Mid Term Flashcards
- In the dice game played in section, which of the following is NOT a good strategy to use based on the law of
large numbers?
A) guess your partner’s true happiness score within a larger range (ex. +/- 5) when given only one measurement.
B) guess your partner’s true happiness score within a smaller range (ex. +/-1) when given only one
measurement.
C) guess your partner’s true happiness score within a smaller range (ex. +/-1) when given 9 measurements.
D) All of the above are good strategies
B) guess your partner’s true happiness score within a smaller range (ex. +/-1) when given only one
measurement.
- Suppose you are testing a “split brain” patient. You have her fix her eyes on the center of a computer screen.
On the left you flash a picture of a sad face, and on the right you flash a smiley face. You instruct her to both
“tell me what you see” and then “draw what you see.” (She will be drawing with her right hand.) What would
you expect from her?
A) She will draw a smiley face but say she saw a sad face.
B) She will draw a sad face but say she saw a smiley face.
C) She will draw a smiley face and say she saw a smiley face.
D) She will draw a sad face and say she saw a sad face.
C) She will draw a smiley face and say she saw a smiley face.
- Which of the following manipulations most dramatically reduced the bias that Loewenstein and Babcock
observed in their investigation of negotiations (the studies in which participants took the role of defendant and
plaintiff?)
A) Teaching people about self-serving biases
B) Having the participants write an essay in which they make the best argument they can from the position
opposite to theirs (that is, from defendant’s position if they are plaintiff, and from the plaintiff’s position if they
are defendant)
C) Having participants write an essay in which they listed the weaknesses in their own case
D) Using a positive mood induction to get participants into a more positive mood prior to making judgments
C) Having participants write an essay in which they listed the weaknesses in their own case
4. Which of the following is the space between two neurons that communicate? A) Dendrite B) Axon C) Synapse D) Dopamine
C) Synapse
4. Which of the following is the space between two neurons that communicate? A) Dendrite B) Axon C) Synapse D) Dopamine
C) Synapse
- In a one shot prisoner’s dilemma, when is it rational for a self-interested player to cooperate?
A) When there is a greater than 50% chance the other player will cooperate
B) When there is a greater than 50% chance the other player will defect
C) When the pay-off for mutual cooperation is greater than the pay-off for mutual defection
D) Never
C) When the pay-off for mutual cooperation is greater than the pay-off for mutual defection
[Please read this paragraph carefully, and use it to answer the following three test items.] Anne is interested in
whether happiness causes people to be more talkative. All the students in her college class (60 in all) agree to
help her. She meets with each student individually, and does not tell the students the point of her study. She
asks all students to first indicate whether s/he is in a relatively happy mood, or a relatively sad mood. Then
Anne asks the student, “Please tell me what you did today.” She counts the number of words each person uses
when describing their day. She finds that those in a sad mood use, on average, 25 words in their responses.
Those in a happy mood use, on average, 200 words in their responses. She correctly performs a statistical
analysis that indicates that the difference between the groups is unlikely to be just chance (p
C) Correlational
- Which of the following is the most important problem with the title Anne gave her study?
A) The study was confirmatory
B) There is no reason to be confident that the study would generalize to other samples
C) This is too small a sample from which to make inferences
D) She did not use random assignment and so shouldn’t infer causality
D) She did not use random assignment and so shouldn’t infer causality
8. The studies “dependent variable” is: A) mood B) word count C) 60 D) correlational
B) word count
9.Think about your reading of Stumbling on Happiness. The author discusses methods for measuring happiness.
Although no measure is perfect, which below does he argue to be the best (“gold standard”) measure of
subjective experience?
A) Blink response of startled participants
B) Reported re-experiencing while under hypnosis
C) Real-time self-report from an attentive individual
D) Electromyography
C) Real-time self-report from an attentive individual
- Think about the discussion of gossip in your reading of Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis. Which is NOT
argued to be true?
A) Gossiping creates chaos within society.
B) Gossiping serves as a way to punish those who are selfish.
C) Gossiping elicit gossiping, which enables people to keep track of everyone’s reputation without having to
witness their good and bad deeds personally.
D) Most people have negative views of gossiping.
A) Gossiping creates chaos within society.
- Which statement about social dilemma do you agree with (think about the game we played in class where
you each chose between $25 for you or $.50 for all others)?
A) It is not only selfish, but also irrational to defect, because the individual does better if he or she cooperates
B) These dilemmas, in theory, can be solved through educating people about what the true pay-offs are for
defection and cooperation.
C) Individuals that defect get more money than individuals that cooperate.
