Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education

“Irkutsk State Medical University”

of the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation

Department of Clinical, Social Psychology and Humanities

Yu. N. Timofeeva, T. A. Voronova,

Yu. V. Chepurko, S. V. Dubrovina

MAJOR BRANCHES OF

PSYCHOLOGY

Study guide

Irkutsk

ISMU

2020

2

УДК 159.9 (075.8)

ББК 88я73

M 11

Recommended by the CCMС of FSBEI HE ISMU MOH Russia

as a study guide for foreign students, mastering educational programs of higher education

for specialists in Dentistry in the course of studying “Psychology and pedagogy” as an academic

discipline

(Protocol № 1 of 28.10.2020)

Authors:

Yu. N. Timofeeva – Senior teacher, Department of Foreign Languages with Latin and “Russian for

Foreigners” Programs, FSBEI HE ISMU MOH Russia

T. A. Voronova – Doctor of Sciences in Psychology, Associate Professor, Head of the Department

of Clinical, Social Psychology and Humanities, FSBEI HE ISMU MOH Russia

Yu. V. Chepurko – Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Associate Professor, Department of

Clinical, Social Psychology and Humanities, FSBEI HE ISMU MOH Russia

S. V. Dubrovina – Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Senior teacher, Department of Clinical,

Social Psychology and Humanities, FSBEI HE ISMU MOH Russia

Reviewers:

V. V. Litvinenko – Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor,

Department of Foreign Languages with Latin and “Russian for Foreigners” Programs,

FSBEI HE ISMU MOH Russia

E. A. Fedina – Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor,

Department of International and Comparative Law, Law Institute of ISU

M 11 Major branches of psychology : study guide / Yu. N. Timofeeva, T. A. Voronova,

Yu. V. Chepurko, S. V. Dubrovina; FSBEI HE ISMU MOH Russia, Department of Clinical, Social

Psychology and Humanities – Irkutsk : ISMU, 2020. – 93 p.

The study guide contains the basic theoretical information about the major branches of

psychology: cognitive psychology, personality psychology, developmental psychology, social

psychology and health psychology. At the end of each section review questions, topics for

presentation, and test tasks are provided for the purpose of mastering the studied material, preparing

for discussions and self-control.

The study guide is intended for foreign students, mastering educational programs of higher

education for specialists in Dentistry in the course of studying “Psychology and pedagogy” as an

academic discipline.

УДК 159.9 (075.8)

ББК 88я73

© Timofeeva Yu. N., Voronova T. A., Chepurko Yu. V., Dubrovina S. V., 2020

© FSBEI HE ISMU MOH Russia, 2020

3

CONTENTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 5

INTRODUCTION 6

Section 1. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 8

1.1. Cognition 8

1.2. Sensation and perception 8

1.3. Attention 10

1.4. Learning 12

1.5. Thinking 13

1.6. Speaking 14

1.7. Memory 15

1.8. Mnemonic devices 19

Section 2. PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY 24

2.1. Personality 24

2.2. Early theories of personality 24

2.3. Personality as traits 25

2.4. The MMPI and projective tests 27

2.5. Psychodynamic theories of personality 28

2.6. Humanism and self-actualization 32

2.7. Is personality more nature or more nurture? 33

2.8. Four temperaments theory 35

Section 3. DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 41

3.1. Human development 41

3.2. Prenatal development 41

3.3. Infancy and childhood 42

3.4. Adolescence 51

3.5. Adulthood 53

Section 4. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 61

4.1. Social psychology as a science 61

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4.2. History of social psychology 62

4.3. Intrapersonal phenomena 63

4.4. Interpersonal phenomena 68

Section 5. HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY 77

5.1. Health psychology as a science 77

5.2. The role of behavior in health 78

5.3. Psychological health 80

5.4. Psychological stress 81

KEYS TO THE TEST TASKS 91

RECOMMENDED LITERATURE 92

5

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

BC – before Christ

CHD - coronary heart disease

DNA - deoxyribonucleic acid

FAS - fetal alcohol syndrome

IQ - Intelligence quotient

MBTI - Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

MMPI - Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

REM sleep - Rapid eye movement sleep

Rh factor - Rhesus factor

TAT - Thematic Apperception Test

TB - tuberculosis

WHO - World Health Organization

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INTRODUCTION

“Major branches of psychology” is the largest and one of the most important

section of the discipline "Psychology and Pedagogy". The main task of this study

guide is to help students master theoretical knowledge of major branches of

psychology. The study guide consists of five theoretical sections:

1. Cognitive psychology

2. Personality psychology

3. Developmental psychology

4. Social psychology

5. Health psychology

The first section is devoted to the psychology of cognitive mental processes. It

reveals the peculiarities of the following mental processes: sensation, perception,

attention, learning, thinking, speaking, and memory.

The second section is related to the study of personality psychology including

early theories of personality, personality as traits, personality tests, psychodynamic

and humanistic theories of personality, nature versus nurture and four temperaments

theories.

The third section is devoted to the questions of developmental psychology.

This section describes human development during the whole lifespan: prenatal

period, infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

The fourth section reveals the main issues of social psychology: its history,

intrapersonal and interpersonal phenomena.

The fifth section provides information about health psychology. It describes the

role of behavior in health, defines psychological health and reveals the issues of

psychological stress.

At the end of each section review questions, topics for presentation, and test

tasks are provided for the purpose of mastering studied material, preparing for

discussions and self-control.

7

The study guide meets the requirements of the Federal State Educational

Standards of Higher Education and the academic program of the discipline

“Psychology and Pedagogy”. It is assigned for foreign students mastering educational

programs for specialists in Dentistry. It can be used both in classroom and for

independent out-of-class work.

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SECTION 1. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

1.1 Cognition

Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that studies mental processes

including how people think, perceive, remember, and learn. As part of the larger field

of cognitive science, this branch of psychology is related to other disciplines

including neuroscience, philosophy, and linguistics.

Cognitive comes from the Latin “cognito”, meaning to apprehend or

understand.

Cognition - it is a general term including all mental processes by which people

become aware of and understand the world.

Cognition is the process by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced,

elaborated, stored, recovered, and used. In science, cognition is the mental processing

that includes the attention of working memory, comprehending and producing

language, calculating, reasoning, problem solving, and decision making.

Cognitive psychologists argue that individuals do not passively respond to

stimuli, but actively process information in their brain before responding to the

information. They are interested in what happens in the mind between the stimulus

and the response. They look at topics such as perception, memory, thought, language,

and attention. They try to explain behavior in terms of these mental processes.

Cognitive psychology is used in many different ways, such as suggestions on how to

improve our memories, improving performance in situations that require

concentration and so on.

1.2. Sensation and perception

Sensation and perception are inter-related processes that are developed

throughout the lifespan. Although they have a close relationship, sensation and

perception have discrete qualities that differentiate one from the other.

Sensation

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Sensation is defined as the process in which a sensory receptor is stimulated,

producing nerve impulses that travel to the brain, which in turn interprets such

impulses as a visual image, a sound, taste, odor, touch, or pain. The physical stimulus

present in the environment emits energy that is absorbed by a sensory organ (known

as transduction), causing sensation.

Perception

Perception refers to the occurrence when the brain performs organization of

information it obtains from the neural impulses, and then begins the process of

translation and interpretation. It is a vital process that helps us rationalize or make

sense of the information related to the physical stimulus. Perception occurs when the

brain processes information to give meaning to it, by means of emotions, memories,

etc.

Factors influencing perception

1. Functioning of sense organs

2. Functioning of brain

3. Previous experiences

4. Psychological state

5. Interest

6. Motivation

7. Behavior of an organisms

Relationship between sensation and perception

Sensation and perception are elements that balance and complement one

another. They work together for us to be able to identify and create meaning from

stimuli-related information. Without sensation, perception will not be possible,

except for people who believe in extrasensory perception. And without perception,

our sensations would remain to be "unknown" to us since there is no mental

processing of what we sense. Sensation can be defined as the passive process of

bringing information from the outside world into the body and to the brain. The

process is passive in the sense that we do not have to be consciously engaging in a

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"sensing" process. Perception can be defined as the active process of selecting,

organizing, and interpreting the information brought to the brain by the senses.

How they work together?

1) Sensation occurs: a) sensory organs absorb energy from a physical stimulus

in the environment. b) sensory receptors convert this energy into neural impulses and

send them to the brain. 2) Perception follows: a) the brain organizes the information

and translates it into something meaningful.

Differences between sensation and perception

Sensation and perception are two completely different elements in terms of

how they process information. In sensation, the physical stimulus, together with its

physical properties, is registered by sensory organs. Then, the organs decode this

information, and transform them into neural impulses or signals. These signals are

transmitted to the sensory cortices of the brain. The line of difference between

sensation and perception is now drawn; perception follows sensation. In the brain, the

nerve impulses go through a series of organization, translation and interpretation.

Once perception is finished, a person is able to "make sense" out of the sensations.

For instance, seeing the light (sensation) is different from determining its color

(perception). Another example is that feeling the coldness of the environment is

different from perceiving that winter is coming. Also, hearing a sound is different

from perceiving the music being played.

1.3. Attention

Attention is an ability to sustain concentration on a particular object, action, or

thought, and ability to manage competing demands in our environment. There are

four main types of attention that we use in our daily lives: selective attention, divided

attention, sustained attention, and executive attention.

Selective attention

Have you ever been at a loud concert or a busy restaurant, and you are trying to

listen to the person you are with? While it can be hard to hear every word, you can

usually pick up most of the conversation if you're trying hard enough. This is because

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you are choosing to focus on this one person's voice, as opposed to say, the people

speaking around you. Selective attention takes place when we block out certain

features of our environment and focus on one particular feature, like the conversation

you are having with your friend.

Divided attention

Do you ever do two things at once? If you're like most people, you do that a

lot. Maybe you talk to a friend on the phone while you're cleaning the house.

Nowadays, there are people everywhere texting on their phones while they're

spending time with someone. When we are paying attention to two things at once, we

are using divided attention.

Some instances of divided attention are easier to manage than others. For

example, cleaning the home while talking on the phone may not be hard if there's not

much of a mess to focus on. Texting while you are trying to talk to someone in front

of you, however, is much more difficult. Both age and the degree to which you are

accustomed to dividing your attention make a difference in how adept at it you are.

Sustained attention

Are you someone who can work at one task for a long time? If you are, you are

good at using sustained attention. This happens when we can concentrate on a task,

event, or feature in our environment for a prolonged period of time. Think about

people you have watched who spend a lot of time working on a project, like painting

or even listening intently to another share their story.

Sustained attention is also commonly referred to as one's attention span. It

takes place when we can continually focus on one thing happening, rather than losing

focus and having to keep bringing it back. People can get better at sustained attention

as they practice it.

Executive attention

Do you feel able to focus intently enough to create goals and monitor your

progress? If you are inclined to do these things, you are displaying executive

attention. Executive attention is particularly good at blocking out unimportant

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features of the environment and attending to what really matters. It is the attention we

use when we are making steps toward a particular end.

For example, maybe you need to finish a research project by the end of the day.

You might start by making a plan, or you might jump into it and attack different parts

of it as they come. You keep track of what you've done, what more you have to do,

and how you are progressing. You are focusing on these things in order to reach the

goal of a finished research paper. That is using your executive attention.

1.4. Learning

Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors,

skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans

and animals. Some learning is immediate, induced by a single event (e.g. being

burned by a hot stove), but much skill and knowledge accumulates from repeated

experiences. The changes induced by learning often last a lifetime, and it is hard to

distinguish learned material that seems to be "lost" from that which cannot be

retrieved.

Human learning starts at birth (it might even start before) and continues until

death as a consequence of ongoing interactions between people and their

environment. The nature and processes involved in learning are studied in many

fields, including educational psychology, neuropsychology, experimental

psychology, and pedagogy. Research in such fields has led to the identification of

various sorts of learning. For example, learning may occur as a result of habituation,

or classical conditioning, operant conditioning or as a result of more complex

activities such as play, seen only in relatively intelligent animals. Learning may occur

consciously or without conscious awareness. Learning that an aversive event can't be

avoided nor escaped may result in a condition called learned helplessness. There is

evidence for human behavioral learning prenatally, in which habituation has been

observed as early as 32 weeks into gestation, indicating that the central nervous

system is sufficiently developed and primed for learning and memory to occur very

early on in development.

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Play has been approached by several theorists as the first form of learning.

Children experiment with the world, learn the rules, and learn to interact through

play. Lev Vygotsky agrees that play is pivotal for children's development, since they

make meaning of their environment through playing educational games. For

Vygotsky, however, play is the first form of learning language and communication

and the stage where a child begins to understand rules and symbols.

1.5. Thinking

Thinking or thought is a mental process which allows human beings to model

the world, and so to deal with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and

desires. Words referring to similar concepts and processes include cognition,

sentience, consciousness, idea, and imagination.

Thinking involves the deeply cerebral manipulation of information, as when

we form concepts, engage in problem solving, reason and make decisions. Thinking

is a higher cognitive function and the analysis of thinking processes is part of

cognitive psychology.

In common language, the word “to think” covers numerous and diverse

psychological activities. It often refers merely to the act of being conscious of

something, especially if that thing is outside the immediate environment ("It made me

think of my grandmother"). It is sometimes a synonym for "tending to believe,"

especially with less than full confidence ("I think that it will rain, but I am not sure").

At other times it denotes the degree of attentiveness ("I did it without thinking").

Many other mental activities—many of which may shade into each other—can be

covered by the word, such as interpreting, evaluating, imagining, planning, and

remembering.

Little is written about the actual content of thoughts. It would seem we do not

think in complete sentences. We think fragments, ideas embodied in words. We don't

think "I mailed the package to my sister this morning", we think "mailed package

sister morning". If we're reading a book, our thoughts include the story line and our

reflections on the story line. But our thoughts can contain only one idea at a time, so

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if the plot is "hero runs after murderer" and our reflection is "he was foolish to trust

the villain", our thought is something like "hero foolish trust run after murderer

villain". Our thoughts may include images.

The basic mechanics of the human mind reflect a process of pattern matching

or rather recognition. In a "moment of reflection", new situations and new

experiences are judged against recalled ones and judgements are made. In order to

make these judgements, the intellect maintains present experience and sorts relevant

past experience. It does this while keeping present and past experience distinct and

separate. The intellect can mix, match, merge, sift, and sort concepts, perceptions,

and experience. This process is called reasoning. Logic is the science of reasoning.

1.6. Speaking

Speech production refers to the cognitive processes engaged in going from

mind to mouth, that is, the processes transforming a nonlinguistic conceptual

structure representing a communicative intention into a linguistically well-formed

utterance.

Native adult speakers produce on average two to three words per second. These

words are retrieved from a lexicon of approximately 30 000 (productively used)

words. This is no small feat: producing connected speech not only entails retrieving

words from memory, but further entails combining this information into well-formed

sentences. Considering the complexity of all the encoding processes involved, it is

impressive that we produce speech at such a fast rate while at the same time

remaining highly accurate in our production.

Human language is the most complex behavior on the planet and, at least as far

as we know, in the universe. Language involves both the ability to comprehend

spoken and written words and to create communication in real time when we speak or

write. Most languages are oral, generated through speaking. Speaking involves a

variety of complex cognitive, social, and biological processes including operation of

the vocal cords, and the coordination of breath with movements of the throat and

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mouth, and tongue. Other languages are sign languages, in which the communication

is expressed by movements of the hands.

