Introduction to Psychology Lecture 12 PDF

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Introduction to Psychology first-year course, identifies the key areas which are focussed on...

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PSYC 121 L1 -

[email protected] Page 40-50 PSYC textbook (Burton et al) Nominative determinism, why? Skills for learning (Blackboard)

PSYC 40-50: - Psychologists are not called psychologists, but work in fields requiring a psychologist’s knowledge (counselling and business) - 68% of graduated psychologists find work within 4 months - PhDs for psychology graduates earn on average 80,000.

L2 Burton, 1-18 (chapter 1) Might see the same things but perceive them differently depending on context (steve market with the disappearing bust of volitaire Salvador Dali, 1940. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs:

Stanley Milgram: obedience Freud: conscious mind, hypnosis Hypnologic state: halfway sleep (sleep paralysis) Hypnopompic state

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William james B.F Skinner Phillip Zimbardo Stanley Milgram Freud Carl Rogers Abraham Maslow Solomon Asch Wilhelm Wundt

L3 Burton 1-50, Gleitman 1-18 - Back in the day, mental illness was considered to be consequence of evil spirits taking up residence in our heads. - Trepanation: drilling holes in people’s heads to release pressure (depression, anxiety etc.) - Traumatic injury: produces relief for some people - Psychology grew out of philosophy and physiology - Nativism: we are born ultimately able to do everything we are able to do. - Empiricism: Things we do we have to learn to do. - Birth of PSYC: 1879, Wilhelm Wundt, Leipzig. - Structuralism: periodic table of elements of the mind. - Functions: Different things we thing of - Method: Introspection: training people to break down their sensory. (people’s perspective) - Depends of the viewer/ introspective - Instead: Try focus on functions of our makeup. - Gestalt: Interested in the way we perceive things. How you gained a gestalt experience - Behaviorism (Watson, Skinner) - Psychoanalysis: Freud - Academic tree.org/ psyc - Weekend: google history of psychology. - Philosophy: - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle - What is consciousness? - Are people inherently rational or irrational? - What is the nature of Mortality? Trolley problem 5v1, different parts of the brain are partly responsible for what’s going on inside - Physiology: - Hippocrates: early surgeon, nervous system, - How does the brain control the body? - Nature vs nurture - Nature: - Eyes are the window to the soul: physical dispositions reflect our psyche - Personalities reflect our biology. - Descartes: mind/ body dualism: body is a machine - Mind/ soul is different from the brain

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Lavater (18th century AD): Essays on physiognomy: “A basic resource in a gentleman’s home, to be consulted when hiring staff, making friends and establishing business relations” Personality types: different psychologists argue different types of personalities and how many there are. The Big five (ocean): Extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism (coined by Freud) nature of different people’s emotional experience (highs and lows), openness to experience. You possess each of these personality types to a certain extent to make up your unique personality Narcissism: pathological self-love. Big five shows different types of personalities Gall (18th – 19th century): Phrenology: Divination of the character from the shape of the skull, doesn’t work Phallic: loves people Early use of phrenology: taken head shape of Ned Kelly to determine physical skull characteristics of criminals. Risk of false alarms (mythological problems). Issue: doesn’t compare to non- criminals L4 Mass testing (75 mins) Broca 1862: “lesions to the left frontal convolution seemed to be associated with problems with speech production” Craniometry: measurement of the skull and the size of the skill determines the size of the brain, and hence intelligence Roger Sperry: Studies split brain surgery: Where people experience extreme epileptic seizures. Left side of brain controls right side of body (physical field) Hemineglect: One side of brain not pulling its weight. Gustav LeBonn (Social commentator): studied craniometry (study of the size of the brain). Phineas Gage: Railroad worker 1848, survived rod going through head, behavior changed, frontal lobe experienced damage, effected decision making. Frontal lobe doesn’t develop until 25, starts developing at 15. Issues with Gage: Only case in the study, not neurotypical to start with. Discussion section: Check blackboard for youtube videos Sheldon (20th Century): Constitutional psychology: linked personality to body types Endomorph: Slow moving complacent Mesomorph: Competitive, energetic Ectomorph: Self- conscious, restrained Michael Paul Rosen: Tribal personality study Nurture: Locke (18th century): Tabula Rasa: The ‘wild boy of Aveyron’ Can’t talk, moves on all fours, needs to learn how to get dressed (raised by wolves), learns to use cutlery Learns some skills, never learns how to talk. Idea: We are nothing without social cultural experience Critical point in development where language is able to be learned

