to stressful
events often change their eating, sleeping, and
drinking habits. (page 404)
● Direct effects on health. Stress causes
increased secretion of the hormone cortisol. Brief,
moderate elevations of cortisol enhance memory
and immune system responses. However,
prolonged cortisol damages health by impairing the
hippocampus and by exhausting the immune
system. (page 404)
● Heart disease. Research has found only a small
link between emotional responses and the onset of
heart disease. (page 404)
● Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After
traumatic experiences, some people (not all) have
long-lasting changes in their emotional reactions.
Apparently some people are more predisposed to
PTSD than others are. (page 405)
● Coping styles. Most strategies for dealing with
stress fall into three major categories: trying to fix
the problem, reappraisal, and trying to control
emotions. (page 405)
● Prediction and control. Events are generally
less stressful when people think they can predict or
control them. (page 406)
● Reappraisal. Interpreting a situation in a new,
less threatening way reduces tension. (page 406)
● Emotion-focused coping. Relaxation, exercise,
and distraction reduce excess anxiety. (page 407)
Introduction: How Emotions Work
Emotions and the ways we express them are
strange and powerful things. And emotions aren't
just ephemeral psychological phenomena, they
affect our bodies and our health. Because so many
emotions have a certain contagious quality, our
feelings and the behaviors they drive also affect the
minds, and bodies, and health of those around us.
This is true whether your emotions of the moment
are of the feel-good variety or not. The powers of
both positivity and negativity are stronger than you
may know.
Lots of studies have shown that people with a
positive outlook on life tend to live longer, more
fulfilling lives than their mean and grumpy
neighbors. Fear, anger, and other more difficult
emotions and how we handle them are pretty
closely related to this thing called stress. And
stress is so powerful that it can straight up kill you
in any number of ways, given the right opportunity.
Facial Expressions
● What do you think this person is feeling?
● How about him?
● And her?
● What about this one?
● It's not really hard to tell, is it?
Most of us are better than we think at reading
non-verbal cues and subtle expressions. The
understanding among some, but not all,
psychologists, like emotion expert Paul Ekman, is
that facial expressions are culturally universal.
So a Greek, Britain, American, Samoan, or
Nigerian would all be able to discern the same
basic emotions; happiness, sadness, disgust,
anger, fear, and surprise, just by looking at your
face.
Our expressions don't just communicate emotions.
According to the Facial Feedback Hypothesis, they
can help regulate our emotions, too. The act of
smiling broadly, even if you aren't happy, can
actually lift your mood just as scowling can lower it.
This is how, bizarrely enough, a recent randomized
controlled clinical trial suggested that a little Botox
injection in the forehead might actually lessen
depression. 'Cause it's apparently hard to feel down
if yourfrowny muscles are frozen.
Expressing Emotions
Of course whether your face is paralyzed or not,
some people are better at reading your emotions
than others. For example, introverts are usually
better at interpreting people's feelings, while
extroverts are often better at expressing them.
And you've probably heard embarrassing stories or
even experienced first-hand how different cultures
express emotions through particular gestures that
are far from universal.
For example, in the United States, this is a peace
sign, but you don't want to flip it around in the UK.
And the iconic thumbs up gesture means "good
job" in many cultures, but if you toss that thumb
around in Greece, well let's just say you won't make
any new friends.
But of course emotions involve a lot more than
making faces and hand gestures, they're also about
our conscious experience of what we're feeling.
How Many Emotions Are There?
So how do we actually feel all these feels, and how
many different emotions are there? Back in the
1970s, American psychologist Carol Izard identified
ten distinct basic human emotions present from
infancy on. They are: joy, surprise, sadness,
anger, disgust, contempt, shame, fear, guilt, and
interest or excitement.
Others have since suggested that "pride" should be
added to that list, and still others believe that love
should be classified as a basic emotion as well, but
Izard has argued that these and other emotions are
just familiar combinations of the classic ten.
Two-Dimensional Model of Emotional
Experience
Today, some psychologists describe our emotional
experience as using a 2-dimensional model. The
idea there is that any of the emotions you might feel
while, like, reading Harry Potter or something are
expressed on a spectrum, and as a combination of
valence, roughly speaking "good" or "bad", and
arousal--excited or not excited, basically.
So if you're feeling both really excited and super
positive when Harry finally bested Voldemort, you