Although language is often used for the transmission of information, this is

only its most mundane function. Language also allows us to access existing

knowledge, to draw conclusions, to set and accomplish goals, and to understand and

communicate complex social relationships. Language is fundamental to our ability to

think, and without it we would be nowhere near as intelligent as we are.

Language can be conceptualized in terms of sounds, meaning, and the

environmental factors that help us understand it. Phonemes are the elementary sounds

of our language, morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a language, syntax

is the set of grammatical rules that control how words are put together, and contextual

information is the elements of communication that are not part of the content of

language but that help us understand its meaning.

1.7. Memory

Memory refers to the processes that are used to acquire, store, retain, and later

retrieve information. There are three major processes involved in memory: encoding,

storage, and retrieval.

Human memory involves the ability to both preserve and recover information

we have learned or experienced. As we all know, however, this is not a flawless

process. Sometimes we forget or misremember things. Sometimes things are not

properly encoded in memory in the first place.

Memory problems can range from minor annoyances like forgetting where you

left your car keys to major diseases, like Alzheimer's and other kinds of dementia,

that affect the quality of life and the ability to function.

The study of human memory has been a subject of science and philosophy for

thousands of years and has become one of the major topics of interest within

cognitive psychology.

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In order to form new memories, information must be changed into a usable

form, which occurs through the process known as encoding. Once the information

has been successfully encoded, it must be stored in memory for later use.

Much of this stored memory lies outside of our awareness most of the time,

except when we actually need to use it. The retrieval process allows us to bring stored

memories into conscious awareness.

To use the information that has been encoded into memory, it first has to be

retrieved. There are many factors that can influence how memories are retrieved such

as the type of information being used and the retrieval cues that are present.

Of course, this process is not always perfect. Have you ever felt like you had

the answer to a question right at the tip of your tongue, but you couldn’t quite

remember it? This is an example of a perplexing memory retrieval problem known as

lethologica or the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.

One way of thinking about memory organization is known as the semantic

network model. This model suggests that certain triggers activate associated

memories. A memory of a specific place might activate memories about related

things that have occurred in that location. For example, thinking about a particular

campus building might trigger memories of attending classes, studying, and

socializing with peers.

While several different models of memory have been proposed, the stage

model of memory is often used to explain the basic structure and function of memory.

Initially proposed in 1968 by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin, this theory

outlines three separate stages of memory: sensory memory, short-term memory, and

long-term memory.

Sensory memory

Sensory memory is first in this classification of memories and is our ability to

remember certain aspects of information for less than a second after the stimulus has

gone. Our sensory receptors have the ability to hold a huge amount of information but

everything held by these receptors only lasts for a fraction of a second. Sensory

memory is divided into echoic and iconic memory.

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Echoic memory refers to stimuli of an audio nature. Essentially, we are able to

retain a mental echo for a few seconds after the stimulus was heard. An example of

this is the ability to repeat words or numbers a few seconds after someone else has

said them.

Iconic memory is much more brief and lasts for just one quarter of a second.

This relates to visual memory whereby we can remember items that have just flashed

on a screen for a very short period of time.

Short-term memory

Classification of memories continues with short-term memory which is the

ability to hold a small amount of information for a few seconds. It is estimated that

we can hold short-term memories for up to 20 seconds. George Miller came up with a

theory that the human mind was capable of holding 7 plus or minus 2 pieces of

information in its short-term memory store. He reached this conclusion from

experiments in the 1960s. However, more recent studies have shown that the amount

of information we can retain depends on a number of different factors and cannot be

confined to a number between 5 and 9.

The process of chunking also puts a hole in Miller’s theory. Chunking enables

you to recall information in groups which greatly increases your short-term memory

capacity. For example, it is far easier to remember 3 groups of 4 rather than one

group of 12 pieces of information. Also, the very nature of the information being

recalled has a profound effect on how much we can remember.

Long-term memory

Since memories fade from sensory and short-term memory so quickly, we

obviously need a more permanent way to remember events. Long-term memory is

our permanent storage. As far as we know, the capacity of long-term memory is

unlimited. No one reports their memory as being full and unable to encode new

information. Studies show that once information reaches long-term memory, we will

likely remember it for the rest of our lives. However, memories can decay or fade

from long-term memory, so it is not truly permanent. Long-term memories can be

stored in three different formats:

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Episodic memory is memory of specific events, stored in a sequential series of

events. Example: remembering the last time you went on a date.

Semantic memory is general knowledge of the world, stored as facts, meanings,

or categories rather than sequentially. Example: What is the difference between the

terms effect and affect?

Procedural memory means memories of skills and how to perform them. These

memories are sequential but might be very complicated to describe in words.

Example: How to throw a curveball.

Memories can also be implicit or explicit. Explicit memories (also called

declarative memories) are what we usually think of first. They are the conscious

memories of facts or events we actively tried to remember. When you study this

section, you try to form explicit memories about the memory theories. Implicit

memories (also called nondeclarative memories) are unintentional memories that we

might not even realize we have. For example, while you are helping your friend clean

her house, you might find that you have implicit memories about how to scrub a floor

properly after watching your parents do it for so many years.

Forgetting

Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we forget important events or facts that we

try and want to remember. One cause of forgetting is decay, forgetting because we do

not use a memory or connections to a memory for a long period of time. For example,

you might memorize the state capitals for a civics test but forget many of them soon

after the test because you do not need to recall them. However, your studying was not

in vain, even memories that decay do not seem to disappear completely. Many studies

show an important relearning effect. If you have to memorize the capitals again, it

will take you less time than it did the first time you studied them.

Another factor that causes forgetting is interference. Sometimes other

information in your memory competes with what you are trying to recall. Interference

can occur through two processes:

Retroactive interference.

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It happens when learning new information interferes with the recall of older

information. If you study your psychology at 3:00 and your sociology at 6:00, you

might have trouble recalling the psychology information on a test the next day.

Proactive interference.

It happens when older information learned previously interferes with the recall

of information learned more recently. If a researcher reads you a list of items in a

certain order, then rereads them differently and asks you to list them in the new order,

the old list proactively interferes with recall of the new list.

1.8. Mnemonic devices

A mnemonic [nəˈmɒnɪk] (the first "m" is not pronounced) device, or memory

device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval

(remembering) in the human memory.

Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imagery as

specific tools to encode any given information in a way that allows for efficient

storage and retrieval. Mnemonics aid original information in becoming associated

with something more accessible or meaningful—which, in turn, provides better

retention of the information.

Commonly encountered mnemonics are often used for lists and in auditory

form, such as short poems, acronyms, initialisms, or memorable phrases, but

mnemonics can also be used for other types of information and in visual or

kinesthetic forms. Their use is based on the observation that the human mind more

easily remembers spatial, personal, surprising, physical, humorous, or otherwise

"relatable" information, rather than more abstract or impersonal forms of information.

Mnemonic systems are techniques or strategies consciously used to improve

memory. They help use information already stored in long-term memory to make

memorization an easier task.

Types of mnemonic devices

1. Music mnemonics. Songs and jingles can be used as a mnemonic. A common

example is how children remember the alphabet by singing the ABCs.

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2. Name mnemonics (acronym). The first letter of each word is combined into a

new word. For example: VIBGYOR (or ROY G BIV) for the colours of the rainbow

or HOMES for the Great Lakes.

3. Expression or word mnemonics. The first letter of each word is combined to

form a phrase or sentence -- e.g. "Richard of York gave battle in vain" for the colours

of the rainbow.

4. Model mnemonics. A model is used to help recall information. Applications

of this method involve the use of diagrams, cycles, graphs, and flowcharts to help

understand or memorize an idea. e.g. cell cycle, pie charts, pyramid models

5. Ode mnemonics. The information is placed into a poem or doggerel, -- e.g.

"Note socer, gener, liberi, and Liber god of revelry, like puer these retain the 'e'"

(most Latin nouns of the second declension ending in -er drop the -e in all of the

oblique cases except the vocative, these are the exceptions).

6. Note organization mnemonics. The method of note organization can be used

as a memorization technique. Applications of this method involve the use of flash

cards and lists. Flash cards are used by putting a question or word on one side of a

paper and the answer or definition on the other side of the paper. Lists involve the

organization of data from broad to detailed. e.g. Earth → Continent → Country.

7. Image mnemonics. The information is constructed into a picture -- e.g. the

German weak declension can be remembered as five '-e's', looking rather like the

state of Oklahoma in America, in a sea of '-en's'.

8. Connection mnemonics. New knowledge is connected to knowledge already

known.

9. Spelling mnemonics. An example is "i before e except after c or when

sounding like a in neighbor and weigh".

Review Questions

1. What does cognitive psychology study?

2. What is cognition?

3. What is sensation?

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4. What is perception?

5. What are the main types of attention?

6. What is learning?

7. When does human learning start?

8. What does the process of thinking involve?

9. What does the process of speaking involve?

10. What is memory?

11. What are the major processes involved in memory?

12. What are the main types of memory?

13. What are the main formats the long-term memories are stored in?

14. What are the factors that cause forgetting?

15. What are mnemonic devices?

Topics for presentations

1. Cognitive psychology as a science

2. Sensation versus perception

3. How to improve your attention span

4. Learning in children

5. How do animals think?

6. What languages are the most diverse?

7. How to improve your memory

8. Memory disorders

9. What is chunking and how to use it to boost memory

10. Mnemonic devices examples

Test tasks

1. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY IS THE BRANCH OF

PSYCHOLOGY THAT STUDIES:

a) human behavior

b) nervous system

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c) social relationship

d) mental processes

2. SENSATION CAN BE DEFINED AS THE PROCESS OF

BRINGING INFORMATION FROM THE OUTSIDE WORLD INTO THE

BODY AND TO THE BRAIN. THIS PROCESS IS:

a) passive

b) active

c) conscious

d) controlled

3. THIS KIND OF ATTENTION TAKES PLACE WHEN WE

BLOCK OUT CERTAIN FEATURES OF OUR ENVIRONMENT AND

FOCUS ON ONE PARTICULAR FEATURE:

a) divided attention

b) selective attention

c) sustained attention

d) executive attention

4. THE TYPE OF ATTENTION IS NEEDED WHEN YOU HAVE

TO PERFORM TWO (OR MORE) TASKS AT THE SAME TIME:

a) divided attention

b) selective attention

c) sustained attention

d) executive attention

5. THE FIRST FORM OF LEARNING IS:

a) school

b) kindergarten

c) play

d) speaking

6. THE COGNITIVE ACTIVITY WE USE TO PROCESS

INFORMATION, SOLVE PROBLEMS, MAKE DECISIONS AND CREATE

NEW IDEAS IS:

23

a) learning

b) speaking

c) thinking

d) perception

7. THE ELEMENTARY SOUND OF OUR LANGUAGE IS

KNOWN AS:

a) morpheme

b) word

c) syntax

d) phoneme

8. OUR ABILITY TO REMEMBER CERTAIN ASPECTS OF

INFORMATION FOR LESS THAN A SECOND AFTER THE STIMULUS

HAS GONE IS KNOWN AS:

a) sensory memory

b) short-term memory

c) procedural memory

d) long-term memory

9. MEMORY OF SPECIFIC EVENTS, STORED IN A

SEQUENTIAL SERIES OF EVENTS IS KNOWN AS:

a) episodic memory

b) semantic memory

c) procedural memory

d) sensory memory

10. WHEN THE FIRST LETTER OF EACH WORD IS COMBINED

INTO A NEW WORD, THE MNEMONIC DEVICE IS KNOWN AS:

a) music mnemonics

b) model mnemonics

c) acronym

d) connection mnemonics

24

SECTION 2. PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY

2.1 Personality

Personality is a dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a

person that uniquely influences their environment, cognition, emotions, motivations,

and behaviors in various situations. The word personality originates from the Latin

persona, which means "mask".

Personality also refers to the pattern of thoughts, feelings, social adjustments,

and behaviors consistently exhibited over time that strongly influences one's

expectations, self-perceptions, values, and attitudes. Personality also predicts human

reactions to other people, problems, and stress.

The study of personality has a broad and varied history in psychology with an

abundance of theoretical traditions. The major theories include dispositional (trait)

perspective, psychodynamic, humanistic, biological, behaviorist, evolutionary, and

social learning perspective. However, many researchers and psychologists do not

explicitly identify themselves with a certain perspective and instead take an eclectic

approach. Research in this area is empirically driven — such as dimensional models,

based on multivariate statistics such as factor analysis — or emphasizes theory

development, such as that of the psychodynamic theory.

Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and

its variation among individuals. It is a scientific study which aims to show how

people are individually different due to psychological forces. Its areas of focus

include:

construction of a coherent picture of the individual and their major

psychological processes.

investigation of individual psychological differences.

investigation of human nature and psychological similarities between

individuals.

2.2. Early theories of personality

25

Early theories assumed that personality was expressed in people‘s physical

appearance. One early approach, developed by the German physician Franz Joseph

Gall (1758–1828) and known as phrenology, was based on the idea that we could

measure personality by assessing the patterns of bumps on people‘s skulls. In the

Victorian age, phrenology was taken seriously, and many people promoted its use as

a source of psychological insight and self-knowledge. Machines were even developed

for helping people analyze skulls. However, because careful scientific research did

not validate the predictions of the theory, phrenology has now been discredited in

contemporary psychology.

Another approach, known as somatology, championed by the psychologist

William Herbert Sheldon (1898–1977), was based on the idea that we could

determine personality from people‘s body types. Sheldon (1940) argued that people

with more body fat and a rounder constitution (endomorphs) were more likely to be

assertive and bold, whereas thinner people (ectomorphs) were more likely to be

introverted and intellectual. As with phrenology, scientific research did not validate

the predictions of the theory, and somatology has now been discredited in

contemporary psychology.

Another approach to detecting personality is known as physiognomy, or the

idea that it is possible to assess personality from facial characteristics. In contrast to

phrenology and somatology, for which no research support has been found,

contemporary research has found that people are able to detect some aspects of a

person‘s character by looking only at his or her face. But the ability to detect

personality from faces is not guaranteed.

2.3. Personality as traits

Personalities are characterized in terms of traits, which are relatively stable

characteristics that influence our behavior across many situations. As with

intelligence tests, the utility of self-report measures of personality depends on their

reliability and construct validity. Some popular measures of personality are not useful

because they are unreliable or invalid. The MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) is

26

one of the most widely administered personality test in the world, given millions of

times a year to employees in thousands of companies. The MBTI categorizes people

into one of four categories on each of four dimensions: introversion versus

extraversion, sensing versus intuiting, thinking versus feeling, and judging versus

perceiving.

The trait approach to personality was pioneered by early psychologists,

including Gordon Allport (1897–1967), Raymond Cattell (1905–1998), and Hans

Eysenck (1916–1997). Each of these psychologists believed in the idea of the trait as

the stable unit of personality, and each attempted to provide a list or taxonomy of the

most important trait dimensions.

Allport (1937) began his work by reducing the 18,000 traits to a set of about

4,500 trait-like words that he organized into three levels according to their

importance: cardinal traits, central traits, and secondary traits.

