Lecture week 5 Flashcards
what is rational vs irrational behaviour?
- psychology is the study of rational behaviour.
eg. rational: cognitive, logical, predictable, causative
Irrational: Emotional, unconscious,
difficult to predict, free choice.
what is reaction time?
How quickly can someone respond to a particular stimulus?
it is rapid decision-making.
occurs in most situations.
for example: there is reaction time plus the movement time.= reaction distance which applies to driving. this demonstrates response time.
you can improve reaction time by practice.
Decrease uncertainty.
you also need to have situational awareness:
1. sensation
2. perception [interpreting the situation]
3. comprehension- understanding the implications
4. projection - predicting what is going to happen.
What is consciousness?
the study of subjective awareness in everyday thinking.
attention: notice and focus on external reality, this is usually important or interesting.
Selective attention: focuses on events that continuously change. Selectively important
Concentration” is the time or duration that you can focus your attention. this varies across personalities. Eg. Adults are better at concentrating than children.
What are some alternative states of consciousness?
pre conscious: not currently conscious, but can be readily borught to consciousness. memory recall. Planning for the future.
Altered states:
- Meditation and hypnosis
-Psychoactive drugs
-Dreaming
-Disorders of consciousness: Eg mental disorders, disability, or injury, psychosis.
Unconscious: Unknowen internal influences on decison maing and thus behaviuorus and everyday thinking.
there is a critical questions which is: unkown influence ofn thinking, that people do not know about, how de we determine the causation, or will we never know?
what are the 2 states of unconsciousness?
2 levels to the unconscious:
1. perception
Subliminal perception:
Presence of sensory information that is below the threshold of consciousness.
Eg rapid presentation:
Early Freudian studies where emotive and non-emotive words were presented so briefly that they could not be recalled. non emotive words were recognised earlier.
perceptual defence.
This can be used for advertising - consumer presentation. - eg adding a coke bottle in near the end of the movie.
Hidden presentation - products have hidden messages in their ads.
Product placement.
- emotion.
Unconscious motivations and emotions: that is unconscious cognitive and perceptual processes that influence behaviour.
Measurement strategies:
1. Dream analysis: Malinowski analysis of male childrens dreams to evaluate Freuds Oedipal Complex and gender identity.
2. Rorschach Inkblot test. the story asscociated with images help psychologists analyse unsconouness of person.
- sesntence completion test - asls people to finsih a sentence.
- Implicit Associations Test:
Looks at reaction time to explore unconscious cognitive structure/associations between concepts within long-term memory. Topics covered are obesity, race, gender, age etc..
There is a two-stage analysis:
they ask participants about their attitudes towards certain topics - however, this can be impeded y people not wanting to out themselves as racist homophobic etc.
The second is the associations test which is unconscious:
Requires participants to react as soon as possible. then they move on to reactions of keywords put together eg. Nurse female -> male -career. Where the prejudices are there are longer reaction times. then the initial control test.
What is motivation
it is a hypothetical contrcut and arttempts ot explain driving force to achieve goals and avoid others.
What are the different types of motivation?
- biological drives: hunger, thirst, temp.
there are non homeostatice bio drives, eg. sex drive, curiosity.
2. Psychological drives: - Need for achievement
-affiliation needs - need for aggression
eg Maslows Hierarchy of needs:
Hunger vs Curiosity
Monkey located in isolation for 24 hours everyday, 15 minutes each day for the following week, they are given a choice to access food or to look ouut of the room, chose to look outside the room and lost weight.
What are the sources of motivation?
- intrinsic - completing a task for its own sake, hobbies, computers games
- extrinsic - completing task for external rewards/reasons, eg going to work to get money
there are some issues for this: minimal links between bio motivations and social motivations
some people behave both on intrinsic and extrinsic motives, people like their work but also get paid. eg volunteering.
Most situations have multiple motivations.
why are emtoins difficult to define?
difficulty explaining emotions
they are complex because they involve physiological interpretations and subjective or cogntive and expression - whether you want o express it or not
What did ekman say about emotion?
that there are universal emotions that are all interpreted in the same way.
What is this supported by?
- ekhamn study results
- people who are blind still still display sadness in the same way
What are the evotulationary benefits of emotion?+
Emotion helps communicate within the group/.
eg display of anger indicates people need to stay away.
The display of sadness indicates loss and need for comfort.
What are some theories of emotion?
related to the mind - body problem.
The body influences the mind and the other way around.
Subjective experience hopw do you expereince emotions.
Feared stimuli -> body trembles -> emotion
James lange above
cannon bard below
Stimuli -> emotion and physiological responses occur at the same time.
However the Chahcter and singer theory
Fearded stimuli -> physiological response-><interperet> have emotion.</interperet>
There is the most evidence for the latter theory.
Define misattribution research?
Dutton and Aaron experiment with an attractive young female RA surveying young males either on a river footbridge ( high over a ravine) or along the pathway to a low solid wooden bridge over a stream.
They found they more men asked out the women when on the rickety bridge. therefore the body is informing the emotion.
