Behavior II (BS 1 Ch 7)

Question 1

james -lang 1

Answer 1

very easily critiqued if you have that physiological arousal can be a lot of different things that that could men, not a good enough way to differentiate btw heart pounding on a roller coaster, in love, vs bear jumping out at you, no appraisal step or context that comes into it* so it is a very very flawed theroy*

Question 2

Explicit attitudes

Answer 2

Explicit attitudes: conscious beliefs.

Question 3

Implicit attitudes

Answer 3

Implicit attitudes: unconscious beliefs that can nevertheless influence behavior.

Attitudes have three components:

1. Cognitive: beliefs about the thing in question, e.g., “Doctors are good people.”
2. Affective: emotions that are attached to those beliefs, e.g., “I like my own doctor as a person, and I felt

proud when my son decided to go to medical school to help others.”

3. Behavioral: these beliefs have the capacity to influence people’s behavior; e.g., “My doctor is a good

person who wants to help me so I will follow his advice.”

Question 4

implicit attitudes 2

Answer 4

C=What you think

A=what you feel

B= what you do

Question 5

How behavior affects attitudes:

Answer 5

1. Foot-in-the-door phenomenon

In a famous experiment, researchers went door-to-door asking people to place a tiny sign in a window advocating safe driving.

Two weeks later, they returned and asked them to place a giant safe-driving billboard in their front yard.

Those who previously agreed to the tiny sign were much more likely to agree to the billboard → taking a small step toward advocating safe driving caused people to change their attitudes about the issue and become strong advocates.

2. The Stanford Prison Study and role-playing effects: In another famous experiment, subjects were assigned to play the role of “prisoner” or “guard” in an artificial “prison.”

• “Guards” became disrespectful and inhumane, while “prisoners” became passive and submissive or rebellious → acting in a role caused people to change their attitudes about what is appropriate, respectful behavior.

Question 6

attitudinal change

Answer 6

• Attitudes can change over time.
• Sometimes this occurs when people perceive some inconsistency between their beliefs, feelings, and behaviors.

They experience what Leon Festinger called cognitive dissonance.

• They modify their attitudes in order to attenuate this uncomfortable feeling.
• E.g., studies show that soldiers (and medical interns?) come to value their membership in a group more highly after undergoing an especially harsh initiation at boot camp.
• “It must be a really great thing to be a resident at this hospital, because if it weren’t, I would never have volunteered for that internship.”

Research on cognitive dissonance has found that people tend to change their attitudes to match their behaviors, rather than change their behavior.

Question 7

emotion vs. mood

Answer 7

Mood states are similar to emotions but they are longer lasting (hours/days vs. seconds/minutes) and they are usually not related to one specific event (e.g., feeling happy about finishing the MCAT versus being in a good mood in general).

-Moods last longer than emotions, different from common english language usage. but moods last longer if you look at the psych definitions

Question 8

theory of emotion 1

James-Lange theory

Answer 8

James-Lange theory: our experience of emotion is determined by our perception of the physiological changes associated with the emotion; three steps:

1. First, we perceive an emotional situation (e.g., a predator).
2. Second, this causes physiological arousal (e.g., pounding heart).
3. Third, we perceive these physiological changes and label the emotional experience (fear); fear feels different from joy because the physiological changes are different.

simplest and oldest

Question 9

cannon-bard

Answer 9

stimulius that activates subcortical regions of the breain, so do some subcortical processing below hte cortical parts of your cerebrum so you are not aware of it you simualtaneously have feeling of being afraid, subconscious mind processes the stimulus, then yoru conscious midn feels afriad at the same time as you have the physical arousal

Question 10

Theory of emotion 2

Answer 10

Cannon-Bard theory:

Says that James-Lange theory is too simple because the physiological changes associated with many different emotions are actually very similar (e.g., joyful excitement and fear are both associated with increased heart rate).