Cattell (1990) used a statistical procedure known as factor analysis to analyze

the correlations among traits and to identify the most important ones.

Hans Eysenck was particularly interested in the biological and genetic origins

of personality and made an important contribution to understanding the nature of a

fundamental personality trait: extraversion versus introversion. Eysenck proposed

that people who are extroverted (i.e., who enjoy socializing with others) have lower

levels of naturally occurring arousal than do introverts (who are less likely to enjoy

being with others).

The fundamental work on trait dimensions conducted by Allport, Cattell,

Eysenck, and many others has led to contemporary trait models, the most important

and well-validated of which is the Five-Factor (Big Five) Model of Personality.

According to this model, there are five fundamental underlying trait dimensions that

are stable across time, cross-culturally shared, and explain a substantial proportion of

behavior. The five dimensions (sometimes known as the “Big Five”) are

agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to

experience.

27

2.4. The MMPI and projective tests

One of the most important measures of personality (which is used primarily to

assess deviations from a “normal” or “average” personality) is the Minnesota

Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), a test used around the world to identify

personality and psychological disorder. The current version (the MMPI-2) has more

than 500 questions, and the items can be combined into a large number of different

subscales. The MMPI has questions that are designed to detect the tendency of the

respondents to lie, fake, or simply not answer the questions. To interpret the results,

the clinician looks at the pattern of responses across the different subscales and

makes a diagnosis about the potential psychological problems facing the patient.

One potential problem with a measure like the MMPI is that it asks people to

consciously report on their inner experiences. But much of our personality is

determined by unconscious processes of which we are only vaguely or not at all

aware. Projective measures are measures of personality in which unstructured stimuli,

such as ink blots, drawings of social situations, or incomplete sentences, are shown to

participants, who are asked to freely list what comes to mind as they think about the

stimuli. Experts then score the responses for clues to personality. The proposed

advantage of these tests is that they are more indirect—they allow the respondent to

freely express whatever comes to mind, including perhaps the contents of their

unconscious experiences.

One commonly used projective test is the Rorschach Inkblot Test, developed

by the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach (1884–1922). The Rorschach Inkblot

Test is a projective measure of personality in which the respondent indicates his or

her thoughts about a series of 10 symmetrical inkblots. The Rorschach is

administered millions of time every year. The participants are asked to respond to the

inkblots, and their responses are systematically scored in terms of what, where, and

why they saw what they saw. For example, people who focus on the details of the

inkblots may have obsessive-compulsive tendencies, whereas those who talk about

sex or aggression may have sexual or aggressive problems.

28

Another frequently administered projective test is the Thematic Apperception

Test (TAT). TAT is a projective measure of personality in which the respondent is

asked to create stories about sketches of ambiguous situations, most of them of

people, either alone or with others. The sketches are shown to individuals, who are

asked to tell a story about what is happening in the picture. The TAT assumes that

people may be unwilling or unable to admit their true feelings when asked directly

but that these feelings will show up in the stories about the pictures. Trained coders

read the stories and use them to develop a personality profile of the respondent.

Other popular projective tests include those that ask the respondent to draw

pictures, such as the Draw-A-Person test and free association tests in which the

respondent quickly responds with the first word that comes to mind when the

examiner says a test word.

Another approach is the use of anatomically correct dolls that feature

representations of the male and female genitals. Investigators allow children to play

with the dolls and then try to determine on the basis of the play if the children may

have been sexually abused.

The advantage of projective tests is that they are less direct, allowing people to

avoid using their defense mechanisms and therefore show their “true” personality.

The idea is that when people view ambiguous stimuli, they will describe them

according to the aspects of personality that are most important to them, and therefore

bypass some of the limitations of more conscious responding.

2.5. Psychodynamic theories of personality

One of the most important psychological approaches to understanding

personality is based on the theorizing of the Austrian physician and psychologist

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), who founded what today is known as the

psychodynamic approach to understanding personality. Many people know about

Freud because his work has had a huge impact on our everyday thinking about

psychology, and the psychodynamic approach is one of the most important

approaches to psychological therapy. As is true of all theories, many of Freud‘s ideas

29

have turned out to be at least partially incorrect, and yet other aspects of his theories

are still influencing psychology.

Id, ego, and superego

Freud proposed that the mind is divided into three components: id, ego, and

superego, and that the interactions and conflicts among the components create

personality. According to Freudian theory, the id is the component of personality that

forms the basis of our most primitive impulses. The id is entirely unconscious, and it

drives our most important motivations, including the sexual drive (libido) and the

aggressive or destructive drive (Thanatos - the death instinct). According to Freud,

the id is driven by the pleasure principle—the desire for immediate gratification of

our sexual and aggressive urges. The id is why we smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol,

view pornography, tell mean jokes about people, and engage in other fun or harmful

behaviors, often at the cost of doing more productive activities.

In stark contrast to the id, the superego represents our sense of morality and

oughts. The superego tells us all the things that we shouldn‘t do, or the duties and

obligations of society. The superego strives for perfection, and when we fail to live

up to its demands we feel guilty.

In contrast to the id, which is about the pleasure principle, the function of the

ego is based on the reality principle—the idea that we must delay gratification of our

basic motivations until the appropriate time with the appropriate outlet. The ego is the

largely conscious controller or decision-maker of personality. The ego serves as the

intermediary between the desires of the id and the constraints of society contained in

the superego. We may wish to scream, yell, or hit, and yet our ego normally tells us

to wait, reflect, and choose a more appropriate response.

Freud believed that psychological disorders, and particularly the experience of

anxiety, occur when there is conflict or imbalance among the motivations of the id,

ego, and superego. When the ego finds that the id is pressing too hard for immediate

pleasure, it attempts to correct for this problem, often through the use of defense

mechanisms—unconscious psychological strategies used to cope with anxiety and to

maintain a positive self-image. Freud believed that the defense mechanisms were

30

essential for effective coping with everyday life, but that any of them could be

overused.

Freud’s theory of personality development

The most controversial, and least scientifically valid, part of Freudian theory is

its explanations of personality development. Freud argued that personality is

developed through a series of psychosexual stages, each focusing on pleasure from a

different part of the body. Freud believed that sexuality begins in infancy, and that

the appropriate resolution of each stage has implications for later personality

development.

Stages of psychosexual development

Oral (Birth to 18 months). Pleasure comes from the mouth in the form of

sucking, biting, and chewing. During this oral stage, the infant obtains sexual

pleasure by sucking and drinking. Infants who receive either too little or too much

gratification become fixated in the oral stage, and are likely to regress to these points

of fixation under stress, even as adults. According to Freud, a child who receives too

little oral gratification (e.g., who was underfed or neglected) will become orally

dependent as an adult and be likely to manipulate others to fulfill his or her needs

rather than becoming independent. On the other hand, the child who was overfed or

overly gratified will resist growing up and try to return to the prior state of

dependency by acting helpless, demanding satisfaction from others, and acting in a

needy way.

Anal (18 months to 3 years). Pleasure comes from bowel and bladder

elimination and the constraints of toilet training. During the anal stage children first

experience psychological conflict. During this stage children desire to experience

pleasure through bowel movements, but they are also being toilet trained to delay this

gratification. Freud believed that if this toilet training was either too harsh or too

tolerant, children would become fixated in the anal stage and become likely to regress

to this stage under stress as adults. If the child received too little anal gratification

(i.e., if the parents had been very harsh about toilet training), the adult personality

will be anal retentive—stingy, with a compulsive seeking of order and tidiness. On

31

the other hand, if the parents had been too tolerant, the anal expulsive personality

results, characterized by a lack of self-control and a tendency toward messiness and

carelessness.

Phallic (3 years to 6 years). Pleasure comes from the genitals, and the conflict

is with sexual desires for the opposite-sex parent. During this stage, Freud believed

that children develop a powerful but unconscious attraction for the opposite-sex

parent, as well as a desire to eliminate the same-sex parent as a rival. Freud based his

theory of sexual development in boys (the “Oedipus complex”) on the Greek

mythological character Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his

mother, and then put his own eyes out when he learned what he had done. Freud

argued that boys will normally eventually abandon their love of the mother, and

instead identify with the father, also taking on the father‘s personality characteristics,

but that boys who do not successfully resolve the Oedipus complex will experience

psychological problems later in life. Although it was not as important in Freud‘s

theorizing, in girls the phallic stage is often termed the “ Electra complex”, after the

Greek character who revenged her father‘s murder by killing her mother. Freud

believed that girls frequently experienced penis envy, the sense of deprivation

supposedly experienced by girls because they do not have a penis.

Latency (6 years to puberty). The latency stage is a period of relative calm.

Sexual feelings are less important. During this time, Freud believed that sexual

impulses were repressed, leading boys and girls to have little or no interest in

members of the opposite sex.

Genital (puberty and older). The genital stage begins about 12 years of age and

lasts into adulthood. According to Freud, sexual impulses return during this time

frame, and if development has proceeded normally to this point, the child is able to

move into the development of mature romantic relationships. But if earlier problems

have not been appropriately resolved, difficulties with establishing intimate love

attachments are likely.

If prior stages have been properly reached, mature sexual orientation develops.

According to Freud, sexual impulses return during this time frame, and if

32

development has proceeded normally to this point, the child is able to move into the

development of mature romantic relationships. But if earlier problems have not been

appropriately resolved, difficulties with establishing intimate love attachments are

likely.

Freud has probably exerted a greater impact on the public‘s understanding of

personality than any other thinker, and he has also in large part defined the field of

psychology. Although Freudian psychologists no longer talk about oral, anal, or

genital “ fixations”, they do continue to believe that our childhood experiences and

unconscious motivations shape our personalities and our attachments with others, and

they still make use of psychodynamic concepts when they conduct psychological

therapy.

2.6. Humanism and self-actualization

Psychoanalytic models of personality were complemented during the 1950s

and 1960s by the theories of humanistic psychologists. In contrast to the proponents

of psychoanalysis, humanists embraced the notion of free will. Arguing that people

are free to choose their own lives and make their own decisions, humanistic

psychologists focused on the underlying motivations that they believed drove

personality, focusing on the nature of the self-concept, the set of beliefs about who

we are, and self-esteem, our positive feelings about the self.

One of the most important humanists, Abraham Maslow (1908–1970),

conceptualized personality in terms of a pyramid-shaped hierarchy of motives.

At the base of the pyramid are the lowest-level motivations, including hunger

and thirst, and safety and belongingness. Maslow argued that only when people are

able to meet the lower-level needs are they able to move on to achieve the higher-

level needs of self-esteem, and eventually self-actualization, which is the motivation

to develop our innate potential to the fullest possible extent.

Maslow studied how successful people, including Albert Einstein, Abraham

Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi had been able to lead such

successful and productive lives. Maslow believed that self-actualized people are

33

creative, spontaneous, and loving of themselves and others. They tend to have a few

deep friendships rather than many superficial ones and are generally private. He felt

that these individuals do not need to conform to the opinions of others because they

are very confident and thus free to express unpopular opinions. Self-actualized people

are also likely to have peak experiences, or transcendent moments of tranquility

accompanied by a strong sense of connection with others. Abraham Maslow

conceptualized personality in terms of a hierarchy of needs. The highest of these

motivations is self-actualization.

Perhaps the best-known humanistic theorist is Carl Rogers (1902–1987).

Rogers was positive about human nature, viewing people as primarily moral and

helpful to others, and believed that we can achieve our full potential for emotional

fulfillment if the self-concept is characterized by unconditional positive regard—a set

of behaviors including being genuine, open to experience, transparent, able to listen

to others, and self-disclosing and empathic. When we treat ourselves or others with

unconditional positive regard, we express understanding and support, even while we

may acknowledge failings. Unconditional positive regard allows us to admit our fears

and failures, to drop our pretenses, and yet at the same time to feel completely

accepted for what we are. The principle of unconditional positive regard has become

a foundation of psychological therapy; therapists who use it in their practice are more

effective than those who do not.

2.7. Is personality more nature or more nurture?

One question that is exceedingly important for the study of personality

concerns the extent to which it is the result of nature or nurture. If nature is more

important, then our personalities will form early in our lives and will be difficult to

change later. If nurture is more important, however, then our experiences are likely to

be particularly important, and we may be able to flexibly alter our personalities over

time.

In the nucleus of each cell in your body are 23 pairs of chromosomes. One of

each pair comes from your father, and the other comes from your mother. The

34

chromosomes are made up of strands of the molecule DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid),

and the DNA is grouped into segments known as genes. A gene is the basic

biological unit that transmits characteristics from one generation to the next. Human

cells have about 25,000 genes. The genes of different members of the same species

are almost identical. The DNA in your genes is about 99.9% the same as the DNA in

every other human being. These common genetic structures lead members of the

same species to be born with a variety of behaviors that come naturally to them and

that define the characteristics of the species. These abilities and characteristics are

known as instincts—complex inborn patterns of behaviors that help ensure survival

and reproduction. Different animals have different instincts. Birds naturally build

nests, dogs are naturally loyal to their human caretakers, and humans instinctively

learn to walk and to speak and understand language.

But the strength of different traits and behaviors also varies within species.

Rabbits are naturally fearful, but some are more fearful than others; some dogs are

more loyal than others to their caretakers; and some humans learn to speak and write

better than others do. These differences are determined in part by the small amount

(in humans, the 0.1%) of the differences in genes among the members of the species.

Personality is not determined by any single gene, but rather by the actions of

many genes working together. There is no “IQ gene” that determines intelligence.

Furthermore, even working together, genes are not so powerful that they can control

or create our personality. Some genes tend to increase a given characteristic and

others work to decrease that same characteristic—the complex relationship among

the various genes, as well as a variety of random factors, produces the final outcome.

Furthermore, genetic factors always work with environmental factors to create

personality. Having a given pattern of genes doesn‘t necessarily mean that a

particular trait will develop, because some traits might occur only in some

environments. For example, a person may have a genetic variant that is known to

increase his or her risk for developing emphysema from smoking. But if that person

never smokes, then emphysema most likely will not develop.

35

Over the past two decades scientists have made substantial progress in

understanding the important role of genetics in behavior. Behavioral genetics studies

have found that, for most traits, genetics is more important than parental influence.

And molecular genetics studies have begun to pinpoint the particular genes that are

causing these differences. The results of these studies might lead you to believe that

your destiny is determined by your genes, but this would be a mistaken assumption.

In fact, the major influence on personality is nonshared environmental

influences, which include all the things that occur to us that make us unique

individuals. These differences include variability in brain structure, nutrition,

education, upbringing, and even interactions among the genes themselves.

The genetic differences that exist at birth may be either amplified or

diminished over time through environmental factors. The brains and bodies of

identical twins are not exactly the same, and they become even more different as they

grow up. As a result, even genetically identical twins have distinct personalities,

resulting in large part from environmental effects.

Because these nonshared environmental differences are nonsystematic and

largely accidental or random, it will be difficult to ever determine exactly what will

happen to a child as he or she grows up. Although we do inherit our genes, we do not

inherit personality in any fixed sense. The effect of our genes on our behavior is

entirely dependent upon the context of our life as it unfolds day to day. Based on your

genes, no one can say what kind of human being you will turn out to be or what you

will do in life.

