Chapter 1:

HER DOG’S NAME is ZEPHYR

She did have pasta for dinner

She also made cookies

What is Psychology?

Scientific study of mind and behaviour.

Greek words “psyche,” meaning life, and “logos,” meaning explanation.

broad academic field that can be seen in many different areas of life. To understand the mind and
behaviors of creature's psychologists examine both human and non-human animals.

• Most psychologists work in research laboratories, hospitals, and other field settings where they
study the behaviour of humans and animals.

• Psychologists also work in schools and businesses, and they use a variety of methods, including
observation, questionnaires, interviews, and laboratory studies, to help them understand
behaviour.

• Organizational Psychology is new + emerging

Two categories:

1. Research psychologists use scientific methods to create new knowledge about the causes of
behavior.

2. Psychologist-practitioners, use existing research to enhance the everyday life of others.

(lecturers & researchers as well)

Despite the differences in their interests, areas of study, and approaches, all psychologists have one
thing in common: they rely on scientific methods.

Science & Empirical Methods

The science of psychology is important for both researchers and practitioners. All scientists,
whether they are physicists, chemists, biologists, sociologists, or psychologists, use empirical
methods to study the topics that interest them.
 Empirical methods include the processes of collecting and organizing data and drawing
conclusions about those data.

Scientific method is the set of assumptions, rules, and procedures that scientists use to conduct
empirical research.

Facts vs. Values

Although scientific research is an important method of studying human behaviour, not all
questions can be answered using scientific approaches. Scientists therefore draw a distinction
between values and facts.

Values are personal statements

Facts are objective statements determined to be accurate through empirical study

• distinction between values and facts is not always clear cut. Research to establish facts

• Sometimes statements that scientists consider to be factual turn out later, on the basis of
further research, to be partially or even entirely incorrect.

Levels of explanation: the perspectives that are used to understand behaviour.

• Lower levels of explanation are more closely tied to biological influences, such as genes,
neurons, neurotransmitters, and hormones.

• Middle levels refer to the abilities and characteristics of the individual

• Higher levels relate to social groups, organizations, and cultures

 Level Underlying Process Example

• Depression is in part genetically influenced.

Lower Biological • Depression is influenced by the action of
neurotransmitters in the brain.

• People who are depressed may interpret

the events that occur to them too
Middle Interpersonal negatively.

• Psychotherapy can be used to help people

talk about and combat depression

• Women experience more depression than

do men.
Higher Cultural and Social
• The prevalence of depression varies across
cultures and historical time periods.

Challenges of Studying Psychology

A major goal of psychology is to predict behaviour by understanding its causes. Several things make
these predictions difficult:

1. People vary and respond differently in different situations.

2. Almost all behaviour is multiply determined (produced by many factors). These multiple causes
are not independent of one another; they are associated such that when one cause is present,
other causes tend to be present as well.

3. Human behaviour is caused by factors that are outside our conscious awareness, making it
impossible for us, as individuals, to really understand them.
Key Takeaways

• Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behaviour.

• Though it is easy to think that everyday situations have common sense answers, scientific
studies have found that people are not always as good at predicting outcomes as they think they
are.

• The hindsight bias leads us to think that we could have predicted events that we actually could
not have predicted.

• People are frequently unaware of the causes of their own behaviours.

• Psychologists use the scientific method to collect, analyze, and interpret evidence.

• Employing the scientific method allows the scientist to collect empirical data objectively, which
adds to the accumulation of scientific knowledge.

• Psychological phenomena are complex and making predictions about them is difficult because of
individual differences and because they are multiply determined at different levels of
explanation.
Section 2

The Evolution of Psychology: History, Approaches, and Questions

Early Psychologists

The earliest psychologists that we know about are the Greek philosophers Plato (428-347 BC) and
Aristotle (384-322 BC).

Plato believed that much knowledge was innate, whereas Aristotle thought that each child was born as
an “empty slate” and that knowledge was primarily acquired through learning and experience.

French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) also considered the issue of free will, arguing in its
favour and believing that the mind controls the body through the pineal gland in the brain. He was
among the first the understand that nerves control muscles.

Descartes believed in the principle of dualism: that the mind is fundamentally different from the
mechanical body.

Other early psychologists: Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1712-1778)

Dramatic changes came during the 1800s with the help of the first two research psychologists:

1. the German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), who developed a psychology laboratory
in Leipzig, Germany

- Wundt’s research in his laboratory in Leipzig focused on the nature of consciousness itself.
Wundt and his students believed that it was possible to analyze the basic elements of the
mind and to classify our conscious experiences scientifically.
- Wundt began the field known as structuralism
- “The distinguishing characteristics of mind are of a subjective sort; we know them only from
the contents of our own consciousness.”
- (Wundt, 1874)

Structuralism: a school of psychology whose goal was to identify the basic elements or structures of
psychological experience.

• Its goal was to create a periodic table of the elements of sensations.

• Structuralists used the method of introspection (asking research participants to describe exactly
what they experience as they work on mental tasks) to attempt to create a map of the elements
of consciousness.
 2. the American psychologist William James (1842-1910), who founded a psychology laboratory at
Harvard University.

- In contrast to Wundt, who attempted to understand the nature of consciousness, William

James and the other members of the school of functionalism aimed to understand why
animals and humans have developed the particular psychological aspects that they currently
possess

Functionalism

• Influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Just as some animals have developed
strong muscles to allow them to run fast, the human brain, so functionalists thought, must have
adapted to serve a particular function in human experience.

• The work of the functionalists has developed into the field of evolutionary psychology, a branch
of psychology that applies the Darwinian theory of natural selection to human and animal
behaviour

• Basically, we adapted the mind for a specific purpose

• Evolutionary psychologists use evolutionary theory to understand many different behaviours,

including romantic attraction, stereotypes and prejudice, and even the causes of many
psychological disorders.

• A key component of the ideas of evolutionary psychology is fitness

Fitness: the extent to which having a given characteristic helps the individual organism survive and
reproduce at a higher rate than do other members of the species who do not have the characteristic.

Psychodynamic psychology: an approach to understanding human behaviour that focuses on the role of
unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories.

• Championed by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and his followers (Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Karen
Horney, and Erik Erikson)

Believe it is possible to help the patient if the unconscious drives can be remembered, particularly
through a deep and thorough exploration of the person’s early sexual experiences and current sexual
desires.
Psychoanalysis: a processes of talk therapy and dream analysis used to help patients explore
unconscious drives

The importance of the unconscious in human behaviour, the idea that early childhood experiences are
critical, and the concept of therapy as a way of improving human lives are all ideas that are derived from
the psychodynamic approach and that remain central to psychology.

Behaviourism: a school of psychology that is based on the premise that it is not possible to objectively
study the mind, and therefore that psychologists should limit their attention to the study of behaviour
itself.

• No point in trying to determine what happens in our mind because we can successfully predict
behaviour without knowing what happens inside the brain.

• The first behaviourist was the American psychologist John B. Watson (1878-1958).

• Watson and the other behaviourists began to use these ideas to explain how events that people
and other organisms experienced in their environment (stimuli) could produce specific
behaviours (responses).

• Watson was influenced in large part by the work of the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-
1936), who had discovered that dogs would salivate at the sound of a tone that had previously
been associated with the presentation of food.

Famous Behaviourist Experiments

Pavlov’s Dog

• Ivan Pavlov found that a stimulus (either the food or, after learning, the tone) would produce
the response of salivation in the dogs.

Little Albert

• Watson found that systematically exposing a child to fearful stimuli in the presence of objects
that did not themselves elicit fear could lead the child to respond with a fearful behaviour to the
presence of the objects

Skinner Box

• Burrhus Frederick (B.F.) Skinner used the ideas of stimulus and response, along with the
application of rewards or reinforcements, to train pigeons and other animals.
Cognitive psychology: a field of psychology that studies mental processes, including perception,
thinking, memory, and judgment.

Some of the important contributors to cognitive psychology include

• Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), who studied the ability of people to remember lists of words
under different conditions

• Sir Frederic Bartlett (1886-1969), who studied the cognitive and social processes of
remembering

• Donald E. Broadbent, Daniel Kahneman, George Miller, Eleanor Rosch, Amos Tversky, and Jean
Piaget.

• In its argument that our thinking has a powerful influence on behaviour, the cognitive approach
provided a distinct alternative to behaviourism.

• According to cognitive psychologists, ignoring the mind itself will never be sufficient because
people interpret the stimuli that they experience

• The cognitive revolution has been given even more life over the past decade as the result of
recent advances in our ability to see the brain in action using neuroimaging techniques.

Social-cultural psychology is the study of how the social situations and the cultures in which people find
themselves influence thinking and behaviour.

• Social-cultural psychologists are particularly concerned with how people perceive themselves
and others, and how people influence each other’s behaviour.

social norms: the ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are shared by group members and
perceived by them as appropriate

culture represents the common set of social norms, including religious and family values and other
moral beliefs, shared by the people who live in a geographical region

Psychologists have found that there is a fundamental difference in social norms between Western
(Individualistic) cultures and East Asian (Collectivist) cultures

Individualism: valuing the self and one’s independence from others

Collectivism: value interdependence and a focus on developing harmonious social relationships with
others.

• It is important to be aware of cultures and cultural differences because people with different
cultural backgrounds increasingly come into contact with each other as a result of increased
travel and immigration and the development of the Internet and other forms of communication
 • The social-cultural approach to understanding behavior reminds us again of the difficulty of
making broad generalizations about human nature. Different people experience things
differently, and they experience them differently in different cultures.

Summary of the Most Important Approaches (Schools) of Psychology

School of Description Important Contributors

Psychology

Structuralism Uses the method of introspection to identify the Wilhelm Wundt,

basic elements or “structures” of psychological Edward B.
experience
Titchener

Functionalism Attempts to understand why animals and William James

humans have developed the particular
psychological aspects that they currently possess

Psychodynamic Focuses on the role of our unconscious thoughts, Sigmund Freud, Carl
feelings, and memories and our early childhood Jung,
experiences in determining behaviour
Alfred Adler, Erik
Erickson

Behaviorism Based on the premise that it is not possible to John B. Watson, B. F.

objectively study the mind, and therefore that
Skinner
psychologists should limit their attention to the
study of behavior itself

Cognitive The study of mental processes, including Hermann Ebbinghaus,

perception, thinking, memory, and judgments Sir

Frederic Bartlett, Jean

Piaget

Social-Cultural The study of how the social situations and the Fritz Heider, Leon
cultures in which people find themselves
Festinger, Stanley
influence thinking and behaviour
Schachter
The Many Disciplines of Psychology

• Psychology is not one discipline but rather a collection of many subdisciplines that all share at
least some common approaches and that work together and exchange knowledge to form a
coherent discipline

Some Fields of Psychology:

- Biopsychology and Neuroscience

- Clinical and Counseling
- Developmental
- Industrial-organization/ Environmental
- Forensic
- Health
- School/Education
- Social/Cultural
- Sports

Chapter 2:
Introduction To Major
Perspectives

Science in Psychology

• Scientific areas of study are often guided by a paradigm (prevailing model).

• A paradigm equips scientists and practitioners with a set of assumptions about what is to be
studied as well as a set of research methods for how those phenomena should be examined.

