Midsemester test Flashcards
Difference between positive and clinical psychology
Traitional mental health wants to get rid of the illness
Positive focusses on living well and living with illness
SELIGMAN’S PERMA MODEL of wellbeing: 5 components
Positive emotions: how often do you feel happy, what makes you feel good.
Engagement: to what extend do you feel excited about things, what flow activities make you lose track of time
Relationships: Who brings you joy and support, to what extent do you feel loved
Meaning: what do you find worthwhile, do you feel what you do is worthwhile
Accomplishment: how often do you feel like you are achieving your goals
Subjective wellbeing
The experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful and worthwhile.
What are the features of someone with subjective wellbeing?
More:
- successful
- socially engaged
- more stable relationships
- creative
- better physical health
- better immune systems
- live longer
Subjective wellbeing: hedonic component
Experience of positive emotions and absence of negative emotions, life saatisfaction
subjective wellbeing: Eudaimonic component
psychological wellbeing, search and attainment of meaning, self-actualisation, and personal growth
In business settings, materialism ______ correlated with caring about corporate social responsibility and ______ correlated with interpersonally deviant workplace behaviours
negatively, positively
The big 5 personality dimensions
- extraversion (most associated with positive feelings)
- conscientiousness
- avoidance orientation
- agreeableness
- neuroticsm
Adaption
The fact that after people first react to good or bad events, sometimes in a strong way, their feelings and reactions tend to dampen down over time and they return toward their original level of subjective well-being.
Bottom-up
or external causes of happiness
Situational factors outside the person that influence his or her subjective well-being, such as good and bad events and circumstances such as health and wealth.
Happiness
The popular word for subjective well-being. Scientists sometimes avoid using this term because it can refer to different things, such as feeling good, being satisfied, or even the causes of high subjective well-being.
Life satisfaction
A person reflects on their life and judges to what degree it is going well, by whatever standards that person thinks are most important for a good life.
Negative feelings
Undesirable and unpleasant feelings that people tend to avoid if they can. Moods and emotions such as depression, anger, and worry are examples.
Positive feelings
Desirable and pleasant feelings. Moods and emotions such as enjoyment and love are examples.
Subjective well-being
The name that scientists give to happiness—thinking and feeling that our lives are going very well.
Subjective well-being scales
Self-report surveys or questionnaires in which participants indicate their levels of subjective well-being, by responding to items with a number that indicates how well off they feel.
Top-down
or internal causes of happiness
The person’s outlook and habitual response tendencies that influence their happiness—for example, their temperament or optimistic outlook on life.
Outlooks
how one sees the world
important internal cause of subjective wellbeing
What are mindtraps
impact bias - overestimate emotional impact of events
hedonic adaption - we get used to stuff
eaily misled
* Our minds judge based on (faulty) reference points
o A lot of our experiences and how we see the rest of the world is based on our experiences, or reference points
E.g. if co-workers have a higher salary, you are less happy with your job (even after controlling for salary
Downward social comparison
when comparing oneslf with inferior others who have negative characteristics
Upward social comparison
occurs when comparing oneself with superior others who have positive characteristics
Hedonic adaption
become accustomed to both positive and negative stuff
even major events lose impact in less than 3 months, there is a standard pattern of affective dynamics
when bad stuff happens we think it is the end of the word - but we have these set points of happiness that we usually go back to
you learn a new reference point, things seem less extreme
the two big culprits of hedonic adaption
rising aspiration and social comparison
Impact bias
we tend to overestimate the emotional impact of things both in intensity and duration
Affective forecasting
we tend to exaggerate effects of positive or nagative events on our happiness.