2.8. Four temperaments theory

The four temperament theory is a proto-psychological theory which suggests

that there are four fundamental personality types: sanguine, choleric, melancholic,

and phlegmatic.

Most formulations include the possibility of mixtures among the types where

an individual's personality types overlap and they share two or more temperaments.

Greek physician Hippocrates (c. 460 – c. 370 BC) described the four temperaments as

36

part of the ancient medical concept of humourism, that four bodily fluids affect

human personality traits and behaviors. Modern medical science does not define a

fixed relationship between internal secretions and personality, although some

psychological personality type systems use categories similar to the Greek

temperaments.

Most individuals tend to have aspects of their personality which identify with

each of the four temperaments. However, there are usually one or two primary

temperaments that are displayed at a significantly higher level. An individual could

be any combination of the following four types.

Sanguine personality type is described primarily as being highly talkative,

enthusiastic, active, and social. Sanguines tend to be more extroverted and enjoy

being part of a crowd; they find that being social, outgoing, and charismatic is easy to

accomplish. Individuals with this personality have a hard time doing nothing and

engage in more risk seeking behavior.

Choleric personality type tends to be more extroverted. They are described as

independent, decisive, goal-oriented, and ambitious. These combined with their

dominant, result-oriented outlook make them natural leaders. In Greek, Medieval,

and Renaissance thought, they were also violent, vengeful, and short-tempered.

Melancholic personality type tends to be analytical and detail-oriented, and

they are deep thinkers and feelers. They are introverted and try to avoid being singled

out in a crowd. A melancholic personality leads to self-reliant individuals who are

thoughtful, reserved, and often anxious. They often strive for perfection within

themselves and their surroundings, which leads to tidy and detail-oriented behavior.

Phlegmatic personality type tends to be relaxed, peaceful, quiet, and easy-

going. They are sympathetic and care about others, yet they try to hide their

emotions. Phlegmatic individuals are also good at generalizing ideas or problems to

the world and making compromises.

Review Questions

1. What does personality psychology study?

37

2. What is phrenology?

3. What is somatology?

4. What is physiognomy?

5. Who originated the trait approach to personality?

6. What are the five dimensions of Big-five model of personality?

7. What are projective tests?

8. What are projective tests’ advantages?

9. Who was the founder of psychodynamic approach to understanding

personality?

10. What are the main components of personality according to Freud's theory?

11. What are the stages of psychosexual development according to Freud's theory?

12. What are the main ideas of humanistic approach?

13. Who are the most prominent humanistic founders?

14. What are the instincts?

15. Is there any single gene determining intelligence?

Topics for presentations

1. The history of phrenology

2. The history of somatology

3. The principles of physiognomy

4. Gordon Allport’s contribution to psychology

5. Raymond Cattell’s contribution to psychology

6. Hans Eysenck’s contribution to psychology

7. The five-factor model of personality: general overview

8. Rorschach Inkblot Test

9. Thematic Apperception Test

10. Draw-A-Person test

11. Sigmund Freud: life, work, theory

12. Abraham Maslow’s contribution to psychology

13. Carl Rogers ’s contribution to psychology

38

14. Nature vs. nurture: genes or environment?

15. How to determine your temperament type?

Test tasks

1. THE THEORY ASSUMING THAT IT IS POSSIBLE TO MEASURE

PERSONALITY BY ASSESSING THE PATTERNS OF BUMPS ON

PEOPLE‘S SKULLS IS KNOWN AS:

a) humanistic theory

b) physiognomy

c) somatology

d) phrenology

2. THE TRAIT APPROACH TO PERSONALITY WAS PROPOSED BY:

a) Gordon Allport

b) Raymond Cattell

c) Hans Eysenck

d) all of them

3. THIS SCIENTIST MADE AN IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTION TO

UNDERSTANDING THE NATURE OF A FUNDAMENTAL

PERSONALITY TRAIT: EXTRAVERSION VERSUS INTROVERSION:

a) Gordon Allport

b) Raymond Cattell

c) Hans Eysenck

d) William Herbert Sheldon

4. WHAT PERSONALITY TEST IS ONE OF THE MOST WIDELY USED

PERSONALITY INVENTORY TO IDENTIFY PERSONALITY AND

PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDER?

a) MMPI

b) TAT

c) Rorschach Inkblot Test

d) Draw-A-Person test

39

5. ACCORDING TO FREUDIAN THEORY, THIS COMPONENT OF

PERSONALITY REPRESENTS OUR SENSE OF MORALITY AND

OUGHTS:

a) superego

b) ego

c) id

d) libido

6. ACCORDING TO FREUDIAN THEORY, THIS COMPONENT OF

PERSONALITY FORMS THE BASIS OF OUR MOST PRIMITIVE

IMPULSES:

a) superego

b) ego

c) id

d) libido

7. FREUD BELIEVED THAT DURING THIS STAGE CHILDREN DEVELOP

A POWERFUL BUT UNCONSCIOUS ATTRACTION FOR THE

OPPOSITE-SEX PARENT:

a) oral stage

b) anal stage

c) phallic stage

d) genital stage

8. ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT HUMANISTS WHO

CONCEPTUALIZED PERSONALITY IN TERMS OF A PYRAMID-

SHAPED HIERARCHY OF NEEDS IS:

a) Albert Einstein

b) Abraham Lincoln

c) Mahatma Gandhi

d) Abraham Maslow

9. THE DNA IS GROUPED INTO SEGMENTS KNOWN AS:

a) genes

40

b) cells

c) chromosomes

d) atoms

10. THIS PERSONALITY TYPE PERSON TENDS TO BE ANALYTICAL AND

DETAIL-ORIENTED, AND THEY ARE DEEP THINKERS AND

FEELERS.

a) sanguine

b) choleric

c) melancholic

d) phlegmatic

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SECTION 3. DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

3.1 Human development

Development refers to the physiological, behavioral, cognitive, and social

changes that occur throughout human life, which are guided by both genetic

predispositions (nature) and by environmental influences (nurture).

Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why human

beings change over the course of their life. Originally concerned with infants and

prepubescent children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult

development, aging, and the entire lifespan.

Developmental psychologists aim to explain how thinking, feeling, and

behaviors change throughout life. This field examines change across three major

dimensions: physical development, cognitive development, and social-emotional

development. Within these three dimensions there are a broad range of topics

including motor skills, executive functions, moral understanding, language

acquisition, social change, personality, emotional development, self-concept, and

identity formation.

Developmental psychology examines the influences of nature and nurture on

the process of human development, and processes of change in context across time.

Many researchers are interested in the interactions among personal characteristics, the

individual's behavior, and environmental factors, including the social context and the

built environment.

Each of the stages of development has its unique physical, cognitive, and

emotional changes that define the stage and that make each stage unique, one from

the other. Successful development involves dealing with and resolving the goals and

demands of each of the life stages in a positive way.

3.2. Prenatal development

Prenatal development is of interest to psychologists investigating the context of

early psychological development. The whole prenatal development involves three

42

main stages: germinal stage, embryonic stage and fetal stage. Germinal stage begins

at conception until 2 weeks; embryonic stage means the development from 2 weeks

to 8 weeks; fetal stage represents 9 weeks until birth of the baby. The senses develop

in the womb itself: a fetus can both see and hear by the second trimester (13 to 24

weeks of age). The sense of touch develops in the embryonic stage (5 to 8 weeks).

Most of the brain's billions of neurons also are developed by the second trimester.

Babies are hence born with some odor, taste and sound preferences, largely related to

the mother's environment.

Some primitive reflexes too arise before birth and are still present in newborns.

One hypothesis is that these reflexes are vestigial and have limited use in early

human life. Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggested that some early

reflexes are building blocks for infant sensorimotor development. For example, the

tonic neck reflex may help development by bringing objects into the infant's field of

view.

Other reflexes, such as the walking reflex appear to be replaced by more

sophisticated voluntary control later in infancy. This may be because the infant gains

too much weight after birth to be strong enough to use the reflex, or because the

reflex and subsequent development are functionally different. It has also been

suggested that some reflexes are predominantly adaptations to life in the womb with

little connection to early infant development. Primitive reflexes reappear in adults

under certain conditions, such as neurological conditions like dementia or traumatic

lesions.

Ultrasound has shown that infants are capable of a range of movements in the

womb, many of which appear to be more than simple reflexes. By the time they are

born, infants can recognize and have a preference for their mother's voice suggesting

some prenatal development of auditory perception. Prenatal development and birth

complications may also be connected to neurodevelopmental disorders, for example

in schizophrenia. With the advent of cognitive neuroscience, embryology and the

neuroscience of prenatal development is of increasing interest to developmental

psychology research.

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Several environmental agents—teratogens—can cause damage during the

prenatal period. These include prescription and nonprescription drugs, illegal drugs,

tobacco, alcohol, environmental pollutants, infectious disease agents such as the

rubella virus and the toxoplasmosis parasite, maternal malnutrition, maternal

emotional stress, and Rh factor blood incompatibility between mother and child.

Harmful substances that the mother ingests may harm the child. Cigarette

smoking, for example, reduces the blood oxygen for both the mother and child and

can cause a fetus to be born severely underweight. Another serious threat is fetal

alcohol syndrome (FAS), a condition caused by maternal alcohol drinking that can

lead to numerous detrimental developmental effects, including limb and facial

abnormalities, genital anomalies, and mental retardation. One in about every 500

babies in Western countries is born with fetal alcohol syndrome, and it is considered

one of the leading causes of retardation in the world today. Because there is no

known safe level of alcohol consumption for a pregnant woman, a pregnant woman

should not drink alcohol at all. Maternal drug abuse is also of major concern and is

considered one of the greatest risk factors facing unborn children.

The environment in which the mother is living also has a major impact on

infant development. Children born into homelessness or poverty are more likely to

have mothers who are malnourished, who suffer from domestic violence, stress, and

other psychological problems, and who smoke or abuse drugs. And children born into

poverty are also more likely to be exposed to teratogens. Poverty impact may also

amplify other issues, creating substantial problems for healthy child development.

3.3. Infancy and childhood

From birth until the first year, the child is referred to as an infant.

Developmental psychologists vary widely in their assessment of infant psychology,

and the influence the outside world has upon it, but certain aspects are relatively

clear.

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The majority of a newborn infant's time is spent in sleep. At first, this sleep is

evenly spread throughout the day and night, but after a couple of months, infants

generally become diurnal.

Infants can be seen to have six states, grouped into pairs:

quiet sleep and active sleep (dreaming, when REM sleep occurs)

quiet waking, and active waking

fussing and crying

Infant perception

Infant perception is what a newborn can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch.

These five features are better known as one's "five senses". Infants respond to stimuli

differently in these different states.

Vision is significantly worse in infants than in older children. Infant sight tends

to be blurry in early stages but improves over time. Color perception similar to that

seen in adults has been demonstrated in infants as young as four months, using

habituation methods. Infants get to adult-like vision in about six months.

Hearing is well-developed prior to birth, unlike vision. Newborns prefer

complex sounds to pure tones, human speech to other sounds, mother's voice to other

voices, and the native language to other languages. Scientist believe these features are

probably learned in the womb. Infants are fairly good at detecting the direction a

sound comes from, and by 18 months their hearing ability is approximately equal to

an adult's.

Smell and taste are present, with infants showing different expressions of

disgust or pleasure when presented with pleasant odors (honey, milk, etc.) or

unpleasant odors (rotten egg) and tastes (e.g. sour taste). Newborns are born with

odor and taste preferences acquired in the womb from the smell and taste of amniotic

fluid, in turn influenced by what the mother eats. Both breast- and bottle-fed babies

around 3 days old prefer the smell of human milk to that of formula, indicating an

innate preference. There is good evidence for older infants preferring the smell of

their mother to that of others.

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Touch and feel is one of the better-developed senses at birth considering it's

one of the first senses to develop inside the womb. This is evidenced by the primitive

reflexes described above, and the relatively advanced development of the

somatosensory cortex.

Pain: infants feel pain similarly, if not more strongly than older children but

pain-relief in infants has not received so much attention as an area of research.

Glucose is known to relieve pain in newborns.

Language: babies are born with the ability to discriminate virtually all sounds

of all human languages. Infants of around six months can differentiate between

phonemes in their own language, but not between similar phonemes in another

language. At this stage infants also start to babble, producing phonemes.

Cognitive development during infancy and childhood

Childhood is a time in which changes occur quickly. The child is growing

physically, and cognitive abilities are also developing. During this time the child

learns to actively manipulate and control the environment, and is first exposed to the

requirements of society, particularly the need to control the bladder and bowels.

According to Erik Erikson, the challenges that the child must attain in childhood

relate to the development of initiative, competence, and independence. Children need

to learn to explore the world, to become self-reliant, and to make their own way in

the environment.

These skills do not come overnight. Neurological changes during childhood

provide children the ability to do some things at certain ages, and yet make it

impossible for them to do other things. This fact was made apparent through the

groundbreaking work of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. During the 1920s,

Piaget was administering intelligence tests to children in an attempt to determine the

kinds of logical thinking that children were capable of. In the process of testing the

children, Piaget became intrigued, not so much by the answers that the children got

right, but more by the answers they got wrong. Piaget believed that the incorrect

answers that the children gave were not mere shots in the dark but rather represented

specific ways of thinking unique to the children‘s developmental stage. Just as almost

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all babies learn to roll over before they learn to sit up by themselves, and learn to

crawl before they learn to walk, Piaget believed that children gain their cognitive

ability in a developmental order. These insights—that children at different ages think

in fundamentally different ways—led to Piaget‘s stage model of cognitive

development.

Piaget argued that children do not just passively learn but also actively try to

make sense of their worlds. He argued that, as they learn and mature, children

develop schemas—patterns of knowledge in long-term memory—that help them

remember, organize, and respond to information. Furthermore, Piaget thought that

when children experience new things, they attempt to reconcile the new knowledge

with existing schemas. Piaget believed that the children use two distinct methods in

doing so, methods that he called assimilation and accommodation.

When children employ assimilation, they use already developed schemas to

understand new information. If children have learned a schema for horses, then they

may call the striped animal they see at the zoo a horse rather than a zebra. In this

case, children fit the existing schema to the new information and label the new

information with the existing knowledge. Accommodation, on the other hand,

involves learning new information, and thus changing the schema.

Piaget‘s most important contribution to understanding cognitive development,

and the fundamental aspect of his theory, was the idea that development occurs in

unique and distinct stages, with each stage occurring at a specific time, in a sequential

manner, and in a way that allows the child to think about the world using new

capacities.

Sensorimotor stage

The first developmental stage for Piaget was the sensorimotor stage, the

cognitive stage that begins at birth and lasts until around the age of 2. It is defined by

the direct physical interactions that babies have with the objects around them. During

this stage, babies form their first schemas by using their primary senses—they stare

at, listen to, reach for, hold, shake, and taste the things in their environments.

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During the sensorimotor stage, babies‘ use of their senses to perceive the world

is so central to their understanding that whenever babies do not directly perceive

objects, as far as they are concerned, the objects do not exist. Piaget found, for

instance, that if he first interested babies in a toy and then covered the toy with a

blanket, children who were younger than 6 months of age would act as if the toy had

disappeared completely—they never tried to find it under the blanket but would

nevertheless smile and reach for it when the blanket was removed. Piaget found that

it was not until about 8 months that the children realized that the object was merely

covered and not gone. Piaget used the term object permanence to refer to the child’s

ability to know that an object exists even when the object cannot be perceived.