• Psychology lacks a guiding or prevailing paradigm due to its youth and scope. Instead, the field
of psychology has travelled the course of several movements, schools of thought, or
perspectives, which provide frameworks for organizing data and connecting theories but no
overall guidance or stance.

• Perspectives in psychology tend to examine human existence by asking why, how, and what.

The three elements of psychology:

• “Why” deals with things like evolution, environment, and culture.

• “How” deals with things like cognition, behaviour, and subconscious.

 • “What” deals with sensations, emotions, thoughts, perceptions, and actions.

• Major psychological perspectives discussed by researchers and practitioners today include

biological, psychodynamic, behaviouristic, humanistic, cognitive, and evolutionary perspectives.

• It appears that a new perspective emerges every 20 to 30 years and these perspectives expand
and develop with new knowledge.

• Perhaps an integrative perspective will be the next developmental stage for the field of
psychology and will move the field that much closer to its own established paradigm.

• Section 1 Biological Psychology

Biological Psychologists

• Measure biological, physiological, or genetic variables in an attempt to relate them to

psychological or behavioural variables.

• Originates from early structuralist and functionalist psychological studies.

• Because all behaviour is controlled by the central nervous system, biological psychologists seek
to understand how the brain functions in order to understand behaviour.
Biological psychology is also considered reductionist because it explains complex phenomenon with
simple elements.

• An example of this is how the biological approach often suggests that psychological problems
can be treated like a disease, and therefore solved with drugs.

This way of viewing behavior can be beneficial though. Since reducing behavior to simple elements
allows researchers to study cause and effect.

Cognitive Psychologists

• Are a type of Biological psychologist.

• They rely on the functionalist insights in discussing how affect, or emotion, and environment or
events interact and result in specific perceptions.

• They study the human brain in terms of specialized parts, or systems, and their exquisitely
complex relationships.

The brain comprises four lobes:

1. Frontal lobe: also known as the motor cortex, this portion of the brain is involved in motor
skills, higher level cognition, and expressive language. (personality)

2. Occipital lobe: also known as the visual cortex, this portion of the brain is involved in
interpreting visual stimuli and information.

3. Parietal lobe: also known as the somatosensory cortex, this portion of the brain is involved in
the processing of other tactile sensory information such as pressure, touch, and pain.

4. Temporal lobe: also known as the auditory cortex, this portion of the brain is involved in the
interpretation of the sounds and language we hear.
Medulla oblongata – regulation

Nervous System

• Another important area of study in cognitive psychology is the nervous system. The nervous
system is separated into several systems.

Two examples of Biological/Cognitive Research

1. Internal versus External Focus and Performance (Wulf et a., 1998)

• Focusing on external objects (e.g. skiis) increases performance compared to focusing on

your own body (internally, e.g. your feet).

2. Visual Attention (Schmitz et al., 2010)

• the brain’s ability to selectively filter unattended or unwanted information from

reaching awareness — diminishes with age, leaving older adults less capable of filtering
out distracting or irrelevant information.

• When asked to identify faces in an image, older adults had a harder time ignoring
irrelevant information in the background (e.g. the Eiffel tower) than younger adults.
Section 2 Psychodynamic Psychology

Psychodynamic Perspective

• Proposes that there are psychological forces underlying human behaviour, feelings, and
emotions.

• Originated with Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century.

• He thought that psychological processes are flows of psychological energy (libido) in a complex
brain.

• Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis assumes that much of mental life is unconscious, and that past
experiences, especially in early childhood, shape how a person feels and behaves throughout
life.

• Consciousness varies in both arousal and content, and there are two types of conscious
experience:

• phenomenal, or in the moment, and

• access, which recalls experiences from memory.

• Sigmund Freud further divided human consciousness into three levels of awareness:

• Conscious

• Preconscious

• Unconscious

These levels corresponds to and overlaps with Freud’s ideas of the id, ego, and superego. Which he liked
to an iceberg.

Like the bottom of an iceberg, a lot of things are going on in our mind that we don’t see. This represents
preconscious and unconscious thoughts.
 Conscious
Ego

Preconscious

Super Ego

Id Unconscious
 • Most psychodynamic approaches use talk therapy, or psychoanalysis, to examine maladaptive
functions that developed early in life and are, at least in part, unconscious.

Psychoanalysis is a type of analysis that involves attempting to affect behavioural change through
having patients talk about their difficulties

• Psychoanalytic scientists today also collect data in formal laboratory experiments, studying
groups of people in more restricted, controlled ways

Carl Jung

• Expanded on Freud’s theories, introducing the concepts of the archetype, the collective
unconscious, and individuation.

• Jung focused less on infantile development and conflict between the id and superego, and more
on integration between different parts of the person.

• Jung believed that a human being is inwardly whole, but that most people have lost touch with
important parts of themselves.

“Trust that which gives you meaning and accept it as your guide”

Jung, 1951

The following are Jung’s concepts that are still prevalent today:

• Active imagination: This refers to activating our imaginal processes in waking life in order to tap
into the unconscious meanings of our symbols.

• Archetypes: These primordial images reflect basic patterns or universal themes common to us
all and that are present in the unconscious. (e.g. children are innocent)

• Individuation: a unique calling in life that each person must fulfill by uniting their conscious and
unconscious thoughts.

According to Jung, people differ in certain basic ways, even though the instincts that drive us are the
same.

• Introvert: needs privacy and space; chooses solitude to recover energy; often reflective.

• Extravert: needs sociability; chooses people as a source of energy; often action-oriented.

• Thinking function: sees cause and effect relations; cool, distant, frank, and questioning.

• Feeling function: has a sense of valuing positively or negatively. (Note that this is not the same
as emotion.)

• Sensing function: oriented toward the body and senses; detailed, concrete, and present.
 • Intuitive: goes with hunches; impatient with earthy details; impractical; sometimes not present

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

• Assessment is a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in

how people perceive the world and make decisions

• Inspired by Jung’s personality theory

• The MBTI provides individuals with a measure of their dominant preferences based on the
Jungian functions.

• The goal of knowing about personality type is to understand and appreciate differences
between people. As all types are equal, there is no best type.

Dreaming and Psychodynamic Psychology

Freud’s theory described dreams as having both latent and manifest content.

• Latent content relates to deep unconscious wishes or fantasies

• Manifest content is superficial and meaningless

Threat-simulation theory

• Dreaming should be seen as an ancient evolutionary (biological) defense mechanism.

• Dreams allow us to practice responding to threatening events. This enhances neurocognitive

mechanisms required for efficient threat perception and avoidance.

Expectation Fulfillment Theory

• Dreaming serves to discharge emotional arousals (however minor) that haven’t been expressed
during the day.

• This practice frees up space in the brain to deal with the emotional arousals of the next day and
allows instinctive urges to stay intact. Thus, the expectation is fulfilled in the dream.

• Dreams are metaphorical in order to avoid false memories. This is why dreams are usually
forgotten.
Activation-Synthesis Theory

• Dreams don’t actually mean anything. They are simply your neurons randomly firing during
sleep and your mind trying to make sense of that neural activity.

• We construct the dream stories after we wakeup in an attempt to understand the random
neural activity and images.

Continual-activation theory

• Dreaming is a result of brain activation and synthesis.

• The hypothesis states that the function of sleep is to process, encode, and transfer data from
short-term memory to long-term memory.

• Dreaming and REM sleep are simultaneously controlled by different brain mechanisms. NREM
sleep processes the conscious-related memory (declarative memory), and REM sleep processes
the unconscious-related memory (procedural memory).

• It is through this processes of continual-activation in the brain that we learn and consolidate
information into memory.

Differences in Dreams

• Nielsen and colleagues (2003) found that:

• Women’s dreams related mostly to negative factors

(e.g. failure, loss of control, snakes/insects)

• Men’s dreams related primarily to positive factors

(e.g. magic/myth, alien life)

Dreaming and Problem Solving

• What happens when you “sleep on it”?

• Incubation is the concept of “sleeping on a problem,” or letting unconscious processes

work through the problem.

• Incubation can take a variety of forms, such as taking a break, sleeping, or working on another
kind of problem either more difficult or less challenging.

• Studies have found that incubation results in increased problem-solving ability and creativity.
These positive effects may be due to:

1. Spreading activation: When problem solvers disengage from the problem-solving task,
they naturally expose themselves to more information that can serve to inform the problem-
solving process.

2. Selective forgetting: Once disengaged from the problem-solving process, solvers are freer to let
go of certain ideas or concepts that may be inhibiting the problem-solving process.

3. Problem restructuring: When problem solvers let go of the initial problem, they are then freed
to restructure or reorganize their representation of the problem and thereby capitalize on
relevant information not previously noticed.

Neural Correlates of Consciousness

• The smallest set of neural events and structures sufficient for a given conscious percept or
explicit memory.

• Neuronal correlates of consciousness may be viewed as what causes consciousness.

• Consciousness may be thought of as a state-dependent property of some undefined complex,

adaptive, and highly interconnected biological system.

• Progress in neurophilosophy has come from focusing on the body rather than the mind.

• A number of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments have found that activity
in certain brain areas follows the mental perception, not simply the retina receiving the
information. Therefore, brain activity seems to be what causes visual consciousness, not the
sensory organ itself.

Behaviourist Perspective

• Focuses on observable behaviour as a means to studying the human psyche.

• The primary tenet of behaviourism is that psychology should concern itself with the observable
behaviour of people and animals, not with unobservable events that take place in their minds.

• Main influences:

• Ivan Pavlov

• Edward Lee Thorndike

• John B. Watson

• B.F. Skinner

Classical Conditioning
 • As we learn, we alter the way we perceive our environment, the way we interpret the incoming
stimuli, and therefore the way we interact, or behave.

• Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)

• Pavlov actually discovered classical conditioning accidentally while doing research on the
digestive patterns in dogs.

• Many of our behaviours today are shaped by the pairing of stimuli.

• The smell of a cologne, the sound of a certain song, or the occurrence of a specific day of the
year can trigger distinct memories, emotions, and associations.

• When we make these types of associations, we are experiencing classical conditioning.

Operant Conditioning

• Another type of learning that refers to how an organism operates on the environment or how it
responds to what is presented to it in the environment.

• Research has found positive reinforcement is the most powerful of any of these types of
operant conditioning responses.
Thorndike’s (1898) work with cats and puzzle boxes illustrates the concept of conditioning.

• Thorndike’s puzzle boxes were built so that the cat, placed inside the box, could escape only if it
pressed a bar or pulled a lever, which caused the string attached to the door to lift the weight
and open the door.

• Thorndike measured the time it took the cat to perform the required response (e.g., pulling the
lever).

• Once it had learned the response, he gave the cat a reward, usually food.

• Thorndike found that once a cat accidentally stepped on the switch, it would then press the
switch faster in each succeeding trial inside the puzzle box.

• By observing and recording how long it took a variety of animals to escape through several trials,
Thorndike was able to graph the learning curve (graphed as an S-shape).
• He observed that most animals had difficulty escaping at first, then began to escape faster and
faster with each successive puzzle box trial, and eventually levelled off in their escape times.

Thorndike’s Theory of Learning

1. Learning is incremental.

2. Learning occurs automatically.

3. All animals learn the same way.

4. Law of effect. If an association is followed by satisfaction, it will be strengthened, and if it is

followed by annoyance, it will be weakened.