Instead, our experience of emotion is determined by changes in brain state:

1. First, we perceive an emotional situation.
2. Second, this causes changes in brain activity that are specific to different emotions.
3. Third, we perceive both the emotional experience and the physiological change as by-products of the change in brain state.

Question 11

theory of emotion 3

schachter- singer hteory

Answer 11

Schachter-Singer theory:

Our experience of emotion is determined by our cognitive appraisal of the meaning of the situation.

1. First, we perceive an emotional situation (e.g., a predator).
2. Second, this causes physiological arousal (e.g., pounding heart).
3. Third, we formulate judgments about the meaning of the situation and the cause of the physiological changes (e.g., my heart is pounding because I’m afraid of that predator).

Question 12

Schatcher- singer theory 2

Answer 12

3. depends on APPRAISAL** if body’s physioogical arousal brain can mislabel a given emotional state if the body’s physiological arousal is wrongly
   associated with an enviromental cue unrelated to the original emotion inducing stimulus. fear brain can appraise that incorrectly so possible for brain to make
   mistakes and mislabel emotions, where things go wrong is where the brain is labelign emotions or appraising hte situations* other situations do not deal
   with appraisal in the same way*

Question 13

schatchter- singer theory 3

Answer 13

Schachter- Singer- you experience the stimulus, you have the autonomic arousal the animal jumps out and yoru heart starts pounding, then there is an
appraisal step very very fast then evaluating why heart is pounding, could also be puming becuase it is fun, havign that autnoic arousal becuse it is fun
and watching a horror movie, so then you go on or not, then conscious feelign of fear after you have apraised your physiological feeling /response* most clinical
spychologists woudl subscribe to this becuase the biggest issue with this is that the autonomic arousal, heart poundign shouldn’t always lead to
fear depending on context.

If you believe thee is this moment in between your heart is pounding where cognitive therapy works well, appraisal and you can intervene to retool how that appraisal step works the essence of cognitive therapy for things like anxiety* pause at appraisal step and interrupt
straight arrow btw heart pounding, feeling fear with is there somethign actually goign to kill me, tools you can use to short circut or pause this pathway and to not get to the same itnese feeling of fear

Question 14

elaboration likelihood model

Answer 14

Elaboration Likliehood model- this is about persuasion

• central processing= if you are persuading someone or someone is changing their mind about something, because of real logic and they are apprecaiting the reasoning that is central processing* central is always high elaboration
• peripheral processing= because involves low elaboraiton if they are good looking, charismatic, central is the argument itself* peripheral is more low elaboration always. If you are trying to get someone vaccinated and do it through central processing/ through strength of your argument that is central rpocessing, because strength fo argumetn is persuasive

peripheral persuading is for vaccines well i liek claire so i will just go with what htey said that is peripheral, something around the argument is actually persuading them*

central processing= high elaboration
peripheral processing= low elaboration
central processing- is you like the argument, peripheral porcessing you like their shirt and think they are charistmatic

Question 15

universal emotions

Answer 15

Ekman: showed that facial expressions for certain emotions were universally recognized by people from Western and Eastern cultures, as well as people from isolated cultures like Papua New Guinea.

Six emotional expressions were very consistently recognized: fear, anger, happiness, sadness, surprise, and disgust.

But others were more influenced by culture.

Question 16

universal emotions 2

Answer 16

• Darwin: Expressions of emotion (e.g., facial expressions) are universal, biologically determined responses to certain situations.
• Evidence:

Monkeys and apes use similar facial expressions for fear and other emotions.

Blind people use the same facial expressions even though could not have learned them by looking at others.

Some facial expressions of emotion transcend cultures.

Question 17

emotions and natural selection

Answer 17

Emotions probably serve many functions that may have been targeted by natural selection in our evolutionary past.

1. Physiological benefits: E.g., sympathetic nervous system activation during fear delivers more blood to muscles, enabling us to fight or flee from a threat.
2. Cognitive benefits: Positive emotions enhance cognitive flexibility.

