Psych Exam

Part 8: Cognition and Language What is cognition? Cognition means thinking and using knowledge. Cognitive psychologists deal with how people organize their thoughts into language. Cognition begins with attending to something and categorizing what it is. Why can't we understand cognitive processes by simply asking people about them? People don’t always now their own thought processes. Do people use mental images when thinking? What happens when people must rotate a mental image to answer a question about whether two objects are the same or mirror images of one another? People use mental images when thinking. The reaction time depends on the angular difference in orientation between the two views. For every additional 20 degrees of rotation, the time to respond increased by a constant amount. Researchers can infer thought processes from people’s delay in answering a question. What are the two basic aspects of attention? Attention is the tendency to respond to and remember some stimuli more than others. What are bottom-up and top-down attentional processes? Recognize examples. Bottom-up process are controlled by the peripheral stimuli. Ex. Magicians use this to take up their audience’s attention so that they can set up their next trick. Bottom-up is preattentive. Top-down process allows you to deliberately decide to shift your attention. Ex. Fixating my eyes on an x and, without moving my eyes, read the letters in the circle around it clockwise. Top-down is attentive. What is the difference between a preattentive and an attentive process? Preattentive process is where something stands out immediately. Ex. Finding an albino animal in a flock of normal ones. Attentive process is one that requires searching through the items in series. Ex. Where’s Waldo. What is the Stroop effect? What affects the strength of the influence of the Stroop effect? Stroop effect is the tendency to read the words instead of saying the color of the ink. Saying the colors in a different language, manage to regard the color words as meaningless, or pointing at the words make it easier to say the color. What is change blindness?  Change blindness is the failure to detect changes in parts of a scene. Attentive process to check each part of a scene. What is attention deficit disorder (ADD)? What is ADHD? What is known about the causes of ADHD? What are the most common treatments for ADHD? ADD is characterized by easy distraction, impulsiveness, moodiness, and failure to follow through on plans. ADHD is the same except with excessive activity and “fidgetiness”. Causes for ADHD vary from fetal alcohol exposure, lead poisoning, epilepsy, emotional stress, genetic predisposition, and epigenetics. The most common treatment for ADD or ADHD is stimulant drugs such as Ritalin or Adderall. What is a prototype? A prototype is a familiar or typical example of a category. What is the conceptual network and how is it organized? The conceptual network is relating words to something else and it is organized into hierarchies. What is spreading activation? Spreading activation is a process by which the activation of one concept activates or primes related concepts. Thinking about one of the concepts will activate, or, prime the concepts linked to it. What is priming? Priming is where hearing or reading one word makes it easier to think or recognize a related word. Seeing something makes it easier to recognize a related object. How do System 1 and System 2 thinking differ? System 1 (or Type 1 thinking) is cognitive processing for quick, automatic processes. System 1 generally proceeds without much effort. System 2 (or Type 2 thinking) is cognitive processing for mathematical calculations, evaluating evidence, and anything else that requires attention. System 2 heavily relies on working memory, and if your working memory is already loaded, because you are trying to remember something else, you tend to fall back onto System 1. What is maximizing? What is satisficing? Maximizing is thoroughly considering as many choices as possible to find the best one. Satisficing is searching only until you find something satisfactory. What is an algorithm? What is a heuristic? An algorithm is an explicit procedure for calculating an answer or testing every hypothesis. System 2 solves problems by using algorithms. Heuristics are strategies for simplifying a problem and generating a satisfactory guess. Heuristics provide quick guidance when you are willing or forced to accept some possibility of error, and they work well most of the time. System 1 relies heavily on heuristics. What is the representativeness heuristic? Representativeness heuristic is the assumption that an item that resembles members of a category is probably also in that category. This heuristic is usually correct, except when we deal with uncommon categories. What is base-rate information? Base-rare information is how common two categories are. Base-rate information is usually overlooked when representativeness heuristic is being applied. What is the availability heuristic? Availability heuristic is the tendency to assume that if we easily think of examples of a category then that category must be common. This heuristic leads us astray when uncommon events are highly memorable. What is the confirmation bias? Confirmation bias is the tendency to accept a hypothesis and then look for evidence to support it instead of considering other possibilities. What is functional fixedness? Functional fixedness is the tendency to adhere to a single approach or a single way of using an item. What is the framing effect? The framing effect is the tendency to answer a question differently when it is framed differently. What is the sunk cost effect? Sunk cost effect is the willingness to do something undesirable because of money or effort already spent. What factors lead to expertise and superior performance? Applying appropriate algorithms quickly, recognizing which heuristics do or do not work in a situation leads to expertise. People who start off doing well at something are more likely than others to develop an interest and therefore devote the needed hours to improving their skill. People need feedback based on the practice. What do experts do that is different from what non-experts do when faced with a task in their area of expertise? Experts at memorizing learn to recognize patterns. Whereas most people something as five items, someone who has practiced memorizing cards might see this as a single familiar pattern or as a part of an even larger pattern. What are near and far transfer in the context of task performance? Near transfer is the benefit to a new sill based on practice of a similar skill. It is a robust phenomenon, easy to demonstrate. Far transfer is the benefit from practicing something less similar, is more difficult. Requires extensive practice of the first skill, and even then, far transfer is a small or inconsistent effect. To what extent have non-human species been able to display language abilities? Chimpanzees learned many human habits but understood only a few words and their few attempts to speak were extremely inarticulate. What are the deep structure and surface structure of a sentence? What is transformational grammar? The deep structure is the underlying logic or meaning of a sentence. The surface structure is the sequence of words as they are spoken or written. Transformational grammar is a system for converting a deep structure into a surface structure. What is Williams syndrome? What does it tell us about language and intelligence? Williams syndrome is a genetic condition characterized by mental retardation in most regards, but surprisingly good use of language relative to their other abilities. It tells us that language is not the same as overall intelligence. What did Noam Chomsky mean by "language acquisition device?" What was it intended to explain? A language acquisition decide is a built-in mechanism for