5. Law of use. The more often an association is used, the stronger it becomes.

6. Law of disuse. The longer an association is unused, the weaker it becomes.

7. Law of recency. The most recent response is most likely to reoccur.

8. Multiple response. An animal will try multiple responses (trial and error) if the first response
does not lead to a specific state of affairs.

9. Set or attitude. Animals are predisposed to act in a specific way.

10. Prepotency of elements. A subject can filter out irrelevant aspects of a problem and focus on
and respond to significant elements of a problem.

11. Response by analogy. Responses from a related or similar context may be used in a new
context.

12. Identical elements theory of transfer. The more similar the situations are, the greater the
amount of information that will transfer. Similarly, if the situations have nothing in common,
information learned in one situation will not be of any value in the other situation.

13. Associative shifting. It is possible to shift any response from occurring with one stimulus to
occurring with another stimulus.

14. Law of readiness. A quality in responses and connections that results in readiness to act.
Behaviour and learning are influenced by the readiness or unreadiness of responses, as well as
by their strength.

15. Identifiability. Identification or placement of a situation is a first response of the nervous

system, which can recognize it. Then connections may be made to one another or to another
response, and these connections depend on the original identification. Therefore, a large
amount of learning is made up of changes in the identifiability of situations.

16. Availability. The ease of getting a specific response. For example, it would be easier for a person
to learn to touch his or her nose or mouth with closed eyes than it would be to draw a line five
inches long with closed eyes.

John B. Watson & Little Albert

• Through his behaviourist approach, Watson conducted research on animal behaviour, child
rearing, and advertising while gaining notoriety for the controversial “Little Albert” experiment.

• This experiment set out to show how the recently discovered principles of classical conditioning
could be applied to condition fear of a white rat into Little Albert, an 11-month-old boy.

1. Watson and Rayner (1920) first presented to the boy a white rat and observed that the boy was
not afraid.

2. Next, they presented him with a white rat and then clanged an iron rod. Little Albert responded
by crying. This second presentation was repeated several times.

3. Finally, Watson and Rayner presented the white rat by itself and the boy showed fear.

• Later, in an attempt to see if the fear transferred to other objects, Watson presented Little
Albert with a rabbit, a dog, and a fur coat. He cried at the sight of all of them.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner

• Burrhus Frederic Skinner called his particular brand of behaviourism radical behaviourism
(philosophy of the science of behaviour).

• This applied behaviourism does not accept private events such as thinking, perceptions, and
unobservable emotions in a causal account of an organism’s behaviour.

“I did not direct my life. I didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them
for me. That's what life is.”

B.F. Skinner (1974)

Skinner Box

• Skinner invented a chamber used to measure responses of organisms (most often rats and
pigeons) and their orderly interactions with the environment.

• The box had a lever and a food tray, and a hungry rat inside the box could get food delivered to
the tray by pressing the lever.

1. Skinner observed that when a rat was first put into the box, it would wander around, sniffing
and exploring.

2. It would usually press the bar by accident, at which point a food pellet would drop into the tray.

3. After that happened, the rate of bar pressing would increase dramatically and remain high until
the rat was no longer hungry.
 • Negative reinforcement was also exemplified by Skinner placing rats into an electrified chamber
that delivered unpleasant shocks.

• Levers to cut the power were placed inside these boxes

• After accidentally pressing the lever in a frantic bid to escape, quickly learned the effects of the
lever and consequently used this knowledge to stop the currents both during and prior to
electrical shock.

Behaviourism Today

Gamification

• The process of taking an ordinary activity (e.g. running) and adding game mechanisms to it,
including prompts, rewards, leader-boards, and competition between different players.

• Typically, gamification is web-based, usually with a mobile app or as a micro-site.

• E.g. organizations that wanted employees to exercise regularly have installed gyms in their
offices and created a custom application that rewards employees for “checking in” to the gyms.

Humanistic Psychology

• Holds a hopeful, constructive view of human beings and of their substantial capacity to be self-
determining.

• Humanistic psychologists strive to enhance the human qualities of choice, creativity, the
interaction of the body, mind, and spirit, and the capacity to become more aware, free,
responsible, life-affirming, and trustworthy.

• The early humanistic psychologists sought to restore the importance of consciousness and offer
a more holistic view of human life.

Influential People

Carl Rogers – Client-centered Therapy

Abraham Maslow – Hierarchy of Needs

Rollo May – Existential Psychotherapy

Fritz Perls – Gestalt Therapy

 Client-centered Therapy

• Relies on clients’ capacity for self-direction, empathy, and acceptance to promote clients’
development.

• Provides a supportive environment in which clients can re-establish their true identity.

• The therapist relies on the techniques of unconditional positive regard and empathy, in order to
build trust and create a nonjudgmental and supportive environment for the client.

Unconditional
Empathy Genuineness
Positive Regard

Supportive
Environment
Existential Therapy

• The counsellor and the client may reflect on how the client has answered life’s questions in the
past, but attention ultimately emphasizes the choices to be made in the present and future.

• This enables a new freedom and responsibility to act.

• By accepting limitations and mortality, a client can overcome anxieties and instead view life as
moments in which he or she is fundamentally free.

Gestalt Therapy

• Focuses on the skills and techniques that permit an individual to be more aware of their
feelings.

• It is much more important to understand what patients are feeling and how they are feeling
rather than to identify what is causing their feelings.

• Focuses on the present.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Motivation Theory

• During the industrial revolution it was thought all work consisted largely of simple, uninteresting
tasks, and that the only viable method to get people to undertake these tasks was to provide
incentives and monitor them carefully.

• Carrot-and-Stick approach

• In order to get as much productivity out of workers as possible, it was believed that a
person must reward the desired behaviour and punish the rejected behaviour.

• During the early 1900s, scientists believed in two main drives powering human
behaviour: the biological drive, including hunger, thirst, and intimacy; and the reward-
punishment drive.

• In 1949, Harry F. Harlow, began to argue for a third drive intrinsic motivation.

• He found monkeys solved puzzles quicker and more accurately than monkeys that received food
rewards.

Positive Psychology

• Combines emotion and intuition with reason and research.

• Emphasizes empathetic listening (similar to client-centered therapy).

“[Psychology should] turn toward understanding and building the human strengths to complement our
emphasis on healing damage”

Martin Seligman (1998)

• Rather than analyze the psychopathology underlying alcoholism, for example, positive
psychologists might study the resilience of those who have managed a successful recovery
through Alcoholics Anonymous.
ABCDE Model

When faced with adversity (A) such as a criticism or failure, a person might form the belief (B) that he or
she is underperforming or incapable, and consider the consequence (C) of quitting. However,
disputation (D) would challenge the underlying assumptions or beliefs that have formed. The person
would then form a new belief in his or her capacity to grow from the critique or learn from the failure.
From there, the person would become energized (E) as he or she pursues a new performance path.

Adversity, Belief, Consequence, Disputation, Energization

Theory of Flow

• Flow is a state of optimal performance.

• A flow state can be entered while performing any activity, although it is most likely to occur
when a person is wholeheartedly performing a task or activity for intrinsic purposes.

• Three conditions must be met to achieve a flow state:

1. Activity must involve a clear set of goals and progress

2. Task must have clear and immediate feedback

3. Person must have a good balance between the task challenges and their skill level
Cognitive Psychology

• the study of mental processes such as attention, memory, perception, language use, problem
solving, creativity, and thinking.

“all processes by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and
used”

Ulric Neisser (1967)

• Theories of cognition include developmental, cultural, neural, computational, and moral

perspectives.

• Behaviourist and Cognitive schools have come to be complementary therapeutic applications,

such as in the case of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).

• Cognitive Psychology studies several different areas, some including:

• Attention

• Memory

• Perception

• Language Use

• Problem Solving

• Metacognition

Evolutionary Psychology

• Seeks to develop and understand ways of expanding the emotional connection between
individuals and the natural world.

• The main premise of evolutionary psychology is that while today the human mind is shaped by
the modern social world, it is adapted to the natural environment in which it evolved.

• Evolutionary psychologists sometimes present their approach as potentially unifying, or

providing a foundation for, all other work that aims to explain human behaviour

Evolutionary psychology is founded on several core premises:

1. The brain is an information-processing device, and it produces behaviour in response to external

and internal inputs.

2. The brain’s adaptive mechanisms were shaped by natural selection.

3. Different neural mechanisms are specialized for solving problems in humanity’s evolutionary
past.
 4. The brain has evolved specialized neural mechanisms that were designed for solving problems
that recurred over deep evolutionary time, giving modern humans stone-age minds.

5. Most contents and processes of the brain are unconscious; and most mental problems that
seem easy to solve are actually extremely difficult problems that are solved unconsciously by
complicated neural mechanisms.

6. Human psychology consists of many specialized mechanisms, each sensitive to different classes
of information or inputs. These mechanisms combine to produce manifest behaviour.

There is also TOBY the DAWG

Chapter 3:
Psychological Science & Research

Research

• The main purpose of this research is to help us understand people and to improve the quality of
human lives.

• There are two overall categories of research:

1. Basic research: answers fundamental questions about behaviour.

2. Applied research: investigates issues that have implications for everyday life and
provides solutions to everyday problems.

• Psychological studies start with a research design, which is the specific method a researcher
uses to collect, analyze, and interpret data.

• Psychologists use three major types of research designs in their research:

1. Descriptive: research designed to provide a snapshot of the current state of affairs.

2. Correlational: research designed to discover relationships among variables and to allow

the prediction of future events from present knowledge.

3. Experimental: research conducted with a scientific approach, where a set of variables

are manipulated while the other set of variables are being measured.

• It is important that research in psychology is conducted in an ethical, moral, and responsible

manner. Our research ethics are interpreted by important moral principles like respecting people’s
rights and dignity.

• The results of psychological research are reported primarily in research articles published in
scientific journals. The research reported in scientific journals has been evaluated, critiqued, and
improved by scientists in the field through the process of peer review.
The Scientific Method

• The scientific method is the set of assumptions, rules, and procedures scientists use to conduct
research.

• It is:

• Empirical: based on systematic collection and analysis of data.

• Objective: free from the personal bias or emotions of the scientist.

• Replicable: to repeat, add to, or modify previous research findings.

• It is used to create:

• Laws

• Theories

• Hypotheses

Laws: Principles that are so general as to apply to all situations in a given domain of inquiry. (e.g. Law of
gravity)

• Because laws are very general principles and their validity has already been well established,
they are themselves rarely directly subjected to scientific test.

Theory: an integrated set of principles that explains and predicts many, but not all, observed
relationships within a given domain of inquiry (e.g. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs).

• Good theories have four important characteristics:

1. They are general – they can be applied to many different outcomes.

2. They are parsimonious – they provide the simplest possible explanation.

3. Provide ideas for future research

4. They are falsifiable – predictions can be made and measured to be correct or incorrect.

• No single theory is able to account for all behaviour in all cases.

• Theories are each limited in that they make accurate predictions in some situations or for some
people but not in other situations or for other people.

• There is a constant exchange between theory and data: existing theories are modified on the
basis of collected data, and the new modified theories then make new predictions that are
tested by new data, and so forth.