Children younger than about 8 months of age do not understand object permanence.

Preoperational stage

At about 2 years of age, and until about 7 years of age, children move into the

preoperational stage. During this stage, children begin to use language and to think

more abstractly about objects, but their understanding is more intuitive and without

much ability to deduce or reason. The thinking is preoperational, meaning that the

child lacks the ability to operate on or transform objects mentally. In one study that

showed the extent of this inability, the researchers showed children a room within a

small dollhouse. Inside the room, a small toy was visible behind a small couch. The

researchers took the children to another lab room, which was an exact replica of the

dollhouse room, but full-sized. When children who were 2.5 years old were asked to

find the toy, they did not know where to look—they were simply unable to make the

transition across the changes in room size. Three-year-old children, on the other hand,

immediately looked for the toy behind the couch, demonstrating that they were

improving their operational skills.

The inability of young children to view transitions also leads them to be

egocentric—unable to readily see and understand other people‘s viewpoints.

Developmental psychologists define the theory of mind as the ability to take another

person’s viewpoint, and the ability to do so increases rapidly during the

preoperational stage.

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Concrete operational stage

After about 7 years of age, the child moves into the concrete operational stage,

which is marked by more frequent and more accurate use of transitions, operations,

and abstract concepts, including those of time, space, and numbers. An important

milestone during the concrete operational stage is the development of conservation—

the understanding that changes in the form of an object do not necessarily mean

changes in the quantity of the object. Children younger than 7 years generally think

that a glass of milk that is tall holds more milk than a glass of milk that is shorter and

wider, and they continue to believe this even when they see the same milk poured

back and forth between the glasses. It appears that these children focus only on one

dimension (in this case, the height of the glass) and ignore the other dimension

(width). However, when children reach the concrete operational stage, their abilities

to understand such transformations make them aware that, although the milk looks

different in the different glasses, the amount must be the same.

Formal operational stage

At about 11 years of age, children enter the formal operational stage, which is

marked by the ability to think in abstract terms and to use scientific and philosophical

lines of thought. Children in the formal operational stage are better able to

systematically test alternative ideas to determine their influences on outcomes. For

instance, rather than occasionally changing different aspects of a situation that allows

no clear conclusions to be drawn, they systematically make changes in one thing at a

time and observe what difference that particular change makes. They learn to use

deductive reasoning, such as ― if this, then that, and they become capable of

imagining situations that might be, rather than just those that actually exist.

Piaget‘s theories have made a substantial and lasting contribution to

developmental psychology. His contributions include the idea that children are not

merely passive receptacles of information but rather actively engage in acquiring new

knowledge and making sense of the world around them. This general idea has

generated many other theories of cognitive development, each designed to help us

better understand the development of the child‘s information-processing skills. .

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More recent theories, based in large part on the sociocultural theory of the

Russian scholar Lev Vygotsky, argue that cognitive development is not isolated

entirely within the child but occurs at least in part through social interactions. These

scholars argue that children‘s thinking develops through constant interactions with

more competent others, including parents, peers, and teachers.

Social development during childhood

It is through the remarkable increases in cognitive ability that children learn to

interact with and understand their environments. But these cognitive skills are only

part of the changes that are occurring during childhood. Equally crucial is the

development of the child‘s social skills—the ability to understand, predict, and create

bonds with the other people in their environments.

One of the important milestones in a child‘s social development is learning

about his or her own self-existence. This self-awareness is known as consciousness,

and the content of consciousness is known as the self-concept. The self-concept is a

knowledge representation or schema that contains knowledge about us, including our

beliefs about our personality traits, physical characteristics, abilities, values, goals,

and roles, as well as the knowledge that we exist as individuals.

Some animals, including chimpanzees, orangutans, and perhaps dolphins, have

at least a primitive sense of self. In one study, researchers painted a red dot on the

foreheads of anesthetized chimpanzees and then placed each animal in a cage with a

mirror. When the chimps woke up and looked in the mirror, they touched the dot on

their faces, not the dot on the faces in the mirror. These actions suggest that the

chimps understood that they were looking at themselves and not at other animals, and

thus we can assume that they are able to realize that they exist as individuals. On the

other hand, most other animals, including, for instance dogs, cats, and monkeys,

never realize that it is they themselves in the mirror.

Infants who have a similar red dot painted on their foreheads recognize

themselves in a mirror in the same way that the chimps do, and they do this by about

18 months of age. The child‘s knowledge about the self continues to develop as the

child grows. By age 2, the infant becomes aware of his or her sex, as a boy or a girl.

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By age 4, self-descriptions are likely to be based on physical features, such as hair

color and possessions, and by about age 6, the child is able to understand basic

emotions and the concepts of traits, being able to make statements such as, I am a

nice person.

Soon after children enter grade school (at about age 5 or 6), they begin to make

comparisons with other children, a process known as social comparison. For

example, a child might describe himself as being faster than one boy but slower than

another. The important component of this process is the development of competence

and autonomy—the recognition of one‘s own abilities relative to other children. And

children increasingly show awareness of social situations—they understand that other

people are looking at and judging them the same way that they are looking at and

judging others.

One of the most important behaviors a child must learn is how to be accepted

by others—the development of close and meaningful social relationships. The

emotional bonds that we develop with those with whom we feel closest, and

particularly the bonds that an infant develops with the mother or primary caregiver,

are referred to as attachment.

As late as the 1930s, psychologists believed that children who were raised in

institutions such as orphanages, and who received good physical care and proper

nourishment, would develop normally, even if they had little interaction with their

caretakers. But studies showed that these children did not develop normally—they

were usually sickly, emotionally slow, and generally unmotivated. These

observations helped make it clear that normal infant development requires successful

attachment with a caretaker.

But the attachment behavior of the child is also likely influenced, at least in

part, by temperament, the innate personality characteristics of the infant. Some

children are warm, friendly, and responsive, whereas others tend to be more irritable,

less manageable, and difficult to console. These differences may also play a role in

attachment. Taken together, it seems safe to say that attachment, like most other

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developmental processes, is affected by an interplay of genetic and socialization

influences.

3.4. Adolescence

Adolescence is defined as the years between the onset of puberty and the

beginning of adulthood.

During adolescence, the child continues to grow physically, cognitively, and

emotionally, changing from a child into an adult. The body grows rapidly in size and

the sexual and reproductive organs become fully functional. At the same time, as

adolescents develop more advanced patterns of reasoning and a stronger sense of self,

they seek for their own identities, developing important attachments with people

other than their parents. Particularly in Western societies, where the need to have an

independence is critical this period can be stressful for many children, as it involves

new emotions, the need to develop new social relationships, and an increasing sense

of responsibility and independence.

Adolescence begins with the onset of puberty, a developmental period in which

hormonal changes cause rapid physical alterations in the body, culminating in sexual

maturity. Although the timing varies to some degree across cultures, the average age

range for reaching puberty is between 9 and 14 years for girls and between 10 and 17

years for boys.

The timing of puberty in both boys and girls can have significant psychological

consequences. Boys who mature earlier attain some social advantages because they

are taller and stronger and, therefore, often more popular. At the same time, however,

early-maturing boys are at greater risk for engaging in antisocial behaviors, including

drug and alcohol use, truancy, and precocious sexual activity. Girls who mature early

may find their maturity stressful, particularly if they experience teasing or sexual

harassment. Early-maturing girls are also more likely to have emotional problems, a

lower self-image, and higher rates of depression, anxiety, and disordered eating than

their peers.

Cognitive development in adolescence

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Although the most rapid cognitive changes occur during childhood, the brain

continues to develop throughout adolescence, and even into the 20s. During

adolescence, the brain continues to form new neural connections, but also casts off

unused neurons and connections. As teenagers mature, the prefrontal cortex, the area

of the brain responsible for reasoning, planning, and problem solving, also continues

to develop.

Adolescents often seem to act impulsively, rather than thoughtfully, and this

may be in part because the development of the prefrontal cortex is, in general, slower

than the development of the emotional parts of the brain, including the limbic system.

Furthermore, the hormonal surge that is associated with puberty, which primarily

influences emotional responses, may create strong emotions and lead to impulsive

behavior. It has been hypothesized that adolescents may engage in risky behavior,

such as smoking, drug use, dangerous driving, and unprotected sex in part because

they have not yet fully acquired the mental ability to curb impulsive behavior or to

make entirely rational judgments.

The new cognitive abilities that are attained during adolescence may also give

rise to new feelings of egocentrism, in which adolescents believe that they can do

anything and that they know better than anyone else, including their parents.

Teenagers are likely to be highly self-conscious, often creating an imaginary

audience in which they feel that everyone is constantly watching them. Because teens

think so much about themselves, they mistakenly believe that others must be thinking

about them, too. It is no wonder that everything a teen‘s parents do suddenly feels

embarrassing to them when they are in public.

Social development in adolescence

Some of the most important changes that occur during adolescence involve the

further development of the self-concept and the development of new attachments.

Whereas young children are most strongly attached to their parents, the important

attachments of adolescents move increasingly away from parents and increasingly

toward peers. As a result, parents‘ influence diminishes at this stage.

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The main social task of the adolescent is the search for a unique identity—the

ability to answer the question, Who am I? In the search for identity, the adolescent

may experience role confusion in which he or she is balancing or choosing among

identities, taking on negative or undesirable identities, or temporarily giving up

looking for an identity altogether if things are not going well.

To help them work through the process of developing an identity, teenagers

may well try out different identities in different social situations. They may maintain

one identity at home and a different type of person when they are with their peers.

Eventually, most teenagers do integrate the different possibilities into a single self-

concept and a comfortable sense of identity (identity-achievement status).

For teenagers, the peer group provides valuable information about the self-

concept. The friendship groups (cliques, crowds, or gangs) that are such an important

part of the adolescent experience allow the young adult to try out different identities,

and these groups provide a sense of belonging and acceptance. A big part of what the

adolescent is learning is social identity, the part of the self-concept that is derived

from one’s group memberships. Adolescents define their social identities according

to how they are similar to and differ from others, finding meaning in the sports,

religious, school, gender, and ethnic categories they belong to.

3.5 Adulthood

Until the 1970s, psychologists tended to treat adulthood as a single

developmental stage, with few or no distinctions made among the various periods that

we pass through between adolescence and death. Present-day psychologists realize,

however, that physical, cognitive, and emotional responses continue to develop

throughout life, with corresponding changes in our social needs and desires. Thus, the

three stages of early adulthood, middle adulthood, and late adulthood (old age) each

has its own physical, cognitive, and social challenges.

Early adulthood

Early adulthood generally refers to the period between ages 18 to 35, and

according to theorists such as Erik Erikson, is a stage where development is mainly

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focused on maintaining relationships. Examples include creating bond of intimacy,

sustaining friendships, and ultimately making a family. Some theorists state that

development of intimacy skills rely on the resolution of previous developmental

stages. A sense of identity gained in the previous stages is also necessary for intimacy

to develop. If this skill is not learned the alternative is alienation, isolation, a fear of

commitment, and the inability to depend on others.

A related framework for studying this part of the lifespan is that of emerging

adulthood. Scholars of emerging adulthood, such as Jeffrey Arnett, are not

necessarily interested in relationship development. Instead, this concept suggests that

people transition after their teenage years into a period not characterized as

relationship building and an overall sense of constancy with life, but with years of

living with parents, phases of self-discovery, and experimentation.

Middle adulthood

Middle adulthood generally refers to the period between ages 35 to 60. During

this period, middle-aged adults experience a conflict between generativity and

stagnation. They may either feel a sense of contributing to society, the next

generation, or their immediate community; or develop a sense of purposelessness.

Physically, the middle-aged experience a decline in muscular strength, reaction

time, sensory keenness, and cardiac output. Also, women experience menopause at an

average age of 48.8 and a sharp drop in the hormone estrogen. Men experience an

equivalent endocrine system event to menopause. Andropause in males is a hormone

fluctuation with physical and psychological effects that can be similar to those seen in

menopausal females. As men age lowered testosterone levels can contribute to mood

swings and a decline in sperm count.

The important influence of biological and social changes experienced by

women and men in middle adulthood is reflected in that fact that depression is

highest at age 48.5 around the world.

Old age

The World Health Organization (WHO) finds "no general agreement on the

age at which a person becomes old." Most developed countries set the age as 60 or

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65. However, in developing countries inability to make "active contribution" to

society, not chronological age, marks the beginning of old age. According to

Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, old age is the stage in which

individuals assess the quality of their lives. In reflecting on their lives, people in this

age group develop a feeling of integrity if deciding that their lives were successful or

a feeling of despair if evaluation of one's life indicates a failure to achieve goals.

Physically, older people experience a decline in muscular strength, reaction

time, stamina, hearing, distance perception, and the sense of smell. They also are

more susceptible to diseases such as cancer and pneumonia due to a weakened

immune system. Programs aimed at balance, muscle strength, and mobility have been

shown to reduce disability among mildly (but not more severely) disabled elderly.

Mental disintegration may also occur, leading to dementia or ailments such as

Alzheimer's disease. The average age of onset for dementia in males is 78.8 and 81.9

for women. It is generally believed that crystallized intelligence increases up to old

age, while fluid intelligence decreases with age. Whether or not normal intelligence

increases or decreases with age depends on the measure and study. Longitudinal

studies show that perceptual speed, inductive reasoning, and spatial orientation

decline. An article on adult cognitive development reports that cross-sectional studies

show that "some abilities remained stable into early old age”.

Confronting death

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1969), who worked with the founders of hospice care,

described in her theory of grief the process of an individual accepting their own

death. She proposed five stages of grief in what became known as the Kübler-Ross

model: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Denial: People believe there must be some mistake. They pretend death isn’t

happening, perhaps live life as if nothing is wrong, or even tell people things are fine.

Underneath this facade, however, is a great deal of fear and other emotions.

Anger: After people start to realize death is imminent, they become angry.

They believe life is unfair and usually blame others (such as a higher power or

doctors) for the state of being they are experiencing.

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Bargaining: Once anger subsides, fear sets in again. Now, however, people

plead with life or a higher power to give them more time, to let them accomplish just

one more goal, or for some other request.

Depression: The realization that death is near sets in, and people become

extremely sad. They may isolate themselves, contemplate suicide, or otherwise refuse

to live life. Motivation is gone and the will to live disappears.

Acceptance: People realize that all forms of life, including the self, come to an

end, and they accept that life is ending. They make peace with others around them,

and they make the most of the time they have remaining.

While most individuals experience these stages, not all people go through

every stage. The stages are not necessarily linear, and may occur in different orders

or reoccur throughout the grief process. Some psychologists believe that the more a

dying person fights death, the more likely they are to remain stuck in the denial

phase, making it difficult for the dying person to face death with dignity. However,

other psychologists believe that not facing death until the very end is an adaptive

coping mechanism for some people.

Whether due to illness or old age, not everyone facing death or the loss of a

loved one experiences the negative emotions outlined in the Kübler-Ross model. For

example, research suggests that people with religious or spiritual beliefs are better

able to cope with death because of their belief in an afterlife and because of social

support from religious or spiritual associations.