D) Tit-for-tat can be used to get people to cooperate, if the game is repeated.
C) Individuals that defect get more money than individuals that cooperate.
- Think about the in class experiment in which we got an approximation of the speed a nerve impulse travels
using a stopwatch and a ring of students. Which was key for doing this?
A) Subtracting the time the procedure took when participants squeezed their neighbor’s shoulder from the time
it took when they squeezed their neighbor’s wrist.
B) Subtracting the time the procedure took when participants squeezed their neighbor’s wrist from the time it
took when they squeezed their neighbor’s shoulder.
C) Separating out the contribution of all dependent variables
D) Recognizing the limits of correlational approaches
A) Subtracting the time the procedure took when participants squeezed their neighbor’s shoulder from the time
it took when they squeezed their neighbor’s wrist.
- Which of the following is not a key ingredient in natural selection
A) There is variation in off-spring (progeny aren’t exactly like their ancestors)
B) Smarter and faster organisms survive better, and so are more likely to pass on their genes
C) Some variation leads to greater reproductive success (“Reproductive fitness”)
D) There is some degree of heritability of variation (children are somewhat like their parents)
B) Smarter and faster organisms survive better, and so are more likely to pass on their genes
- Our brains fill in missing information. Which of the following most clearly illustrates this?
A) Traumatic events, in which bad experiences replay in our minds
B) The Blind Spot, which is usually not noticed
C) Déjà vu, in which we think we remember things, but often are wrong
D) Conscience, which we experience even when absent
B) The Blind Spot, which is usually not noticed
- According to the research we discussed in class, if someone is asked how painful a tooth procedure was,
which of the following is most likely to contribute the LEAST to their answer?
A) How painful it was at the very end
B) How painful it was at the very worst
C) How long the pain lasted
D) The three above all contribute about the same amount
C) How long the pain lasted
- Which was true of the video “Golden Balls” that we watched in class
A) It was a clip from a James Bond movie that illustrated how male risk-taking can be adaptive by the standards
of inclusive fitness.
B) It was a clip of a game show that is centered on the prisoner’s dilemma.
C) It was a clip from a James Bond movie in which the climax of the movie involves a prisoner’s dilemma
between the two main characters.
D) It was a clip of a game show that illustrated how male risk-taking can be adaptive by the standards of
inclusive fitness.
B) It was a clip of a game show that is centered on the prisoner’s dilemma.
axon
the long threadlike part of a nerve cell along which impulses are conducted from the cell body to other cells.
dendrites
a short branched extension of a nerve cell, along which impulses received from other cells at synapses are transmitted to the cell body.
synaptic terminal
The synaptic terminal contains neurotransmitters and cell organelles including mitochondria. An electrical impulse in the sending neuron triggers the migration of vesicles containing neurotransmitters toward the membrane of the synaptic terminal.
Spatial summation
Sherrington also noticed that several small stimuli on a similar location produced a reflex when a single stimuli did not.
This led to the idea of spatial summation or that synaptic input from several locations can have a cumulative effect and trigger a nerve impulse.
Speed of reflex arc:
Sherrington observed a difference in the speed of conduction of the reflex arc from that of the speed of an action potential.
He believed the difference must be accounted for by the time it took for communication between neurons to occur.
Functional localization
Correspondence between brain location and functional role
How do you find out what a particular part of the brain does?
Perturbation and visualization
corpus callosum
a broad band of nerve fibers joining the two hemispheres of the brain.
Negative Affective priming
impeding of responses to a target stimulus following prime stimulus when valence differs (e.g. unpleasant-pleasant).
Negative Affective priming
impeding of responses to a target stimulus following prime stimulus when valence differs (e.g. unpleasant-pleasant).
Somatic Markers Hypothesis
The cortex establishes connections between stimuli and bodily sensations. These bodily sensations are the embodiment of emotions.
e.g., the pang in your stomach you might get when you break a rule
Altruism
A motive to increase another’s welfare without regard for one’s self-interest.
Inclusive fitness
The expansion of the concept of the evolutionary fitness of a gene/trait to include benefits to relatives since relatives share parts of their genomes.
Kin selection
the evolution of characteristics which favor the survival of relatives of the affected individual.
Dependent variable
a variable (often denoted by y ) whose value depends on that of another.
Independent variable
a variable (often denoted by x ) whose variation does not depend on that of another.
Random assignment
Random assignment or random placement is an experimental technique for assigning human participants or animal subjects to different groups in an experiment (e.g., a treatment group versus a control group) using randomization, such as by a chance procedure (e.g., flipping a coin) or a random number generator.