• When a better theory is found, it will replace the old one.

 • Theories are usually framed too broadly to be tested in a single experiment. Therefore,
hypotheses are created from the existing theory.

Research hypothesis: a specific and falsifiable prediction about the relationship between or among two
or more variables.

Variable: any attribute that can assume different values among different people or across different
times or places.

• There are several types of variables that can be used in an experiment.

Conceptual variables: abstract ideas that form the basis of research hypotheses.

• e.g. Aggression

Measured variables: variables consisting of numbers that represent the conceptual variables.

Operational definition: a precise statement of how a conceptual variable is turned into a measured
variable.

• e.g. number of seconds taken to honk the horn at the car ahead of you after the
stoplight turns green

Ethics in Psychology

1. The most direct ethical concern of the scientist is to prevent harm to the research participants.

2. Another goal of ethical research is to guarantee that participants have free choice regarding
whether they wish to participate in research.

3. Researchers must also protect the privacy of the research participants.

Use of Deception

Deception occurs whenever research participants are not completely and fully informed about the
nature of the research project before participating in it.

• Deception may occur in an active way, such as when the researcher tells the participants that he
or she is studying learning when in fact the experiment really concerns obedience to authority.

• Deception may be more passive, such as when participants are not told about the hypothesis
being studied or the potential use of the data being collected.

Should deception be allowed in research?

Example of Unethical Research

The Milgram Shock Experiment:

 • Participants were told to administer electric shocks to another person so that Milgram
could study the extent to which they would obey the demands of an authority figure.

• Most participants evidenced high levels of stress resulting from the psychological
conflict they experienced between engaging in aggressive and dangerous behaviour and
following the instructions of the experimenter.

- Confederate – someone who is in on the deception

- Participant
- (administers
- shock)

Animal Research

The following are some of the most important ethical principles from the Canadian
Psychological Association’s (CPA) guidelines on research with animals:

1. Not use animals in their research unless there is a reasonable expectation that the research will
increase understanding of the structures and processes underlying behaviour, or
increase understanding of the particular animal species used in the study, or result eventually in
benefits to the health and welfare of humans or other animals.

2. Use a procedure subjecting animals to pain, stress, or privation only if an alternative procedure
is unavailable and the goal is justified by its prospective scientific, educational, or applied value.

3. Make every effort to minimize the discomfort, illness, and pain of animals. This would include
performing surgical procedures only under appropriate anesthesia, using techniques to avoid
infection and minimize pain during and after surgery and, if disposing of experimental animals is
carried out at the termination of the study, doing so in a humane way.

4. Use animals in classroom demonstrations only if the instructional objectives cannot be achieved
through the use of video-tapes, films, or other methods, and if the type of demonstration is
warranted by the anticipated instructional gain.

• Although many people accept the value of animal research a minority of people, including
animal-rights activists, believe that it is ethically wrong to conduct research on animals.

• This argument is based on the assumption that because animals are living creatures just as
humans are, no harm should ever be done to them.

• Some scientists argue that such beliefs ignore the potential benefits that have come, and
continue to come, from research with animals.

• E.g. AIDS & Cancer medication

 Cost-Benefit Analysis

Whether the research is done with humans or animals a cost-benefit analysis needs to be done
to determine whether the research is worth conducting.

Costs

• Deception

• Research on animals

• Possible short-term harm

Benefits

• Medication that improve and save lives

• Understanding human behavior

• Improved therapies

• Better surgery techniques

• Better understanding of psychological conditions

Historical Overview of Ethics

• Nuremberg Code (WWII) was particularly clear about the importance of carefully weighing risks
against benefits and the need for informed consent.

• Declaration of Helsinki (1964) outlined how research with human participants should be based
on a written protocol—a detailed description of the research—that is reviewed by an
independent committee.

• Belmont Report explicitly outlined principles of justice, respect for persons, beneficence, in
response to the Tuskegee study.

Ethical Review Board (ERB)

These historical events lead to the creation of an ethical or institutional review boards (IRB): a
committee that is responsible for reviewing research protocols for potential ethical problems

An IRB must consist of at least five people with varying backgrounds, including members of
different professions, scientists and nonscientists, men and women, and at least one person not
otherwise affiliated with the institution.
The IRB helps to make sure that:

• the risks of the proposed research are minimized;

• the benefits outweigh the risks;

• the research is carried out in a fair manner; and

• the informed consent procedure is adequate.

The federal regulations also distinguish research that poses three levels of risk.

1. Exempt research (no-risk)

2. Minimal risk research

3. At-risk research

APA Ethics Code

It includes about 150 specific ethical standards that psychologists and their students are expected to
follow. These standards address some of the following:

Informed consent

Rules for use of deception

Debriefing

Nonhuman Animal subjects

Scholarly integrity

Ethical Research in Psychology

In this article the main author:

• Altered testimonials of the participants

• Falsified the symptoms of many participants

• Reported false statistics to support their conclusions

• Recruited participants who supported the anti-MMR agenda

• Was paid by an anti-MMR organization to do the research

Why might this behavior be considered unethical?

Four general moral principles:

1. Weighing risks against benefits

 2. Acting responsibly and with integrity

3. Seeking justice

4. Respecting people’s rights and dignity

Three groups of people affected by research:

1. Research Participants

2. Scientific Community

3. Society

The idea is that a thorough consideration of the ethics of any research project must take into
account how each of the four moral principles applies to each of the three groups of people.

Weighing Risks Against Benefits

Scientific research in psychology can be ethical only if its risks are outweighed by its benefits.

Risks

• treatment might fail to help

• treatment might be harmful

• procedure might result in physical harm

• procedure might result in psychological harm

• right to privacy might be violated

Benefits

• receiving a helpful treatment

• learning about psychology

• experiencing the satisfaction of contributing to scientific knowledge

• receiving money for participating

• receiving course credit for participating

Scientific research can have risks and benefits to the scientific community and to society too:

• Scientific risk: research question is uninteresting, or a study is poorly designed. Then the time,
money, and effort spent on that research could have been spent on more productive research.

• Society risk: research results could be misunderstood or misapplied with harmful consequences.

The idea that vaccines cause Autism is an example of the harm that can come from these risks.

• It is not necessarily easy to weigh the risks of research against its benefits because the risks and
benefits may not be directly comparable.

• It is common for the risks of a study to be primarily to the research participants but the benefits
primarily for science or society.

• An example of this is animal research so that humans can have a better understanding of
medicine and therefore better quality of life.

Acting Responsibly and With Integrity

Researchers must carry out their research in a thorough and competent manner, meeting their
professional obligations, and being truthful.

• Participants must be able to trust that researchers:

• are being honest with them (e.g., about what the study involves)

• will keep their promises (e.g., to maintain confidentiality)

• will carry out their research in ways that maximize benefits and minimize risk

The scientific community and society must also be able to trust that researchers have conducted
their research thoroughly and competently and that they have reported on it honestly.

When this trust is violated it can result in wasted time, money, and loss of trust in the scientific
community.

For example the MMR vaccine study resulted in:

• unnecessary follow-up research resulting in wasted resources

• people avoiding the MMR vaccine putting their children at risk

Seeking Justice

Researchers should treat their participants fairly.

• For example, by giving them adequate compensation for their participation and making
sure that benefits and risks are distributed across all participants.
 • If a drug turns out to be very effective, it should also be offered to the control group as
soon as is reasonable.

• At a broader societal level, members of some groups have historically faced more than
their fair share of the risks of scientific research, including people who are
institutionalized, are disabled, or belong to racial or ethnic minorities.

• Tuskegee syphilis study (1932-1972)

Respecting People’s Rights and Dignity

Respect for autonomy:

• Informed consent: researchers obtain and document people’s agreement to participate

in a study after having informed them of everything that might reasonably be expected
to affect their decision.

Respect for privacy:

• Confidentiality: an agreement not to disclose participants’ personal information without

their consent or some appropriate legal authorization

• Anonymity: name and other personally identifiable information is not collected at all or
is not published in a way to identify them.

Unavoidable Ethical Conflict

Sometimes deception is necessary in order to conduct the research, or research is beneficial to one
group (scientific community) but harmful to another (research subjects).

Although it may not be possible to eliminate ethical conflict completely, it is possible to deal with it
in responsible and constructive ways:

1. thoroughly and carefully thinking through the ethical issues that are raised

2. minimizing the risks

3. weighing the risks against the benefits

4. explain one’s ethical decisions to others

5. seeking feedback on decisions

6. take responsibility for the decisions.

Ethical Responsibilities

“Lack of awareness or misunderstanding of an ethical standard is not itself a defense to a charge of

unethical conduct.”

APA Ethics Code

• The very first thing that you must do as a new researcher is to know and accept your ethical
responsibilities.

• You can do this by reviewing the relevant ethics codes, reading about how similar issues have
been resolved by others, or consulting with more experienced researchers, your IRB, or your
course instructor.

• Ultimately, you as the researcher must take responsibility for the ethics of the research you
conduct.

Identify and Minimize Risks

• Start by listing all the risks, including risks of physical and psychological harm and violations of
confidentiality.

• Remember that it is easy for researchers to see risks as less serious than participants do or even
to overlook them completely.

• Be mindful of how some risks may influence certain participants more than others (e.g.
children).

• Seek input from a variety of people, including your research collaborators, more experienced
researchers, and even from non-researchers who might be better able to take the perspective of
a participant.

Once you have identified the risks, you can often reduce or eliminate many of them.

• Shorten procedure

• Give multiple rest breaks if the task is tiring

• Replace upsetting or offensive content with milder content

• Stopping the procedure if participants show distress

• Use the smallest number of animal subjects that is necessary

• Pre-screening participants

Identify and Minimize Deception

• Remember that deception can take a variety of forms, not all of which involve actively
misleading participants.
 • It is also deceptive to allow participants to make incorrect assumptions or simply withhold
information about the full design or purpose of the study.

• It is best to identify and minimize all forms of deception.

• Deception is ethically acceptable only if there is no way to answer your research question
without it.

• Therefore, if your research design includes any form of active deception, you should consider
whether it is truly necessary.

• In general, it is considered acceptable to wait until debriefing before you reveal your research
question as long as you describe the procedure, risks, and benefits during the informed consent
process.

Other responsibilities

Weighing the risks against the benefits.

• Once the risks of the research have been identified and minimized, you need to weigh
them against the benefits.

• Remember, to include benefits and risks to science and to society as well as participants.

Create Informed consent and debriefing procedures

• What information is necessary to tell participants before the participate?

• What information is necessary to tell them after they are done participating?

Get approval

• Research must be approved by your institution.

• If the IRB has questions or concerns about your research, address them promptly and in
good faith.

Follow through

• Your concern with ethics should not end when your study receives institutional
approval.

• Be sure to follow all procedures, monitor participants for unanticipated events, and
conduct the research with integrity.

ARLO is another DOG

 Research Designs

If psychological ideas and theories about human behaviour are to be taken seriously, they must be
backed up by data.

Research design: the specific method a researcher uses to collect, analyze, and interpret data

There are different research designs that can be used to get this data:

1. Descriptive Research

Descriptive research is designed to create a snapshot of the current thoughts, feelings, or behaviour of
individuals.