Review Questions

1. What does developmental psychology study?

2. What are the main stages of prenatal development?

3. When do primitive reflexes reappear in adults?

4. What is teratogen?

5. What do infants do during the majority of time?

6. Is infant’s perception the same as adult’s?

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7. Who originated the idea that children gain their cognitive abilities in a

developmental order?

8. What is the difference between assimilation and accommodation?

9. What is object permanence?

10. Why small children are unable to understand other people‘s viewpoints?

11. What is a self-concept?

12. What animals do have a primitive sense of self?

13. What is a social comparison?

14. When does an adolescence usually start?

15. What are the main stages of an adulthood?

16. What physical changes do people experience during middle adulthood?

17. What physical and mental changes do people experience during old age?

18. Do all mental abilities decline by reaching old age?

19. Who originated the theory of grief?

20. What are the stages of grief?

Topics for presentations

1. Developmental disorders of infancy and childhood

2. Teratogens

3. Jean Piaget’s contribution to psychology

4. Piaget's theory of cognitive development

5. Teenage depression

6. Teenage self-esteem

7. Teenage suicide

8. Teenagers and stress

9. Gender in early childhood

10. Teen pregnancy prevention

11. Building self-esteem in children & adolescents

12. Moral development theories

13. Challenges of adolescence

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14. Parenting styles

15. The Kübler-Ross model

Test tasks

1. EMBRYONIC STAGE MEANS THE DEVELOPMENT FROM:

a) from conception until 2 weeks

b) from 2 weeks to 8 weeks

c) from 13 to 24 weeks

d) from 9 weeks until birth of the baby

2. A CONDITION IN A CHILD THAT RESULTS FROM ALCOHOL

EXPOSURE DURING THE MOTHER'S PREGNANCY:

a) Down syndrome

b) Edwards syndrome

c) fetal alcohol syndrome

d) Asperger syndrome

3. THIS SENSE IS SIGNIFICANTLY WORSE IN INFANTS THAN IN

OLDER CHILDREN:

a) hearing

b) vision

c) smell

d) touch

4. ACCORDING TO HIS THEORY NEUROLOGICAL CHANGES DURING

CHILDHOOD PROVIDE CHILDREN THE ABILITY TO DO SOME

THINGS AT CERTAIN AGES:

a) Erik Erikson

b) Sigmund Freud

c) Lev Vygotsky

d) Jean Piaget

5. THE COGNITIVE STAGE THAT BEGINS AT BIRTH AND LASTS UNTIL

AROUND THE AGE OF 2:

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a) sensorimotor stage

b) preoperational stage

c) concrete operational stage

d) formal operational stage

6. THIS COGNITIVE STAGE IS MARKED BY THE ABILITY OF A CHILD

TO THINK IN ABSTRACT TERMS AND TO USE SCIENTIFIC AND

PHILOSOPHICAL LINES OF THOUGHT:

a) sensorimotor stage

b) preoperational stage

c) concrete operational stage

d) formal operational stage

7. ACCORDING TO ERIK ERIKSON, IT IS A STAGE WHERE

DEVELOPMENT IS MAINLY FOCUSED ON MAINTAINING

RELATIONSHIPS:

a) adolescence

b) early adulthood

c) middle adulthood

d) old age

8. THIS DEVELOPMENTAL STAGE GENERALLY REFERS TO THE

PERIOD BETWEEN AGES 35 TO 60:

a) adolescence

b) early adulthood

c) middle adulthood

d) old age

9. ACCORDING TO ERIKSON, THIS IS THE STAGE IN WHICH

INDIVIDUALS ASSESS THE QUALITY OF THEIR LIVES:

a) adolescence

b) early adulthood

c) middle adulthood

d) old age

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10. ACCORDING TO THE KÜBLER-ROSS MODEL, THIS STAGE OF GRIEF

IS CHARACTERIZED BY PRETENDING THAT DEATH ISN’T

HAPPENING:

a) denial

b) anger

c) bargaining

d) depression

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SECTION 4. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

4.1 Social psychology as a science

Social psychology is the scientific study of how the thoughts, feelings, and

behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, and implied presence

of others. In this definition, scientific refers to the empirical investigation using the

scientific method, while the terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors refer to the

psychological variables that can be measured in humans. Moreover, the notion that

the presence of others may be imagined or implied suggests that humans are

malleable to social influences even when alone, such as when watching videos,

quietly appreciating art, or even sitting on the toilet. In such situations, people can be

influenced to follow internalized cultural norms.

Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the

relation between mental state and social situation, studying the factors/conditions

under which certain behavior, actions, and feelings occur. Social psychology, thus, is

concerned with the way these feelings, thoughts, beliefs, intentions, and goals, are

cognitively constructed and how these mental representations, in turn, influence our

interactions with others.

Traditionally, the emergence of this discipline bridged the gap between

psychology and sociology. During the years immediately following World War II,

there was frequent collaboration between psychologists and sociologists. The two

disciplines, however, have become increasingly specialized and isolated from each

other in recent years, with sociologists generally focusing on more macro features

(e.g., social structure)—whereas psychologists may be more concerned with more

micro features. Nevertheless, sociological approaches to psychology remain an

important counterpart to psychological research in this area.

In addition to the split between psychology and sociology, there has been a

somewhat less pronounced difference in emphasis between American and European

social psychologists, as, the former traditionally have focused more on the individual,

whereas the latter have generally paid more attention to group-level phenomena.

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4.2. History of social psychology

Although older writings regarding social psychology have existed—such as

those by Islamic philosopher Al-Farabi)—the discipline of social psychology, as its

modern-day definition, began in the United States at the beginning of the 20th

century. By this time, however, the discipline itself had already developed a

significant foundation.

Following the 18th century, those in the emerging field of social psychology

were concerned with developing concrete explanations for different aspects of human

nature. They would attempt to discover concrete cause-and-effect relationships that

explain the social interactions in the world around them. In order to do so, they

believed that the scientific method, an empirically based scientific measure, could be

applied to human behavior.

Early 20th century

The first published study in this field was an experiment in 1898 by Norman

Triplett, on the phenomenon of social facilitation. During the 1930s, many Gestalt

psychologists, most notably Kurt Lewin, fled to the United States from Nazi

Germany. They would be instrumental in developing the field as an area separate

from that of the dominant behavioral and psychoanalytic schools during that time.

Social psychology would continue to maintain the legacy of the foundational interests

in perception and cognition. As such, attitudes and small group phenomena were the

most commonly studied topics in this era.

During World War II, social psychologists were primarily engaged with studies

of persuasion and propaganda for the U.S. military. Following the war, researchers

would become interested in a variety of social problems, including issues of gender

and racial prejudice. Most notable, revealing, and contentious of these were the shock

experiments on obedience to authority conducted by Stanley Milgram.

Late 20th century and modernity

In the 1960s, there would be growing interest in topics such as cognitive

dissonance, bystander intervention, and aggression. By the 1970s, however, social

psychology in America had reached a crisis, as heated debates would emerge over:

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ethical concerns about laboratory experimentation; whether attitude could actually

predict behavior; and how much science could really be done in a cultural context.

This was also the time when a radical situationist approach came to challenge the

relevance of self and personality in psychology.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, social psychology reached a more mature

level, especially in regard to theory and methodology. Now, careful ethical standards

regulate research, and pluralistic and multicultural perspectives have emerged.

Modern researchers are interested in many phenomena, though attribution, social

cognition, and the self-concept are perhaps the greatest areas of growth in recent

years. Social psychologists have also maintained their applied interests with

contributions in the social psychology of health, education, law, and the workplace.

4.3. Intrapersonal phenomena

Attitudes

In social psychology, attitude is defined as learned, global evaluations of a

person, object, place, or issue that influence thought and action. In simpler terms,

attitudes are basic expressions of approval and disapproval, favorability and

unfavourability, or, likes and dislikes.

In regard to attitudes, social psychologists have studied attitude formation; the

structure of attitudes; attitude change; the function of attitudes; and the relationship

between attitude and behavior. Because people are influenced by situation, general

attitudes are not always good predictors of specific behavior, e.g. a person may value

the environment, but, for a variety of reasons, not recycle a plastic bottle on a

particular day.

In recent times, research on attitudes has examined the distinction between

traditional self-reported attitude measures and "implicit" or unconscious attitudes.

Experiments using the implicit-association test, for instance, have found that people

often demonstrate implicit bias against other races, even when their explicit responses

reveal equal mindedness. Likewise, one study found that explicit attitudes correlate

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with verbal behavior in interracial interactions, whereas implicit attitudes correlate

with nonverbal behavior.

Attitudes are also involved in several other areas of the social psychology, such

as conformity, interpersonal attraction, social perception, and prejudice.

Persuasion

The topic of persuasion has received a great deal of attention in recent years.

Persuasion is an active method of influence that attempts to guide people toward the

adoption of an attitude, idea, or behavior by rational or emotive means. Persuasion

relies on "appeals" rather than strong pressure or coercion. The process of persuasion

has been founded to be influenced by numerous variables (who said what to whom

and how), which generally fall into one of five major categories:

Communicator: includes credibility, expertise, trustworthiness, and

attractiveness.

Message: includes varying degrees of reason, emotion (e.g. fear), one-sided or

two-sided arguments, and other types of informational content.

Audience: includes a variety of demographics, personality traits, and

preferences.

Channel/medium: includes printed word, radio, television, the internet, or face-

to-face interactions.

Context: includes environment, group dynamics, and preliminary information

to that of the message (the second category).

Social cognition

Social cognition is a growing area of social psychology that studies how people

perceive, think about, and remember information about others. Much research rests

on the assertion that people think about (other) people differently from non-social

targets. This assertion is supported by the social cognitive deficits exhibited by

people with Williams syndrome and autism. Person perception is the study of how

people form impressions of others. The study of how people form beliefs about each

other while interacting is known as interpersonal perception.

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A major research topic in social cognition is attribution. Attributions are the

explanations we make for people's behavior, either our own behavior or the behavior

of others. One element of attribution ascribes the locus of a behavior to either internal

or external factors. An internal, or dispositional, attribution assigns behavior to

causes related to inner traits such as personality, disposition, character or ability. An

external, or situational, attribution involves situational elements, such as the weather.

A second element of attribution ascribes the cause of behavior to either stable or

unstable factors (whether the behavior will be repeated or changed under similar

circumstances). Finally, we also attribute causes of behavior to either controllable or

uncontrollable factors: how much control one has over the situation at hand.

Heuristics

Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts. Instead of weighing all the evidence when

making a decision, people rely on heuristics to save time and energy. The availability

heuristic occurs when people estimate the probability of an outcome based on how

easy that outcome is to imagine. As such, vivid or highly memorable possibilities will

be perceived as more likely than those that are harder to picture or are difficult to

understand, resulting in a corresponding cognitive bias. The representativeness

heuristic is a shortcut people use to categorize something based on how similar it is to

a prototype they know of.

Schemas

Another key concept in social cognition is the assumption that reality is too

complex to easily discern. As a result, we tend to see the world according to

simplified schemas or images of reality. Schemas are generalized mental

representations that organize knowledge and guide information processing. Schemas

often operate automatically and unintentionally, and can lead to biases in perception

and memory. Expectations from schemas may lead us to see something that is not

there. One experiment found that people are more likely to misperceive a weapon in

the hands of a black man than a white man. This type of schema is actually a

stereotype, a generalized set of beliefs about a particular group of people (when

incorrect, an ultimate attribution error). Stereotypes are often related to negative or

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preferential attitudes (prejudice) and behavior (discrimination). Schemas for

behaviors (e.g., going to a restaurant, doing laundry) are known as scripts.

Self-concept

Self-concept is a term referring to the whole sum of beliefs that people have

about themselves. However, what specifically does self-concept consist of? The self-

concept is made up of cognitive molecules called self-schemas—beliefs that people

have about themselves that guide the processing of self-reliant information. For

example, an athlete at a university would have multiple selves that would process

different information pertinent to each self: the student would be one "self," who

would process information pertinent to a student (taking notes in class, completing a

homework assignment, etc.); the athlete would be the "self" who processes

information about things related to being an athlete (recognizing an incoming pass,

aiming a shot, etc.). These "selves" are part of one's identity and the self-reliant

information is the information that relies on the proper "self" to process and react on

it. If a "self" is not part of one's identity, then it is much more difficult for one to

react. For example, a civilian may not know how to handle a hostile threat as a

trained Marine would. The Marine contains a "self" that would enable him/her to

process the information about the hostile threat and react accordingly, whereas a

civilian may not contain that self, disabling them from properly processing the

information from the hostile threat and, furthermore, debilitating them from acting

accordingly. Self-schemas are to an individual's total self–concept as a hypothesis is

to a theory, or a book is to a library. A good example is the body weight self-schema;

people who regard themselves as over or underweight, or for those whom body image

is a significant self-concept aspect, are considered schematics with respect to weight.

For these people a range of otherwise mundane events – grocery shopping, new

clothes, eating out, or going to the beach – can trigger thoughts about the self. In

contrast, people who do not regard their weight as an important part of their lives are

a-schematic on that attribute.

It is rather clear that the self is a special object of our attention. Whether one is

mentally focused on a memory, a conversation, a foul smell, the song that is stuck in

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one's head, or this sentence, consciousness is like a spotlight. This spotlight can shine

on only one object at a time, but it can switch rapidly from one object to another and

process the information out of awareness. In this spotlight the self is front and center:

things relating to the self, have the spotlight more often.

The "ABCs" of self are:

Affect (i.e. emotion): How do people evaluate themselves, enhance their self-

image, and maintain a secure sense of identity?

Behavior: How do people regulate their own actions and present themselves to

others according to interpersonal demands?

Cognition: How do individuals become themselves, build a self-concept, and

uphold a stable sense of identity?

Affective forecasting is the process of predicting how one would feel in

response to future emotional events. Studies done in 2003 by Timothy Wilson and

Daniel Gilbert have shown that people overestimate the strength of reaction to

anticipated positive and negative life events that they actually feel when the event

does occur.

There are many theories on the perception of our own behavior. Daryl Bem's

(1972) self-perception theory claims that when internal cues are difficult to interpret,

people gain self-insight by observing their own behavior. Leon Festinger's (1954)

social comparison theory is that people evaluate their own abilities and opinions by

comparing themselves to others when they are uncertain of their own ability or

opinions. There is also the facial feedback hypothesis: changes in facial expression

can lead to corresponding changes in emotion.

The fields of social psychology and personality have merged over the years,

and social psychologists have developed an interest in self-related phenomena. In

contrast with traditional personality theory, however, social psychologists place a

greater emphasis on cognitions than on traits. Much research focuses on the self-

concept, which is a person's understanding of their self. The self-concept is often

divided into a cognitive component, known as the self-schema, and an evaluative

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component, the self-esteem. The need to maintain a healthy self-esteem is recognized

as a central human motivation in the field of social psychology.

Self-efficacy beliefs are associated with the self-schema. These are

expectations that performance on some task will be effective and successful. Social

psychologists also study such self-related processes as self-control and self-

presentation.

People develop their self-concepts by varied means, including introspection,

feedback from others, self-perception, and social comparison. By comparing

themselves to relevant others, people gain information about themselves, and they

make inferences that are relevant to self-esteem. Social comparisons can be either

"upward" or "downward," that is, comparisons to people who are either higher in

status or ability, or lower in status or ability. Downward comparisons are often made

in order to elevate self-esteem.