acquiring language. It was intended to explain how children infer the meaning of new words they learned. Chomsky argued that children must begin with preconceptions. What is parentese? A pattern of speech that prolongs the vowels, making clearer than usual the difference between the words cat and cot. What is Broca's aphasia? Broca’s aphasia is a condition characterized by difficulties in language production. Serious language impairment occurs only if the damage extends beyond Broca’s area, and even into the interior of the brain. What is Wernicke's aphasia? Wernicke’s aphasia is a condition marked by the impaired recall of nouns and impaired language comprehension, despite fluent and grammatical speech. Difficulty with nouns and impaired comprehension fit together: if you cannot remember what something is called, you will have trouble processing a sentence based on that word. Because these people omit or misuse mot nouns, their speech is hard to understand. What is babbling? What changes in a baby's babbling at around 1 year of age? Babbling is haphazard sounds, but soon they start repeating the sounds they have been hearing. By age 1 year, an infant’s babbles mostly sounds that resemble the language the family speaks. What is a telegraphic phrase? Telegraphic phrases are made up of two or more words that are original. Such as, “more page’ (read some more), “allgone sticky” (my hands are now clean), etc. What happens when a young child over regularizes the rules of the language she or he is learning? They apply grammatical rules, although of course they cannot state those rules. In what circumstances does the way we hear an ambiguous word depend on the context? Context not only determines how we interpret a word, but also primes us to hear an ambiguous sound one way or another. Although a long-delayed context cannot help you hear an ambiguous word correctly, it does help you understand its meaning. What are phonemes?  A phoneme is a unit of sound, such as f or sh. Machines that talk to you, such as a GPS, take a written word, break it into phonemes, and pronounce the phonemes. What are morphemes? A morpheme is a unit of meaning. Ex. The noun thrills has two morphemes (thrill and s). The final s is a unit of meaning because it indicates that the noun is plural. What is meant by the term "pragmatics?" The branch of linguistics dealing with language in use and the contexts in which it is used. What are saccades? Saccades are quick eye movements from one fixation point to another. You read during fixations, not saccades. Part 9: Intelligence What is g? g is general intellectual ability. What is crystallized intelligence? Crystallized intelligence consists of acquired skills and knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge in specific situations. Crystallized intelligence includes the job skills you have already acquired. Words you already know are an example of crystallized intelligence. What is fluid intelligence? Fluid intelligence is the power of reasoning and using information. It includes the ability to perceive relationships, solve unfamiliar problems, and gain new knowledge. Fluid intelligence enables you to learn new skills for a job. The ability to learn new words is an example of fluid intelligence. What are the main assertions of Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences? Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence states that there are unrelated forms of intelligence, consisting of language, musical abilities, logical and mathematical reasoning, spatial reasoning, ability to recognize and classifying objects, body movement skills, self-control and self-understanding, and sensitivity to other people’s social signals. Gardner argues that people can be outstanding in one type of intelligence but not others. What are the three components of Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence? What is Sternberg trying to accomplish by developing a new way to assess intelligence? Analytical intelligence, which is thinking critically, creative intelligence, which is developing new ideas, and practical intelligence, which is doing something. What was the motivation behind the development of the original IQ tests by Binet and Simon? The original goal of intelligence tests was to identify the least capable children, who could not learn from ordinary schooling. What are Stanford-Binet tests? Stanford-Binet IQ test is a procedure designed by Binet and Simon and later modified for English speakers by Stanford psychologists. What is mental age? Mental age is the average age of children who perform as well as this child. How was an IQ score calculated in the early days of IQ testing? Stanford-Binet IQ scores are computed from tables set up to ensure that a given IQ score means the same at different ages. The mean IQ at each age is 100. What are the Wechsler tests? IQ tests originally devised by David Wechsler, known as WIAS-IV and WISC-V, and later modified by others, which produced the same average, 100, and almost the same distribution of scores as the Stanford-Binet. A Wechsler text provides an overall IQ, a Verbal IQ, a Performance IQ, and subtest scores representing working memory, verbal comprehension, processing speed, and others. What is the Raven's Progressive Matrices test? What are its advantages? The Raven’s Progressive Matrices test is the most widely used culture-reduced test. This test requires less information than the Wechsler or Stanford-Binet tests, and requires no use of language, but it does assume familiarity with pencil-and-paper, multiple-choice tests. No test can be totally free from cultural influences, but this comes closer than most. To what extent do IQ test scores correlate with genetic relatedness? The greater similarity between monozygotic than dizygotic twins implies a genetic basis. The high correlation between monozygotic twins reared apart shows that they strongly resemble each other in IQ tests even if they are adopted by separate sets of parents. Monozygotic twins become more and more similar to each other in IQ as they grow older, indicating that the influence of genes is greater in older than in younger individuals. For children living in a terrible environment, the change for intellectual development is limited, regardless of their genes. For those with a satisfactory environment, genetic differences have more impact. Those with favorable genetic predispositions take advantage of their opportunities. Similarly, the influence of genetics is weak if the quality of teaching is poor. None of the children do well when the teaching is poor, regardless of genetics. With better teaching, some children advance faster than others. How do psychologists study genetic influences on human intelligence? By monitoring unrelated children adopted into the same family, indicating an influence from shared environment. The IQs of young adopted children correlate moderately with those of their adoptive parents. As the children grow older, their IQ scores gradually correlate more with those of their biological parents and less with those of their adoptive parents. The studies of adopted children imply a genetic influence from the biological parents, but another interpretation is possible. Some low-IQ parents who put their children up for adoption are impoverished and probably for not provide good prenatal care. Poor prenatal care correlates with de creased IQ for the offspring through life. Has the Human Genome Project could identify any genes correlated with IQ scores? If so, what has been found? Dozens of genetic variations have been reported to correlate with measures of intelligence, but no common variant has a large effect. Intelligence depends on many genes making small contributions, and depends on epigenetic influences as well. What environmental factors tend to influence IQ scores? IQ is consistently lowest in countries and states where children have the highest exposure to