Negative emotions increase attentional focus, especially on negative features in the environment.

Fear enhances learning and memory.

3. Interpersonal benefits: Expressions of emotion are an important means of nonverbal communication.

Question 18

neurobiology of emotional perception

1. limbic system

Answer 18

The limbic system: Emotional processing is associated with changes in activity in this network of brain structures, including:

1. The amygdala: evaluates the valence (positive, negative, or neutral) of a potential emotionally salient event; important in fear and fear-related learning.
2. The hippocampus: important for emotion-related learning and memory; hippocampal activity is abnormal in depression.

Question 19

limbic system 2

Answer 19

3. Cingulate cortex: regulates autonomic functions and emotion-related attention.
4. Reward circuitry: important for reward processing and reinforcement learning:
   - Dopamine is a critical neurotransmitter in the reward circuit.
   - Components of the reward circuit include the ventral tegmental area (VTA), nucleus accumbens, septum, and medial forebrain bundle.
5. Hypothalamus: controls motivated behaviors like eating, drinking, sleeping, mating.–> all this in hippocampus can be influenced by emotions as well

Question 20

amgydala 2

Answer 20

in limbic system for emotinal processing

evaluates the valence (positive, negative, or neutral) of a potential emotionally salient event; important in fear and fear-related learning.

so when memory stored it is stored with idea it is fear inducing, or
sticky to remeber, if amyglda says this was a life threatening situation adn scary
this makes sense from evolutionary pt of view which animals will rip our head off

Question 21

problem set neurotransmitter details

Answer 21

Dopamine and serotonin are removed same way. transporter is on the presynaptic neuron causes it ot be pumped** /active transport ATp from same neuron that released the dopamine in the first place* so it is presynaptic uptake that DAT pumps DA back into the presynaptic cytosol- question 10 problem set Ch Behavior 1

11- ACh at the neuromuscualr junction are terminated becuase it is broken down through enzymatic degradation by acetylcholinesterase and after that happens the reminants are not active anymore, not an active neurotransmitter anymore once it is broken down by the
enzyme

neurotranmitters diffuse to some extent out of synapse around neurons becuase diffusion always happens, eurotransmitter is released in synapse very concentrated, diffusion always wants to go from where it is concentated ot less cocnetnrated, but going back to where
they came from is always an active process not a diffusion process b/c of concentration gradient they need a protein and pumping

active transport process*** diffusion isnt talking about going back into the first neuron, talking abotu slow spraeding out that always happens** diffusion of neurotransmitters out of synapse is not hte main way neurotransmitters get out they usually get pumped back

Question 22

Selye’s general adaptation syndrome

Answer 22

Selye’s general adaptation syndrome: stress response is general (not specific to the kind of stressor).

=they ask about this if want to test effects of stress on something mice are doing, stress mice by playing loud noises at them, test mouse stress respoonse by some other stimulus by flashing lights, if can genreate a stress response in animal may be asme stress response more or less intense fight or flight response, genreralized regadless of stimulus provoking the response

Question 23

The prefrontal cortex

2 out of 3 things it does

Answer 23

The prefrontal cortex: interacts with the limbic system to regulate emotional processing.

1. Cognitive appraisal: The prefrontal cortex is important for evaluating the meaning of an emotional situation or event.
2. Decision making: The prefrontal cortex is important for using emotion to inform decision making:

Example: Patients with prefrontal cortex lesions often have difficulty adjusting their behavior in laboratory gambling tasks to avoid losing large sums of money.

Example: The case of Phineas Gage: an accident at work on a construction site drove an iron rod through his prefrontal cortex; he survived, but his personality was altered and his decision-making skills impaired.

Question 24

prefrontal cortex 2

Answer 24

3. Temperament: a tendency for particular kinds of emotional behavior that is genetically influenced and relatively stable from very early childhood into adulthood:
   - Jerome Kagan identified two temperaments that can be observed in early infancy and tend to be stable throughout life: inhibited and uninhibited.
4. Inhibited: shy, anxious, avoiding novelty.
5. Uninhibited: outgoing, gregarious, low anxiety, novelty-seeking.