people epect certain events to hurt them more then they end up doing
twarting hedonic adaption
Savouring: stepping outside experience to appreciate it
replaying: happy memories increases positive emotions over time
negative visualisation: what life would have been like without somethings, can rekindle a relationship
Gratitude
live each day as if it were your last
Growth mindset
fixed m would be someone who things intelligence is a stable and unchangeable trait - avoid challenged
a growth mindset is someone who sees failure as inevitable for progress, more likely to persist and take on challenges
What is flow
Mental state in which you’re performing an activity where you are fully immersed, where you feel energised, have a sense of control, strong sense of self, focused, you’re fully involved, and you’re enjoying it as you go
Characteristics of flow
- complete concentration on task
- sense of ecstacy
- greater inner clarity
- knowing activity is doable
a sense of serenity
timelessness
intrinsic motivation
Signature strengths
using your top character strngths in new ways
savouring
taking time to savour the things you enjoy
graititude
expressing gratitude for the people and things in your life
kindess
increasing your acts kindness
social connection
making connections with strangers and acquaintances along with scheduling time for people in your life
exercise
increasing physical activity to at least 30 minutes a day
sleep
making sure you gget at least 7 hours of sleep
meditation
m for 5-10 minutes and increasing over time
change your diet
reduce UPF and increase F and V intake
Character strength
a positive trait or quality deemed to be morally good and is valued for iteslf as well as for promoting individual and collective well-being
flourishing
to live optimally, psychologically, relationally, and spiritually
forgiveness
letting go of negative thoughts, feelings and behaviours toward an offender
humility
having an accurate view of self-not too high or low- and a realistic appraisal of one’s strengths and weaknesses, especially in relation to other people
positive psychology
the science of human flourishing - an applied science with an emphasis on real world intervention
pro-social
thoughts, actions, and feelings that are directed towards others and which are positive in nature
three key strengths to make yourself happier
forgiveness, gratitude, and humility
Predator eyesight
tend to have frontal eyes to eye up prey
binocular vision
large areas that both eyes cover
- better depth perception, helps with locating prey
Perception is constructive
our brain makes assumptions we’re unaware of, think of duck rabbit example
Peception is selective
we don’t take in all the information in the environment, we take in the information we want
why is perception constructive and selective
predict future
classify objects when at an odd angle or partially obstructed
reduce processing load
____ lens required to focus a distant object on retina
Thin
___ lens required to focus nearby object on retina
thick
Normal vision
lens just right, object focused on the retina
Myopic
nearsighted
lens too thick or eyeball too long
distant object focused in front of retina
Hyperopic
farsighted
lens too thin or eyeball too short
close object would have been focussed behing the retina
Presbyopia
Presbyopia is a refractive error that makes it hard for middle-aged and older adults to see things up close. It happens because the lens (an inner part of the eye that helps the eye focus) stops focusing light correctly on the retina (a light-sensitive layer of tissue at the back of the eye)
Eyes as we age
lens loses elasticity, presbyopia, why many old people require glasses
Photoreceptors: rod
100 to 120 million
extremely sensitive
everywhere in retina except for the fovea, for vision in low light levels
helps in dim light, do not see wavelengths, cannot see colour
Photoreceptors: cones
three types
6 to 7 million
less sensitive to light
concentrated at the fovea
for vision under normal lighting conditions and for colour
can see wavelengths, allow us to see colour
not as sensitive as rods
Distribution of cones in the retina
high concentration at fovea - helps see fine details
blind spot, hole in our retina where the nere fibres exit the eye to the brain, no photoreceptors there
Distribution of rods in the retina
none at fovea or blind spot
Why don’t we notice blind spot
usually have both eyes open
brain is good at filling in information
Dark adaption curves
when walk into dark cinema, can’t see at first, over time vision becomes cleared
- Initially we rely on our cones
- but they are not sensitive, so we can see, but not in detail
- after 6 mins, they stop adapting, vision doesn’t get better
- rods kick in, see more details
- best in the para-fovea because the fovea does not have any rods
__ are mostly responsible for processing light when photons are scarce
rods, but takes time to replenish the visual prigment that rods require for photoactivation
under bright conditions, ___ are quickly bleached
rods, when cones become useful because they canno tdeal with the constant barrage of photons
in bright light ___ are bleached, takes 30 minutes in dimmer environment for them to recover
rods
___ require more photons to fire and their photopigments replenish much faster than ___ photopigments, allowing them to keep up when photons are abundant
cones, rods
Contrast gain
the visual system dertimines the mean contrast in a scene and represents values around that mean contrast best, while ifnoring smaller contrast differences
Lateral inhibition - interaction between neurons
Lateral inhibition refers to the capacity of excited neurons to reduce the activity of their neighbors. Neurons that are firing inhibit the stimulation of surrounding. Accordingly, only the neurons that are most stimulated and least inhibited respond.