could say you were elated. On the other hand, if
you're at that part in Deathly Hallows when Harry,
Ron and Hermoine are just sort of wandering
around on the lam in a heavy mood, maybe your
emotions fell more on the opposite side of the
spectrum.
In this instance, feeling depressed might be a
combination of negative emotion and lack of
excitement.
So potentially every emotion can fall in degrees on
this 2-dimensional scale. Like being terrified means
you're more frightened than if you're just scared,
just as being enraged is a more extreme form of
anger than simply being mad. These
polarities--positive versus negative, high arousal
versus low arousal--affect our psychological states,
and therefore our bodies as well. Because, you'll
remember that what is psychological is ultimately
biological. And when it comes to the physical
effects of our emotions, it pretty much goes the way
you might expect.
Happiness is helpful while chronic anger or
depression makes us vulnerable to all kinds of
problems with health and well-being. The good
news is that if we're angry or sad, we often
over-estimate the duration of our bad moods and
under-estimate our capacity to adapt and bounce
back from traumas, even if things feel hopeless,
depressing, or stressful in the thick of it.
Defining Stress
And we've all experienced stress before,
sometimes on a daily or even hourly basis. Much
like anger or joy, stress can slowly build and
simmer, or it can strike suddenly and with great
intensity.
Stress, certainly the chronic or extreme type can be
bad for your health, but defining stress is trickier
than you might think.
Psychologists would define stress as the process
by which we perceive and respond to certain
events, or stressors, that we view as challenging
or threatening. In other words, stress isn't
technically an emotion, it's more of a reaction to a
disturbing or disruptive stimulus. And our reactions
stem in part from our appraisal of that stimulus.
A person can either roll with, or get worked up
about a missed flight, an increased workload, or a
strange thump in the house. These external
stressors typically fall into three main categories:
catastrophes, or unpredictable large scale events
like war, natural disasters and terrorist attacks;
significant life changes, things like moving, having a
child, losing or getting a job, or the death of a loved
on; and then just everyday inconveniences like
getting caught in traffic, running late, or feuding with
your roommates. Any of these stressful events, big
or small, even the good things, can fire up your
sympathetic nervous system and trigger that old
fight or flight response.
In this way, it's important to understand that stress
is ultimately natural. You experience it for a reason
and a bit of short-lived stress can actually be a
good thing. It can make you active and alert when
you need to be, like an upcoming chemistry test
might be stressing you out, but that might help you
find focus so you can dominate that thing.
In your body, moderate stress can kick the immune
system into action to do things like heal wounds,
and fight infections. It does this by triggering the
release of stress hormones like adrenaline and
cortisol. These chemical messengers are what get
your organ systems to respond the way you need
them to when you're getting charged by a bear, or
focusing really hard on the gas law for your
chemistry test.
But to also why chronic stress Chronic Stress & the
Autonomic Nervous System can really wreck a
body and mind, research has shown that abused
children have a high risk of chronic disease and
people suffering from post-traumatic stress
disorder, PTSD, which we'll talk about in an
upcoming episode, experience higher rates of
digestive, respiratory, circulatory, and infectious
diseases. A lot of these negative connections
between your body's systems have to do with the
fact that many of its most basic functions, like blood
pressure, breathing, body temperature, digestion,
and heartbeat, are in part regulated by the
autonomic nervous system
We've talked before about how the sympathetic
side of that system cranks you up, and the
parasympathetic arm calms you down, but both
those systems also interact with the so-called
"brain-in-the-gut", the enteric nervous system,
which helps regulate gastrointestional functioning.
And it's this brain-gut connection that explains how
stress causes digestive problems, because when
that werewolf pops out of the bushes and a wave of
cortisol washes through you, your body wants to
focus its energy on sending blood to your muscles
so that you can react quickly.
But it may do that partly by shutting down digestion
or decreasing the amount of digestive secretions
and making your colon spasm; an anxious mind
can lead to an anxious gut. Stress is an even
bigger risk
_________________________________________
MOTIVATION
“Motivation is what activates and directs behavior.”
This description sounds good, but it also fits other
phenomena. For instance, light activates and
directs plant growth, but we wouldn’t say that light
motivates plants. “Motivation is what makes our
behavior more vigorous and energetic.” Alas, some
motivated behavior is not vigorous at all.