Case Studies

• descriptive records of one or more individual’s experiences and behaviour

• case studies are typically conducted on individuals who have unusual or abnormal
experiences or characteristics or who find themselves in particularly difficult or stressful
situations

• E.g. Phineas Gage

Surveys

• a measure administered through either an interview or a written questionnaire to get a

picture of the beliefs or behaviours of a sample of people of interest.

• Sample: the people chosen to participate in the research

• Population: all the people the researcher wishes to know information about

Naturalistic Observation

• research based on the observation of everyday events.

• E.g. watching children on a playground and describing what they say to each other while
they play; watching animals interact in the wild.

Descriptive Statistics

• numbers that summarize the distribution of scores on a measured variable.

• Normal Distribution: A data distribution that is shaped like a bell

Central Tendency: the point in the distribution around which the data are centered.

Arithmetic Mean: the sum of all the scores of the variable divided by the number of participants in the
distribution.

• the most commonly used measure of central tendency

Outliers: extreme scores within the distribution.

Median: the score in the center of the distribution, meaning that 50% of the scores are greater than the
median and 50% of the scores are less than the median.

Mode: the value that occurs most frequently in the distribution.

Dispersion: the extent to which the scores are all tightly clustered around the central tendency.

One simple measure of dispersion is to find the largest (the maximum) and the smallest (the minimum)
observed values of the variable and to compute the range of the variable as the maximum observed
score minus the minimum observed score

2. Correlational Research

involves the measurement of two or more relevant variables and an assessment of the
relationship between or among those variables.

E.g. the variables of height and weight are related (correlated) because taller people generally
weigh more than shorter people.

Predictor variable: the variable assumed to have an effect on some other variable or explains a change
in another variable.

Outcome variable: the variable that is observed to determine whether it changes due to the predictor
variable.

Linear Relationship: When the association between the variables on the scatter plot can be easily
approximated with a straight line.

Pearson correlation coefficient: statistical measure of the strength of linear relationships among
variables (r= +1 to -1)

Positive/Negative sign indicates the direction of the relationship.

Distance from zero indicates strength of relationship.

Multiple regression is a statistical technique, based on correlation coefficients among variables, that
allows predicting a single outcome variable from more than one predictor variable.
An important limitation of correlational research designs is that they cannot be used to draw
conclusions about the causal relationships among the measured variables.

E.g. watching violent TV and aggressive play

Watching violent TV causes aggressive play

Aggressive children watch violent TV

Both are occurring and they reinforce each other.

Still another possible explanation for the observed correlation is that it has been produced by the
presence of a common-causal variable.

Common-causal variable: a variable that is not part of the research hypothesis but that causes both the
predictor and the outcome variable and thus produces the observed correlation between them.

Spurious relationship: a relationship between two variables in which a common-causal variable

produces and “explains away” the relationship.

When the common-causal variable is controlled for, the relationship disappears.

E.g. watching violent TV and aggressive play

Parenting style allows for kids to watch more violent TV and behave more aggressively
3. Experimental Research

The goal of experimental research design is to provide more definitive conclusions about the causal
relationships among the variables in the research hypothesis than is available from correlational
designs.

Independent variable: the causing variable that is created (manipulated) by the experimenter

Dependent variable: a measured variable that is expected to be influenced by the experimental

manipulation

Random assignment to conditions: a procedure in which the condition that each participant is
assigned to is determined through a random process, such as drawing numbers out of an envelope
or using a random number table.

Despite the advantage of determining causation, experiments do have limitations:

• Often conducted in laboratory situations, rather than daily life

• Some variables cannot be manipulated (e.g. age)

• It would be unethical to manipulate other variables (e.g. life without a limb)

Research Advantages Disadvantages
Goal
Design

• Relatively complete • Does not assess

picture of what is relationships among
To create a occurring variables
snapshot of
Descriptive • Allows development of • May be unethical if
the current
state of affairs questions for further participants do not
study know they are being
observed

• Testing of expected • Cannot be used to

relationships between draw inferences
To assess the •
variables about the causal
relationships •
relationships
Correlational between and • Making of predictions •
between variables
among two or •
• Can assess these
more variables •
relationships in everyday
life events •
•
•
To assess the • Allows drawing of • Cannot
•
causal impact conclusions about the experimentally
•
of one or more causal relationships manipulate many
•
experimental among variables important variables
Experimental •
manipulations
• May be expensive •
on a
and time consuming •
dependent
•
variable
•
•
Descriptive, correlational, and experimental research designs are used to collect and analyze data.

• Descriptive designs include case studies, surveys, and naturalistic observation. The goal of these
designs is to get a picture of the current thoughts, feelings, or behaviours in a given group of
people. Descriptive research is summarized using descriptive statistics.

• Correlational research designs measure two or more relevant variables and assess a relationship
between or among them. The variables may be presented on a scatter plot to visually show the
relationships. The Pearson Correlation Coefficient (r) is a measure of the strength of linear
relationship between two variables.

• Common-causal variables may cause both the predictor and outcome variable in a correlational
design, producing a spurious relationship. The possibility of common-causal variables makes it
impossible to draw causal conclusions from correlational research designs.
• Experimental research involves the manipulation of an independent variable and the
measurement of a dependent variable. Random assignment to conditions is normally used to
create initial equivalence between the groups, allowing researchers to draw causal conclusions.

Conducting Good Research

When research is valid the conclusions drawn by the researcher are legitimate, and when it is
reliable the conclusions are consistent.

Unfortunately, there are many threats to the validity and reliability of research, and these threats
may sometimes lead to unwarranted conclusions.

Validity is not an all-or-nothing proposition, which means that some research is more valid than
other research.

Confounding Variable: variables other than the independent variable on which the participants in
one experimental condition differ systematically from those in other conditions.

Experimenter Bias: the experimenter subtly treats the research participants in the various
experimental conditions differently, resulting in an invalid confirmation of the research hypothesis.

• Single Blind Study: either the participants or the researcher do not know the conditions
participants are assigned to

• Double Blind Study: both the participants and the researcher do not know the conditions
participants are assigned to.

There are four major types of threats to the validity of research:

1. Threats to construct validity.

2. Threats to internal validity.

3. Threats to external validity.

4. Threats to statistical conclusion validity.

Construct validity: the extent to which the variables used in the research adequately assess the
conceptual variables they were designed to measure.

For example, if we wanted to measure the construct of “intelligence” which would be better?

A. The weight of your brain

 B. The weight of your body

C. Your score on a math exam

Internal validity: the extent to which the independent variable has caused the dependent variable.

• increases when confounding variables are reduced or eliminated or accounted for

Independent Dependent Confounding

Variable Variable Variables
Going to Weight Genetics
the Gym Loss
General
Exercise
Healthy
Eating
External validity: the extent to which the results extend to other scenarios, populations, etc. (a.k.a.
Generalizability)

• increases with replication

Statistical conclusion validity: the extent to which we can be certain that the researcher has drawn
accurate conclusions about the statistical significance of the research.

• Research will be invalid if the conclusions made about the research hypothesis are incorrect
because statistical inferences about the collected data are in error.

• Normally, we can assume that the researchers have done their best to ensure the statistical
conclusion validity of a research design, but we must always keep in mind that inferences about
data are probabilistic and never certain — this is why research never proves a theory.
Meta-Analysis

• a statistical technique that uses the results of existing studies to integrate and draw conclusions
about those studies.

• A meta-analysis provides a relatively objective method of reviewing research findings because it:

1. Specifies inclusion criteria for exactly what will be examined

2. Systematically searches the literature using the inclusion criteria

3. Provides objective measures of the strength of observed relationships

4. May also include unpublished research

REPLICATION IN PSYCH

The Problem

• The replication of findings is one of the defining hallmarks of science.

• Scientists must be able to replicate the results of studies or their findings do not become part of
scientific knowledge.

• Replication protects against false positives (seeing a result that is not really there) and also
increases confidence that the result actually exists.

• It turns out that many studies in psychology—including many highly cited studies—do not
replicate.

This is not just a problem in Psychology. Other scientific fields have suffered the same issue with
reproducibility

• Physics & Engineering – Cold fusion energy

• Medical science – Treatments for different illnesses

• Genetics – Genetic diseases

The non-reproducibility of findings is disturbing because it suggests the possibility that the original
research was done sloppily or falsified.

What is Replication?

1. Exact (Direct) Replication: a scientist attempts to exactly recreate the scientific methods used in
conditions of an earlier study to determine whether the results come out the same.
 • Exact replications tell us whether the original findings are true

• Conceptual Replication: a scientist tries to confirm the previous findings using a

different set of specific methods that test the same idea.

• Conceptual replications help confirm whether the theoretical idea behind the findings is
true

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 23%

Journal of Experimental Psychology 48%

Psychological Science (social) 29%

Psychological Science (cognition) 53%

Overall replications 36%

Reasons for Non-replication

1. Those replicating do not have the right equipment

2. The original findings were falsified

• Hopefully researchers are not faking their work, but the possibility must be considered

3. Small sample size

4. Not generalizable to other cultures, circumstances, or populations.

5. Scientist error during replication

In Defense of Replication Attempts

• Failures in replication are not all bad and, in fact, some non-replication should be expected in
science.

• More evidence, either for or against findings, is never a bad thing.

• We want to encourage scientists to try and replicate, even if it means a change of non-
replication findings

Who is to Blame?

• Institutions – they reward scientists with promotions when significant results are found, not null
results or replications
 • Journals – there is a focus on only publishing significant results, not null results or replications

• Textbooks – there is little information presented to new researchers about the replication crisis

• Scientists themselves – without a change in views and attitudes around null results and
replications the cycle will continue.

Solutions to the Non-Replication Problem

• Some sites now focus on archiving original studies with their replication attempts

• Some articles have stated they will publish replication attempts, even if they fail

• A Replication Index (R Index) has been created to estimate the replicability of studies, journals,
or specific areas of research.

• A new focus on open science shares data between scientists and institutions

Open Science

In recent years there has been a focus on rewarding scientists for being open and honest with the
work, rather than rewarding them for simply having significant results.

There are 6 principles to open science:

1. Open Data

2. Open Source

3. Open Access

4. Open Methodology

5. Open Peer Review

6. Open Educational Resources

Affect

• Refers to the experience of feeling or emotion.

• Two components: emotions & motivation

• Both of these involve arousal: our experiences of the bodily responses created by the
sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system (ANS).

• Emotions & motivations drive behaviour and play an important role in everyday life

Emotions & Motivation

 • Emotion: A mental and physiological feeling state that directs our attention and guides our
behaviour.

Motivations are closely related to emotions.

• Motivation: A driving force that initiates and directs behaviour.

• They can include basic motivations (e.g., hunger) to personal and social motivations
(e.g., goals).

The Basic Emotions

• The most fundamental emotions, known as the basic emotions, are anger, disgust, fear,
happiness, sadness, and surprise.

• The basic emotions are determined in large part by one of the oldest parts of our brain.

• Since they are primarily evolutionarily determined, the basic emotions are experienced &
displayed similarly across cultures.

Secondary Emotions

• Beyond basic emotions, we also experience a much larger and complex set of secondary
emotions.

• This is made possible due to the cognitive interpretations that accompany emotions (i.e.,
cognitive appraisal).

