Psychology

Description:

• Emperical science
• Derived from Greek, meaning experience
• Knowledge is gained through experience
• Objects of Interest have different characteristics/features

Research Method:

Scientific hypotheses:

• A good hypothesis
  • relates to real, measurable things
  • generalizes beyonds observations: cant gather every population there are
  • can be expressed as conditional statements
    • ”there are some” → cant be expressed
  • can be falsified
    • if “can lead to”: think of infinite line of samples, there is no amount of samples to be able to falsify the statement
• Generally, a hypotheses are not falsifiable
  • existential clause
  • ”can” statement
  • poorly defined constructs
  • tautologies
  • metaphysical statements
• bad examples:
  • selection bias

Constructs

• Operationalization: how do we translate a feature into variable value?
• Latent vs manifest features:
  • latent features doesnt exist physically in reality “hypothetical constructs”: creativity, frustration,..
  • manifest features: distance, count,…
• Most things we measure are latent features in psychology

Terminology:

• IV vs DV
  • Independent variable (IV): cause of sth
  • Dependent variable (DV): Effect of sth
• Moderator variable: moderates relationship between IV and DC
  • interaction variable
  • something that acts upon the relationship between two variables and changes its direction or strength
  • also independent
  • an intermediate variables: IV → affects moderator → affect DV
  • example:
    • “The more people witness an emergency situation, the less likely any single person is to intervene” (Bystander effect)
    • It depends on how dangerous the situation is.
    • Dangerous situations attenuate the bystander effect
• Mediator variable mediates relationship between IV and DV
  • part of the causal pathway of an effect, and it tells you how or why an effect takes place
  • If something is a mediator:
    1. It’s caused by the independent variable.
    2. It influences the dependent variable
    3. When it’s taken into account, the statistical correlation between the independent and dependent variables is higher than when it isn’t considered.
  • example:
    • Bystander effect
    • Perception of emergency and experienced arousal increase the probability to intervene
    • More nb of passive bystanders → reduce perception of emergency
    • Perception of emergency → increases probability to intervene
• 
• Causality can be established by randomly assigned participants to different levels of the IV
  • samples dont choose which class/group they get to be in

Theory-driven approach:

• Theory provide general explainations for human behavior
  • /= hypothesis
• Scientific theories satisfy 3 requirements:
  • Statements about constructs: abstract concepts such as “self-esteem”, “intelligence” or “happiness”
  • Describe causal relationships: cause-effect coupling
    • allows designing interventions to fix the causal-effect (with other hypotheses /predictions)
  • General scope: need to apply across a variety of different settings

How reliable is research?

• Construct validity: Am i measuring the right construct?
  • makes sure that events that occur in research setting actually correspond to the theoretical construct
  • The extent to which the independent and dependent variables used in research correspond to the theoretical constructs under investigation
  • IVs and DVs must correspond to the intended constructs, and they must not correspond to other constructs
  • There are infinitely many ways to measure psychological constructs
  • How to measure psychological constructs:
    • self-report measures: rate on a scale
    • observational measure: record actions
    • archival measures: see past trends
    • performance measure: test scores/speed/…
    • physiological measure: brain activity
• Internal validity: can i draw the correct conclusions about causality?
  • extent to which it can be concluded that changes in the independent variable actually caused changes (not any other cause) in the dependent variable in a research study
  • dependent on the research design
  • Gold standard of establishing causality is an experimental design:
    • A research design in which researchers randomly assign participants to different groups and manipulate one or more independent variables.
  • Random assignment: The procedure of assigning participants to different experimental groups so that every participant has exactly the same chance as every other participant of being in any given group.
  • Manipulation: Intentionally varying some factor as the independent variable in an experimental research design
• External validity: makes sure that we can make claims about more than just the people in a study (generalize)
  • extent to which research results can be generalized to other appropriate people, times, and settings

Biological psychology:

The human nervous system

• Includes:
  • peripheral nervous system (PNS)
    • somatic nervous system: control what brain ask of the body
      • cranial nerves: Emerge directly from the brain
      • spinal nerves: Emerge from the segments of the spinal cord.
    • autonomic nervous system
      • parasympathetic nervous system: The “rest-and-digest” system, conserving energy and promoting routine body maintenance
      • sympathetic nervous system: The “fight-or-flight” system, preparing the body for intense physical activity or perceived danger.
  • central nervous system (CNS):

