Health, Motivation, Development Flashcards
Drives
psychological states encourage behaviours (eating) that satisfy needs (food)
–increasing arousal
•Motivates you to do something
Needs & Drives
- Drives-Arousal
- Arousal-Motivation
- Motivation-Performance (?)
- Less hungry = picky
- More hungry = eat anything
The Yerkes-Dodson Law
optimal arousal=moderate
•Not motivated enough/Motivated too much: distracting you
Needs & Drives: Maslow’s pyramid
•Need to fulfill needs bottom
•Not necessarily needed to start bottom up
•Self actualization may be individualistic
•Not taking into account other needs
1. Physiological: hunger, thirst, warmth, air, sleep
2. Safety: security, protection, freedom from threats
3. Belonging + Love: acceptance, friendship
4. Esteem: good self opinion, accomplishments, reputation
5. Self-actualization: living to full potential, achieving personal dreams + aspirations
Needs & Drives
•not only internal drives that guide behaviour
•Incentives: External stimuli that motivate behaviours
–food tastes good so we eat though we are not hungry
Self-Regulation
process ppl change behaviour to attain personal goals
–ppl differ in self-efficacy
•difficult: involves postponing short-term rewards in pursuit of long-term goals
•Doing something to control our behaviour
•Long term goals conflict with short term goals
Self-Regulation
- “limited resource”
- exercising a muscle – over time, we become fatigued, but practice also builds strength
- Self effecacy: belief that behaviours lead to success
- High in effecacy = believe in yourself
Self-regulation as a limited resource (Baumeister et al., 1998)
No need to self-regulate: Behaviour matches goal
Self-regulation required: Behaviour conflicts goal
Used up all self regulatory resource
•More we self regulate, the better we become, more resources we have
Self-regulation as a limited resource
Baumeister et al., 1998
Independent variable: Type of food eaten
•No food = Control condition
•Cookie eaters = No self-regulation
•Turnip eaters = Self-regulation
•Half were allowed to eat cookies, other half can see cookies but are offered turnips
Self-regulation as a limited resource
Baumeister et al., 1998
Dependent variable: Time spent on unsolvable puzzle
•turnip eater used up all self-regulatory resources=spent less time on the puzzle than everyone else
•Participants were very hungry
Self-Regulation: Delayed Gratification
- Marshmallow Test – Walter Mischel, 1960s
- Think of it differently
- Strategies: Turning hot cognitions into cold cognitions; ignoring; distraction
Self-Regulation: Delayed Gratification
– ability to delay gratification as a child associated with social and academic outcomes in adolescence + adulthood
•Longitudinal studies: predictive of success when they’re older
Eating: What?
•Cultural beliefs + personal experience/religius beliefs: habits of eating
Eating: When?
- Meal time
- Hungry
- Tasty
- When there’s food
Eating: Why?
- Satiety centre: (stop, you’re full)
- Damaged = hyperphagia
- Feeding centre: eat
- Damaged = aphagia
- We need two systems to regulate eating behaviour
- Limbic system: reward system
- Limbic system goes on overdrive: food more rewarding
Eating: Why?
- numerous theories regarding the internal signals responsible for hunger and satiation
- Leptin: hormone released from fat which travels to hypothalamus + inhibits eating behaviour
- Leptin activates satiety centre
- Ghrelin leads to growling
Eating: Why?
- Ghrelin: hormone from stomach, surges before eating + decreases after eating
- Glucostatic theory: glucose levels in bloodstream
- Glucostatic: too low = need to eat, set level of glucose we want to maintain
- Lipostatic theory: set-point for body fat
- Lipostatic: focused on fat levels in bloodstream
Dieting
–weight regulated around set-point primarily determined by genetic influence
–responds to weight loss by slowing down metabolism
•Bouncing back + forth between deprivation + overeating can be particularly detrimental
•Maintaining weight loss challenging
Dieting
–Restrained eaters (chronic dieters) prone to excessive eating in certain situations
•Tend to eat according to rules, rather than internal states
•If they broke a rule, then lets just go for it
Eating: How Much?