• Our experiences of the secondary emotions are determined in part by arousal and in part by
their valence — that is, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant feelings.

Psychological Theories of Emotion

Psychologists have proposed three theories of emotion, which differ in the hypothesized role of arousal
in emotion.
The Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion

• The experience of an emotion is accompanied by physiological arousal.

• Thus, as we become aware of danger, our heart rate also increases.

• The experience of the emotion (“I’m afraid”) occurs alongside the experience of the
arousal (“my heart is beating fast”).

• Support for theory: Emotions and arousal generally are subjectively experienced
together, and the spread is very fast.

• Rely on thalamus heavily

The James-Lange Theory of Emotion

• Our experience of an emotion is the result of the arousal that we experience.

• Thus, arousal and emotion are not independent, but the emotion depends on the
arousal.

• Fear does not occur along with the racing heart but occurs because of the racing heart.

“We feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble” (James, 1884, p.
190).

• Different patterns of arousal may create different emotional experiences.

• Support for theory: Arousal is necessary for the experience of emotion, and that the patterns of
arousal are different for different emotions.

• Descriptional and correlational

The Two-Factor Theory of Emotion

• The arousal that we experience is basically the same across emotions.

• The experience of emotion is determined by the intensity of the arousal we are experiencing,
but that the cognitive appraisal of the situation determines what the emotion will be.

• Thus, emotions have two factors: an arousal factor and a cognitive factor (Schachter & Singer,
1962):

emotion = arousal + cognition

• Support for theory: there is evidence that we may interpret the same patterns of arousal
differently in different situations.

Misattribution of Arousal

• The tendency for people to incorrectly label the source of the arousal that they are
experiencing. Can cognitively appraise something as what it should be but physiologically
responding to something else

Excitation Transfer

• Because it assumes that arousal is constant across emotions, the two-factor theory also predicts
that emotions may transfer or spill over from one highly arousing event to another.
 • Excitation Transfer: The phenomenon that occurs when people who are already experiencing
arousal from one event tend to also experience unrelated emotions more strongly.

Communicating Emotion

• In addition to experiencing emotions internally, we also express our emotions to others, and we
learn about the emotions of others by observing them.

• This communication process has evolved and is highly adaptive.

• One way that we perceive the emotions of others is through their nonverbal communication,
which does not involve words (Ambady & Weisbuch, 2010; Andersen, 2007).

• The most important communicator of emotion is the face.

• The face contains 43 different muscles that allow it to make more than 10,000 unique
configurations and to express a wide variety of emotions.

• In addition to helping us express emotions, the face also helps us feel emotion.

• The facial feedback hypothesis proposes that the movement of our facial muscles can trigger
corresponding emotions.

• Our behaviours, including our facial expressions, both influence and are influenced by our affect.

The Function of Emotions

1. Intrapersonal: the role that emotions play within each of us individually.

Help us act quickly with minimal conscious awareness.

Prepare the body for immediate action.

Influence thoughts.

Motivate future behaviors.

2. Interpersonal: the role that emotions play between individuals within a group.

Facilitate specific behaviors in perceivers.

Signal the nature of interpersonal relationships.

• Provide incentives for desired social behavior.

• Social Referencing: the process whereby infants seek out information from others to clarify a
situation and then use that information to act (Klinnert, Campos, & Sorce, 1983).
3. Social and Cultural: the role that emotions play in the maintenance of social order within a
society.

The complexity in human social life is what creates the enormous potential for social chaos.

One of the important functions of culture is to provide this necessary coordination and organization.
Doing so allows individuals and groups to negotiate the social complexity of human social life.

Culture does this by providing a meaning and information system to its members.

Culture and Emotions

• Cultures inform us about what to do with our emotions through cultural display rules, which are
learned early in life that specify how to manage or modify our emotions based on social
circumstances.

• For example, in many Asian countries children are taught to mute their emotions, especially
negative emotions like anger.
 Positive Thinking & Coping with Stress

Positive thinking can help us to manage our stress in different ways:

1. Optimism: a general tendency to expect positive outcomes.

• Optimists are happier and have less stress.

2. Self-Efficacy: the belief in our ability to carry out actions that produce desired outcomes.

• People with high self-efficacy respond to stress constructively (e.g., by getting

information, talking to friends).

Positive Emotions & Health

• Positive thinking can be beneficial to our health.

• Optimists make faster recoveries from illness & surgery.

• People with high self-efficacy are more able to quit smoking and lose weight.

• Hardy individuals cope better with stress and other negative life events.

• The benefits of taking positive approaches to stress can last a lifetime.

Finding Happiness through Our Relationships

• Happiness is determined in part by genetic factors, but also by the experience of social support.

• The Perception of Social Support (i.e., having positive social relationships) is the most important
variable that influences happiness.

• E.g., married people report being happier than unmarried people, and people who are
connected with and accepted by others suffer less depression, higher self-esteem, and less
social anxiety and jealousy.

The Role of Social Support on Stress

• Social support buffers us against stress in several ways:

• Direct Effects of social support: having people we can trust and rely on helps us
directly by allowing us to share favours when we need them.

• Appreciation Effects of social support: having people around us makes us feel good
about ourselves.

What Makes Us Happy?

• Material wealth plays only a small role in determining happiness.

• After we reach a minimum level of wealth to afford food and shelter, more money does not
generally buy more happiness.
 • People may not always know what will make them happy.

• People’s ability to predict future emotional states is not very accurate.

• It has been estimated that our wealth, health, and life circumstances account for only 15% to
20% of life satisfaction scores.

• The main ingredient in happiness lies beyond external factors!

Drive States

• A Drive State is an affective experience (something you feel) that motivates organisms to fulfill
goals that are beneficial to their survival and reproduction.

• Examples: thirst, hunger, sexual arousal.

• Affects psychological processes, such as perception, attention, emotion, and motivation.

• Drive states are unique from other affective/emotional states in that they generate behaviors
that result in specific benefits for the body.

• For example, hunger directs individuals to eat foods that increase blood sugar levels in
the body, while thirst causes individuals to drink fluids that increase water levels in the
body.

• Different drive states have different triggers.

 • Different drive states also result in different cognitive and emotional states and are associated
with different behaviors.

• Homeostasis: the tendency of an organism to maintain this stability across all the different
physiological systems in the body.

• Maintained via two key factors

1) Set Point: an ideal level in which the state of the system being regulated is monitored and
compared to.

2) Mechanisms for moving the system back to this set point—that is, to restore homeostasis when
deviations from it are detected.

Many homeostatic mechanisms, such as blood circulation and immune responses, are automatic and
unconscious. Others, however, involve deliberate action.

• As drive states intensify, they direct attention toward elements, activities, and forms of
consumption that satisfy the biological needs associated with the drive.

• Hunger, for example, draws attention toward food.

• Drive states collapse time-perspective toward the present. That is, they make us
impatient.

• Intense drive states tend to narrow one’s focus inwardly and to undermine altruism — or the
desire to do good for others.

Drive States: Hunger & Sexual Arousal

• Two different drive states that play very important roles in determining behavior, and in
ensuring human survival.

Hunger

• Hunger is generally triggered by low glucose levels in the blood.

• Behaviors resulting from hunger aim to restore homeostasis regarding glucose levels.

• Internal & external cues can also cause hunger.

• The hypothalamus is responsible for synthesizing and secreting various hormones that affect
hunger.

• Satiation: the decline of hunger and eventual termination of eating.

• Whereas the feeling of hunger gets you to start eating, satiation gets you to stop.

• Hunger and satiation are two distinct processes, controlled by different circuits in the
brain and triggered by different cues.
 • After identifying a food item, the brain also needs to determine its reward value, which
affects the organism’s motivation to consume the food.

• The reward value ascribed to a particular item is sensitive to the level of hunger.

• The hungrier you are, the greater the reward value of the food

• Neurons in the areas where reward values are processed fire more rapidly at the sight
or taste of food when the organism is hungry.

Sexual Arousal

• Unlike hunger, the internal and external mechanism that trigger sexual arousal can differ
substantially between males and females.

• Suggests important evolutionary differences.

• Sexual arousal and pleasure in males is strongly related to the preoptic area. If damaged, male
sexual behavior is severely impaired.

Other Drive States

• Examples : Fear, thirst, exhaustion, exploratory and maternal drives, and drug cravings.

• One key difference between drive states is the extent to which they are triggered by internal as
opposed to external stimuli.

• Thirst is induced both by decreased fluid levels and an increased concentration of salt in
the body.

• Fear, on the other hand, is induced by perceived threats in the external environment

Section 11.5:
Motives and Goals

• A goal is our mental idea of how we would like things to turn out.

• A goal can be clearly defined (e.g., stepping on the surface of Mars), or it can be more
abstract and represent a state that is never fully completed (e.g., eating healthy).

• Motivation underlies our goals and it refers to the psychological driving force that enables
action in the pursuit of that goal.

• Motivation can stem from two places:

• Intrinsic Motivation: motivation that comes from the benefits associated with the
process of pursuing a goal.
 • Extrinsic Motivation: motivation that comes from the benefits associated with achieving
a goal.

Goals and Motivation

• Goal pursuit and motivation are products of personal characteristics and situational factors.

• Cues in the immediate environment can activate, or prime, a goal.

• This activation can be conscious, such that the person is aware of the environmental cues
influencing their pursuit of a goal, or it can occur outside a person’s awareness, and lead
to nonconscious goal pursuit.

The Origins and Manifestation of Goals:

Goal Adoption

• Commitment to our goals stems from the sense that a goal is both valuable and attainable, and
that we adopt goals that are highly likely to bring positive outcomes

Commitment = value of the goal × the expectancy it will be achieved

• Committing to a goal can occur without much conscious deliberation.

• E.g., People infer value and attainability and often learn about themselves by observing
their own behaviour.

The Origins and Manifestation of Goals:

Goal Priming

• We don’t always act on our goals in every context.

• Cues in the immediate environment (i.e., anything that primes a goal) can have a strong
influence on the pursuit of goals to which people are already committed.

• In memory, goals are organized in associative networks. Each goal is connected to

corresponding means — activities and objects that help us attain the goal.

• Cues related to the goal or means can activate or prime the pursuit of that goal.

• After goal priming, the motivation to act on the goal peaks then slowly declines, as the person
moves away from the primer or after they pursue the goal.

The Origins and Manifestation of Goals:

Consequences of Goal Activation

• The activation of a goal and accompanying motivation can influence behavior & judgment

• E.g., Balcetis and Dunning (2006) - when participants had the goal of seeing a letter, they
in fact saw a B.

• Goals also exert a strong influence on how people evaluate the objects (and people)
around them.
 • Priming a goal can lead to behaviors like this (consistent with the goal), even though the
person is not necessarily aware of why (i.e., the source of the motivation).

Self-Regulation in Goal Pursuit

• Many of the behaviors we like to engage in are inconsistent with achieving our goals (e.g., you
may want to be physically fit, but you may also really like cake!).

• Self-Regulation refers to the process through which individuals alter their perceptions, feelings,
and actions in the pursuit of a goal (e.g., filling up on fruits at a dessert party).

From Deliberation to Implementation

• Self-regulation involves two basic stages, each with its own mindset.