Stress & Heart Disease

Factor in North America's leading cause of death:

heart disease, because it contributes to increased
blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol levels in
a number of different ways. Essentially, when your
stressed out nervous system is redirecting all of its
energy sources to your muscles and brain, it pulls
flow away from your other organs. And one of those
organs is the liver, whose job includes removing the
fat and cholesterol from your blood. So basically,
when a stressed liver can't filter properly, that extra
fat and cholesterol ends up circulating in your
blood, which can settle around the heart.

Pessimism & Depression

And physiologically speaking, it's worth pointing out

that some close relatives to stress, when it comes
to their effects on the body, are pessimism and
depression, which also have been linked to stress
and heart disease. Many types of studies have
found that people characterized by their optimism,
happiness, love, and positive feelings often live
significantly longer than their grumpy, dour
counterparts.
Researchers don't quite know exactly how chronic
negative emotional states influence health, but it
may be some combination of lifestyle or behavioral
factors, like neglecting your health, or not taking
your heart meds when you're feeling blue, or social
factors like the way the depression can be isolating
and thus prevent others from helping you out. Or
biological factors, like increases in certain kinds of
inflammatory proteins released by the immune
system in response to stress and sadness.
So in the end, while stress may not directly cause
disease, you could say that the two walk
hand-in-hand. In that way, it isn't a stretch to say
that chronic stress can kill, so go ahead take a
deep breath, feel your emotions, appreciate them,
but don't let them run your life.
● Characteristics of motivated behaviors.
Motivated behaviors vary from time to time, from
situation to situation, and from person to person.
They persist until the individual reaches the goal.
(page 345)
● Motivation as drive reduction. Some aspects of
motivation can be described as drive reduction, but
people strive for new experiences that do not
reduce any apparent drive. (page 345)
● Homeostasis and allostasis. Many motivated
behaviors tend to maintain body conditions and
stimulation at a near-constant, or homeostatic,
level. In addition, behaviors anticipate future needs.
(page 346)
● Motivation as incentive. Motivations are partly
under the control of incentives—external stimuli
that pull us toward certain actions. Both drives and
incentives control most motivated behaviors. (page
346
● Extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. Motivations
include the possible rewards and the joy of the task
itself. (page 346)
● Motivation conflict. People seldom do anything
for just one reason. In general, biological needs
take priority over other motivations, but not always.
(page 346)
● Goal setting. Setting a goal motivates strong
effort if the goal is high but realistic. Other important
factors include making a serious commitment to the
goal, receiving feedback on progress, and believing
that the goal will bring a fair reward. (page 347)
● Making goals realistic. People tend to
underestimate how much time and effort they will
need to achieve their goals. It is best to plan for
more time and resources than seem necessary and
to start as quickly as possible. (page 348)
● Deadlines. Deadlines motivate people to work
harder. Setting deadlines for parts of an assignment
can spread out the task. (page 348)
● Overcoming procrastination. People get
started toward their goals if they set specific plans
about what they will do, when, and where.
Estimating your probability of doing something
increases your chance of doing it. Making any kind
of decision helps end procrastination. (page 349)
● Delayed gratification. People vary in whether
they choose a larger reward later over a smaller
one now. Children who can delay gratification show
long-term advantages when they reach
adolescence. It is often easier to choose the
delayed reward if you make the choice far in
advance. (page 349)
● Overcoming temptations. It is better to avoid
tempting situations than to try to combat
temptation. Resisting a temptation helps people to
later resist the same type of temptation, but it often
weakens their ability to resist other types. Seeing
another person yield to temptation increases the
risk of also yielding, unless one sees the other
person as an outsider, different from oneself. A