infectious diseases. Fighting diseases takes much of the body’s energy, and building a brain does also. Do programs that attempt to help children from populations that tend to score low on IQ tests have any positive effects? If so, what seems to work and what doesn't? Randomized controlled studies demonstrate long-term benefits from educational programs as well as from dietary supplements, especially with polyunsaturated fatty acids. Additional research indicates that children with music training show IQ advantages beyond what we can explain in terms of parental income and education. Interventions work best if they start early. What is involved in standardizing an IQ test? Standardization is the process of evaluating the questions, establishing rules for administering a test, and interpreting the scores. One step in this process is to find the norms, or descriptions of how frequently various scores occur. Psychologists try to standardize a test on a large sample of people who are as representative as possible of the population. What is the Flynn effect? The Flynn effect is the tendency for performance on IQ tests to improve from one generation to the next. In the context of psychological assessment, what is reliability? What is validity? The reliability of a test is defined as the repeatability of its scores. If a test is reliable, it produces nearly the same results every time. A test’s validity is defined as the degree to which evidence and theory support the interpretations of test scores for the intended purposes. Validity indicates how well the test measures what it claims to measure. What other than IQ test scores predict success in school (including college)? One study found that eighth graders’ performance in school correlated highly with questionnaire measurements of their self-discipline. College grades correlate with measures of effort and curiosity. People also vary in initiative, creativity, and other variables that are important but hard to measure. What does It mean for an IQ test to be biased? A biased test overstates or understates the true performance of one or more groups. Ex. Women who enter college or graduate school after age 25 generally receive better grades than their SAT scores predict. The tests are “biased” against them in the sense of under-predicting their performance. What is stereotype threat? How can it be overcome? Stereotype threat is people’s perceived risk of performing poorly and thereby supporting an unfavorable stereotype about their group. One approach to overcome this is to simply tell people about stereotype threat.  Part 10: Consciousness What is the difference between a vegetative state and a minimally conscious state? A vegetative state is marked by limited responsiveness, such as increased heart rate in response to pain. Responsiveness varies between a sleeping state and a waking state, but even in the waking state, brain activity is well below normal, and the person shows no purposeful behavior. A minimally conscious state is when people have brief periods of purposeful actions and speech comprehension. A vegetative or minimally conscious state can last for months or years What are the symptoms and causes of spatial neglect? Caused by damage to the parts of the right hemisphere, and people are only conscious of half of the information they receive. Tendency is severest shortly after a right-hemisphere stroke. People with this eat only from the right side of the plate, read from only the right side of the page, and draw only on the right side of an object. What brain areas are associated with conscious experience? Frontal cortex, the right parietal cortex, and recognition areas of the temporal lobe. Activity in the brain stem and thalamus is necessary for all consciousness at all. What is the difference in brain activity between a stimulus that is not consciously perceived (because it was shown for a short time and masked) and one that is consciously perceived (no mask)? The stimuli activated the same areas of the visual cortex in both conditions, but produced greater activation on trials when people became conscious of the word. What is a circadian rhythm? What accounts for (causes) it? Circadian rhythms are cycles of activity and inactivity generally lasting about on day. The rising and setting of the sun provides cues to reset our rhythm, but we generate the rhythm ourselves. What does sleep deprivation do to a person's reasoning ability over time? Sleep deprivation produces a pattern of progressive deterioration on the normal circadian rhythm cycle of rising and falling body temperatures and alertness. Who tend to be "morning people" and who tend to be "evening people?" What happens to cognitive performance as the day wears on? Most people over the age of 65 are morning people, and do their best work early. Young adults tend to be more evening people and do their best work in the late afternoons or evening. What are the main theories of why we need to sleep? What evidence supports each theory? Sleep saves energy and enables the body to repair wear and tear (sleep deprivation can alter immune function, lead to early death, and can lead to hallucinations and perceptual disorder). Sleep is required for memory consolidation. What are the different stages of sleep? How are they differentiated? What is special about the REM stage? Stage 1: just fallen asleep, neural activity unsynchronized Stage 2: pulse and breathing slower, start of longer and slower bran waves Stage 3: pulse, breathing, and brain activity slower and neural activity more synchronized Stage 4: everything at its slowest, brain waves highly synchronized REM sleep: eyes move back and forth, dreams more frequent, vivid, and complex, brain waves not synchronized, postural muscles most relaxed, duration gets longer toward morning. What are the major theories of dreaming and how do they try to explain dreams? Modern theorist describes dreaming as a kind of thinking that occurs under conditions of low sensory input and no voluntary control of thinking. More dreams are more threatening than pleasant. Freud states that dreams are the product of unconscious motivations. What is the latent content of a dream? What is the manifest content? Latent content is the hidden ideas that the dream experience represents symbolically. Manifest content: the content that appears on the surface. Ch 11: Motivation There is work motivation (goals and deadlines), hunger motivation (hunger regulation and eating disorders), and sexual motivation (sexual arousal, sexual development and sexual orientation). What is the “mere measurement” effect? A research demonstrated that merely measuring an individual’s purchase intentions changes his or her subsequent behavior in the market. What is homeostasis? Homeostasis is the maintenance of an optimum level of biological conditions within an organism. Ex. People try to keep a steady body weight. What is Maslow's motivational hierarchy? What are its levels? How has it been criticized? What modifications have been proposed to the hierarchy? A hierarchy of needs is an organization from the most insistent needs to the ones that receive attention only when all the others are under control. It has been criticized because the theory omits parenting and overemphasized the vague idea of self-actualization, and because it is culture specific. Modifications include an idea to branch off after satisfying survival needs. What is the best way to set and pursue goals? How important are deadlines? What research supports the conclusion? The best way to set goals is to make sure it is specific, difficult, and realistic. Deadlines are very important because they motivate people to work harder. Those who chose a deadline did better on a project than those who did not. How do psychologists study the ability to resist temptation (delay gratification) and what have these studies shown? Delay of gratification is the declining of a pleasant activity