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Language acquisition device, can’t specialize if not in right environment. (learning to talk through specific part of brain. Brains are designed to consolidate the networks that get used a lot and prune the ones that don’t Myelination: insulating material around our nerves, isn’t seen much in babies, is in chimpanzees We learn to become what we are. Jeremy Bentham argues: We are born bad, changing our personality as we grow up Francis Galton: Heritability of intellect: Member of British aristocracy, related to Charles Darwin: wrote book on evolution, survival of the fittest. Conducted first surveys in social science: Asked people about their early experience, aristocracies are smarter, have been brought up that way, had parents in similar situations. i.e. intelligence is inherited, correlation Personality is inherited. Intelligence is 80% inherited. Intelligence test: Biased: reflects learning not intelligence, example of cultural knowledge Galton’s heritability impacted social Darwinism: Killing people without the correct inheritance: Hitler Nazi Germany etc. Present day: An interactionist perspective is most common Family members of people diagnosed with schizophrenia are more likely to develop it than others. Early childhood trauma: Flicks switch, makes people more likely to be schizophrenia Interactions between nature and nurture: Parents who play music encourage children to play an instrument, children also inherit the genes. L5 Readings: Page 96-101 Robert Rosenthal: Pygmalion (and golem) effect Hawthorne effect You can create success by treating people as if their successful. the alteration of behaviour by the subjects of a study due to their awareness of being observed. Just by paying attention we can interfere with behavior, by studying something we effect it. (Hawthorne effect) Albert Bandura: studies things that apply to everyone’s lives Bobo experiment: Bring children to labs, observed an adult playing with Bobo (inflatable thing). Idea: Children follow the behavior which has been role modelled to them. We learn through our social environment to behave in particular ways. (Bandura) Self ethicness: Peoples predicted level of capacity. Cognitive psychology: (the information processing metaphor) Since 1950s, research in memory and cognition has adopted the idea that the brain is a lot like a computer. Evolutionary Psychology: Since the 1980s, the idea that pretty much everything we do is geared towards making sure we get to pass our genetic inheritance. Richard Weissman: self-disclosure is key in trust. Evolutionary experience: Things we carry over in generic inheritance to better others.

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Left handers: it continues as there are other associated benefits with being left handed, e.g. left-handed people are more creative (adaptive reasons) Ethics: how to conduct psychological research. Morality: independent set of guidelines Ethics: Beliefs on an institutional/ social level. Some people are disadvantaged by not being advantaged. Long term consequences are unknown/ unable to predict as different people act differently There is nothing set in stone about what is ethically right and wrong. Different practices entail different situations. (Rainbow community survey with u16s not needing parental consent). Four common ‘bioethical’ principles 1. Respect for autonomy 2. Beneficence and non- maleficence 3. Justice: what you do should be in the interest of making the world better. L6 Readings: 1-50 96-101, 61-135 Ethical principles: Four common ‘bioethical’ principles: 1. Respect for autonomy: giving people the right for self-determination. Letting people understand what they are participating in. (Hawthorne effect etc.) 2. Beneficence and non- maleficence: whatever you do you should try to do good and not bad, depending on who the person is. Participating in research might be bad for some people but good for many others. 3. Justice: trying to make the world a better place. Trying to remediate situations (social justice) in our society. Four principles: Respect for the dignity of persons and peoples Responsible caring Integrity in relationships Social justice and responsibility in society Beneficence: working in the interest of your clients Justice: working for society 1940s US: African Americans offered free medical treatment (Syphilis): Didn’t help anyone, used for research for 40 years. (example of why we have bioethical principles) Problems with research can have serious implications on peoples lives. “As scientists, psychologists believe that behavior, like other natural phenomena, can be studied objectively. The scientific method permits psychologists to discover the nature, Theory: “a set of statements designed to explain a set of phenomena; more encompassing than a[n] hypothesis Example: Lying is associated with particular personality types Behavior depends on norms and expectations in context.