Self-perception is a specialized form of attribution that involves making

inferences about oneself after observing one's own behavior. Psychologists have

found that too many extrinsic rewards (e.g. money) tend to reduce intrinsic

motivation through the self-perception process, a phenomenon known as

overjustification. People's attention is directed to the reward and they lose interest in

the task when the reward is no longer offered. This is an important exception to

reinforcement theory.

4.4. Interpersonal phenomena

Social influence

Social influence is an overarching term given to describe the persuasive effects

people have on each other. It is seen as a fundamental value in social psychology and

overlaps considerably with research on attitudes and persuasion. The three main areas

of social influence include: conformity, compliance, and obedience. Social influence

is also closely related to the study of group dynamics, as most principles of influence

are strongest when they take place in social groups.

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The first major area of social influence is conformity. Conformity is defined as

the tendency to act or think like other members of a group. The identity of members

within a group, i.e. status, similarity, expertise, as well as cohesion, prior

commitment, and accountability to the group help to determine the level of

conformity of an individual. Individual variation among group members plays a key

role in the dynamic of how willing people will be to conform. Conformity is usually

viewed as a negative tendency in American culture, but a certain amount of

conformity is adaptive in some situations, as is nonconformity in other situations.

The second major area of social influence research is compliance. Compliance

refers to any change in behavior that is due to a request or suggestion from another

person. The foot-in-the-door technique is a compliance method in which the

persuader requests a small favor and then follows up with requesting a larger favor,

e.g., asking for the time and then asking for ten dollars. A related trick is the bait and

switch.

The third major form of social influence is obedience; this is a change in

behavior that is the result of a direct order or command from another person.

Obedience as a form of compliance was dramatically highlighted by the Milgram

study, wherein people were ready to administer shocks to a person in distress on a

researcher's command.

An unusual kind of social influence is the self-fulfilling prophecy. This is a

prediction that, in being made, actually causes itself to become true. For example, in

the stock market, if it is widely believed that a crash is imminent, investors may lose

confidence, sell most of their stock, and thus actually cause the crash. Similarly,

people may expect hostility in others and actually induce this hostility by their own

behavior.

Psychologist have spent decades studying the power of social influence, and

the way in which it manipulates people's opinions and behavior. Specifically, social

influence refers to the way in which individuals change their ideas and actions to

meet the demands of a social group, received authority, social role or a minority

within a group wielding influence over the majority. No matter if you are student,

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teacher, doctor, lawyer or entrepreneur, you will encounter some type of social

influence.

Group dynamics

A group can be defined as two or more individuals that are connected to each

another by social relationships. Groups tend to interact, influence each other, and

share a common identity. They have a number of emergent qualities that distinguish

them from aggregates:

Norms: Implicit rules and expectations for group members to follow (e.g.

saying thank you, shaking hands).

Roles: Implicit rules and expectations for specific members within the group

(e.g. the oldest sibling, who may have additional responsibilities in the family).

Relations: Patterns of liking within the group, and also differences in prestige

or status (e.g. leaders, popular people).

Temporary groups and aggregates share few or none of these features, and do

not qualify as true social groups. People waiting in line to get on a bus, for example,

do not constitute a group.

Groups are important not only because they offer social support, resources, and

a feeling of belonging, but because they supplement an individual's self-concept. To a

large extent, humans define themselves by the group memberships which form their

social identity. The shared social identity of individuals within a group influences

intergroup behavior, the way in which groups behave towards and perceive each

other. These perceptions and behaviors in turn define the social identity of individuals

within the interacting groups. The tendency to define oneself by membership in a

group may lead to intergroup discrimination, which involves favorable perceptions

and behaviors directed towards the in-group, but negative perceptions and behaviors

directed towards the out-group. On the other hand, such discrimination and

segregation may sometimes exist partly to facilitate a diversity which strengthens

society. Intergroup discrimination leads to prejudice and stereotyping, while the

processes of social facilitation and group polarization encourage extreme behaviors

towards the out-group.

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Groups often moderate and improve decision making, and are frequently relied

upon for these benefits, such as in committees and juries. A number of group biases,

however, can interfere with effective decision making. For example, group

polarization, formerly known as the "risky shift," occurs when people polarize their

views in a more extreme direction after group discussion. More problematic is the

phenomenon of groupthink. This is a collective thinking defect that is characterized

by a premature consensus or an incorrect assumption of consensus, caused by

members of a group failing to promote views which are not consistent with the views

of other members. Groupthink occurs in a variety of situations, including isolation of

a group and the presence of a highly directive leader. Janis offered the 1961 Bay of

Pigs Invasion as a historical case of groupthink.

Groups also affect performance and productivity. Social facilitation, for

example, is a tendency to work harder and faster in the presence of others. Social

facilitation increases the dominant response's likelihood, which tends to improve

performance on simple tasks and reduce it on complex tasks.[citation needed] In

contrast, social loafing is the tendency of individuals to slack off when working in a

group. Social loafing is common when the task is considered unimportant and

individual contributions are not easy to see.

Social psychologists study group-related (collective) phenomena such as the

behavior of crowds. An important concept in this area is deindividuation, a reduced

state of self-awareness that can be caused by feelings of anonymity. Deindividuation

is associated with uninhibited and sometimes dangerous behavior. It is common in

crowds and mobs, but it can also be caused by a disguise, a uniform, alcohol, dark

environments, or online anonymity.

Interpersonal attraction

A major area in the study of people's relations to each other is interpersonal

attraction. This refers to all forces that lead people to like each other, establish

relationships, and (in some cases) fall in love. Several general principles of attraction

have been discovered by social psychologists, but many still continue to experiment

and do research to find out more. One of the most important factors in interpersonal

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attraction is how similar two particular people are. The more similar two people are

in general attitudes, backgrounds, environments, worldviews, and other traits, the

more probable an attraction is possible.

Physical attractiveness is an important element of romantic relationships,

particularly in the early stages characterized by high levels of passion. Later on,

similarity and other compatibility factors become more important, and the type of

love people experience shifts from passionate to companionate. Robert Sternberg

(1986) has suggested that there are actually three components of love: intimacy,

passion, and commitment. When two (or more) people experience all three, they are

said to be in a state of consummate love.

According to social exchange theory, relationships are based on rational choice

and cost-benefit analysis. If one partner's costs begin to outweigh their benefits, that

person may leave the relationship, especially if there are good alternatives available.

This theory is similar to the mini-max principle proposed by mathematicians and

economists (despite the fact that human relationships are not zero-sum games). With

time, long-term relationships tend to become communal rather than simply based on

exchange.

Review Questions

1. What does social psychology study?

2. How do social psychologists explain human behavior?

3. Who were the first social psychologists?

4. What are modern researchers in social psychology interested in?

5. What is an attitude in social psychology?

6. What are the major categories of persuasion?

7. What is social cognition?

8. What is the major research topic in social cognition?

9. What is heuristic?

10. What is self-concept?

11. What are the "ABCs" of self?

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12. What are the components of self-concept?

13. What is self-perception?

14. What is conformity?

15. What is self-fulfilling prophecy?

16. What are the three main areas of social influence?

17. How can we distinguish groups from aggregates?

18. Why groups are so important?

19. What is interpersonal attraction?

20. What are the components of love according to Sternberg theory?

Topics for presentations

1. Crowd psychology

2. Intergroup relations

3. Social psychology key figures

4. Minority influence

5. Compliance techniques

6. Stereotypes

7. Leaders and leadership

8. Nonverbal behavior

9. Asch conformity experiments

10. Leon Festinger's cognitive dissonance experiment

11. Stanford prison experiment

12. Persuasion, propaganda, and marketing.

13. Prejudice and discrimination (i.e., homophobia, sexism, racism)

14. Commitment

15. Cheater-detection mechanism

Test tasks

1. IN 1898 HE CARRIED OUT THE EXPERIMENT ON THE

PHENOMENON OF SOCIAL FACILITATION:

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a) Kurt Lewin

b) Al-Farabi

c) Stanley Milgram

d) Norman Triplett

2. LEARNED, GLOBAL EVALUATIONS OF A PERSON,

OBJECT, PLACE, OR ISSUE THAT INFLUENCE THOUGHT AND

ACTION IS KNOWN AS:

a) persuasion

b) attitude

c) social cognition

d) self-concept

3. THE AREA OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY THAT STUDIES

HOW PEOPLE PERCEIVE, THINK ABOUT, AND REMEMBER

INFORMATION ABOUT OTHERS IS:

a) persuasion

b) attitude

c) social cognition

d) self-concept

4. GENERALIZED MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS THAT ORGANIZE

KNOWLEDGE AND GUIDE INFORMATION PROCESSING ARE KNOWN

AS:

a) schemas

b) heuristics

c) attitudes

d) self-concepts

5.THE AUTHOR OF SELF-PERCEPTION THEORY WHICH CLAIMS

THAT WHEN INTERNAL CUES ARE DIFFICULT TO INTERPRET, PEOPLE

GAIN SELF-INSIGHT BY OBSERVING THEIR OWN BEHAVIOR:

a) Timothy Wilson

b) Daniel Gilbert

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c) Daryl Bem

d) Leon Festinger

6. THE TENDENCY TO ACT OR THINK LIKE OTHER MEMBERS OF

A GROUP IS:

a) conformity

b) compliance

c) obedience

d) self-fulfilling prophecy

7. ANY CHANGE IN BEHAVIOR THAT IS DUE TO A REQUEST OR

SUGGESTION FROM ANOTHER PERSON IS KNOWN AS:

a) conformity

b) compliance

c) obedience

d) self-fulfilling prophecy

8. THIS IS A CHANGE IN BEHAVIOR THAT IS THE RESULT OF A

DIRECT ORDER OR COMMAND FROM ANOTHER PERSON:

a) conformity

b) compliance

c) obedience

d) self-fulfilling prophecy

9. IMPLICIT RULES AND EXPECTATIONS FOR GROUP MEMBERS

TO FOLLOW ARE DEFINED AS:

a) roles

b) norms

c) relations

d) groups

10. IMPLICIT RULES AND EXPECTATIONS FOR SPECIFIC

MEMBERS WITHIN THE GROUP ARE DEFINED AS:

a) roles

b) norms

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c) relations

d) groups

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SECTION 5. HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY

5.1 Health psychology as a science

Health psychology is the study of psychological and behavioral processes in

health, illness, and healthcare. It is concerned with understanding how psychological,

behavioral, and cultural factors contribute to physical health and illness.

Over the twentieth century thinking changed and it became obvious that the

mind and body were more connected than assumed by the biomedical model. In

addition, the greatest risk to health was no longer acute conditions such as TB or flu

but chronic illnesses such as coronary heart disease (CHD) cancer, obesity, and

diabetes all of which have a clear role for behavior.

As a result, health psychology was developed which can be understood in

terms of the same questions that were asked of the biomedical model:

What causes illness? Health psychology suggests that human beings should be

seen as complex systems and that illness is caused by a multitude of factors

and not by a single causal factor. Health psychology therefore attempts to

move away from a simple linear model of health and claims that illness can be

caused by a combination of biological (e.g. a virus), psychological (e.g.

behaviors, beliefs) and social (e.g. the environment) factors.

Who is responsible for illness? Because illness is regarded as a result of a

combination of factors, the individual is no longer simply seen as a passive

victim. For example, the recognition of a role for behavior in the cause of

illness means that the individual may be held responsible for their health and

illness.

How should illness be treated? According to health psychology, the whole

person should be treated, not just the physical changes that have taken place.

This can take the form of behavior change, encouraging changes in beliefs and

coping strategies and compliance with medical recommendations.

Who is responsible for treatment? Because the whole person is treated, not just

their physical illness, the patient is therefore in part responsible for their

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treatment. This may take the form of responsibility to take medication,

responsibility to change beliefs and behavior. They are not seen as a victim.

What is the role of psychology in health and illness? Health psychology

regards psychological factors not only as possible consequences of illness but

as contributing to it at all stages along the continuum from healthy through to

being ill.

Health psychology therefore focuses on the role of psychology at all stages of

health and illness. In particular, it draws upon the bio-psycho-social model of health,

health as a continuum, the direct and indirect pathways between psychology and

health and a focus on variability.

5.2. The role of behavior in health

About 50% of mortality from the 10 leading causes of death results from

individual behavior indicating that behavior and lifestyle have a potentially major

effect on longevity.

Therefore, health behaviors in terms of smoking, drinking alcohol, diet, sleep

and exercise are important predictors of health and illness. Health psychologists

attempt to understand and predict health-related behaviors by studying health beliefs.

For example, the belief that smoking is dangerous should be associated with non-

smoking or smoking cessation; the belief that cervical cancer is preventable should be

associated with attendance for cervical screening; the belief that exercise is beneficial

should be associated with increased physical activity.

Health psychologists study what people believe and whether this relates to how

they behave. They also study whether beliefs and behavior can be changed.

Health behaviors are regarded as any behavior that is related to the health

status of the individual. These can be behaviors that have a negative impact on health

such as smoking, eating foods high in fat, drinking large amounts of alcohol, having a

sedentary lifestyle, having unsafe sex and those behaviors that may have a positive

effect such as tooth brushing, wearing seat belts, seeking health information, having

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regular check-ups, taking medication, sleeping an adequate number of hours per

night, having a healthy diet and being active.

People hold many different types of beliefs which influence their behavior.

Here are some of the key ones.

Attitudes

We hold attitudes about many aspects of life. For example, we may have an

attitude that exercise is boring, that smoking is relaxing, that eating vegetables is

healthy, that using a condom takes the fun out of sex, that going to the doctor is

embarrassing and that alcohol is good for stress. These attitudes will clearly change

and shape how we behave.

Beliefs about control

Attribution theory states that people want to understand what causes events

because this makes the world seem more predictable and controllable. People

therefore develop beliefs about control and may see aspects of the world and their

own behavior as either controllable or uncontrollable. For example, a person who is

obese may see this as uncontrollable and attribute their body weight to factors such as

‘genetics’, ‘hormones’ or ‘diabetes’ which they may feel are beyond their control. In

contrast, someone who has had a heart attack may attribute this to their unhealthy

lifestyle and feel that there is something that they can do about this. This has led

researchers to focus on the notion of health locus of control with people showing

either an internal or external locus of control. Such beliefs will influence behavior.

Risk perception

People hold beliefs about their own susceptibility to a given problem and make

judgements concerning the extent to which they are ‘at risk’. Smokers, for example,

may continue to smoke because, although they understand that smoking is unhealthy,

they do not consider themselves to be at risk of lung cancer. Likewise, a woman may

not attend for a cervical smear because she believes that cervical cancer only happens

to women who are not like her.

People have ways of assessing their susceptibility to particular conditions, and

this is not always a rational process. It has been suggested that individuals

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consistently estimate their risk of getting a health problem as less than that of others

which has been called unrealistic optimism. In addition, people also show risk

compensation and can believe that ‘I have eaten well today and so therefore can have

a cigarette’ as one healthy behavior is seen to compensate for one unhealthy

behavior.

Beliefs about confidence

Individuals also hold beliefs about their ability to carry out certain behaviors.