now in order to get greater pleasure later. Testing this theory has shown that waiting could resist temptation. What are the best ways to avoid procrastination? People get started towards their goals of they set specific plans about what they will do, when, and where. Making any kind of decision ends procrastination. Ch 12: Emotions. Stress & Health What was the James-Lange theory of emotions? What evidence supports this theory? The James-Lange theory of emotions is your interpretation of a stimulus evokes autonomic changes and sometimes muscle actions. Your perception of those changes is the feeling aspect of your emotion. Supporting evidence is that decreases in body reaction decrease emotional feelings, and increases in body reaction increase emotional feelings. Describe the main features and findings of Schachter and Singer's experiments on emotions. What did this research lead Schachter and Singer to propose about the nature of emotions? The main features and findings of the Schachter and Singer’s experiments on emotions is the intensity of the psychological state (the degree of sympathetic nervous system arousal) determines the intensity of the emotion, but a cognitive appraisal of the situation identifies the type of emotion. They proposed that the autonomic arousal controls the strength of an emotion, but cognitive factors tell us which emotion we are experiencing. Why do some psychologists believe that there are basic universal emotions? What classic research has been done to support this notion? Humans can recognize six basic facial expressions and this was shown in facial expression research. What are the six basic emotions, according to research by Paul Ekman and others? The six basic emotions are happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise. What is the broaden-and-build hypothesis? The broaden-and-build hypothesis states that a happy mood increases your readiness to explore new ideas and opportunities. How do the Trolley Dilemma and the Footbridge Dilemma reveal about the role of emotion in reasoning through moral problems? After people make moral decisions in cases like these, they often have trouble stating a reason for their decisions. They make the decisions quickly and emotionally and then look for an explanation afterwards. Even though killing one saved five, it would be emotionally repulsive. What happened to Phineas Gage? What did this tell us about the role of emotions in decision making? Phineas Gage survived an accident in which an iron bar shot though his head. The accident damaged part of his pre-frontal cortex and during the months afterwards, he showed little emotion and made poor, impulsive decisions (he didn’t care for the outcome and it didn’t affect him). What do psychologists use as a good operational definition of anxiety? A good operational definition of anxiety is a vague sense that “something bad might happen”. What brain structure seems to be highly implicated in the experience of anxiety? What happens when this brain structure is over-reactive? What happens when it is damaged? The amygdala is highly implicated in the experience of anxiety. People with amygdala damage no longer respond quickly the way other people do to complex emotional signals. For example, they are impaired at recognizing emotions from facial expressions. What does the polygraph do? What is the problem with using the polygraph for lie detection? A polygraph is a lie-detector test. It correctly identifies 76% of guilty suspects as lying, but also identifies 37% of innocent suspects as lying. What is the guilty-knowledge test? Why is it a superior method for lie detection? The guilty-knowledge test is a modified version of the polygraph test because it produces a more accurate result by asking questions that should be threatening only to someone who knows the facts of a crime. How do anger, disgust, and contempt differ? Anger: occurs when someone interferes with your rights or expectations. Disgust: a reaction to something that would make you feel contaminated if it got into your mouth (a bad taste). Contempt: a reaction to a violation of community standards, such as when someone fails to do a fair share of the work. What is positive psychology? Positive psychology studies the features that enrich life, such as happiness, hope, creativity, courage, spirituality, and responsibility. Does wealth increase happiness? If so, for whom and under what circumstances? Sometimes lower income people are happy when they gain wealth. Beyond a certain level of wealth, additional money doesn’t add much happiness. What correlates with greater happiness, well-being, and life satisfaction? Well-being What can you do to increase your happiness in your daily life? Change your activities. Are elderly people more or less happy in general than everyone else? Why? They are happier in general because of decreased stress levels. What makes people sad? A sense of loss. Does crying relieve tension and depression? Most people say it does, but evidence says otherwise. Relaxation actually occurs when people stop crying. What might be the social function of crying? Eliciting sympathy and social support. What are the "self-conscious" emotions? Embarrassment, shame, and guilt. What are the direct and indirect effects of prolonged or severe stress? Direct effects of prolonged or severe stress are sympathetic nervous system and endocrine changes Indirect is health impairing behavior. What helps prevent heart disease? Having a type B personality (easygoing, less hurried, and less hostile) prevents heart disease. What is PTSD? How common is it in people who have experienced trauma? What factors are associated with the probability of developing PTSD in people who have experienced trauma? PTSD stands for post-traumatic stress disorder. Most people who endure traumatic events do not develop PTSD. The probability of developing PTSD correlates poorly with the stressfulness of the event, and more strongly with previous emotional difficulties. What are the three main types of ways of coping with stress? Problem-solving coping: doing something to improve the situation Reappraisal: reinterpreting a situation to make it seem less threatening Emotion-focused coping: regulation of one’s emotional reaction. What can a person do to prepare for a difficult experience to make it less stressful? When people think, they can predict or control, thus making the difficult experience less stressful. What is reappraisal? Reappraisal is reinterpreting a situation to make it seem less threatening. What are the cultural differences in the frequency and effect of emotion suppression as a mechanism of dealing with stress? of providing and seeking social support? Most Europeans and North Americans find it difficult and unpleasant to suppress their emotions. However, people in Asian cultures routinely practice emotional suppression and find it much less burdensome. What are other techniques that a person can employ to reduce anxiety and stress? Techniques that a person can employ to reduce anxiety and stress are social support, relaxation, exercise, and distraction. Ch 13: Social Psychology What was Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development? What kinds of questions did he ask and what information did he use to classify the answers? Lawrence Kohlberg proposed moral reasoning is a process that matures through a series of stages. According to Kohlberg, to evaluate people’s moral reasoning, we should ask about the reasons for their decisions, not just about the decisions themselves. What research shows that moral judgments are sometimes made on an emotional rather than a rational basis? Altruistic behavior is helping others with a benefit to ourselves. Research on children show that they generally prefer a choice that brings a treat to themselves and someone else, as opposed to just themselves and this tendency increases as children grow older. What differences