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Evolutionary function of ‘religion’ Hypothesis: Statement that can be tested (67) Can be exploratory: theory no one has ever tested Are typically more focused than theories What separates psychology from other non- sciences is that we use the specific method to test hypothesizes if they are supported, or not supported, by appropriate information (or data) Examples: Places where there are weak norms (how people should behave) around appropriate behavior will be the subject of more vandalism and crime Societal expectations vary in different areas. Psychopathy and lying: study show’s people who lie more are more likely to be psycho (correlation). Researchers use survey’s (hypothesis) to back up theories. Variables: things we can measure, that can assume a meaningful value. Operationalism: “The definition of a variable in terms of the operations the experimenter performs to measure or manipulate it (p. 663) Basically, we define concepts in terms of how we measure them. Many concepts can be operationalized in many different ways. Correlation: number that represents the size and direction of the relationship between two things. A correlation can range from: Negative correlation, no correlation, positive correlation L7 Social Psychology The first social psychology experiment: (1897) Figure: Triplett’s competition machine Experiment: one-person v two people Result: Those who reel alone reel in less than those who do it with someone else. Illustrations: An experiment that simulates a real-life situation Concealment of ultimate aim of the experiment Impact of mere presence of others Social facilitation became one of the major topics of social psychology for three decades Core topics of social psychology: Conformity (or majority influence) Burton: 1302- 1304 Experiment to describe conformity: Sherif (1935)- The Autokinetic effect Participants placed alone or in groups of 2/3 in completely dark room. Results: People who gave their results alone varied in answers; they somewhat converged their answers from an individual norm to a group norm Conclusion: In ambiguous situations individuals develop frame of reference for future comparisons. Frame of reference developed in a group may persist when alone. Participants’ judgements have been influenced in the direction of judgements expressed by others- to a limited extent they have conformed. Solomon ash: Jewish scholar who fled to the united states and tried to research the reasonings for the holocaust

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Asch: (1951- 1956)- conformity in unambiguous People participated in visual discrimination Control groups: people whose responses are given in a way which cannot be subject to social influence. Conclusion: Even in unambiguous situations, people are likely to conform to majority influence at least some of the time. Socialization: one reason why people may conform, influence of parents etc. Social cure: people who are members of groups are better off physically and mentally Why do people conform: Motivation: People may conform for one, other, or both of: wanting to be right, wanting to make a good impression Leading to: Informational influence: Conformity increased if there were more neutral trials at the start (more evidence that confederates were competent). Normative Influence: Conformity due to desire to be liked (assumption that disagreeing: being liked less) is referred to as normative influence Increasing interdependence of participants by promising a reward to most accurate groups: conformity doubled. Different types of conformity: Informational Influence: Conversation Normative influence: Compliance Type of influence can mean different type of conformity: Compliance- primarily because of concern about how they will be perceived then disagreeing Conversion: primarily because of their belief that other are right Independence vs anti conformity US POW’s in Korean war: Independent resisters (anti conformist resisters) Anti-conformists: people who will go against what the majority says as the majority has said it Independents v anti conformists may make the same decisions but have different motives for their choices.