• First, a person must decide which goal(s) to pursue (Deliberative Phase).

• A person often has a mindset that is open-minded and realistic about available goals to
pursue. However, such scrutiny of one’s choices sometimes hinders action.

• After deciding which goal to follow, the Implemental Phase involves planning specific
actions related to the goal.

• A person tends to have a mindset conducive to the effective implementation of a goal

through immediate action. Unfortunately, though, this mindset often leads to closed-
mindedness and unrealistically positive expectations.

Regulation of Ought- and Ideals-Goals

• In addition to the two phases in goal pursuit, there are two distinct self-regulatory orientations
(or perceptions of effectiveness):

1. Prevention focus: emphasizes safety, responsibility, and security needs, and views goals as
“oughts.”

• A goal is something they should be doing, and they tend to focus on avoiding potential
problems

2. Promotion focus: views goals as “ideals,” and emphasizes hopes, accomplishments, and
advancement needs.

• A goal is something they want to do that will bring them added pleasure.
A Cybernetic Process of Self-Regulation

Self-regulation depends on feelings that arise from comparing actual progress to expected
progress.

During goal pursuit, individuals calculate the discrepancy between their current and desired end
state.

After determining this difference, the person acts to close that gap.

A higher-than-expected rate of closing the discrepancy creates a signal in the form of positive
feelings.

Highlighting One Goal or Balancing Goals

• Commitment results from the perceived value and attainability of a goal,

whereas progress describes the perception of a reduced discrepancy between the current state
and desired end state (i.e., the cybernetic process).

• After achieving a goal, when people interpret their previous actions as a sign of commitment to
it, they tend to highlight the pursuit of that goal, prioritizing it and putting more effort toward it.

• However, when people interpret their previous actions as a sign of progress, they tend
to balance between the goal and other goals, putting less effort into the focal goal.

Conflicting Goals and Self-Control

• In the pursuit of our goals, we inevitably come across other goals that might get in the way.

• To stay on course, we must exercise self-control: the capacity to control impulses, emotions,
desires, and actions in order to resist a temptation and protect a valued goal.

• Self-control is a process of self-regulation in contexts involving a trade-off between long-

term interests and immediate gratification.

• Self-control is like a muscle; it becomes drained by being used but is also strengthened
in the process.

Self-Control as a Limited Resource

• Mischel, Shoda, and Rodriguez (1989) found that the persistent capacity to postpone immediate
gratification for the sake of future interests leads to greater cognitive and social competence
over the course of a lifetime.

• Children who were able to wait longer in the experiment for the second marshmallow (vs. those
who more quickly ate the single marshmallow) performed better academically & socially and
had better psychological coping skills as adolescents.
 • The ability to exercise self-control can fluctuate across contexts.

• Ego-Depletion: refers to the exhaustion of resources from resisting a temptation.

• Previous exertion of self-control drains individuals of the limited physiological and

psychological resources required to continue the pursuit of a goal.

A Prerequisite to Self-Control: Identification

• Identifying the self-control conflict inherent to a particular situation is an important — and often
overlooked — prerequisite to self-control.

• The successful pursuit of a goal in the face of temptation requires that individuals first identify
they are having impulses that need to be controlled.

• However, individuals often fail to identify self-control conflicts because many everyday
temptations seem to have very minimal negative consequences.

• People are more likely to identify a self-control conflict, and exercise self-control, when
they think of a choice as part of a broader pattern of repeated behavior (rather than as
an isolated choice).

Self-Control Processes: Counteracting Temptation

• People use several cognitive and behavioural strategies to “counteract” the pull of temptations
and to push towards goal-related alternatives.

• Example cognitive strategy: decreasing the value of temptations and increasing the
value of goal-consistent objects or actions.

• Example behavioural strategy: establishing rewards for goals and penalties for
temptations.

• These self-control processes can benefit individuals’ long-term interests, either

consciously or without conscious awareness.

• At times, individuals automatically activate goal-related thoughts in response to temptation, and

inhibit temptation-related thoughts.

Chapter 12: Stress, Health, and Coping

• Stress refers to the physiological responses that occur when an organism fails to respond
appropriately to emotional or physical threats.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

• Extreme negative events may produce an extreme form of stress known as Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder (PTSD): includes symptoms of anxiety, sleeplessness, nightmares, and social
withdrawal.

• PTSD is frequently experienced by victims or witnesses of violence or abuse, natural disasters,

major accidents, or war.

• In Canada, up to 10% of war veterans experience PTSD.

• People in NYC who lived near the 9/11 terrorist attacks reported experiencing more
stress in the year following it than those who lived farther away.

The Negative Effects of Stress

• Hans Selye examined how rats responded to being exposed to stressors such as extreme cold,
infection, shock, or excessive exercise.

• Selye found that regardless of the source of the stress, the rats experienced the same series of
physiological changes as they suffered the prolonged stress.

General Adaptation Syndrome

• Selye created the term General Adaptation Syndrome to refer to the three distinct phases of
physiological change that occur in response to long-term stress:

1. Alarm

2. Resistance

3. Exhaustion
Stress and the HPA Axis

• Stress increases arousal in the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and
physiological changes through the HPA axis.

• HPA axis: A physiological response to stress involving interactions among the (H) hypothalamus,
the (P) pituitary, and the (A) adrenal glands.
Prolonged Stress

• The initial arousal that accompanies stress is normally quite adaptive – it helps us respond to
potentially dangerous events.

• When stress is chronic, there is a direct negative influence on health.

• With prolonged stress, the HPA axis remains active and the adrenals continue to
produce cortisol.

• Chronic stress is a major contributor to heart disease. It also decreases our ability to
fight off colds and infections.

Stressors in Our Everyday Lives

• “The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale:” a measure of some everyday life events that might lead to
stress.

• Rahe and colleagues examined the medical records of over 5,000 patients to determine
whether stressful events might cause illnesses.

• A positive correlation of 0.118 was found between their life events and their illnesses
resulting in the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS).

• Our everyday interactions with the environment that are essentially negative (daily
hassles), can create stress & poorer health outcomes. Small things add up
Responses to Stress

• Not all people experience and respond to stress in the same way.

• The strongest predictor of a physiological stress response from daily hassles is the amount of
negative emotion that they evoke.

• Men are more likely than women are to respond to stress by activating the Fight-or-Flight
Response: an emotional and behavioural reaction to stress that increases the readiness for
action.

• This response is triggered by the activation of the HPA axis.

• Women are more likely to have a Tend-and-Befriend Response: involves activities

designed to create social networks that provide protection from threats.

• This response is triggered by the release of the hormone oxytocin, which promotes
affiliation.

• The tend-and-befriend response is healthier than the flight-or-flight response because it

does not produce the elevated levels of arousal related to the HPA.

• This may help explain why women have less heart disease and live longer than men.

Managing Stress

• The most common approach to dealing with negative affect is to attempt to suppress, avoid, or
deny it.

• Suppressing our negative thoughts does not work, and there is evidence that the opposite is
true.

• Many correlational and experimental studies demonstrate the advantages to our mental and
physical health of opening up versus suppressing our feelings.

Opening Up About Stress

• Expressing our problems to others allows us to gain information, and possibly support, from
them.

• Writing or thinking about one’s experiences also seems to help people make sense of these
events and may give them a feeling of control over their lives.

• It is easier to respond to stress if we can interpret it more positively.

Emotion Regulation

• It is important to learn how to control our emotions, to prevent them from letting our behaviour
get out of control.

• Emotion Regulation: The ability to successfully control our emotions.

• The ability to regulate our emotions has important consequences later in life. For example, on
academic and social functioning.

• Effective self-regulation is an important key to success in life, and it is a skill that we can improve
on via practice!

Section 12.2: Health and Stress

Stress and Health

• Stress can impact personal, social, economic, and political health.

• Personal. When stressors are measured comprehensively, their damaging impacts on physical
and mental health are substantial.

• Socioeconomic. Differential exposure to stressful experiences can produce gender, racial-ethnic,

marital status, and social class inequalities in physical and mental health.

• Sociopolitical. Stressors proliferate over the course of life and across generations, widening
health gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged group members.
The Sociopolitical-Economic Factors of Stress

• Stress has been shown to create inequalities socioeconomically.

• Over time, stress can lead to health divisions and sociopolitical disparities.

• Policies and programming that enhance education, address structural conditions, and target
children are most effective at addressing the negative impacts of stress in society.

Negative Impacts of Stress on Health

• Stress can have debilitating effects on physical and mental health.

• When the body encounters a perceived threat, the hypothalamus instigates the “fight-or-flight
response.”

• This system prompts the adrenal glands to release a surge of hormones:

• Adrenaline: A hormone that increases heart rate, blood pressure, and energy.

• Cortisol: The primary stress hormone; increases sugars (glucose) in the bloodstream,
enhances the brain’s use of glucose, and increases the availability of substances that
repair tissues.

Cortisol and Health

• Cortisol curbs functions that would be non-essential or detrimental in a fight-or-flight situation.

• It alters immune system responses and suppresses the digestive system, the reproductive
system, and growth processes.

• This complex natural alarm system also communicates with regions of the brain that control
mood, motivation, and fear.

Negative Impacts of Stress on Health

• The body’s stress-response system is usually temporary. Once a perceived threat has passed,
hormone levels return to normal.

• However, when stressors are always present, the body can constantly feel under attack, and the
fight-or-flight reaction remains activated.

• The long-term activation of the stress-response system can disrupt almost all of the body’s
processes and increase the risk of numerous mental and physical health problems, including:

• Anxiety

• Depression

• Digestive problems
 • Heart disease

• Sleep problems

• Weight gain

• Memory and concentration impairment

• Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

Positive Impacts of Stress on Health

• Because stress is subjective and hinges on perception, the degree to which a person perceives
an event as threatening or non-threatening determines the level of stress that
person experiences.

• An individual’s perception or appraisal of an event depends on many factors, such as gender,

personality, context, upbringing, age, relationships, and status.

Positive Impacts of Stress on Health: Eustress

• Eustress: refers to stress that is not necessarily debilitative and could be potentially facilitative
to a person’s sense of well-being, capacity, or performance.

• It is individual differences, or “how we take it,” that determines whether a stressor is

interpreted as eustress (positive or challenging) or distress (negative or threatening).

Positive Impacts of Stress on Health: Stress-Related Growth

• Stress can enhance an individual’s resilience or hardiness.

• The hardiness theoretical model illustrates resilient stress response patterns in individuals and
groups.

• Hardiness includes the following three elements:

 Commitment: The tendency to see the world as interesting and meaningful.

 Control: The belief in one’s own ability to control or influence events.

 Challenge: Seeing change and new experiences as exciting opportunities to

learn and develop.

• The hardy style of functioning distinguishes people who stay healthy under stress from those
who develop stress-related problems.

• The hardy person is not immune to stress, but is resilient in responding to a variety of stressful
conditions.
 • Individuals high in hardiness not only remain healthy, but they also perform better under stress.

• It is unclear whether stress fosters hardiness or hardiness is something a person is born with.

Inverted U Hypothesis

• The inverted U hypothesis asserts that, up to a point, stress can be growth inducing but that
there is a turning point when stress becomes debilitative.