between real life and the prisoner's dilemma game can account for greater cooperation in real life? Prisoner’s dilemma is a situation where people choose between a cooperative act and a competitive act that benefits themselves but hurts others. In real life, people do cooperate most of the time. The main difference is that we deal with people repeatedly, not just once. If you play the prisoner’s dilemma many times with the same partner, the two of you will probably learn to cooperate, especially if real rewards are at stake. Furthermore, in real life, you want a reputation for cooperating, or people will stop doing business with you. People want a reputation for being fair and helpful. How do "diffusion of responsibility" and "pluralistic ignorance" explain why bystanders might not help someone in need? Diffusion of responsibility is when we feel less responsibility to act when other people are equally able to act. This allows each person to think, “It’s not my responsibility to help any more than anyone else’s.” Pluralistic ignorance is a situation in which people say nothing, and each person falsely assumes that others have a better-informed opinion. Other people’s inactivity implies that doing nothing is acceptable (a norm) and that the situation is not an emergency (information). What is the frustration-aggression hypothesis? What alternative did Leonard Berkowitz propose? The frustration-aggression hypothesis states that the main cause of anger and aggression is frustration - an obstacle that stands in the way of doing something or obtaining something. However, frustration only makes you angry when you believe the other person acted intentionally. Leonard Berkowitz proposed that any unpleasant event – frustration, pain, heat, foul odors, bad news, etc. – excites both the impulse to fight and the impulse to flee it excites the sympathetic nervous system and its fight-or-flight response. What hypotheses about the causes of aggression remain controversial? One hypothesis has been that low self-esteem leads to violence. According to this idea, people who think little of themselves try to build themselves up by tearing someone else down. Studies find small or no relationship between the two. Another possibility is that people who are accustomed to feeling powerful become aggressive when they find their self0confidence threatened, or when their self-esteem wavers. What does a study of baboons described in the textbook suggest about the relationship between culture and violence? After the aggressive males died, the troop got along well without them, stress levels decreased, and health improved. What psychological mechanisms have been used by perpetrators to justify their violence? Deindividuation (perceiving others as anonymous, without any real personality) and dehumanizing (perceiving others as less than human). People also justify their violent behavior by decreasing their own sense of identity. What is the primacy effect in impression formation? The primacy effect is the first information we learn about someone that influences us more than later information does. What is the difference between prejudice and discrimination? A prejudice is an unfavorable attitude toward a group of people. Discrimination is unequal treatment of different groups, such as minority groups, the physically abused, people who are obese, or gays and lesbians. What is an implicit association? How are implicit associations assessed by researchers? An implicit association test (IAT) is a method which measures reactions to combinations of categories. What are the major findings of the IAT research described in your text? On average, white people who claimed to have no racial prejudice responded slower if they had to make one response for “black face or pleasant word” and a different response for “white face or unpleasant word” than if the pairings were reversed – black and unpleasant, white and pleasant. How can intergroup prejudice and hostility be reduced? People who work together for a common goal can overcome prejudices that initially divide them. Competition breeds hostility, and cooperation leads to friendship. What are the influences on whether we make an internal or external attribution? Internal attributions are explanations based on someone’s attitudes, personality traits, abilities, or other characteristics. Internal attributions are also known as dispositional (i.e., relating to the person’s disposition). External attributions are explanations based on the situation, including events that would influence almost anyone. External attributions are also known as situational (i.e., relating to the situation). What is the actor-observer effect? Actor-observer effect is the tendency to be more likely to make internal attributions for other people’s behavior and to be more likely to make external attributions for one’s own behavior. What is the fundamental attribution error? Who is most likely to make this error and why? The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to make internal attributions for people’s behavior even when we see evidence for an external influence on behavior. It is also known as the correspondence bias, meaning a tendency to assume a strong similarity between someone’s current actions and his or her dispositions. The fundamental attribution error emerges in many settings. When we see crime, we tend to think “bad person,” although sometimes the truth is closer to “bad situation.” People in Western cultures tend to make more internal (personality) attributions, whereas people in China and other Asian countries tend to make more external (situational) attributions. What is an attitude? An attitude is a like or dislike that influences behavior. Your attitudes include an evaluative or emotional component (how you feel about something), a cognitive component (what you know or believe), and a behavioral component (what you are likely to do). How are attitudes typically measured? Psychologists commonly measure attitudes through attitude scales. On a Likert scale, you would check a point along a line from 1, meaning “strongly disagree,” to 7, meaning “strongly agree,” for each statement. What is cognitive dissonance? Describe the classic study on attitudes and behavior performed by Leon Festinger and its results. Cognitive dissonance is a state of unpleasant tension that people experience when they hold contradictory attitudes or when their behavior contradicts their stated attitudes, especially if the inconsistency distresses them. You are participating in a classic experiment on cognitive dissonance. You hate it. The experimenter lies to you and tells you some bullshit. Then asks you to lie and tell the next participant it was an interesting experiment for money. You do it and leave and see a representative down the hall that asks how the experiment was. The students who received $20 said the experiment was boring and they wanted nothing to do with another such experiment. Those who received $1 said they enjoyed the experiment and would be willing to participate again. What is the central route of persuasion? What is the peripheral route? The peripheral route to persuasion is the use of superficial factors to persuade people, such as repetition of a message or prestige of the speaker. If for any reason, you associate something with feeling happy, you form a favorable attitude toward it. What is the effect of your liking of and similarity to a speaker on the probability that you will be persuade by that speaker's message? People are more successful at persuading you if you like them or see them as similar to yourself. How is reciprocation used to influence the behavior of others? Civilization is based on the concept of reciprocation: if you do me a favor, then I owe you one. How do contrast effects increase sales? An offer can seem good or bad, depending on how it compares to something else. A restaurant might list one entrée at such a high