E.g., A is darker than B, so A said not as much inhibition to B compared to the inhibition sent by B at the other side, so the border between B and C there is more inhibition, which is why the part looks a little bit darker
Importance of contrast
important because your neurons go out of their way not only to encode differences in light but to exaggerate those differences for you so you don’t miss them - this is lateral inhibition
when a neuron fires in response to light: produces two signals
- output signal: pass on to the next level in vision
- lateral signal: to inhibit all neurons that are next to it
3 types of cones:
s, m and l
s-cone:
those most sensitive to short wavelengths, these cones are more sensitive to wavelengths we typically perceive as blue
m-cone:
most sensitive to the medium wavelengths like green
l-cone:
long wavelengths, orange/red
Shades of grey, white and black:
means the surgace reflects about equally all visible wavelength, reflectance is very high
why do we see a tomato as red
they refract the light at the longer portion of the spectrum, a spectral reflectance,
Trichromatic theory of colour vision: Young-Helmholtz theory
ability to distinguish wavelengths depends on the operation of three different kinds of cone receptors (the s, m and l cones)
At its most basic, the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory states that within your eye are tiny cells that can receive waves of light and translate them into one of three colors: blue, green, and red. These three colors can then be combined to create the entire visible spectrum of light as we see it.
perceived colour is based on the relative amount of activity in the three cones
the opponent process theory: Hering theory
colour vision is caused by opposing responses generated by 3 pairs: blue v yellow, green v red, and black v white
monocular visual cues
occlusion/interposition: when an object covers another, helps with depth
relative height: mountains taller than flowers, but smaller in horizon
texture gradient
linear perspective
aspects of a scene that yield info about depth when viewed with only one eye
often called pictorial depth cues because it works even in 2d images
why sun and moon look the same size
we don’t have any depth cues, brain cannot infer the actual distance
just has to rely on the size of the image on the retina, large and far away sun = close smaller moon
binocular disparity
the magnitude of the disparity reveals how far the object is from fization
Binocular disparity is the difference in image between the two eyes, think when you focus on something in front of you like a finger and close one eye then the other, it appears that the object moves.
Binocular depth cues exist because we have stereoscopic vision: having space between our eyes means that each eye registers a slightly different view of the world
- The closer the object you’re looking at, the great the BD – the difference in retinal images of the two eyes that provides information about depth
- You brain computes the disparity between the two retinal images to perceive how far away objects are, as shown above.
- This idea was first discussed by Charles Wheatstone in 1839
- This is why we see the world in three dimensions, because our eyes are a distance apart and the image of an object falls on the retina of each eye at a slightly different place. The disparity in the positions of the object’s retinal images provides a compelling cue to depth
motion based on depth cues
motion parallex = a depth cue based on the movement over time - in car, objects in distance appear to move slower
Gestalt principles of perceptual grouping:
“perception of the whole is more than simply the sum on individual parts” - our vision system constantly organising things
muliple principles for how we do this: proximity, similarity, pragnanz, good continuation, common fate
proximity vision
things near eachother get groups
similarity vision
similar elements get groups together, like orientation or colour
pragnanz: good figure, simplicity
everything seen as simple as possible, e.g. olympics logo, see as occluding circles, not a bunch of different shapes stuck together
Good continuation
regions appear to follow in the same contours grouped together: a rectangle with its middle occluded by a square, assumed the recatangle continues behind the square and out the other side
common fate
things that move together seen as belonging together
separating figure from ground
face and vase example, we segregate figure and background
ventral pathway
involved in what, perception of colour and form
o Many of these computations occur in specialized brain areas. For instance, an area called MT processes global-motion information; the parahippocampal place area identifies locations and scenes; the fusiform face area specializes in identifying objects for which fine discriminations are required, like faces. There is even a brain region specialized in letter and word processing. These visual-recognition areas are located along the VENTRAL PATHWAY of the brain (also known as the What pathway).
dorsal pathway:
invonved in the perception of movement, location, and how to make a movement to respond to or interact with an object
DORSAL PATHWAY (or Where-and-How pathway) will compute information about self- and object-motion, allowing you to interact with objects, navigate the environment, and avoid obstacles (Goodale and Milner, 1992).
Vestibulo-ocular reflex
when your head moves in one direction, your eyes reflecively move in the opposite direction to compensate, allowing you to maintain your gaze on the object you are looking at
it is achieved by integrating information from both the visual and the vestibular system
Synaesthesia:
occurs when one signal gives rise to two or more sensations - the most common type is grapheme-colour synaethesia
about 1 in 200 individuals experience a sensation of colour associated with specigic letter, numbers or words
some can include taste and colour or music and colour, like this chicken tastes green