reminder about ethical norms decreases cheating
in some situations. (page 350)
● Job design. The scientific-management
approach emphasizes efforts to find the best, most
efficient, safest way to do a job. According to the
human-management approach, jobs
should be made interesting enough to give workers
a sense of achievement. (page 351)
● Job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is strongly
correlated with an individual’s interest in the job,
and moderately correlated with good performance
on the job. People with a happy disposition are
more likely than others to be satisfied with their
jobs, as are older workers in general. Job
satisfaction also requires a perception that the pay
scale is fair. (page 351)
● Job burnout. Some people have a long-lasting
discouragement
that alienates them from their job and their
coworkers. (page 352)
● Leadership. The demands of leadership depend
on the situation. Organizations generally work best
if many people can take a leadership role,
depending on the situation. When an organization
thrives, its leader is perceived as visionary. Leaders
perceived as using rewards to get employees to do
their work efficiently are effective in situations when
the business is stable. (page 353)
● Short-term regulation of hunger. Meals end by
several mechanisms, principally distension of the
stomach and intestines. Hunger resumes when the
cells begin to receive less glucose and other
nutrients. The hormone insulin regulates the flow of
nutrients from the blood to storage. (page 356)
● Long-term regulation of hunger. When
someone gains weight, the fat cells increase
release of leptin, which decreases hunger. When
someone loses weight, fat cells decrease leptin
release and hunger increases. (page 357)
● Cognitive and social influences on eating.
People eat more in groups than when eating alone.
They eat more, drink more, and enjoy their meal
more when they have high expectations for the
meal, based on such things as the name of the
food or the supposed location of the winery. They
eat more when they are offered larger portions.
(page 359)
● Obesity. Some people are predisposed to
obesity for genetic reasons. Obese people tend to
be inactive and remain so even after losing weight.
(page 360)
● Weight-loss techniques. Most people fail to lose
weight for the long term by dieting, often because
they fail to follow the diet. A combination of diet and
exercise works better, although the success rate is
still disappointing. (page 361)
● Anorexia nervosa. People suffering from
anorexia nervosa deprive themselves of food,
sometimes to a dangerous point. Most show
extreme physical activity, which can be interpreted
as a mechanism of temperature regulation. A
therapy based on keeping the person warm,
restricting exercise, and monitoring food intake has
shown promise. (page 361)
● Bulimia nervosa. People suffering from bulimia
nervosa alternate between periods of strict dieting
and brief but spectacular eating binges. Bulimia has
been compared to drug addiction. (page 362)
● Variability in human sexual behavior. Alfred
Kinsey, who conducted the first extensive survey of
human sexual behavior, found that sexual activity
varies more widely than most people realize. (page
365)
● More recent surveys. Both men and women cite
vaginal intercourse as their most preferred sexual
activity. Most people remain sexually active
throughout life if they remain healthy and have a
loving partner. (page 366)
● Sexual arousal. Sexual arousal proceeds
through four stages: excitement, plateau, orgasm,
and resolution. (page 368)
● Development of genitals. In the early stages of
development, the human fetus possesses
anatomical structures that may develop into either
male genitals (if testosterone levels are high
enough) or female genitals (if testosterone levels
are lower). (page 369)
● Prevalence of homosexuality. According to
surveys in several countries, 1 to 6 percent of adult
men and somewhat fewer women regard
themselves as primarily or exclusively homosexual.
Sexual orientation varies in degree from exclusively
homosexual to exclusively heterosexual with
intermediate gradations. (page 371)
● Differences between men and women.
Bisexual orientation is more common in women
than men. Measurements of penis erection
accurately gauge a man’s sexual interest, but
vaginal secretions do not measure a woman’s
sexual interest. (page 372)
● Origins of sexual orientation. Genetic
influences and prenatal environment affect sexual
orientation. On the average, heterosexual and