-Portion Sizes
•Sensory specific satiety
•Get sick of same taste
•Adaptive: need variety in food for nutrition
•Variety = overeating
•Portion sizes bigger now: Plates we have now are larger=feel like we have to fill the plate
Obesity
•Part genetics, part behaviour
–Genetics determines propensity to become obese, but environ determines whether will become obese
•Obesity rate has dropped down in children
Health psychology
focuses on events that affect physical well-being + applies psychological principles to understand health + well-being
Biopsychosocial Model
- Bio characteristics: genetic predispositions, exposure to germs, brain + other nervous system development
- Psychological factors: behaviours, thoughts, state of mind, lifestyle, job, stress, beliefs, intelligence
- Social: environments, family relationships, social support
- feel better if they believe its gonna work
- Everything’s in our heads
Placebo effect
drug/treatment unrelated to problem may make person feel better because believe drug/treatment is effective
–Role of anxiety, experience of pain
–Effects of common knee surgery for osteoarthritis
Stress
pattern of behavioural, psychological + physiological responses to events that match or exceed abilities to respond
•Worried about responding to threat
•Eustress: positive
•Distress: negative
Stressor
environmental event or stimulus that threatens an organism
•Stressor: causing
•Major life stressors: changes/disruptions strain central areas of ppl’s lives
•Daily hassles
Coping response
response organism makes to avoid, escape/minimize aversive stimulus
Physiology of Stress
hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis
•Hypothalamus sends chemical message to pituitary
•releases hormones to adrenal glands which releases cortisol
•Chronic activation of system damages memory
Stress & Coping: Sex Differences
–Fight-or-flight response
•Oxytocin: important to female stress responses
Stress & Coping: Sex Differences
– Tend-and-befriend response: Females’ tendency to respond to stress by protecting + caring for offspring + forming alliances with social groups
Physiology of Stress: general adaptation syndrome
- Alarm stage: mobilizing resources
- Resistance stage: maximize defences
- Exhaustion stage: systems fail
- Rats are chronic level of maximized stress
- Unable to fight off infection – damage to lymphatic structures
- It is a rat model
- Doesn’t take to account individual differences
Health Effects
–weakens the immune system
–Heart disease - stress + negative emotions (hostility) can lead to unhealthy behaviours (smoking, overeating) + direct wear-and-tear on the heart
Health Effects
Type A behaviour pattern: impatient, competitive
hostility leads to heart conditions + detrimental heart outcomes
Health Effects
Type B behaviour pattern
relaxed, easy going
Coping: Emotion-focused coping
Attempts to prevent an emotional response to the stressor
•More passive coping strategy: Avoidance, minimizing problem, “emotional eating”
•stressors perceived as uncontrollable + levels are high
managing emotional reaction, regulating it
•Attacking it head on doesn’t make sense
Coping: Problem-focused coping
Attempts to deal directly stressor to solve problem
•active coping strategy: choosing alternative solutions
•stressors perceived as controllable + levels moderate
•When there something you can do
•More short term
Primary + secondary appraisal
- Primary appraisals: decide whether stimuli stressful, benign/irrelevant
- Secondary appraisals: evaluate response options + choose coping behaviour
Coping
–Individual differences in hardiness
–high hardiness = Committed to daily activities,
•View threats as challenges/opportunities for growth
•See themselves as being in control
Coping
–Hardiness closely related to resiliency (ability to cope with stress, return to normal state of functioning faster)
•High – able to cope
•Control over situation
•It matters what you choose to do
tangible support
Providing help, taking on some of the responsibilities of the person
informational support
Telling the person what to do, offering advice
esteem support
Telling the person you believe in them, building their confidence
emotional support
Physical comfort (hugs), listening and empathizing •buffering hypothesis: when others provide emtional support, recepient better able to cope with stress
Social Support
–Benefits of emotional disclosure: talking/writing about emotional events
– can help ppl better understand the events + move on
•Helps us organize the experience
Exercise
–all kinds of benefits, including reduced stress + depression
–10 minutes of exercise can enhance mood + mental energy
Exercise
–significant cognitive benefits: improved memory
–physical benefits: faster healing time, better heart + lung health
Positive psychology
relatively recent subfield of psychology focuses on understanding psychology of well-being + examining factors that help people thrive
happiness
3 components: –Positive emotion and pleasure –Engagement in life –A meaningful life Happy, optimistic people tend to be healthier
Power of Positivity
•Laughter good medicine: Reduces pain + stress
–Increases blood flow
–Improves mood
–Connects us to others
•Tends to be social, spontaneous + contagious
Developmental psychology
physiological, cognitive + social changes that occur in individuals across lifespan
Present at Birth
•The five senses: – Sight: See clearly 30cm – Smell – Sound – Taste – Touch
Present at Birth
• Reflexes:
–Grasping: hold onto mom
–Rooting: look for boob
–Sucking
The Developing Brain: Synaptic pruning
•Born with more synaptic connections than needed
– “use it/lose it”
•Remember our “enriched” vs. “impoverished” rats
Attachment
- Adaptive: encourages proximity betw child + mother
- Oxytocin: “cuddle hormone”, released during breastfeeding
- Connection persists over time
- Enduring bond
Attachment
•Imprinting: Attach to person that’s gonna take care of us
•Cling on to the first person that’ll take care of them
–Critical periods: attachment, imprint, learning has to happen in this period, if it doesn’t happen it’s not gonna
sensitive periods: becomes more challenging after certain age
Attachment
