Final Flashcards
1
Q
What are gender roles and why do they exist?
A
- Gender role refers to the different roles that are expected in our society from males and females
- They exist due to biological differences between the sexes and a lifelong process of gender-role socialization (acquired through observational learning)
- Creates differences in personality
2
Q
Give an example of gender socialization being acquired through observational learning
A
- Most little girls occasionally play “dress up”
- They put on their mother’s clothes, jewelry, and makeup after identifying that this is something females, but not males, do
- We would not expect to find little boys imitating this behaviour
3
Q
Describe how psychologists have started looking at what are traditionally masculine roles and feminine roles
A
- Traditionally saw masculinity and femininity as separate categories
- Ways that women are (feminine) and ways that men are (masculine)
- Masculine: leaning more towards independence competition
- Feminine: caring, sharing
- Characteristics that we’ve attributed to men and women
- Used to be a belief that the prototypical, psychologically healthy man had all male traits and the prototypical and psychologically healthy woman had all female traits
- Psychologists later on thought about the fact that these characteristics aren’t strictly masculine (male) or female (women)
- These different traits can be a part of (to different degrees) men and women (continuum of masculine to feminine)
- Required these labels to be replaced with more specific and less emotionally loaded labels
- What we knew as masculine traits became grouped under the term agency
- What we knew as feminine traits became grouped under the term communion
- These are more neutral terms that are applicable to both men or women
- Masculine and feminine are 2 extremes on a continuum -> this is how we used to see things
- This idea doesn’t allow someone to be high on both traits -> if you gain on one side, you lose on another side
4
Q
Describe agency
A
- Independence, assertiveness, and control
- Similar to masculinity
5
Q
Describe communion
A
- Attachment, cooperation, and interpersonal connection
- Similar to femininity
6
Q
Describe the Androgyny Model
A
- Views masculinity and femininity as independent traits
- Androgynous: maintains that the most well-adjusted person is both masculine and feminine
- Challenges the assumption that a person’s gender should match their gender type
- 2 different continuums
- Someone could score high or low on each one of these traits
- 2x2 grid where people are scored on different parts
- 4 different possibilities:
- Someone could be high on femininity and high on masculinity -> androgynous
- Someone could be high on femininity and low on masculinity -> feminine (but still has masculinity just lower amounts)
- Someone could be low on femininity and high on masculinity -> masculine
- Someone could be low on femininity and low on masculinity -> undifferentiated
- What do we do with this? Why might this be useful to think about?
- Situations in life that would require to have more communion or more agency
- People whose behavioral repertoires lack either masculine or feminine behaviors are ill-prepared to respond to many situations they encounter
- We know now that there’s a lot of evidence for the androgyny model
7
Q
What’s the congruence model?
A
- States that masculine men and feminine women are the most well-adjusted
- A long time ago it was about the congruence model
8
Q
What’s the masculinity model?
A
Maintains that being masculine is the key to mental health
9
Q
Describe the study that looked at gender type and interpersonal relationships
A
- Study that looked at relationships
- Looked at which combinations of these traits would go best together
- The couples that fare better in the short and long term are the couples that one of the members of the couple is androgynous
- These studies were done in the very short-term (speed dating games), including this one
- Asked to scale the other members on the scale of agency and communion
- Findings: the ones that had the highest liking rating were the ones that were most androgynous
10
Q
What are the reasons that make feminine and androgynous people preferable partners?
A
- Feminine people (communion) score high on being sensitive to others’ needs
- Androgynous people (whether male or female) are more aware of and better able to express romantic feelings
- Feminine and androgynous individuals communicate well
- Can be nice to have an androgynous partner because they help compensate for what a non-androgynous partner lacks and the non-androgynous partner can learn from them
11
Q
Describe the social pressure to act masculine or feminine
A
- Social pressure to act “like a man” or “like a lady” has not disappeared
- Societal pressure to act in narrowly defined masculine or feminine roles may do much more harm than good
12
Q
Describe unmitigated agency and the problems this may lead to
A
- Someone that scores very high on the trait of agency and extremely low on the trait of communion
- People acting narcissistically, focusing on themselves to the exclusion of others
- People find themselves in trouble when situations require them to rely on other people as they turn potential friends away
- People that are so independent that they are lonely, lack friends, and have a hard time asking for help
- This is related to psychological problems
13
Q
Describe unmitigated communion and the problems this may lead to
A
- Someone that scores very high on the trait of communion and extremely low on the trait of agency
- People being concerned with taking care of others that they tend to sacrifice their own needs and interests
- Helping others so much that you’re hurting yourself
- Includes people who score low on measures of well-being and self-esteem
- Related to high scores on measures of depression and can lead to self-neglect
14
Q
Describe Bandura’s Four-Step Model
A
- Observational learning
- Model of learned aggression
- People must go through each of 4 steps before exposure to aggression leads them to act aggressively
1. Attending to an aggressive action (the aggressive acts don’t only have to occur in the presence of the child, the child has to attend to them)
2. Remembering the information (if the child attends, but not enough or gets distracted and the child doesn’t remember, then the aggressive act isn’t likely to be imitated)