homosexual men differ in the size of a structure in
the hypothalamus that contributes to certain
aspects of sexual behavior. Less is known about
the role of experience in the development of sexual
orientation. (page 373)
● Fear and anxiety. Anxiety can be measured
objectively by variations in the startle reflex after a
loud noise. (page 394)
● Anxiety and the amygdala. Variations in fear
and anxiety relate to activity of the amygdala.
People with damage to the amygdala are capable
of feeling fear, but they are impaired in processing
most types of information that might lead to fear.
(page 394)
● Polygraph. The polygraph measures the activity
of the sympathetic nervous system. The polygraph
is sometimes used as a “lie detector.” However,
because the responses of honest people overlap
those of liars, the polygraph makes many mistakes.
(page 395)
● Anger. Anger arises when we perceive that
someone has done something intentionally that
blocks our intended actions. (page 396)
● Positive psychology. Positive psychology is the
study of features that enrich life. (page 397)
● Happiness and joy. Happiness level is usually
fairly stable over time. However, it decreases for
years, sometimes permanently, after the death of a
close loved one, divorce, loss of a job, or a
disability. (page 398)
● Increasing happiness. Happiness increases
from changes in activities, such as listing things to
feel grateful about and helping other people. (page
399)
● Happiness and age. On average, people report
increased happiness and life satisfaction as they
grow older. In the United States, people born in
recent decades tend to report more happiness than
people born in previous decades. (page 399)
● Sadness. Sadness is a reaction to a loss. Crying
is a way of communicating sadness or distress to
others. (page 400)
● Other emotions. It is often helpful to distinguish
several types of positive emotion such as pride,
awe, and amusement. Embarrassment, shame,
guilt, and pride depend on how we believe others
will react to our actions. (page 400)
● Selye’s concept of stress. According to Hans
Selye, stress is “the nonspecific response of the
body to any demand made upon it.” Any event,
pleasant or unpleasant, that brings about change in
a person’s life produces some measure of stress.
However, this definition omits lifelong problems,
such as coping with racism. By an alternative
definition, stress is an event that someone
interprets as threatening. (page 402)
● Difficulties of measuring stress. Stress
checklists are problematic because many items are
ambiguous. They treat all types of stress as
interchangeable, although later research indicates
that the stress from feeling rejected is especially
hurtful. Furthermore, the stressfulness of an event
depends on the person’s interpretation of the event
and ability to cope with it. (page 403)
● Indirect effects on health. Stress affects health
indirectly because people exposed to stressful
events often change their eating, sleeping, and
drinking habits. (page 404)
● Direct effects on health. Stress causes
increased secretion of the hormone cortisol. Brief,
moderate elevations of cortisol enhance memory
and immune system responses. However,
prolonged cortisol damages health by impairing the
hippocampus and by exhausting the immune
system. (page 404)
● Heart disease. Research has found only a small
link between emotional responses and the onset of
heart disease. (page 404)
● Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After
traumatic experiences, some people (not all) have
long-lasting changes in their emotional reactions.
Apparently some people are more predisposed to
PTSD than others are. (page 405)
● Coping styles. Most strategies for dealing with
stress fall into three major categories: trying to fix
the problem, reappraisal, and trying to control
emotions. (page 405)
● Prediction and control. Events are generally
less stressful when people think they can predict or
control them. (page 406)
● Reappraisal. Interpreting a situation in a new,
less threatening way reduces tension. (page 406)
● Emotion-focused coping. Relaxation, exercise,
and distraction reduce excess anxiety. (page 407)
_________________________________________
PERSONALITY
● Personality. Personality consists of the stable,
consistent ways in which each person’s behavior
differs from that of others, especially in social
situations. (page 451)
● Psychodynamic theories. Several historically
influential theories have described personality as
the outcome of unconscious internal forces. (page