• Feelings of stress (cognitive or physical) can be interpreted negatively to mean that a person is
not ready, or positively to mean that a person is ready.

• It is the person’s interpretation, not the stress itself, that influences the outcome.

The Stress Curve

Stress

• Stress has been viewed as a response, a stimulus, and a transaction.

• How an individual conceptualizes stress determines his or her response, adaptation, or coping
strategies.

Stress As a Response

• Stress as a response describes stress as a physiological response pattern

• This model is captured by Hans Selye’s (1956) General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) model.

• The GAS model describes stress as a dependent variable and includes three concepts:

1. Stress is a defensive mechanism.

 2. Stress follows the three stages of alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.

3. If the stress is prolonged or severe, it could result in diseases of adaptation or even death.

General Adaptation to Stress (GAS) Model

Stress As a Response

• Later, Selye introduced the idea that the stress response could result in positive or negative
outcomes based on cognitive interpretations of the physical symptoms or physiological
experience

• Stress could be experienced as eustress (positive) or distress (negative).

• The response model incorporates coping - the idea of adaptation is inherent to the GAS
model at both the alarm and resistance stages.

• This initiated research on coping

Stress As a Stimulus

• Views stress as a significant life event or change that demands response, adjustment, or
adaptation.

• The stress as a stimulus theory assumes:

1. Change is inherently stressful.

2. Life events demand the same levels of adjustment across the population.

3. There is a common threshold of adjustment beyond which illness will result.

• The stress as stimulus model ignores important variables, such as prior learning, environment,
support networks, personality, and life experience.

Stress As a Transaction
 • Transactional Theory of Stress and Coping (TTSC) presents stress as a product of a transaction
between a person (including multiple systems: cognitive, physiological, affective, psychological,
and neurological) and their complex environment.

• This model attempts to explain stress as more of a dynamic process.

• Stress is described in multiple ways (e.g., acute, episodic, chronic) and different types of
stressors emerged (e.g., event, situation, cue).

Theories of Stress

Model of Stress Appraisal

• How an individual appraises a stressor determines how he or she copes with or responds to the
stressor, and this is influenced by a variety of personal and contextual factors.

• Model of stress appraisal:

• Primary appraisal involves determining whether the stressor poses a threat.

• Secondary appraisal involves the individual’s evaluation of the resources or coping

strategies at their disposal for addressing any perceived threats.

• Reappraisal involves continually reappraising both the nature of the stressor and the
resources available for responding to the stressor.

Coping with Stress

 • Many techniques can help us cope with life stressors.

• Stress management techniques are more general and range from cognitive (mindfulness,
meditation) to physical (yoga, art, deep breathing) to environmental (spa visits, music, pets,
nature).

• Stress Coping implies a specific process of cognitive appraisal to determine whether an

individual believes that they have the resources to respond effectively to the stress.

• Coping strategies vary and are measured and tested using a variety of instruments and scales
(e.g., COPE inventory).

Locus of Control

• Internal Locus of Control: achievements and outcomes are believed to be determined by a

person’s own decisions and efforts.

• If the person does not succeed, they believe it is due to their own lack of effort.

• External Locus of Control: achievements and outcomes are believed to be determined by fate,
luck, or other.

• If the person does not succeed, they believe it is due to external forces outside of the
person’s control.

Sense of Coherence

“…the extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring though dynamic feeling of confidence that (1) the
stimuli deriving from one’s internal and external environments in the course of living are structured,
predictable, and explicable; (2) the resources are available to one to meet the demands posed by these
stimuli; and (3) these demands are challenges, worthy of investment and engagement”

(Antonovsky, 1987 p. 19).

Self-Efficacy
 • Self-Efficacy is the extent or strength of one’s belief in one’s own ability to complete tasks and
reach goals (Bandura, 1997).

• Self-efficacy is often confused with self-confidence, but confidence is one of the many factors
that make up self-efficacy.

• Self-confidence is a trait measure (a quality that is built over time) whereas self-efficacy is a
state measure (a capacity experienced at a specific point in time and concerning a specific task).

Stress-Related Growth (Thriving)

• Stress-Related Growth: a dispositional response to stress that enables the individual to see
opportunities for growth as opposed to threat or debilitation.

• Thriving: being “better off after adversity” (Carver 1998, p. 247).

Coping and Health

• The capacity for thriving, resilience, or stress-related growth has been associated with improved
health outcomes.

• E.g., optimism is significantly correlated with improved health outcomes, including

lower levels of body fat & coronary risk.

• Social support coping predicts increases in positive affect, which in turn are related to
fewer physical symptoms.

• Avoidant coping, however, was related to increases in negative affect, which were
related to more physical symptoms.

Health Psychology

• Aims to understand the role of psychology in maintaining health and preventing & treating
illness.

• Chronic diseases are increasingly common because we are living longer lives while engaging in
unhealthy behaviours.

• Heart disease is the number one cause of death worldwide (WHO, 2013).

• Psychological factors determine the progression of chronic diseases and who develops
diseases/prognosis/nature of symptoms.

• Many of the leading causes of illness in developed countries are often attributed to
psychological and behavioral factors.

• E.g., stress, smoking, unhealthy eating habits.

Biopsychosocial Model of Health

• Biopsychosocial Model of Health: posits that biology, psychology, and social factors are just as
important in the development of disease as biological causes (e.g., germs, viruses).

• This model replaces the older Biomedical Model of Health, which primarily considers the
physical, or pathogenic, factors contributing to illness.

• There is a growing understanding of the physiology underlying the mind–body connection, i.e., role
that different feelings can have on our body’s function.

• Psychosomatic medicine and psychoneuroimmunology: interested in understanding how

psychological factors can “get under the skin” and influence our physiology in order to
better understand how factors like stress can make us sick.

Stress And Health

• Stress can predict your likelihood of developing both minor and major illnesses.

• People who are less stressed and those who are more positive are at a decreased risk of
developing a cold.

• Hans Selye initially used stress in a psychological manner

• He coined the term stressor to label a stimulus that had this effect on the body and
developed a model of the stress response called the General Adaptation Syndrome.

• It is not just major life stressors (e.g., a family death, a natural disaster) that increase the
likelihood of getting sick.

• Even small daily hassles like getting stuck in traffic or fighting with your partner can raise your
blood pressure, alter your stress hormones, and even suppress your immune system function

Protecting Our Health

• Resilience: What keeps us protected from disease and alive longer?

• Five factors are often studied in terms of their ability to protect (or sometimes harm) health:

1. Coping

2. Control and Self-Efficacy

3. Social Relationships

4. Dispositions and Emotions

5. Stress Management

Coping Strategies
 • Coping is often classified into two categories:

1. Problem-Focused Coping: actively addressing the event that is causing stress in an effort
to solve the issue at hand.

• E.g., spending additional time studying to make sure you understand all of the
material.

2. Emotion-Focused Coping: regulates the emotions that come with stress.

• E.g., watching a funny movie to take your mind off the anxiety you are feeling.

• In the short term, emotion-focused coping might reduce feelings of stress, but
problem-focused coping has the greatest impact on mental wellness

3. However, when events are uncontrollable (e.g., the death of a loved one), emotion-
focused coping, at first, might be the better strategy.

4. Thus, it is important to consider the match of the stressor to the coping strategy when
evaluating its benefits.

Control and Self-Efficacy

• Having the belief that you have control over a situation is related to better health outcomes and
an improved ability to cope with stress.

• When individuals do not believe they have control, they do not try to change.

• People with greater self-efficacy believe they can complete tasks and reach their goals.

• Higher self-efficacy can reduce stress and negative health behaviors.

• Something as simple as having control over the care of a houseplant has been shown to improve
health and longevity.

Social Relationships

• The impact of social isolation on our risk for disease/death is similar to the risk associated with
smoking regularly.

• Social integration: describes the number of social roles that you have as well as the lack of
isolation.

• Maintaining these roles can improve your health via encouragement from those around
you to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

• Those in your social network might also provide you with social support (e.g., when you
are under stress).

Dispositions and Emotions: What’s Risky and What’s Protective?

 • Negative dispositions and personality traits have been strongly tied to an array of health risks.

• In the 1950s, two cardiologists discovered that there were common behavioral and
psychological patterns among their heart patients that were not present in other patient
samples.

• Type A Behavior: Being competitive, impatient, hostile, and time urgent. This pattern is
associated with double the risk of heart disease as compared with Type B Behavior.

• Hostility and competitiveness are especially harmful to heart health.

Dispositions and Emotions: What’s Risky and What’s Protective?

• Negative dispositions and personality traits have been strongly tied to an array of health risks.

• In the 1950s, two cardiologists discovered that there were common behavioral and
psychological patterns among their heart patients that were not present in other patient
samples.

• Type A Behavior: Being competitive, impatient, hostile, and time urgent. This pattern is
associated with double the risk of heart disease as compared with Type B Behavior.

• Hostility and competitiveness are especially harmful to heart health.

• Positive traits and states are health protective, even in the most poor & underdeveloped
nations.

• Positive emotions can also serve as the “antidote” to stress, protecting us against some of its
damaging effects.

Stress Management
 • A number of interventions have been designed to help reduce the aversive responses to duress.

• For example, breathing exercises, muscle relaxation, and mental imagery.

• Biofeedback, a technique where the individual is shown bodily information that is not
normally available to them, and then taught strategies to alter this signal.

• Reducing stress does not have to be complicated. For example, exercise is a benefcial stress
reduction activity.

The Importance Of Good Health Practices

• The busy life of a college student doesn’t always allow you to maintain all three areas of your
life

• Positive health practices are especially important in times of stress when your immune system is
compromised.

• Psychologists study both health behaviors and health habits.

• Health Behaviors: behaviors that can improve or harm your health.

• These behaviors become habits when they are firmly established and performed automatically.

• Many people now use the Internet for health information.

 • This is not always a good thing because individuals tend to do a poor job assessing the
credibility of health information.

• Credibility of health information often means how accurate or trustworthy the

information is.

Psychology And Medicine

• Many people now use the Internet for health information.

• This is not always a good thing because individuals tend to do a poor job assessing the
credibility of health information.

• Credibility of health information often means how accurate or trustworthy the

information is.

• After individuals decide to seek care, there is also variability in the information they give their
medical provider.

• E.g., poor communication can influence the effectiveness of the prescribed treatment.

• Not everyone adheres to medical recommendations.

• As mobile technology improves, physicians now have the ability to monitor adherence and work
to improve it.

Being A Health Psychologist

• Clinical health psychologists will evaluate physical, personal, and environmental factors
contributing to illness and preventing improved health.

• Researchers studying health psychology work in numerous locations, such as universities, public
health departments, hospitals, and private organizations.

• Behavioral Medicine: occupations might include jobs in occupational therapy, rehabilitation, or

preventative medicine.

The Future Of Health Psychology

• Health psychologists are moving beyond studying risk in isolation and are moving toward
studying factors that confer resilience and protection from disease.

• There is a growing interest in studying the positive factors that protect our health.

• Seligman (2008) has proposed a field of “Positive Health” to study those who exhibit “above
average” health.

• Many people now use the Internet for health information.

 • This is not always a good thing because individuals tend to do a poor job assessing the
credibility of health information.

• Credibility of health information often means how accurate or trustworthy the

information is.

Dodson curve