Final Flashcards
BPD
inconsistent and unstable behaviours and emotions
Impacts all areas of life (sleep. relationships, work)
Doesnt fit with trait psychology
Medicalization
Interpret behaviour in medical terms
Treat personality medically
Historical and contemporary
People with mental illness suffered stigma and degradation - viewed as less than human
More likely to be victims of abuse
Behavioural functional analysis
How consistent are abnormal behaviours - are there specific triggers?
Has inter rater reliability
MMPI and validity scales
identifies psychological distortions
Comparing likes of patients to like of visitors at institution
Validity scale: lie scale - is there social desirability
F scale: rating self as different from others (frequency)
K scale: defensiveness
Impulsive rage cases
mania w/o delirium
Erotomania
obsession with another person
stalking
Feelings of inadequacy = avoidant behaviour = passive aggressiveness
What causes personality disorder according to domains
Psychoanalysis: unconscious mechanisms and social maladjustments
Behaviourism: personal interactions
Cognitive: cognition and emotional responses, maladaptive info processing
Trait: too much personality
Cross cultural: tolerance threshold differs
Trait excess
too much on either end of major trait
Types of stress
Eustress = good stress
Positive event
Motivating at optimal level of arousal
Distress: bad stress
Strain: effects of bad stress
Residual stress: stress from one situation carrying over to others
Physical stressors
Noise: any unwanted sound
Temperature: hot people are angry
Light: too much or too little can be stressful
Vibrations: cause stress, ex. swaying on boats
Responses to stress
Physiological: blood pressure goes up, ulcers, cortisol
Psychological: affect: anger, hostility, depression
behavioural: accidents, quitting job/ school, drugs, theft, abusing partner
Stress mediators
Social support
Predictability of stress
Understandability of tasks/ work
Controllability of stressors
Personality factors that reduce stress
low neuroticism/ high emotional stability
Reflector
fairly accurate representation of themselves on the internet, uses online spaces for communication
Enhanced or amplifier
not happy with real life so puts a better version of themselves online
Provides opportunity for grandstanding: presenting self in exaggerated, flamboyant way
Used to impress others
Tend to dislike these people when you know they’re not
Use the online world to improve the self
Transformer
change self in how they appear online
Use of completely different persona
Separator
limiting reflectors, online self discloses online and not in person
People open with online community but not with real people
Maybe open about sexuality in group online, but aren’t out to their real life friends and family
Dimension of personality
Live in two different psychological realities - digital vs physical
May include use of AI and fake people/ personalities
Use of avatars and fake names, also talking openly about problems online, come across as shy - transformer + separator
Privacy barriers
Breach of privacy: others discover what you do online
Invasion of privacy: inability to keep some information to self
Everyone is hackable
Women are more worried about privacy then men especially with postings
Reputation
“sum of images” (any digital footprint) of another individual
Positive opinion of sum of images means you like the person
Reputation only makes sense if there’s another person, not talking about self satisfaction, but how you think people perceive you
Three premises of evolutionary psych
Domain-specificity: adaptations are designed by evolutionary process to solve specialized adaptive problems
Numerousness: expectation is that there are many psychological adaptations, different adaptations are required to solve different problems
Functionality: psychological adaptations are designed to accomplish particular “adaptive” goals
Hierarchy levels of analysis
General evolutionary theory (top)
Middle level evolutionary theories
Specific hypotheses
Specific, testable, falsifiable predictions (bottom)
Two ways of generating theories
Deductive: top down, start with theory, theory drives how you think people will react
Inductive: bottom up, generating theory based on observations/ data
Exploratory analysis at human nature level
The need to belong (may lead to social anxiety)
Helping altruism
Universal emotions
Need to belong:
Humans evolved to live in groups
Consequently an individual who is shunned by a group will feel anxious
Altruism and helping:
Tendency to help kin under life or death versus everyday conditions
Genetic overlap predicts the tendency to help, especially under life or death conditions
More likely to help a direct relative then a distant relative
Altruism is heritable approx 50% and linked to other personality dimensions
Altruism predictions/ big 5
heritable 50%
Positive correlations with agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness
Four dimensions of altruism:
General helping
Helping family
Helping friends
Helping strangers
General helping predicted by:
Being older - could be due to more resources
Integrity
Risk-taking
Helping family predicted by:
Having good sense of humour
Helping friends:
Being younger
Helping strangers:
Being masculine
Being religious
Limitations of evolutionary psych
Adaptations are forged over long expanse of evolutionary time
Cannot determine with certainty what the precise selective forces on humans have been
Forced to make inferences
Modern conditions are different from ancestral conditions
What was adaptive historically might not be adaptive today
Trolling
From scandinavian culture: evil clowns
More supernatural beliefs the further away from the equator you are
Internet troll:
Individual who gets extreme pleasure out of disrupting others
Enters discussion/ group just to upset others
Remain anonymous, may use fake accounts
“Everyday sadism”
They dislike successful people
Score high on psychopathy
Score low on empathy
Antisocial impulses
Rationalize behaviour by believing it is just a game
Can’t stop them from existing
Only way to reduce is to increase security and remove anonymity
Bank account theory
reputation as a bank account: positive actions are deposits nad negative actions withdrawals
Digital divide
gap between well to do and the poor in terms of their access to digital technology
Digital reputation and separation
summary outcome of the evaluation of an individual’s digital footprints
separate personality profile/ digital identity based on their footprint - polite person can appear very angry in their digital profile
Foot prints and accessibility
footprint accessibility: digital footprints make it easier to be known or recognized by a larger audience
Footprints: physical markings that reflect human activities
Halo effect theory
humans balance their views of people using a general expectation: good person does good things, bad person does bad things - rooted in assumptions of cognitive dissonance
Katagelasticism
psychological condition where person excessively enjoys laughing at others - seek out situations where they can make a fool out of others and make fun of them
Mindclones
replicates persons personality, memories, thoughts, beliefs, and preferences in a digital format. It is often visualized as a form of AI or digital assistant that behaves, thinks, and responds like the individual it represents.
