Midterm Flashcards
What is personality psych
The study if how a person thinks, feels, and behaves and we use it to try to predict a person’s behaviour
What is personality used to explain?
Consistency: how a person usually acts over time and situations
Distinctivness: the differences that exist people when reacting to the same situation
Whats the difference between positive psych, normal psych, and abnormal psych
Normal psych is why people think and behave the way they do, abnormal psych focuses on the causes of how to fix melntal illness get from -ve to 0, postivie psych focuses on the thoughts and actions that can improve your life get from 0 to net +
What were the 4 possibilites seligman and team were using to come up with a definition for what positive psych is
- Positive intentions of psychologists
- Postiive ideology about human nature
- An appreciative less rigid stance of human nature
- Topics that are universally agreed to positive
Explain what positive intention of psychologists means and why it wasnt a good definition
Focused on psycholgists who wanted to improve other peoples lives make them more positive through the research they do or methods. Not a bood defintion bc a lot of psychologists want to improve peoples lives but might not be dealing with positive topics so they wouldnt fall under the positive psych umbrella, like people treating mental illnesses
Explain what positive ideology about human nature means and why it wasn’t a good definition for positive psych
focused on an inflexible idea that all humans are good by nature and want to grow by their very nature, and it’s only trauma that interrupts that. Not a good definition because we need a scientific approach and we already know that people don’t naturally always behave positively, there is research one people acting altruistically for selfish reasons
What does positive as an appreciative stance mean and why do we have to be careful?
rather than just make assumptions that people are naturally good, look at people on average and objectively but with a positive lens. Careful though because we could potentially fall back on an ideological perspective we need to use scientific method
What does positive as a set of topics mean?
topics that are universally agreed upon to be positive, resilience as well.
How do we know/assess what is positive?
choices, values, and subjective experiences
how do choices affect how we know what is positive?
if people choose something over and over again, we can infer that it makes them happy and its something positive. If a lot of people consistently choose something, we know we should study it as something positive
Where do our choices come from?
values
how do values affect how we know what is positive
things that people values are culturally specific and if they are common across generations they must be positive, otherwise why else would they stick around
how do subjective experiences affect how we know what is positive
If it feels good to you and makes you happy then it must be positive, but it’s different for everyone. people have different tastes of what is good and brings them joy.
Using research-based approaches what are the most frequently associated topics?
form empirical evidence, meta-analyses we have found that happiness and positive things about someone’s personality were the most common elements.
What is the difference between positive psychology and humanistic psychology?
Humanistic focuses on what makes people unique and how that makes you happy. Positive psych focuses on general trends for the general population.
How does positive psychology differ from pop-culture self help books?
positive psych follow scientific method, empirical evidence. Self-help is not tested used scientific method.
What is the jangle fallacy? what’s an example?
thinking 2 almost identical things are not the same because they have different names. Self-esteem and self-confidence
What is the jingle fallacy?
thinking 2 different things are the same because they share the same name.
How is the Big 5 similar to Strengths model?
Big 5 is made up of smaller facets that make up each trait, and 6 virtues are made up of 24 strengths
one of the qualifications of a strength is that it is trait like and can fall along a continuum
strengths are relatively consistent over time but can vary day to day like traits/state
provides common language
What does the positivity offset mean?
people generally look at and appraise the world/stimulus with a positive point of view and people generally feel positive most of the time even without a good event occurring.
Why do humans have a positivity offset from an evolutionary pov?
because if people were generally positive in their view of things they would be more likely to go off and explore and potentially find a mate
What is the negativity bias?
bad isn’t stronger than good but it is more attention grabbing and people give more weight to negative experiences
What did the study with negativity bias and money find?
people will put more effort into trying not to lose their money than putting in effort to make more money
What is the role of negative emotions?
feeling feel and sadness is essential to survival. can indicate when something is not right so you pay attention to threats and stay alive.
What is the difference between emotions and moods?
emotions are brief and usually caused by something specifically, moods are less intense and last longer
what are emotional traits?
relatively stable patterns in a particular emotion that stays the same over time
What is affect?
affect is more of a general term of how your feeling, not super specific
What is the difference between the basic emotions approach vs the dimensional perspective?
basic emotions is a list of a few different emotions that are in their own distinct categories where each emotion is different in terms of expression and physiological response.
Dimension perspective: classifies emotions into subtle variations on one continuum that define different emotions
What is a problem with using the basic emotions approach to define an emotion
some emotions wouldn’t match the criteria and wouldn’t count as an emotion such as ambivalence
describe the circumplex model of affect
y axis is level of activation from high to low activation, x axis is level of pleasantness from unpleasant to pleasant, emotion is classified on where it falls on those 2 variables.
What are the 5 component of an emotion?
Appraisals Physiological changes Expressions Subjective experience Action tendencies
what does appraisal of emotion mean?
how we perceive an event in terms of well-being and our own concerns, happens automatically usually but sometimes deliberate
what does physiology of emotion mean?
how your body responds and changes to feeling that emotion. it goes through these changes so that you are prepared to respond to the situation. Could be things such as pupil dilation and sweating
Which side of the brain is activated to good/approach motivation?
left side
what does expressions of emotion mean?
how the emotion makes your body behave, in terms of facial expression, tone of voice, posture.
what is a Duchenne smile vs a non Duchenne smile?
Duchenne smile includes the eyebrow muscles and the zygomatic muscles, whereas a non-duchenne smile only includes the zygomatic muscles.
what is subjective experience of emotions mean?
these are our personal feelings related to feeling the emotion