price that almost no one orders it. However, sales increase for the second most expensive item, which now seems not too expensive by contrast. What is the "foot in the door" technique? The foot-in-the-door technique is a method of eliciting compliance whereby someone starts with a modest request, which you accept, and follows with a larger request. What is the "bait and switch" technique? The bait-and-switch technique is a method of eliciting compliance whereby a person first offers an extremely favorable deal, gets the other person to commit the deal, and then makes additional demands. What is the "that's not all" technique? The that’s-not-all technique is a method of eliciting compliance whereby someone makes an offer and then improves the offer before you gave a chance to reply. When are fear-based messages effective in influencing the behavior of the recipient of the message? Fear messages are sometimes effective, but not always. However, if a message is too frightening, many people simply don’t want to listen to it, they don’t believe it. An extreme message may suggest that the problem is hopeless. What is the sleeper effect? The sleeper effect is a delayed persuasion by an initially rejected message. How can a minority influence the opinions of the majority? Delayed influence also occurs when a minority group proposes a worthwhile idea. It could be an ethnic, religious, political, or any other kind of minority. The majority rejects the idea at first, but reconsiders it later. If the minority continually repeats, a single message and its members seem united, it has a good chance of eventually influencing the decision. The minority’s influence often increases gradually, even if the majority hesitates to admit that the minority has swayed them. By expressing its views and demonstrating the possibility of disagreeing with the majority, the minority also prompts others to offer new ideas. When you disagree with what everyone else is saying, you might hesitate to speak out. When someone else objects, you feel more comfortable expressing your own idea. How can resistance to persuasion be increased? Simply informing people that they are about to hear a persuasive speech activates their resistance and weakens the persuasion, which is known as the forewarning effect. The warning alerts you to resist the persuasion, to criticize weak arguments, and to reject weak evidence. Are coercive techniques effective? What is the problem with using coercive techniques to elicit confessions? 87% of guilty students and 43% of innocent students agreed to confess. Any technique strong enough to get guilty people to confess gets innocent people to confess also. Coercive techniques increase the confessions by both guilty and innocent people, and therefore make the confessions unreliable evidence. What is the mere exposure effect? The mere exposure effect is the principle that the more often we come in contact with someone or something, the more we tend to like that person or object, When people have only a limited time to interact with each other when first meeting, what determines whether or not they would be romantically interested in each other? Attractiveness. What character values promote successful long-term relationships? Intelligence, honesty, and other character values are critical for a lasting relationship. Do "opposites attract" or is similarity more likely to lead to a successful relationship? Most romantic partners and close friends resemble each other in age, physical attractiveness, political and religious beliefs, intelligence, education, and attitudes. As a relationship matures, people’s interests become more and more alike. A relationship can however work out fine if one is more extraverted and the other is more introverted. What is the equity principle? Exchange or equity theories state that are social relationships are transactions in which partners exchange goods and services. How can psychologists predict if the marriage of a newlywed couple will last? Psychologists have studied newlywed couples and compared the results with how the marriages developed later. Couples whose arguments escalate to greater and greater anger are likely to consider divorce later. Many people have been told that it is good to express their feelings fully. However, venting anger at your partner makes both of you feel bad. If your partner retaliates by screaming at you, nothing good will come of it. The best predictor of long-term satisfaction is much display of genuine affection between newlyweds. If your partner cheers you up when things are going badly, that’s good, but often a better sign of affection is if your partner feels genuine pleasure at your success. In marriages that are successful over a long period of time, what changes occur in the feelings of the partners toward one another? Psychologists have maintained that a romantic relationship begins with passionate love, marked by sexual desire and excitement, and gradually develops over many years in to companionate love, marked by sharing, care, and protection. However, later research found that one-third or more of people who have been married for more than 30 years report that they are still “very intensely” in love. What is a social norm? What is a social role? A social norm is an unwritten rule about how to behave. They provide us with an expected idea of how to behave in a particular social group or culture. A social role is the part people play as a member of a social group. With each social role you adopt, your behavior changes to fit the expectations both you and the others have of that role. What happened when psychologist Phil Zimbardo had college students play the roles of guards and prisoners in a simulated prison in the basement of a building Stanford campus? The researchers had to cancel the study because many of the guards were physically and emotionally bullying the prisoners. Zimbardo concluded that the situation had elicited cruel behavior. The implication is that we shouldn’t blame people who abuse their power because most of us would do the same thing in that situation. What happened in Solomon Asch's conformity studies? Solomon Asch asked groups of students to look at a vertical bar, which he defines as the model. He showed them three other vertical bars and asked which bar was the same length as the model. The task is simple. Asch asked students to give their answers aloud. He repeated the procedure with 18 sets of bars. In each group, only one student was a real participant and they were next to last to answer. This was to see if the real participant would conform and answer wrongly like everyone else did. 37 out of the 50 participants conformed to the majority at least once and 14 conformed on most of the trials. What was the purpose and design of Stanley Milgram's famous obedience to authority study? What were the results? How well were people able to predict the results if they didn't know in advance what would happen? What factors influenced the degree to which subjects were obedient? The purpose was to see if someone would obey someone when an authority figure gives normal people instructions to do something that might hurt another person. Of 40 participants, 25 delivered shocks all the way to 450 volts. Most of those who did quit did so early. Most of those who went beyond 150 volts and everyone who continued beyond 330 persisted all the way to 450. Those who delivered the maximum shock were not sadists but normal adults. Most became nervous and upset while they were supposedly delivering shocks to the screaming latter. It is easy to agree to the small request, and agreeing to that one makes it easier to agree to the next one. Of you have already delivered many shocks you are unlikely to quit, because if you quit, you take responsibility for your actions. You can no longer say, “I was just following orders.” What is the "group polarization" effect? Group polarization is the tendency for people who lean in the same direction on a particular issue to become more extreme in that position after discussing it with one another. If nearly all the people who compose a group lean in the same direction on an issue, then a group discussion moves the group as a whole even further in that direction. What is groupthink? Groupthink is the tendency for people to suppress their doubts about a groups’ decision for fear of making a bad impression or disrupting group harmony. The main elements leading to groupthink are overconfidence by the leadership, underestimation of the problems, and pressure to conform.  