Neurotransmitter (what it is)
a chemical substance that is released at the end of a nerve fiber by the arrival of a nerve impulse and, by diffusing across the synapse or junction, causes the transfer of the impulse to another nerve fiber, a muscle fiber, or some other structure.
Know dopamine, serotonin and endorphins are all neurotransmitters linked to emotions
including happiness
1-5 Scale
Intracranial self-stimulation
Intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS) is the operant conditioning method used to create the BSR response
Central nervous system
the complex of nerve tissues that controls the activities of the body. In vertebrates it comprises the brain and spinal cord.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
a type of psychotherapy in which negative patterns of thought about the self and the world are challenged in order to alter unwanted behavior patterns or treat mood disorders such as depression
Split brain patients
lay term to describe the result when the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the brain is severed to some degree.
Confabulation
a disturbance of memory, defined as the production of fabricated, distorted or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive.
Contralateral visual processing
The visual system is unique as much of visual processing occurs outside the brain within the retina of the eye. … In the case of the visual system, the thalamic nucleus is the lateral geniculate nucleus and the cortex is the striate cortex of the occipital lobe. The Optic Nerve.
Automatic vs. controlled processes
controlled processes — mental processes that:
occur at the conscious level;
are intentional (and, therefore, controllable);
are performed slowly ;
require a great deal of mental effort.
Controlled processes are those mental processes that occur within working memory. Because controlled processes are performed with intension (that is, we consciously intend to use them), we can control them directly.
automatic processes are used to perceive and interpret situational stimuli that release the habitual responses nonconsciously.
Prefrontal cortex
the gray matter of the anterior part of the frontal lobe that is highly developed in humans and plays a role in the regulation of complex cognitive, emotional, and behavioral functioning.
Natural selection (3 ingredients)
- Variation: Individuals in the population must differ with respect to the trait in question. Without this variation, all individuals will have the same trait value and cannot be distinguished with respect to that trait.
- Heritability: The variation found in the population must (at least partially) be heritable, e.g. transmitted from parent to offspring. If the variation in the trait was due entirely to the environment, for example, changes in the parent population would not affect the characteristics of the offspring population.
- Differential Mortality: Finally, individuals must have a probability of survival that is a function of the value of the trait in question. If all individuals, regardless of there trait value, had an equal probability of survival and fecundity, no predictable change in the mean value of the population would occur.
Speciation
the formation of new and distinct species in the course of evolution.
Proximate mechanism
are concerned with the mechanisms that underpin the trait or behavior—that is, how it works.
Group selection
proposed mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group, instead of at the more conventional level of the individual.
Reciprocal altruism
behaviour whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism’s fitness, with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time.
Tit for Tat
highlights the underlying power balance that exists in all relationships which, although not invisible, is often unspoken until resentment erupts.
Know the shared proportion of genes for an individual with biological: full sibling, half
sibling, cousin, aunt, uncle, nephew
Full Sibling: 50 Half Sibling: 25 Cousin: 12.5 Aunt: 25 Uncle: 25 Nephew: 25
One shot prisoners dilemma
the stakes are high – but carry no further repercussions.
Repeated prisoners dilemma
Strategy in repeated games takes into consideration the opponent’s reputation and future cooperation, and so these games can play out much differently than one-shot games.
The Hedonimeter and idea of “objective happiness”
hedonimeter: device used to gauge happiness or pleasure.
the extent to which he wants the experience he is having at that moment to continue. Objective happiness during an interval is the temporal integral of instant utilities for all the moments during the interval.
Implicit vs. explicit attitudes
Implicit attitudes are unconscious while explicit attitudes are conscious
Affective priming
In a typical affective priming study, positive and negative prime stimuli (words or pictures) are presented for 200 ms and are followed by a positive or negative target stimulus after an interstimulus interval of 100 ms.
Alexithymia
personality construct characterized by the sub-clinical inability to identify and describe emotions in the self. The core characteristics of alexithymia are marked dysfunction in emotional awareness, social attachment, and interpersonal relating.
Histogram
a diagram consisting of rectangles whose area is proportional to the frequency of a variable and whose width is equal to the class interval.
Normal distributions
a function that represents the distribution of many random variables as a symmetrical bell-shaped graph.