3. Enacting what is seen (if don’t have the means to enact it, then it will not be done -> child needs to have the capacity to enact it)
4. Expecting that rewards will be forthcoming (if the child doesn’t expect an award in any form, then the child isn’t likely to do the aggressive act) - Research indicates that children learn aggression by imitating aggressive models
- Rehearsing aggression, as when children play with toy guns, is one step in this process
- If the child sees someone they like doing the act (increase attention) and then is rewarded, then the child is more likely to learn this behaviour (ex: watching violent acts of a superhero child likes)
- Research shows there are significantly more acts that the child can imitate if they liked the toy and liked the act
15
Q
Describe Mass Media Aggression and Aggressive Behavior
A
- Majority of studies found that viewing aggression increases the likelihood of acting aggressively
- Frequent exposure to aggressive models on television increases aggressive behavior over the short run and many years later
- In a study on the amount of tv viewing at age 14, they found that 14 yr olds that watched tv for more than 3 hours/day amounted to a higher percentage of committing violent acts than those who watched tv for less than 1 hour/day or 1-3 hrs/day
- In one study (longitudinal study), they looked at for both males and females the amount of tv watched at 8yrs old
- Then they assessed the children at age 30 (22 yrs later)
- Found that the children that had watched the most tv at age 8 were also the ones that committed more violent acts later on (significant correlation)
16
Q
Describe the effect of violent video games
A
- This follows bandura’s model
- Players of violent video games are rewarded for killing police, soldiers, cyborgs, and innocent bystanders
- Most violent video games contain features that psychologists find especially worrisome
- Players do not merely watch the action
- Virtually all violent video games are designed to reward violence
- If the violence is rewarded, according to Bandura, the players are more likely to enact these behaviours
- Kids can play violent video games, but if they get rewarded for the violence then this increases their likelihood to act violent
17
Q
Describe learned helplessness
A
- Hypothetical thing people have in common is that they are all examples of what researchers refer to as learned helplessness
- Psychology’s interest in learned helplessness began with the curious behavior of some dogs in a classical conditioning study but soon evolved into a widely applied phenomenon
- Research on learned helplessness began with studies on laboratory animals
- Conducted experiments with animals to look at the effects of rendering them helpless
- Used a box where there’s always a shocked side and a safe side
- Some of the animals were stuck on the electric side
- The animals squirmed and tried to escape, but soon came to accept that they could do nothing to avoid the shocks
- They developed learned helplessness
- Learned helplessness: the feeling that the person tried everything and nothing seems to help
- We often see this in clinical depression
- Used a box where there’s always a shocked side and a safe side
- Whenever a signal sounded, the dogs could avoid electric shocks by simply jumping over a small partition to the other side of a shuttle-box
- Eventually, through classical conditioning, the light alone gets the animal to jump across without the shock
- Animal learns both classical conditioning and operant conditioning
- The dogs that couldn’t stop the shock took the longest to learn the shuttle box
- This became a model for people with depression
18
Q
Describe Learned Helplessness in Humans
A
- People learn helplessness in the initial uncontrollable setting and can’t break out of that association in subsequent situations
- Sometimes people learn to be helpless by simply observing other people who are helpless
- Elderly may generalize the perception of uncontrollability to other areas of their lives
- Lack of motivation and activity seen in elderly may be a form of highly generalized learned helplessness
19
Q
Describe Learned Helplessness and Psychological Disorders
A
- Observations led psychologists to suggest that depression develops similar to acquiring learned helplessness
- Neurotransmitter serotonin helps in the development of learned helplessness and depression
- Low serotonin levels contribute to this
- Learned helplessness acts as an important model for understanding depression
- Cognitive triad of depression: negative views about the self, negative views about the future, negative views about the world
20
Q
Describe the internal locus of control orientation
A
- People can affect what happens to them
- Good and bad experiences are of people’s own making
21
Q
Describe the external locus of control orientation
A
People who believe that what happens to them and others is outside of their control
22
Q
Describe the connection between learned helplessness and locus of control
A
- People suffering from psychological disorders tend to be more external than internal
- Reasons for connection between locus of control and depression connects to the research on learned helplessness
- People with high external locus of control are more likely to experience learned helplessness
23
Q
Describe the connection between locus of control and well-being with regards to achievement
A
- Internal students receive higher grades and better teacher evaluations than externals
- Reasons for internals doing better in school:
- See themselves as being responsible for their achievements
- Tend to attribute high test scores to their abilities or to studying hard
- Good at adjusting their expectancies following feedback
- Pay attention to information that will help them reach their goals
- More ambitious than external students
24
Q
Describe the cognitive approach to personality
A
- Differences in personality are differences in the way people process information
- Cognitive approach is based on the idea that someone’s personality includes their own ideas of what the world is or what they learned the world is and what people expect in certain situations
- Cognitive theory says the way you expect something to be is going to be compared to what it actually is
- You walk around with templates of things (ex: template of what a psychology class is)
- If your template doesn’t fit, then you start having problems
- These templates come from your experiences with the world