451)
● Freud. Sigmund Freud, the founder of
psychoanalysis, proposed that much of what we do
and say has hidden meanings. However, most
psychologists today doubt most of his
interpretations of those hidden meanings. (page
451)
● Freud’s psychosexual stages. Freud believed
that many unconscious thoughts and motives are
sexual in nature. He proposed that people progress
through stages or periods of psychosexual
development—oral, anal, phallic, latent, and
genital—and that frustration at any stage fixates the
libido at that stage. (page 453)
● Defense mechanisms. Freud and his followers
argued that people defend themselves against
anxiety by such mechanisms as denial, repression,
projection, and reaction formation. (page 454)
● Nomothetic and idiographic research.
Nomothetic studies examine large numbers of
people briefly, whereas idiographic studies examine
one or a few individuals intensively. (page 463)
● Traits and states. Traits are personality
characteristics that persist over time; states are
temporary tendencies in response to particular
situations. (page 463)
● Measurement problems. Personality
researchers rely mostly on self-reports, which are
not entirely accurate. (page 464)
● Five major traits. Much of personality can be
explained by these five traits: emotional stability,
extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness,
and openness to new experience. (page 465)
● Determinants of personality. Studies of twins
and adopted children indicate that heredity
contributes to the observed differences in
personality. However, no single gene controls much
of the variance. Family environment evidently
contributes rather little. Some personality variation
relates to unshared environment, the special
experiences that vary from one person to another
even within a family. (page 466)
● Changes over age. Compared to younger
people, older people tend to be higher in
conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional
stability. They are somewhat lower in extraversion.
Openness to experience decreases with age in
most countries. (page 468)
● Changes over generations. Measurements of
anxiety have gradually increased over the decades
so that normal people now report anxiety levels that
used to characterize people in mental hospitals.
American teenagers today report more desire for
wealth than teenagers of the past did, while also
reporting less intention to work hard. (page 469)
● People’s tendency to accept personality test
results. Because most people accept almost any
interpretation of their personality based on a
personality test, tests must be carefully scrutinized
to ensure that they are measuring what they claim
to measure. (page 471)
● Standardized personality tests. A standardized
test is administered according to explicit rules, and
its results are interpreted in a prescribed fashion
based on the norms for the population. (page 472)
● The MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory). The MMPI, a widely used personality
test, consists of a series of true–false questions
selected in an effort to distinguish among various
personality types. The MMPI–2 is a modern
version. (page 472)
● Detection of lying. The MMPI and other tests
guard against lying by including items about
common faults and rare virtues. Anyone who
denies common faults or claims rare virtues is
probably lying. (page 473)

● Projective techniques. A projective technique,

such as the Rorschach inkblots or the Thematic
Apperception Test, lets people describe their
concerns indirectly while talking about ambiguous
stimuli. The results from projective techniques have
unimpressive validity for making decisions about
any individual. (page 474)

● Implicit personality tests. The implicit

association test and affective priming paradigm are
attempts to measure personality traits that people
do not or cannot describe about themselves. So far,
such tests are useful for research but not for
decisions about an individual. (page 475)

● Uses and misuses of personality tests.

Personality tests can help assess personality, but
their results should be interpreted cautiously.
Because the tests are not entirely accurate, a score
that seems characteristic of a psychological
disorder may occur also in many people without
that disorder. (page 476)

● Criminal profiling. Some psychologists try to aid

police investigations by constructing personality
profiles of the kind of person who would commit a
certain crime. Research so far suggests low
accuracy of personality profiles. (page 476)