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L8 1961 Eichmann, architect for ‘final solution’ was sentenced to death for crimes against Jews Eichmann’s defense: Burton 1297-1302: Stanley Milgram: originally set out to study conformity in a situation less trivial than that previously used Motivated by apparent normality of those responsible for extermination of Jews Specifically, many responsible for war crimes states they were ‘following orders’

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Academic context of Milgram’s work:

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One explanation was that of the ‘Authoritarian personality’ provided by Adorno, Frenkel- Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford (1950) AP: originated from childhood in response to harsh discipline \: produced emotional dependence and obedience in the child Child develops ambiguity towards parents Fear and guilt meant the child cannot act on this anger towards the parents. Anger displaced to weaker others while parents and power they represent are idealized This approach was influential (focus of study): understands situational and cultural factors in blind obedience: a situation Milgram’s work addressed. People who score high on the Authoritarian scale are much more prejudice Problem with authoritarian: fell out of favor due to how questions were worded. Milgram’s (1963) procedure: didn’t include woman, soldiers, police officers: working class were conscripted to army to commit atrocities Results: Experts predict only 10% would exceed 180 volts No one predicted the teacher to go till the end Experimental group subjects: 62.5% continued to administer shocks at the highest level Peoples behaviors are heavily altered by the social context they find themselves in Did obedient participants experience conflict? Yes- their behavior clearly showed conflict Peer pressure: Obedience increases when others stand by with an experiment, when people leave obedience decreases L9 Social facilitation, social loafing, and prosociality (Burton 1284-1286) Allport (1920) broadened Triplett’s focus or include non- competitive situations: “Social facilitation is an improvement in the performance of well-learned/ easy tasks and a deterioration in the performance of poorly learned/ difficult tasks in the mere presence of members of the same species” If the presence of one person improved the winding performance of children in Triplett’s original experiment Does the presence of others improve performance? Inhibition of group performance: Efficiency of different size groups of animals/ people performing agricultural tasks Result: Found that force exerted per person decreased as function of group size- the Ringelmann effect Possible explanations: Operationalization: The group performs better overall, but individuals contributes less than one person completing the task individually Individual variation: some people perform better than others, the people who perform badly will potentially drag down the performance of others People who work in groups will have more self-esteem in the fact that they are not on their own

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Co-ordination loss: distraction, tendency to not pull at same time etc that groups don’t quite reach potential Motivation loss- as group size increases members become less motivated (don’t try as hard) But which one is it?

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Ingham, Levinger, graves and Peckham (1974)

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One control condition: Individual pulling alone Two experimental conditions: Pseudo- groups: Individual subject at front pulling with group of confederates (instructed to pretend to be pulling) Real groups: groups of subjects actually pulling together. Result: Motivation loss is difference between individual and Psuedo- group pulling (can’t be co-ordination loss- others aren’t actually pulling) Co-ordination loss is the difference between Pseudo-group and real group pulling (difference not already accounted for by motivation loss) Both motivation loss and co-ordination loss explain some part of the performance decrement, BUT motivation loss has greater impact Pseudo groups can only experience motivation loss, the greater amount of loss is psychological, with only 10% associated with coordination

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Lanate, Williams and Harkins (1979) replicated Ingham et al (1974) using shouting, cheering and clapping tasks: Lanate found the same pattern of results, and coined the term ‘social loafing’ to describe this loss of motivation Social loafing refers to ‘a reduction in individual effort when working on a collective task (in which one’s outputs are pooled with those of other group members) compared to when working either alone of coactively. Social loafing is a ‘robust and persuasive phenomenon’ Different situations (eg. Restaurant tipping, pumping air) Cultures (US, France etc.)

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Bystander Intervention

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The atrocities committed during World War II motivated the research of Asch, Milgram and others. March 1964- a young woman (Kitty Genovese) is attacked and killed in kew gardens (a respectable neighborhood) in the Queens area What made this tragic death ant more significant to social psychologists than another? The attack took approximately half an hour Kitty Genovese struggled and escaped several times, but her attacker persisted when no-one came to her aid. When police interviewed tenants the next day 38 people (allegedly) admitted that they heard the struggle but did not help

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Lanate (and colleagues) conducted a series of studies in which they ccoined the term ‘bystander effect’ to describe the finding that a lone bystander is more likely to give aid than any one of several bystanders Lanate and Rodlin (1969): Male subjects completed questionnaires in a waiting room alone, or with a friend, or confederate Subjects hear a woman in an adjacent room having difficulty with a filing cab...