Personality grandstanding
tendency for individuals to present themself in exaggerated,, flamboyant ways with intention to impress - not necessarily on purpose
Personality lensing
idea that people’s personalities act as a “lens” through which they interpret, perceive, and interact with the world around them.
Differential diagnosis
method to identify and separate one disorder from others
Excessive consistency
extreme end of traits causing distress and impairment - PD’s have excessive consistency except BPD which is excessive inconsistency
Overarching liabilities
affect behavior and traits under unfavorable conditions; for example, internalizing liabilities are linked to emotional problems, while externalizing liabilities refer to behavioral conduct such as lack of inhibition or aggressiveness
Test taking attitudes
people exaggerate positive attitudes (desirability) or negative attitudes (make things sound worse than they are)
Relativist perspective of abnormal behaviours
Situational/ cultural / norm based
- behaviour must be considered within specific environment in which it occurs
universalist perspective of abnormal behavior:
Abnormal features of behaviour are consistent across time and place - despite cultural differences people show a lot of same traits and behaviours
Behavioural economics
studies effects of individual factors on individual economics and other decisions
Categorization
mental shortcuts to group people into boxes based on characteristics
Class consciousness
core beliefs and perceptions about ones life and world around thme based on social class
Clinical pathology method
compared clinical observations of abnormal symptoms with with reliable data on brain to obtain diagnosis
Enlightenment
action of validating knowledge and education based on science and reason rather than on religion
Evolutionary science vs psych
evolutionary psychology - combines knowledge of evolutionary science and psych to figure out how human behaviour has evolved
evolutionary science - explains how large populations of organisms evolve
Natural science
description, prediction, and understanding of natural phenomena
Philosophy
love of wisdom.” It is the study of the most general and basic problems of nature, human existence, mind, and society.
Positive psychotherapy
scientific premise that human mind is capable of changing itself through behaviour - state of mind affects behavior - positive mind = positive life
Progressivism
general way of thinking based on belief that humans and society can be improved through social reform, education, and opportunity for all
Social science/ ology/ status
social science - concerned with society and relationship among individuals
social status - or position within society - access to privilege / power
Sociology- study of society and social action
Transcendental
spiritual/ nonphysical side of humanity
Acculturation
coping or adjusting to new cultures
Acculturative stress - culture shock
Adjustment
refers to relatively significant changes in an individuals behaviour and experiences in response to external and internal challenges
Adjustment disorder
symptoms associated with major distress when encountering changes in life and inability to cope
Anxious avoidance
person who dodges thinking about the stressor and refuses dealing with it
Appraisal focused coping
gain knowledge about stressor to help better understand and discuss anticipated outcomes
Approaching Coping
type of coping that refers to deliberate attempts at changing self as well as sources of stress - seeking internal and external resources to deal with stressor
Autogenic training
technique for physical and emotional relaxation - concentrates on abdominal warmth, heavy body parts, cool forehead, feelings f harmony and peace
Avoiding
avoiding addressing challenges/ stressor
Catastrophic thinking
stable tendency to overestimate how bad something will be or that something will be bad
Cognitive adaptation theory
unrealistic optimism, exaggerated perception and personal control = positive illusions = positive thinking cures cancer
Coping
conscious effort to adjust to challenges
Denial
belief something is untrue and often presents itself as ignoring issue or fact
Dispositional optimism vs pessimism
Dispositional optimism - stable belief in good things
Dispositional pessimists stable belief in bad things
Distraction
avoidant coping strategies that are employed to divert attention away from stressor
Emotion focused
strategies tha center on the emotional meaning of the stressor, distraction from it and relaxation
Flexibility
trait measured by the degree or extent which person can cope in novel ways
Hardiness
general ability to withstand difficult conditions
Latent vulnerability traits
stable behavioural features individuals may develop at any period in life
Learned helplessness
people believe no connection between actions and outcomes of actions so what’s the point
Passive adjustment
passive coping, relying on others to address or resolve stressful life events or situations - rooted in feelings of helplessness
Problem focused
coping strategies center on changing or eliminating source of an individual’s problems
Psych of adjustment
studies problems and conditions causing people to need to adjust, mechanisms of adjustment and ways to help people cope with adjustment
Ruminative strategies
thoughts that focus on negative experiences, failed strategies, and distressful psychological symptoms
Sensitization
anticipate fearful events in protective coping effort to reduce d=negative emotion and despair
Stress and stress tolerance
Stress - reaction to a condition that disturbs an individual’s physical or mental balance
Stress tolerance -stable pattern of behaviour helpful in process of coping with significant stressors, openness to experience, hardiness, impulse control
Type D personality
D for distressed, persistent tendency toward negative affect
troll’s rationale
hurt others but it’s just a game
how to reduce trolls
require identity verification - remove anonymity
strain
consequence of stress
general stressors (tasks and roles)
tasks: too simplistic or too complex, too monotonous or too much variety
- role conflicts ( work vs home life)
- role overload (time vs quality)
- role ambiguity
Stressor assignments
primary appraisal: deemed catastrophic = unable to cope
secondary appraisal = generate alternate courses of action, options = less stress
consequences of stress
burnout = emotional exhaustion
job/school performance change
health issues
behaviour change
absenteeism
turnover/quitting
evolutionary sex differences
evolutionary psych expects: men and women to be same or similar if adaptive problems have been the same - when situation differs, so do men and women
Different adaptive problems: aggression, jealousy, sexual variety, mate preferences