Measurement error
Measurement error in education generally refers to either (1) the difference between what a test score indicates and a student’s actual knowledge and abilities or (2) errors that are introduced when collecting and calculating data-based reports, figures, and statistics related to schools and students
Law of large numbers
a principle of probability according to which the frequencies of events with the same likelihood of occurrence even out, given enough trials or instances. As the number of experiments increases, the actual ratio of outcomes will converge on the theoretical, or expected, ratio of outcomes.
variance
the fact or quality of being different, divergent, or inconsistent.
standard deviation
a quantity calculated to indicate the extent of deviation for a group as a whole.
Basic story of Phineas Gage
Phineas Gage is probably the most famous person to have survived severe damage to the brain. He is also the first patient from whom we learned something about the relation between personality and the function of the front parts of the brain. The tamping iron was 3 feet 7 inches long and weighed 13 1/2 pounds.
Somatic Marker Hypothesis
The somatic marker hypothesis (SMH) proposes a mechanism by which emotional processes can guide (or bias) behavior, particularly decision-making. This hypothesis has been formulated by Antonio Damasio. Within the brain, somatic markers are thought to be processed in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC).
Ultra-sociality
the ability to cooperate with huge numbers (millions and more) of genetically unrelated individuals. It is apparently unique to humans. Ultrasociality is closely related to social complexity.
Eudaimonia
actualisation of human potential , while others associate it with frequent experiences of flow states. Other commonly used definitions include: realising one’s true nature/ true self , personal growth, meaning, and the totality of the six components of Ryff’s psychological well-being.
Language-squishing hypothesis (as discussed in Gilbert reading)
Everyone has the same subjective experience of an identical event,
but their happiness scales are calibrated differently
Experience-stretching hypothesis
Happiness scales stretch when we have new experiences, so what
used to be an 8 on one’s scale might become a 5 after a
particularly pleasurable experience
Ignoring absences
for example, we notice the pigeon which successfully takes a dump on us but not the hundreds of thousands that leave us alone.
Tragedy of the commons
term coined by scientist Garrett Hardin in 1968 describing what can happen in groups when individuals act in their own best self interests and ignore what’s best for the whole group
sea squirt
The life of the sea squirt tells us something interesting about what brains may have evolved for – to orchestrate and express active movement. But, even though the sea squirt’s story suggests a tight coupling of body and mind, this relation is often ignored. Take main stream education in the Western world. Despite the fact that the information we encounter is taken in by different senses – the eyes, ears, or even touch, psychologists and educators often characterize the storage of this information as abstract symbols on our mind’s hard drive. The logic, then, is that it doesn’t really matter how the information gets in. Lesson plans are designed with the adult sea squirt in mind, as if the body is unnecessary, with students permanently affixed to their desks.
action potential
the change in electrical potential associated with the passage of an impulse along the membrane of a muscle cell or nerve cell
polarization
behavior of a social or political group to split based on opposing views. Over time, more and more members of the original group join one or the other split group and fewer and fewer members remain neutral.
ion pump
a transmembrane protein that moves ions across a plasma membrane against their concentration gradient, in contrast to ion channels, where ions go through passive transport.
voltage gated ion
Voltage-gated ion channels are a class of transmembrane proteins that form ion channels that are activated by changes in the electrical membrane potential near the channel. The membrane potential alters the conformation of the channel proteins, regulating their opening and closing.
clues Sherrington used to infer the synapse
used behavioral observations to infer major synaptic properties
Proximate mechanisms motivating Tit-fot-tat
feeling of anger
The broaden and build theory of positive emotions
the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions suggests that positive emotions (viz. enjoyment/happiness/joy, and perhaps interest/anticipation) broaden one’s awareness and encourage novel, varied, and exploratory thoughts and actions. Over time, this broadened behavioral repertoire builds skills and resources.
Experienced Happiness vs. Remembered Happiness
…Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman has made an important distinction between two types of happiness: (i) happiness as we experience it on a moment-to-moment basis; and (ii) happiness as we remember it after-the-fact.
Experienced happiness and remembered happiness are of course related - they correlate about .50 - but they are not identical. Kahneman uses the example of someone who attended a wonderful concert. At the very end of the concert, the musician misplayed a note - terribly. Kahneman recounts the reaction of someone in attendance. ‘It ruined the entire experience.’ In point of fact, the experience had already happened, and it had been wonderful. What had been ruined was the memory of the experience.
Peek-end rule
a psychological heuristic in which people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.
The correlation between brain size and social group size within vertebrate species (Haidt
reading)
Robin Dunbar has demonstrated that within a given group of vertebrate species—primates, carnivores, ungulates, birds, reptiles, or fish—the logarithm of the brain size is almost perfectly proportional to the logarithm of the social group size.