- Kurt Lewin, George Kelly and * Mishel
25
Describe Kurt Lewin’s Field theory of behavior (1938)
- Theory of personality
- B = f (LS) B = f (p,e)
- Life space (LS) behavior (B) is a function of the person (p) and their cultural environment (e)
- This is a theory that helps you predict someone’s behaviour
- It’s a holistic theory that takes into account a person’s entirely life
- Not just instances
- The idea that everybody at all times is in a psychological field
- Everything that’s around you at the moment (life space) and your life experiences are going to determine your behaviour
- What’s around you now is always interacting with your baggage (the things you grew up with, the things you saw)
- Although people may be in the same situation the situation may have different impact on everyone because of their different experiences in life
- Interaction between the person’s current environment and past experiences
26
What's the psychological field according to Lewin
- The total sum of all forces and influences that can impact a person's behavior
- Incorporates situational, cultural, and social elements
27
What's the life space according to Lewin
- Represents a person's unique experience and reality
- Includes their feelings, thoughts, perceptions, goals, and experiences
28
Describe the Personal Construct Theory
- Invented by George Kelly
- Psychology of Personal Constructs published by George Kelly
- Premise of many approaches identified as cognitive
- Identifies humans as scientists who follow the scientific method by observing, explaining, predicting, and controlling
- Believed that from this we build personal constructs
- Application of first construct is followed by other bipolar constructs
- Determines the extent of the blackness or whiteness
- Differences in personality result from differences in the way people “construe the world”
- Initial thoughts of people to make sense of others and their behavior (constructs at the top of the hierarchy)
- Individuals may use the same constructs and construe the world differently
- Ex: one person may view the world as being more friendly and the other might view the world as being more unfriendly
29
What are personal constructs?
- Cognitive structures people use to interpret and predict events
- People don't use identical personal constructs and don't organize constructs in an identical manner
- Constructs are templates of the world that we have for different situations
- We all have constructs like this according to Kelly and these constructs are part of what constitutes our personality
- Kelly thought constructs were bipolar: there are 2 sides/extremes to constructs
- People that are more adaptable can see the grey zones as well
- They can be organized
- Kelly says that sometimes we get more detailed about the constructs -> we can organize the constructs
- The bipolar can keep going downwards into more detail
- The more you do this, the more layers you have to your construct which is more adaptable
- If you can see the grey zones, this demonstrates more flexibility
- Kelly emphasizes the creative capacity of living things to represent their environment, as opposed to simply reacting to it (reaction to behaviourism)
30
What are constructs according to Kelly?
- Patterns that we create in our mind and attempt to fit over the realities of the world
- Since our constructs don’t always fit with reality, we are constantly modifying them, as well as trying to increase our repertoire of constructs
- Over time, we test our constructs for the ability to predict what will happen in our lives
- With sufficient time and experience, and if we are willing to learn from our mistakes, we can evaluate all of our interpretations of the world in which we live
- Problems arise when not dealing with things or people that don’t fit your constructs
- People with inflexible constructs have problems and trouble with adapting/getting along
- Kelly would look at people’s templates/constructs
- Sees the person as the scientist -> overtime we test our constructs
- The healthy person can update them
- 11 corollaries (what the constructs do)
31
What's the fundamental postulate according to Kelly?
"A person’s processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which he anticipates events”
32
What's the individuality corollary?
- Persons differ from each other in their construction of events
- 2 people can't play the same role in a situation
- They will therefore interpret the event differently
- Ex: TAT -> all seeing the same picture but all come up with different stories/explanations
- What makes us come up with different stories is that we have different lives and experiences
- When someone says something and you think I would never have thought of something like that -> because it’s not in your template
- If you struggle to accept someone’s interpretation -> you need to expand your template/constructs
33
Describe the Organization Corollary
- When faced with conflict, there may be solutions that contradict one another
- Which do we choose?
- Your constructs are organized hierarchically
- Certain things come to mind faster than others
- When asked about something, there are things that come up automatically
- Ex: stupid might work but we choose smart
34
Describe Inadequate Personal Constructs
- People suffer from psychological problems due to defects in their construct systems
- Kelly thought past traumatic experiences are not the cause of the problems
- People become anxious when personal constructs fail to make sense of the events in their lives
- People frequently generate a new construct to replace the inadequate one
35
What are the 5 cognitive personality variables?
- Encodings: categories (constructs) for encoding information about oneself, other people, events, and situations
- Expectations and Beliefs: expectations for what will happen in certain situations, for outcomes for certain behaviors, and for one’s personal efficacy
- Affects: feelings, emotions, and emotional responses
- Goals and Values: individual goals and values, and life projects
- Competencies and Self-Regulatory Plans: perceived abilities, plans, and strategies for changing and maintaining one’s behavior and internal states
36
What are Cognitive Personality Variables?
- Walter Mishel
- Elements between the stimulus and response
- Constitute to individual differences in people
- Referred as cognitive-affective units
- Part of a complex system that links situations people encounter with their behavior