•Harlow’s Study: Attachment in Monkeys
“Mom as milk” vs. “Mom as comfort”
stayed with mom as comfort + only went for milk at wire mom
Mary Ainsworth’s strange-situation test
•Children can be difficult
-mom’s left babies to see how they reacted
secure
- Approx. 65% of children
- Upset when caregiver leaves, but easily comforted upon their return
avoidant
- Approx. 20-25% of children
- Little distress when caregiver leaves, avoids the caregiver upon their return
anxious/ambivalent
- Approx. 10-15% of children
- Extremely upset when caregiver leaves + reject caregiver upon their return
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
–During each stage of development, children form new schemas: ways of perceiving, organizing + thinking about how the world works
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
– Two key learning processes:
• Assimilation
• Accommodation
Sensorimotor Stage (birth – 2 years)
- Acquiring information only through the senses
- Forming representations of kinds of actions that can be performed on certain objects
- Moves from reaction to action
- Object permanence: things continue to exist even when you can no longer sense them
Preoperational Stage (2 – 7 years)
•Begin to think symbolically, but not logically
–No understanding of the law of conservation of
quantity
•Development of language
•Egocentric (self-focused) thinking
Concrete Operational Stage (7 - 12 years)
- Begin to think logically about objects + events
- reasoning limited to concrete things - objects they can act on in the world
- Overcome limits of egocentrism
Formal Operational Stage (12 years+)
- Able to think and reason abstractly
- Deductive reasoning + problem solving
- Intelligence develops
criticisms of Piaget’s stages
•Leaves little room for individual differences and/or
cultural differences/differences in type of logic/cognitive strategies used to solve problems
Cognitive Development: Research techniques for learning what infants know
–Preferential looking technique: if looks longer at something, distinguish betw 2 + finds 1 more interesting
–Orienting reflex: Prefer looking at something new
•Babies have perceptual cues
•6 months can tell it was different
–Memory retention test: •when they kick the foot, it moves the mobile above them
•will they remember 24 hours later
Understanding the laws of nature
–Physics: spends more time + baffled that the block doesn’t fall
–Mathematics: Young children not motivated enough to think through unless give them line of candy
Theory of Mind
-Recognizing other ppl have mental states separate from own: able to infer others’ thoughts, feelings/behaviour by considering their mental states
The false-belief test
Results are culturally universal: age 5, frontal lobes
Sally doesn’t know ann moved the ball
•She doesn’t have the info available to the person
Social & Identity Development
•Parents vs. Peers
–Judith Rich Harris: it’s all about the peers
•2 sets of behaviours - Set for outside world most used
–criticized: both parents and peers play an important role in social development
Impact of divorce
–Associated with an array of negative outcomes though plenty of children cope well: lower grades, bad behaviour
–Non-divorced but constantly fighting parents associated with even worse outcomes
•Children end up living with single mother: might be significant drop in income rather than divorce itself
Gender Identity
–personal beliefs about whether they are M/F
–Gender roles: culturally defined norms that distinguish betw male and female characteristics
–Gender schemas: cognitive structures that influence how ppl perceive behaviours of females and males
•At age 3 understand there are genders
Gender Identity
•Interacting with baby whether it’s a boy/girl: choice of toys, how they describe the baby, their voices
•As a baby they’re perceived through lenses of gender schema
–bio + environ affect development of gender identity
•Gender dysphoria: don’t identify with their sex, leads to emotional conflict, other conflicts
Racial Identity
–Very young infants can differentiate race + prefer race most familiar with
•Same as with gender
–Formation of racial identity happens later in childhood/ adolescence
Erikson’s Stages of Identity
–Every stage has developmental challenge/crisis we have to overcome
•Young adulthood: Intimacy vs. Isolation – forming strong + lasting relationship
•Middle adulthood: Generativity vs. Stagnation – you’re contribution, through career, children, leaving world a better place
•Old age: Integrity vs. Despair - looking back on life, feeling like you did a good job
•mid life crisis: dealing with transitions, looking back on life + choices, plan future
Adulthood & Aging
•Most older adults report being happy + healthy
•Cognitive changes: Declines in working memory + fluid intelligence
•crystallized: gets good with age
–Dementia: brain condition thinking, memory + behaviour deteriorate progressively + develops into alzheimers, can’t go back, can only stall it
The Aging Mind & Brain
- tend to have fewer mental health issues
- decreases in processing speed, short-term + long-term memory + decreases in brain structure size + white matter integrity (myelination, communication)
- Age related reductions in dope activity in frontal lobes
The Aging Mind & Brain
• increases in prefrontal activation=adaptive compensatory mechanism
–scaffolding theory of aging & cognition: process from changes in brain function through strengthening of existing connections, formation of new connections + disuse of connections that have become weak/faulty
other parts of brain work to try to compensate for weak connections/deteriorating brain areas = plasticity
Allostatic load theory of illness
unable to return to homeostasis when continually stressed
Erikson’s Stages of Identity
- Infancy 0-2: trust vs. mistrust
- Toddler 2-3: autonomy vs. shame + doubt
- Preschool 4-6: initiative vs. guilt
- Childhood 7-12: industry vs. inferiority
- Adolescence 13-19: ego identity vs. role confusion
Socioemotional selectivity theory
•as they grow older, perceive time to be limited + adust priorities to emphasize emotionally meaningful events, experiences + goals
