Chapter 14 Flashcards
Clinical Psychology (def)
The study, assessment, and treatment of people with psychological difficulties
What’s the main problem in clinical diagnosis that affects accuracy?
Expert intuition rules over objective formulas
What shows that clinical psychologists tend to be overconfident?
Most rate themselves at the 80th percentile.
Why might Rorschach inkblots in clinical setting be a problem?
They’re not very predictive of clinical illness; so they promote illusory correlations
How do illusory correlations happen in clinical settings?
Clinicians perceive a relationship when they expect it.
Hindsight bias in clinical setting
When depressed individual takes own life, we fall into i-should-have-known-all-along phenomenon
Self-confirming diagnoses in clinical settings
Patients reveal information that confirm the clinician’s expectation.
Clinicians ask for confirming evidence when they suspect. (they’ll probably find the evidence if they’re looking for it)
Clinical intuition vs. Statistical prediction
confidence in clinical judgements?
Statistical predictions are more accurate.
little correlation between confidence and accuracy.
When clinicians were allowed interview, what happened to accuracy of their judgements?
accuracy got even worse
Some suggestions for better clinical practice
Know agreement from patient doesn’t mean it’s valid. Careful when seeing associations. Use notes, not memory. Consider opposing ideas.
Are depressed people more realistic? Judgements are memories?
Yeah. More accurate judgements memories, and knowing others’ feelings.
Depressive Realism
why might this exist?
Phenomenon where mildly depressed individuals have more accurate judgements, attributions, and predictions
Normal people tend to exaggerate how good they are
People with depression more likely have what kind of explanatory style? What does that breed?
A negative explanatory style. Attribute bad things to self. Breeds hopelessness
3 Characteristics of negative explanatory style
Stable (this bad attribute will be with me forever), Global (this bad attribute affects everything i do), Internal (it’s all my fault)
Is negative thinking a cause or result of depression?
Both.
How does negative thinking cause depressive moods?
Those with dispositions to depression usually have negative explanatory styles, leading to self-blame, then depressive moods.
What might explain why women have 2x risk of depression in adolescence compared to men?
Women tend to overthink and have negative explanatory styles.
A psychologists suggests what reason to be reason for high depression rates today? What phenomenon this relate to?
Emphasis on self-focus and self-blame in today’s culture.
Relates to how negative thinking breeds depression
How is short-term depression adaptive?
Makes us slow down and reassess how we can improve when we fail.
How does depression lead to negative thinking?
Bad mood primes negative memory recollection (depressed people recall more bad events)
Moods modify memories
When in life is loneliness the most increasing?
Early teen and mid 20s. Declines afterwards
Compare 2010s in-person social time to 1980s
1 hour less on average.
Genetic factors of loneliness
Identical twins are more likely to share degree of moderate to extreme loneliness.
What groups are most prone to loneliness?
Young people, men, and individualistic
What must be necessary for one to be considered lonely?
Alone does not mean lonely.
Need to feel excluded or unloved
How does loneliness affect health outcomes?
Increases stress hormones, resulting in many negative health outcomes. Increases risk of death as much as smoking
How does social media affect loneliness?
Social media makes people lonelier (eg. facebook longitudinal study)
How do lonely people tend to see self and others?
Sees self and others more negatively. Self as socially unworthy
Shyness (definition)
A type of social anxiety that is afraid of what others think. A trait, not a state.
What makes us anxious in social situations?
Self-presentation theory: we want to impress others. Anxiety comes when we doubt ourselves when trying to make a good impression
What does an anxious concern to make a good impression lead to?
The opposite. Makes a bad impression
What is underlying overpersonalizing situations?
Extreme proneness to the spotlight effect.
What might people who overpersonalize do as a “solution”?
drink. decreases self-awareness/self-consciousness
What happened when women attributed pounding heart to something else in a social situation?
They were no longer shy. (they attributed their physiological arousal to something else.)
What does being anger-prone Type A personality or having depression predict in health outcomes?
More prone to heart disease. Possibly due to stress hormones
What does stress do to our health?
Makes immune system weaker
Optimists vs. pessimists in health
Pessimistic style more likely to be ill. Hopelessness makes illness
What does effects of hopelessness entail about how we can treat illness?
Use placebo effect and be hopeful. Believing is a treatment.
3 Social-Psychological approaches to Treatment
Internal changes by changing external behavior
Break self-defeating cycles or patterns
Attribute improvements to self
Assertiveness training is part of which social-psychological approach?
External behavior change internal state approach.
Attitudes-follow-behavior approach
2 ways of breaking self-defeating cycles mentioned in the text
1) Social skills training: use safe environment to train social skills (eg. talk to women –> confidence)
2) Explanatory Style Therapy (change explanatory style by attributing success to self and failures to external)
What about coercive changes in behavior?
What should focus be on instead?
They don’t last. Self-efficacy or self-motivation focus is better.
How does sociability related to proneness to cold?
Those high in sociability are less prone to the cold
How does giving predict health?
People who give live longer
How does marriage predict health?
Good quality marriage predicts good health
Confiding and health
Being able to confide predicts better health. Confiding in diary works too.
How does friendships predict outcomes?
Talking to friends and disclosing more predicts happiness. But not online; real life.
Causality of marriage and happiness
Marriage causes happiness (longitudinal study), and happy people are more likable so cause marriage too.
Both correct and incorrect eyewitnesses were believed ___% of the time. What does this show?
80%. we’re not good at telling if people are right or not
___% confidence tends to be ___% accurate
90-100% –> 75-90%
What might help decreasing lineup mistakes?
Noting they might not be in it. Also doing 1 at a time (so no comparison)
What happens to memory of events when stress and heart rate is high during the event?
Worse meomry
What does harsh interrogation do to information retreival?
less accurate retreival
Imagining inflation
when told to imagine, more likely to recall that the thing actually happened
What signs when recalling flase info?
Tend to use more “um” and pause
Compliant vs Internalized confessions
Compliant is just to get it over with
Internalized is when believing in the misinformation
Is DNA more or less convincing than a confession?
DNA is less convincing
What’s recommended for police interviewers to do?
Start with unprompted recollections, show pictures of scene, instruct to imagine how they thought and felt
Faster or slower identification tend to be accurate?
10-12s or less accurate.
Distinguishing features and lineup
If have distinuishing features, must put others with that feature too
What defendant chaacteristics affect judgements?
Physical appearance and similarity
Reactance in jurors when told to ignore evidence
Makes the evidence more strong
How to promote understanding of instructions in jurors
Plain laguage, transcripts
Death-qualified jurors problem
A biased sample. More liekly to vote guilty
What proportion initially has no unanimous decision? Then what happens after deliberation?
2/3. 95% become unanimous
Leniency phenomenon
more liekly to go not guilty after deliberation (both informational and normative influences)
6 or 12?
12 more diverse, more accurate, less conformity pressure if 10v2