Bandura (1977) has termed this self-efficacy to reflect the extent to which people feel

confident that they can do whatever it is that they wish to do. A smoker, for example,

may feel that she should stop smoking but has very little confidence that she will be

able to do so. Likewise, an overweight man may be convinced that he should do more

exercise but think that this goal is unlikely to be achieved. These two examples would

be said to have low self-efficacy. In contrast, a woman who was motivated to attend

for a health check, and felt confident that she could, would be said to have high self-

efficacy. Self-efficacy is a very powerful predictor of behavior.

5.3. Psychological health

Psychologists generally agree that there are few set standards to define

psychological health, since it can vary from person to person. There are some

common factors across those individuals who may be considered psychologically

healthy, however. At its most basic, the absence of mental illness is an important

starting place for determining psychological health. The most frequent other

considerations include an individual's common emotional state, such as whether he or

she is generally happy, as well as if he has a healthy social life with a few close

connections in addition to coping mechanisms for dealing with stress or challenging

events in everyday life.

Psychological health is certainly not the absence of any negative moods.

Certainly, psychologically healthy people will have days when they are angry,

depressed, or anxious, in response to negative or stressful events. It is only if these

mental states persist over a period of time, or if they become the state of equilibrium

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that the individual always returns to, that it might indicate a problem. In general, a

psychologically healthy individual will have a fairly positive outlook on life, and

might feel happy or at least reasonably content much of the time. Since this state of

contentment can vary for each person, it is difficult to set specific parameters for

psychological health in this way.

Two other things that psychologists have determined are very important for

psychological health are interpersonal relationships and coping skills. Individuals

should have at least a few people in their lives with whom they feel comfortable

sharing and being open, as these positive relationships can have a very positive

impact on mental health. Coping mechanisms allow individuals to deal with stressful,

challenging, or even traumatic situations without developing a mental illness such as

depression or severe anxiety, or attempting to use unhealthy methods of coping, such

as drug or alcohol use. Many people who attend psychological therapy will learn how

to change their behaviors and habits to develop better coping mechanisms.

The absence of mental illness is also an important aspect of psychological

health. Individuals who have undergone therapy, or who are on medication to balance

the neurotransmitters in the brain, and are no longer experiencing symptoms, may be

considered otherwise psychologically healthy. There are a number of different mental

illnesses for which effective treatments are available, so it is important for anyone

suffering from an illness to seek treatment, and not just try to overcome it with sheer

willpower.

5.4. Psychological stress

The term stress means many things to many different people. A layperson may

define stress in terms of pressure, tension, unpleasant external forces or an emotional

response.

Contemporary definitions of stress regard the external environmental stress as a

stressor (e.g. problems at work), the response to the stressor as stress or distress (e.g.

the feeling of tension), and the concept of stress as something, that involves

biochemical, physiological, behavioral and psychological changes.

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Researchers have also differentiated between stress that is harmful and

damaging (distress) and stress that is positive and beneficial (eustress).

In addition, researchers differentiate between acute stress, such as an exam or

having to give a public talk, and chronic stress, such as job stress and poverty. The

most commonly used definition of stress was developed by Lazarus and Launier

(1978), who regarded stress as a transaction between people and the environment and

described stress in terms of ‘person–environment fit’. If a person is faced with a

potentially difficult stressor such as an exam or having to give a public talk, the

degree of stress they experience is determined first by their appraisal of the event (‘is

it stressful?’) and second by their appraisal of their own personal resources (‘will I

cope?). A good person–environment fit results in no or low stress and a poor fit

results in higher stress.

Does stress cause illness?

One of the reasons that stress has been studied so consistently is because of its

potential effect on the health of the individual. In particular, research shows a link

between high stress jobs and hypertension and CHD; higher life stress and physical

symptoms; that stressful lives are associated with greater recurrence of colds and flu;

and that there is a link between stress and mortality.

Stress can cause illness through either a direct or indirect pathway. The direct

pathway involves stress related changes in physiology such as raised blood pressure,

raised heart rate, reduced immune function or cortisol production. The indirect

pathway involves changes in health behaviors such as sleep, diet, smoking or exercise

which in turn cause poor health.

There are the three types of stress — acute stress, episodic acute stress, and

chronic stress — can all make us feel out of sorts or even ill, but chronic stress is

often ignored.

Acute Stress

Acute stress is the most common form of stress. It comes from demands and

pressures of the recent past and anticipated demands and pressures of the near future.

Acute stress is thrilling and exciting in small doses, but too much is exhausting. A

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fast run down a challenging ski slope, for example, is exhilarating early in the day.

That same ski run late in the day is taxing and wearing. Skiing beyond your limits can

lead to falls and broken bones. By the same token, overdoing on short-term stress can

lead to psychological distress, tension headaches, upset stomach and other symptoms.

Fortunately, acute stress is recognized by most people. It’s a laundry list of

what has gone awry in their lives: the auto accident that crumpled the car fender, the

loss of an important contract, a deadline they’re rushing to meet, their child’s

occasional problems at school and so on.

Because it is short term, acute stress doesn’t have enough time to do the

extensive damage associated with long-term stress. Acute stress can crop up in

anyone’s life, and it is highly treatable and manageable.

Episodic stress

There are those, however, who suffer acute stress frequently, whose lives are

so disordered that they are studies in chaos and crisis. They’re always in a rush, but

always late. If something can go wrong, it does. They take on too much, have too

many irons in the fire, and can’t organize the slew of self-inflicted demands and

pressures clamoring for their attention. They seem perpetually in the clutches of acute

stress.

It is common for people with acute stress reactions to be over aroused, short-

tempered, irritable, anxious, and tense. Often, they describe themselves as having “a

lot of nervous energy.” Always in a hurry, they tend to be abrupt, and sometimes

their irritability comes across as hostility. Interpersonal relationships deteriorate

rapidly when others respond with real hostility. The workplace becomes a very

stressful place for them.

A form of episodic acute stress comes from ceaseless worry. “Worry warts”

see disaster around every corner and pessimistically forecast catastrophe in every

situation. The world is a dangerous, unrewarding, punitive place where something

awful is always about to happen. These “awfulizers” also tend to be over aroused and

tense, but are more anxious and depressed than angry and hostile.

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Often, lifestyle and personality issues are so ingrained and habitual with these

individuals that they see nothing wrong with the way they conduct their lives. They

blame their woes on other people and external events. Frequently, they see their

lifestyle, their patterns of interacting with others, and their ways of perceiving the

world as part and parcel of who and what they are.

Sufferers can be fiercely resistant to change. Only the promise of relief from

pain and discomfort of their symptoms can keep them in treatment and on track in

their recovery program.

Chronic stress

While acute stress can be thrilling and exciting, chronic stress is not. This is the

grinding stress that wears people away day after day, year after year. Chronic stress

destroys bodies, minds and lives. It wreaks havoc through long-term attrition. It’s the

stress of poverty, of dysfunctional families, of being trapped in an unhappy marriage

or in a despised job or career.

Chronic stress comes when a person never sees a way out of a miserable

situation. It’s the stress of unrelenting demands and pressures for seemingly

interminable periods of time. With no hope, the individual gives up searching for

solutions.

Some chronic stresses stem from traumatic, early childhood experiences that

become internalized and remain forever painful and present. Some experiences

profoundly affect personality. A view of the world, or a belief system, is created that

causes unending stress for the individual (e.g., the world is a threatening place,

people will find out you are a pretender, you must be perfect at all times). When

personality or deep-seated convictions and beliefs must be reformulated, recovery

requires active self-examination, often with professional help.

The worst aspect of chronic stress is that people get used to it. They forget it’s

there. People are immediately aware of acute stress because it is new; they ignore

chronic stress because it is old, familiar, and sometimes, almost comfortable.

Chronic stress kills through suicide, violence, heart attack, stroke and, perhaps,

even cancer. People wear down to a final, fatal breakdown. Because physical and

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mental resources are depleted through long-term attrition, the symptoms of chronic

stress are difficult to treat and may require extended medical as well as behavioral

treatment and stress management.

What is a stressor?

Stressors are those changes in one's life or threatening situations referred to

above. As a student, you will likely encounter a number of situations/events which

will result in stress. You are reminded that not everyone responds to stressors in the

same way because of differences in perception (differences in the meaning given to

the situation/event by an individual). What might be stressful for one individual may

not be necessarily stressful for another. Below is a list of some common stressors

specific to student life.

Arguments

Change in family roles

Change in financial status

Change in friends

Change in living conditions & social activities

Clutter/disorganization

Daily hassles

Death of a family member or close friend

Debt load/financing education

Different/new/developing support system

Failing an important test, exam, or course

Fear of failure

Leaving home

Lower grades than expected

Marriage or divorce

New girl or boyfriend

Noise during study time

Personal conflicts

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Pregnancy

Rigorous academic standards

Roommate & peer pressure

Sexual harassment

Suicide of a friend

Worry about the future job market

Signs and Symptoms of Stress

Stressors in our life encourage us to either adjust to or change some aspect of

our behavior. When we do not successfully make these adjustments or changes we

often times find ourselves experiencing a number of unpleasant side effects or signs

and symptoms. These signs and symptoms are all indications of a level of stress that

is not healthy. Below is a list of some of the more common signs and symptoms

related to inappropriate levels of stress.

They have been categorized as being either physical, emotional, mental,

spiritual, or relational in nature.

Physical

Appetite change, tightness in neck, upset stomach, pounding heart, cold feet

and hands, sweating, unexplained choking feeling, fatigue, teeth grinding,

constipation, chills, restlessness, back pain, memory loss, muscle tension, difficulty

sleeping, blurred vision, diarrhea, chest pain, rashes, word loss, breathing difficulties

headaches, premature aging, nausea, overeating, colds, staring into space for

extended period of time, drinking alcohol or using drugs to change your mood.

Emotional

Frustration, depression, mood swings, quick to anger, nightmares, irritability,

easily discouraged, little joy, worrying, imagining the worst, feeling overwhelmed,

forgetfulness, nervousness, defensiveness, fear, grief anger, anxiety.

Mental

Difficulty solving problems, difficulty making decisions, difficulty

concentrating, difficulty calculating, negative self-talk, negative attitude, regularly

criticize and complain, avoiding situations, catastrophize, overly suspicious.

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Spiritual

Emptiness, loss of meaning, doubt, unforgiving, loss of direction.

Relational

Isolation, intolerance, resentment, loneliness, lashing out, hiding, clamming up,

sexual problems, distrust, fewer contacts with friends, lack of intimacy.

Review Questions

1. What does health psychology study?

2. Who is responsible for treatment?

3. What is the role of psychology in health and illness?

4. What is bio-psycho-social model of health?

5. What is health behavior?

6. What is unrealistic optimism?

7. What is psychological health?

8. What is psychological stress?

9. What is distress?

10. What is eustress?

11. Does stress cause illness?

12. What are the three types of stress?

13. What is the worst aspect of chronic stress?

14. What is a stressor?

15. What are the signs and symptoms of stress?

Topics for presentations

1. The role of behavior in health

2. Behavioral risk factors

3. Nutrition psychology

4. Emotions and health

5. Illness beliefs

6. Cardiac psychology

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7. Bio-psycho-social model

8. The role of psychology in chronic illnesses such as obesity, CHD

and cancer

9. Gender differences in illness

10. Managing pain

11. Workplace stress

12. Coping with stress

13. Stress and physiology

14. Chronic stress

15. Exercising to reduce stress

Test tasks

1. 10 LEADING CAUSES OF DEATH RESULT FROM INDIVIDUAL

BEHAVIOR WITH THE MORTALITY RATE:

a) 20%

b) 40%

c) 50%

d) 70%

2. ANY BEHAVIOR THAT IS RELATED TO THE HEALTH

STATUS OF THE INDIVIDUAL IS KNOWN AS:

a) social behavior

b) health behavior

c) risky behavior

d) work behavior

3. THESE MECHANISMS ALLOW INDIVIDUALS TO DEAL

WITH STRESSFUL, CHALLENGING, OR EVEN TRAUMATIC

SITUATIONS WITHOUT DEVELOPING A MENTAL ILLNESS SUCH AS

DEPRESSION OR SEVERE ANXIETY:

a) coping

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b) behavioral

c) defense

d) sublimation

4. VERY IMPORTANT ASPECT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL

HEALTH IS THE ABSENCE OF:

a) mental illness

b) negative moods

c) stressful events

d) coping skills

5. HARMFUL AND DAMAGING PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS IS

KNOWN AS:

a) eustress

b) distress

c) stressor

d) anxiety

6. POSITIVE AND BENEFICIAL TYPE OF STRESS:

a) eustress

b) distress

c) stressor

d) anxiety

7. THIS TYPE OF STRESS IS THE MOST COMMON ONE. IT COMES

FROM DEMANDS AND PRESSURES OF THE RECENT PAST AND

ANTICIPATED DEMANDS AND PRESSURES OF THE NEAR FUTURE:

a) acute stress

b) episodic stress

c) chronic stress

d) stressor

8. THIS IS THE GRINDING STRESS THAT WEARS PEOPLE AWAY

DAY AFTER DAY, YEAR AFTER YEAR. IT DESTROYS BODIES, MINDS

AND LIVES:

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a) acute stress

b) episodic stress

c) chronic stress

d) stressor

9. THIS TYPE OF STRESS OCCURS WHEN WE EXPERIENCE ACUTE

STRESS TOO FREQUENTLY:

a) acute stress

b) episodic stress

c) chronic stress

d) stressor

10. EVENTS OR ENVIRONMENTS THAT INDIVIDUALS MIGHT

CONSIDER DEMANDING, CHALLENGING, AND/OR THREATENING

INDIVIDUAL SAFETY:

a) acute stress

b) episodic stress

c) chronic stress

d) stressor

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KEYS TO THE TEST TASKS

SECTION 1 SECTION 2 SECTION 3 SECTION 4 SECTION 5

1. - d 1. - d 1. - b 1. - d 1. - c

2. - a 2. - d 2. - c 2. - b 2. - b

3. - b 3. - c 3. - b 3. - c 3. - a

4. - a 4. - a 4. - d 4. - a 4. - a

5. - c 5. - a 5. - a 5. - c 5. - b

6. - c 6. - c 6. - d 6. - a 6. - a

7. - d 7. - c 7. - b 7. - b 7. - a

8. - a 8. - d 8. - c 8. - c 8. - c

9. - a 9. - a 9. - d 9. - b 9. - b

10. - c 10. - c 10. - a 10. - a 10. - d

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RECOMMENDED LITERATURE

Main literature

1. Лукацкий, М. А. Психология : учебник для вузов / М. А. Лукацкий, М. Е.

Остренкова. – М.: ГЭОТАР - Медиа, 2013. - 664 с.

2. Психология и педагогика высшей школы : учебник / Л. Д. Столяренко [и др.].

- Ростов-на-Дону: Феникс, 2014. - 620 с.

Additional literature

1. Окладников, В. И. Личность: (типология, адаптация, коррекция) / В. И.

Окладников. - Иркутск: Изд-во ИрГТУ, 2010. - 216 с.

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Educational edition

Timofeeva Yulia Nikolaevna

Voronova Tatyana Anatolyevya

Chepurko Yulia Vladislavovna

Dubrovina Svetlana Valerievna

MAJOR BRANCHES OF PSYCHOLOGY

Study guide