Ch 14: Personality How did Sigmund Freud develop his theory of personality? He developed his psychodynamic theory that relates personality to the interplay of conflicting forces, including unconscious ones, with the individual. What is catharsis? Catharsis is a release of pent-up emotional tension. What is the Oedipus complex? According to Freud, the Oedipus complex is a period when a boy develops a sexual interest in his mother and competitive aggression toward his father. What is libido? Libido, derived from the Latin word meaning desire, is psychosexual energy according to Freud. What are the stages of psychosexual development in Freud's personality theory? The oral stage (birth – 1.5): the infant derives intense pleasure from stimulation of the mouth, particularly while sucking at the mother’s breast. The anal stage (1.5): children get psychosexual pleasure from the sensations of bowel movements. The phallic stage (3): children begin to play with their genitals. The latent period (5 – adolescence): children suppress their psychosexual interest. The genital stage (puberty): young people take a strong sexual interest in other people. In Freud's theory, what are the three parts of the mind? What is the nature of each of these parts, and how does each part function? The id consists of sexual and other biological drives that demand immediate gratification. The ego is the rational, decision-making aspect of the personality. It resembles the concept of central executive or executive functioning. The superego contains the memory of rules and prohibitions we learned from our parents and others. If the id produces sexual desires that the superego considered unacceptable, the result is guilty feelings. What is a defense mechanism? What are the major defense mechanisms identified in this course and how does each of them work? A defense mechanism is a method employed by the ego to defend itself against anxiety. The major defense mechanisms are as follows: Repression is motivated removal of something to the unconscious – rejecting unacceptable thoughts, desires, and memories. Denial is the refusal to believe unpleasant information. Denial is an assertion that the information is incorrect. Rationalization is an attempt to show that their actions are justifiable. Displacement lets people engage in the behavior with less anxiety by diverting a behavior or thought away from its natural target toward a less threatening target. Regression is an effort to avoid the anxiety of the current situation by returning to a more immature level of functioning. Projection is attributing one’s own undesirable characteristic to other people. Reaction formation is when people present themselves as the opposite of what they really are to avoid awareness of some weakness. Sublimation is the transformation of sexual or aggressive energies into culturally acceptable, even admirable behaviors. In general, how has Freud’s influence on psychology changed over the years? He ideas allow psychotherapists to help their clients think about their developmental history and what it means. In that way, Freud deserves credit, even if most of his specific theories fail to impress. Which aspects of Freud's work have been lasting contributions, and which have been abandoned? Freud’s main lasting contribution is that he popularized psychotherapy. Many psychotherapists acknowledge no allegiance to Freud, but simply try to help their clients understand where their conflicts and emotional reactions come from. What was Karen Horney's contribution to the development of psychodynamic personality theory? Karen Horney kept the concept of repression but argued that penis envy in women was no more likely than womb envy in men. She also argued that women have the same drive to achievement that men do, and that women feel frustrated when forced into subordinate roles. In a way she was a forerunner to later feminist thinkers. Horney focused on what happens when someone’s unrealistic view of the ideal self contrasts with a low evaluation of the real self. What was Carl Jung's contribution to the development of psychodynamic personality theory? Carl Jung’s theory of personality emphasized people’s search for a spiritual meaning in life. Jung stressed the possibility of personality changes in adulthood. He also discussed the way people adopt a persona. He also believed that people’s personalities fell into a few distinct categories. In what ways did Alfred Adler's views of early childhood psychological development differ from Freud's? Alfred Adler broke away from Freud because he believed Freud overemphasized the sex drive and neglected other influences. What did Adler mean by "individual psychology?" Individual psychology, meant to be indivisible psychology, is a psychology of the person as a whole rather than parts, such as id, ego, and superego. Adler emphasized the importance of conscious, goal-directed behavior. What did Adler mean by "inferiority complex?" An inferiority complex is an exaggerated feeling of weakness, inadequacy, and helplessness. What did Adler mean by "social interest" and what role did he suggest it plays in a person's mental health? Social interest is a sense of solidarity and identification with other people that leads to constructive action, meaning an interest in the welfare of society. People with social interest want to cooperate and equating it to mental state, Adler saw mental health as a positive state. What are the main principles of the learning approach to personality? The learning approach to personality emphasizes the ways in which we learn our social behaviors, one situation at a time. We learn social behaviors by vicarious reinforcement and punishment, meaning we tend to copy behaviors that failed for others. We especially imitate the people whom we respect and want to reassemble. What are the main principles of the humanistic approach to personality? The humanistic approach to psychology deals with consciousness, values, and abstract beliefs, including spiritual experiences and the beliefs that people live and die for. Personality depends on people’s beliefs and perceptions of the world. Humanistic psychologists see people as essentially good and striving to achieve their potential. Why did humanistic psychologists reject psychodynamic and behaviorist psychology? Behaviorism and psychoanalysis both assume determinism (the belief that every behavior has a cause) and reductionism (the attempt to explain behavior in terms of its component elements). Humanistic psychologists do not try to explain behavior in terms of its parts or hidden causes. They claim that people are free to make deliberate, conscious decisions. To a humanistic psychologist, attributing such behavior to past reinforcements or unconscious thought processes misses the point. What did Carl Rogers mean by "unconditional positive regard?" Unconditional positive regard is complete, unqualified acceptance of another person as he or she is. You might disapprove of someone’s actions or intentions, but you would still accept and love the person. What were Carl Rogers’ views on personality development? Rogers regarded human nature as basically good. He said it is as natural for people to strive for excellence as it is for a plant to grow. What is self-actualization? Self-actualization is the