Stress

• Three dimensions of stress:
  • Psychological stress
  • Sympathetic nervous system reaction to stress
  • Hormonal reaction to stress

Psychological stress response

• Psychological stress = perceived stress
• appraisal theory:
  • Our emotional and physiological response to an event is not determined by the event itself, but by our interpretation or appraisal of it
  • Stress is a transaction between an individual and their environment
  • Step 1: Primary Appraisal: interpretation of the stressors → if dangerous → step 2
    • Initial evaluation
    • “Am I in trouble?”
    • Three possible outcomes:
      • Irrelevant
      • Benign–positive
      • Stressful
    • Three stressful appraisal forms:
      • Harm/loss (damage already sustained)
      • Threat (anticipated harm/loss)
      • Challenge (possibility for mastery or gain)
  • Step 2: Secondary Appraisal: analysis of the available resources
    • “What might and can I do?” → if efficient → cause stress
    • Different coping options are evaluated:
      • Will it accomplish what it is supposed to do?
      • Can I apply a particular strategy effectively?
      • What are the consequences of using that strategy?
  • Step3: Reappraisal: pacing and learning
    • “How has the situation changed?”
    • Usually based on new information or as a result of cognitive coping efforts
• Sympathetic nervous system reaction to stress
  • Increase quickly and dropping quickly right after
• Neurons and neural activity:
  • Neurons communicate using electrical signals (action potentials)
  • Action potentials form the basis of all neuronal communication
  • At the macro level, the firing rate reflects transmission of information
  • Even during sleep, there is only a small, ~15%, decrease in energy use
  • Energy to the brain is supplied as oxygen and glucose (sugar)
  • How to measure neural activity? with subtraction method
    • Most common use of fMRI is to apply the subtraction method to identify brain areas related to certain cognitive functions
    • Example use:
      • Why do people remember some words but not others?
      • Participants learned lists of words
      • Needed to make recognition decisions
      • Measure activity for remembered vs. forgotten words
    • subtraction method: minus the 2 scans to identify the differences
  • Connectivity analysis
    • Measurement of neural activity asks which areas are active when engaging with a specific task
    • Connectivity analysis asks which areas influence the activity of other areas

Cognitive Psychology

• Cognition is the set of mental processes the mind uses to acquire, represents, and processes information about the world.
• Cognitive abilities:
  • learning
  • memory
  • attention
  • perception
  • problem-solving
  • decision making
  • reasoning
  • language
• Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of how the mind acquires, represents, and processes information about the world
  • The defining feature of cognitive psychology is analyzing mental phenomena in terms of how the mind processes and represents information
  • The perspective and methods of cognitive psychology can be applied to all mental phenomena

Memory

• Human memory is not precise, often it links related items and remember things that didnt exist
• Schema: knowledge about what is typical of a given situation, event, location, etc
• we forget things because:
  • Memory decay:
    • Memories naturally “degrade” over time
  • Retrieval failure: memory is there but we cant recall
    • Forgetting occurs due to the loss of available retrieval cues
    • Memory can feel like it is on the “tip-of-the-tongue”
    • With the right prompting, old memories can come back
  • Interference
    • Retrieval is competitive; memories interfere with each other
    • Target memory retrieval is blocked by competing memories
• False memory: remember thing that didnt exist
• Memory is a reconstructive process
  • We take whatever comes back to mind and fill in the gaps.
  • Retrieving a past event engages the same brain mechanisms as imagining a future event
  • Through the reconstruction process, memories can get distorted
• Recipe for false memories: Source monitoring framework
  1. People must accept that the suggested event is plausible
  2. People must create contextual information for the event, such as an image and a narrative
  3. People must commit a source monitoring error, wrongly attributing their memory construction to personal experience
• fMRI used for energy consumption by brain based on oxygen
• EEG used for

Remembering:

• Make sure to encode the information. Attention is important
  • a random image is easier to be redrawn from memory if there is an “explaination” of the image to describe what going on
• Meaningful information gets stored in LTM. Encode information on a deeper level through meaningful associations to improve memory (the level-of-processing effect)
  • example: “The old man bought the paint to color his cane” is much easier to rmb than “The old man bought the paint”
• Understanding and organizing information to increase distinctiveness in memory. Example: using
  • acronyms
  • peg-word method
  • method of loci (location)
• Memory retrieval is better if the retrieval context is similar to the one at encoding (the encoding-specificity effect)
  • learnt and recall when intoxicated is better than learn when intoxicated and recall sober
• Memory retrieval is better if the mental process engaged at retrieval is similar to that at encoding (the transfer-appropriate processing effect)
  • depth-of-processing effect: participants just need to identify if they saw the word before
    • semantic encoding (does it have?) is better than shallow encoding (does it rhyme with?)
  • Transfer-Appropriate Processing (Rhyming Recognition): participants might be asked to recognize the target words based on their sound
    • shallow encoding (rhyme) is better than semantic encodiing
• Better than relearning? Tests, even without feedback (the testing effect)
• Add gaps between study sessions (the spacing effect)
  • more times studying is better than long hours

Why video games are so addictive:

• Loot boxes
  • Behaviorism (skinner box)
  • Variable ratio reinforcement schedule: known to lead to highest consistency
  • superstitious beliefs: belief that an action influences random chance
• Daily tasks: “Fixed interval reinforcement schedule” guarantees rewards and avoids long streaks of frustration
• Reward progressions:
  • Sunk Cost Fallacy
  • Reinforcement thinning (gradually decrease the frequency of reinforcement): leads to most consistent behaviors

Development psychology

what is development:

• development = qualitative change, something becoming different from before
• examples:
  • physical appearance
  • cognition
  • identify
  • morality
  • performance
• Development implies changes in behavior that have the following characteristics:
  • Aimed at a higher level
  • Aimed at a final state
  • Qualitative in nature
  • Correlated with age
  • Universal (i.e., not culture-specific)
• Modern understanding of development:
  • Development as a life-long process
  • Development is multi-directional:
    • same point and develop to different points
    • same point can be developed from different pathways
    • development can be reversible
  • Development as gain and loss
  • Development as systemic change
  • Development as probabilistic epigenesi
    • Epigenesis: Idea of the unfolding of predetermined predispositions (nature)
    • Probabilistic epigenesis (Gottlieb, 1991):
      • Predetermined predispositions unfold with a certain probability, as a function of the environment and experiences (nurture)
    • can be inherited, but not be learned: nativism
    • can be learned but not be inherited: empiricism

… week 9

Attachment

• Contact comfort: monkey prefers cloth doll to wire doll even though its fed from wire doll
• 3 main attachment styles:
  • Secure: from responsive care giving
    • I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them. I don’t often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me.
  • Avoidant: from unresponsive to child’s needs
    • I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to trest them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often, love partners want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being.
  • Anxious–resistant: inconsistently responsive to child’s need
    • I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn’t really love me or won’t want to stay with me. I want to get very close to my partner, and this sometimes scares people away.

Parenting styles

	Low expectation/control	High expectation/control
low warmth/responsiveness	uninvoled	authoritarian
high warmth/responsiveness	permissive	authoritative

Child outcomes

• Secure children likely to…
  • Have better peer relationships
  • Be better evaluated by teachers
  • Persist on challenging tasks
• Insecure (avoidant) children likely to…
  • Be classified as bullies
  • Have difficulty making and maintaining friendships

Attachment and relationship functioning

• higher security:
  • more satisfying relationships
  • less conflict
  • more enduring relationships
  • more likely to provide support to partner in times of distress

Personality and social psychology:

examples:

• temparement
• intelligence
• influence
• attraction
• stereotypes

What is personality:

• Controversial
• some common features
  • relavively permanent/persisting features
  • comprises of characterisics unique to people
  • give consistency and individuality to person’s thoughts, feeling and behavior
• …

What is social psychology:

• the study of person in siuation (external context)
  • internal context → personality
• 3 main categories: ABC
  • Affective
  • ..
• Individual is the main unit of analysis

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Cognitive bias