Different temperaments are associated with differences in prefrontal cortex structure and function.

PREFRONAL CORTEX REGULATES LIMBIC SYSTEM

Question 25

temperament 2

Answer 25

• Jerome Kagan identified two temperaments that can be observed in early infancy and tend to be stable throughout life: inhibited and uninhibited.
  1. Inhibited: shy, anxious, avoiding novelty.
  2. Uninhibited: outgoing, gregarious, low anxiety, novelty-seeking.

Question 26

stress and homeostasis

Answer 26

Homeostasis describes the tendency of organisms to maintain stability in various dynamic equilibria (pH, osmolarity, temperature, etc.) that are critical for life.

Stressors are factors that tend to disrupt homeostasis.

Allostasis describes an organism’s effort to restore homeostasis in response to a stressor through finely tuned changes in its physiology.

Allostatic load refers to the long-term, maladaptive consequences of these efforts to maintain homeostasis in chronic stress states.

Question 27

types of stressors

Answer 27

Physiological stressors: physiological factors that disrupt homeostasis directly; e.g., hypoxia (insufficient blood oxygen), hyperthermia (overheating), hypoglycemia (insufficient blood glucose).

Psychosocial stressors: psychological and social factors that elicit similar neuroendocrine responses and may disrupt homeostasis indirectly.

Psychosocial stressors vary in severity and duration: e.g., brief public speaking vs. chronic stress due to poverty vs. traumatic stress in a war zone.

Severe, traumatic stressors (personally experiencing or witnessing life-threatening violence) but not mild or moderate stressors cause PTSD in susceptible individuals.

Question 28

cognitive appraisal of stress

Answer 28

Psychosocial stressors are stressful because they are perceived to be stressful, and this triggers a stress response.

1. Primary appraisal refers to the evaluation of the stressor itself.
2. Secondary appraisal refers to the evaluation of coping mechanisms that can be deployed to respond to the stressor.

Question 29

Neuroendocrine responses:

Answer 29

Acute effects: activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the hypothalamic/pituitary/adrenal (HPA) axis, culminating in the release of adrenal glucocorticoid hormones, which mobilize resources to deal with the stressor.

Chronic effects: prolonged glucocorticoid exposure, cardiovascular problems (e.g., high blood pressure), hyperglycemia, immune deficiencies, impaired wound healing.

Question 30

emotional responses

Answer 30

Acute effects: can be associated with increased arousal and anxiety.

Chronic effects: stress-related psychiatric disorders including depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD, etc.

Question 31

Cognitive and behavioral responses:

(part of the stress response)

Answer 31

Acute: increased focus and attention; can enhance some forms of learning and memory.

Chronic: impairments in prefrontal cortex-dependent cognitive processes and memory deficits.

Selye’s general adaptation syndrome: stress response is general (not specific to the kind of stressor).

Question 32

coping mechanisms

Answer 32

• Problem-focused coping: directed at managing the stressor.

= E.g., anxiety about having no time to prepare for the MCAT might be mitigated by making a list of things to do and making a calendar for getting them done.

• Emotion-focused coping: directed at managing negative emotions evoked by the stressor.
• =Can be adaptive (e.g., making time for lunch to discuss problems with a friend) or maladaptive (e.g., using drugs and alcohol to temporarily relieve anxiety).

• Common coping mechanisms:
1.Exercise: mitigates the adverse cardiovascular effects of stress in humans and reverses some of the adverse neurobiological changes in rodent models (e.g., increases neurogenesis in hippocampus).

2. Relaxation techniques: deep breathing, meditation, mindfulness.
3. Role of social support: Individuals with access to larger social support networks (friends, family, etc.) are able to cope more effectively with stress.