achievement of one’s full potential. A person with a self-actualized personality show an accurate perception of reality, independence, creativity, and spontaneity, acceptance of themselves and others, a problem-centered outlook rather than a self-centered outlook, enjoyment of life, and a good sense of humor. What is the "Big-Five" personality theory? What are the five factors identified in the theory? The Big Five personality traits or five factor model is emotional stability, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to new experience. Each correlates with many personality dimensions for which our language has a word and none of these traits correlates highly with any of the other four, so they are not measuring the same thing. What do heritability studies indicate about the causes of personality differences among individuals? What is the evidence? Cross-cultural studies offer partial support to the Big Five approach. Several studies have found results consistent with the Big Five model for people in other cultures using other languages. However, some studies do find cross-cultural differences. A study in China identified traits corresponding to extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and loyalty to Chinese traditions. How does personality tend to change as people get older? The older people get, the more slowly they change. One reason for personality to become more fixed is that older people usually sty in the same environment, doing the same things year after year. What is the Barnum effect? The Barnum effect is the tendency to accept vague descriptions of one’s own personality. What is the MMPI? How is the MMPI designed to detect dishonest responses? The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (mercifully abbreviated MMPI) consists of true-false questions intended to measure certain personality dimensions, especially for identifying clinical conditions. Dishonest responses result in a point on the depression scale. What is the NEO PI-R? The NEO PI-R (NEO personality inventory-revised) includes 240 items to measure neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. What is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator? How has it been criticized? The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a test of normal personality loosely based on Carl Jung’s theories. The MBTI classifies people as types. In addition to being either extraverted or introverted, each person is classed as sensing or intuitive, thinking or feeling, and judging or perceiving. The description may be reasonably accurate, but most people are inclined to accept almost any personality report they receive. Although the MBTI is a reasonable test in many regards, its insistence on putting people into distinct categories is hard to defend. What is the theory behind projective personality tests? What are two major types of projective tests? Projective personality tests are designed to encourage people to project their personality characteristics onto ambiguous stimuli. The two major types are the Rorschach inkblots and the Thematic Apperception Test. What are the criticisms of projective personality testing? The Rorschach does detect thought disorders, has moderate validity for selecting risk of suicide, and identifies certain other personality characteristics with low to moderate accuracy. Critics doubt that the Rorschach is worth the bother of administering it, and strongly insist that no one should use it to make important decisions. Psychologists use the TAT in inconsistent ways because many therapists interpret the results according to their clinical judgement, without any clear rules. The results are useful for research purposes, although not necessarily for making decisions about an individual. Carefully collected data shows no dependable relationship between handwriting and personality. How does an implicit personality test work? An implicit personality test measures some aspect of your personality without your awareness. Both types of this test can distinguish moderately well between groups who differ in their personality. However, they are not accurate enough to say anything with confidence about an individual. What are valid uses of the available personality tests? What are the dangers of using personality tests like the MMPI for diagnosing psychological disorders? MMPI personality profile resembling the typical schizophrenia. If we label everyone with that profile as schizophrenic, then we are more wrong than right. Although the personality test provides a helpful clue, a psychologist looks for evidence beyond the test score before drawing a conclusion.   Ch 15: Abnormal Psychology What is medical student's disease? Reading a medical textbook, misunderstanding the description of some disease and confuse it with their own normal condition. What is the biopsychosocial model of psychological abnormality? The biopsychosocial model that emphasizes biological, psychological, and sociological aspects of abnormal behavior. The biological roots of abnormal behavior include genetic factors, infectious diseases, poor nutrition, inadequate sleep, drugs, and other influences on the brain. The psychological component includes reactions to stressful experiences. Also, behavior must be understood in a social and cultural context. What is the DSM-5? Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a reference book developed by psychiatrists and psychologists to standardize their definitions and diagnoses to set specific criteria for each psychological diagnosis. DSM-5 sets the criteria for making a diagnosis. The “either-or” style of diagnosis means that people can qualify for the same diagnosis in many ways. DSM has helped standardize psychiatric diagnoses so that psychologists use terms like depression, schizophrenia, and so forth in more consistent ways. What are the major criticisms of the DSM-5? Few clients neatly fit into one label or another. DSM labels too many conditions as “mental illnesses.” What are the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)? Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) have frequent and exaggerated worries. They grow so tense, irritable, and fatigued that they have trouble working, maintaining social relationships, and enjoying life. What are the symptoms of panic disorder? People with panic disorder (PD) have frequent periods of anxiety and occasional attacks of panic – rapid breathing, increased heart rate, chest pains, sweating, faintness, and trembling. What does the research suggest are the causes of panic disorder? Several studies have shown a genetic contribution, although no single gene has a strong influence. People with joint laxity (“double-jointedness”) tend to experience more fears than average, and more likely than other people to develop anxiety disorders, especially panic disorder. How can panic disorder be treated? The usual treatment focuses on teaching the patient to control breathing and learning to relax. Controlling stress also helps. What is a phobia? A phobia is a fear that interferes with normal living. It is not necessarily irrational. What is irrational is the degree of the fear, leading to extreme distress in the presence of the feared object. Most people with phobias are not so much afraid of the object itself but of their own reactions. What might explain why certain things (e.g., snakes, strangers, etc.) are much more likely to be the focus of phobias rather than other things (e.g., cars, power tools, etc.) even though the items in the latter group tend to cause more injuries and death in our society? Some people with phobias can trace them to a specific frightening event. People may be born with a predisposition to learn fears of objects that have been dangerous throughout our evolutionary history. We more readily fear objects with which we have few safe experiences. We more readily fear objects that we cannot predict or control. How co