Studies 21-40 Flashcards
- You’re getting defensive again! Freud: The ego and the mechanisms of defense
-Sigmund Freud–> irrational superstitions of demonic possession to rational approaches of reason and logic to determine human behavior.
-Many psychologists have rejected his ideas about: the development of personality, five psychosexual stages; but ego defense mechanisms
-Personality consists of Id: basic human instincts and impulses (unconscious level), ego: the self, alter to consequences of behavior (conscious), superego: requires the ego finds ethical, moral ways to satisfy the id (conscience)
-If id begins to overpower ego-> anxiety -> ego retaliates with defense mechanisms
-Method: Freud developed this theory of defense mechanisms by meeting with clients through the years, Anna Freud synthesized and elaborated on his observations
Results: Identified 10 defense mechanisms (5 will be reported on: repression, regression, projection, reaction formation, sublimation)
1. Repression: forces disturbing thoughts completely out of consciousness
2. Regression: causes people to retreat to earlier stages of human development
3. Projection: Seeing your unconscious urges in other’s behavior, externalizes anxiety-provoking feeling
4. Reaction formation: Engaging in behaviors that are the exact opposite of the id’s real urges
5. Sublimation: Find socially acceptable ways of discharging anxious energy (“it is through sublimation that civilization can exist)
Significance:
-Defense mechanisms help us reduce anxiety and maintain a positive self-image but can produce negative consequences if overused (can inhibit development of problem-solving skills, lead to anxiety disorders)
-Study about homophobia supported Anna Freud’s work
-Scientific interest in defense mechanisms popular among many fields in psych
- Learning to be Depressed: Seligman & Maier
-If perception of power and control is lacking, all that is left is helplessness and hopelessness
-When a person’s efforts at controlling life events fail repeatedly, they stop attempting to exercise control all together, can lead to helplessness and depression
-Previous method: Shocking dogs, put in a partitioned box with easy escape to non-shock side, did not learn escape-avoidant behavior
-Hypothesis: When dogs learned that their behavior could not change consequences of the shocks, in a new situation where they had the power to escape, they learned to be helpless.
-Method: 24 dogs, divided into 3 groups (escape group, no-escape group, no harness group)
-Yoking: dogs from escape and no-escape group were paired, the e group could stop the shocks, no-e group couldn’t, shocks lasted same amount of time
24 hours later, shuttle box-time it took jobs to escape were recorded
-Results: Dogs in no-e group had learned to be helpless,
In no-e group, 6 dogs failed to escape on 9 or 10 of all trials, tested again 7 days later 5 dogs failed on every trial
-Helplessness remained even after a successful experience
-once e dogs learned that behavior could be effective, later experiences with failure weren’t adequate to extinguish motivation to change their fate
-Depression in humans, like dogs, involves passivity, slowness to learn a certain behavior is successful
-Can generalize to humans in that when negative life events occur, there is a sense of helplessness (death of a loved one), helplessness in nursing homes
-Ethical? probably not, study with babies found similar results but didn’t use harmful shocks
- Crowding the Behavioral Sink, Calhoun, Population density and social pathology
-density: # of individuals in a space
-crowding: your subjective experience that results from varying degrees of density
-Question: What are the effects of high-density population on social behavior?
-Method: adult rats in a 10-14 foot lab room divided into 4 sections, sections had paths connecting but 1-4 blocked, 12 rats per section, could multiply normally till 80 rat occupancy, observed over 16 months
-Results: Male rats fought for social status, one male per end room and 12 females, middle pens were the behavioral sink- majority of rats brought together due to central feeding device, more pathological behaviors such as: 1. aggression- had to fight for territory 2. submissiveness- physically healthy but in a hypnotic trance, little interaction 3. sexual deviance- didn’t mate properly, would pursue females violently, cannibalistic, pansexual 4. reproductive abnormalities- females stopped building proper nests for their young
Discussion: Social and survival behaviors of the rats were severely altered by the stresses associated with living in a high-population-density environment.
-Sparked related research on humans, such as in prisons- more crowded: more instances of homicide, suicide, illness, disciplinary problems; affects problem solving, blood pressure and heart rate increase
-Criticism: Can’t generalize to humans, animal testing can be a dead end
-Recent applications:
-In animal studies, pathology and density increase linearly, with humans, number of people in a household, social withdrawal and aggression decreased as the number of people increased, up to a point when the number of people exceeded the number of rooms.
-More relevant as cities become more crowded
- Smith & Glass, Choosing your Psychotherapist, Meta-analysis of psychotherapy outcome studies
- Clinical psychology: focuses on researching, diagnosing, and treating psychological problems
- Questions: 1. Does it work? 2. What works best?
- Goals: 1. Identify and collect all studies that test the effects of counseling and psychotherapy
2. Determine the magnitude of the effect of therapy in each study
3. Compare outcomes of different types - Methods: Using 375 different studies, analyzed for effect size different positive constructs (combined studies’ effect sizes)
- Results: The average client receiving therapy was better than 75% of untreated controls, only 12% of 833 effect sizes were negative (unhelpful)
- Divided types of therapies into: behavioral superclass (systematic desensitization) and non-behavioral (CBT)
- Differences among therapies were insignificant so:
1. Therapy works
2. More research needed to compare dif. types - Conclusions supported in subsequent research
- 40% of therapists consider themselves eclectic (mix of a lot of types)
- Most important considerations may be: your expectations for psychotherapy, the client-therapist relationship
- Implications: Helped therapists focus more on helping patients rather than trying to prove their therapy was the best.
- Recent: CBT more effective in treating anxiety and depressive disorders than alternative therapies
- Relaxing Your Fears Away, Wolpe, The systematic desensitization treatment of neuroses
-Systematic desensitization: decreasing your level of anxiety or fear gently and gradually
-Phobias: simple or social
-Previous research into systematic desensitization: rat and cat photo, being fed, fear response and feeding response cannot exist at the same time, so the fear response was inhibited by the feeding response (reciprocal inhibition), humans anxiety inhibiting response is deep relaxation
-Hypothesis: humans can unlearn phobias through systematic desensitization
-Method: Relaxation training: therapist teaches you how to relax your body
Construction of an anxiety hierarchy: develop a list of anxiety-producing situations in order from least to most-anxiety producing
Desensitization: Process of “unlearning”, no direct contact with feared stimuli is necessary
1. Place yourself in state of deep relaxation
2. Therapist begins with first step in hierarchy and describes scene to you, moves through the hierarchy
3. If you feel anxious, raise a finger, therapist will stop, enter deep relaxation again, and then continue
Generally clients had around 12 sessions
Results: Success of therapy judged by patient’s own reports and occasional direct observation 91% of treatments were judged to be completely or partially successful. No reported instances of relapse or new phobias
-Psychoanalystic criticism: Only treating symptoms not the underlying causes of anxiety
-Systematic desensitization found to be most helpful in treating phobias in comparison with insight training and a no treatment group
- Projections of Who we are, Rorschach- Psychodiagnostics: A diagnostic test based on perception
-Projective test presents a person with an ambiguous shape of a picture and assumes that the person describing the image will project his/her unconscious psychological processes onto it
-Theoretical propositions: Through interpreting an inkblot, attention would be drawn away from the person so that their normal psychological defenses would be weakened, hidden aspects of the psyche would then be revealed.
-Method: Development of test: like an art project, had to be symmetrical and moderately suggestive of vague objects
Administration and scoring: Administrators hand person image one by one and ask “What might this be?”, takes notes on response without making suggestions, no time limit, scores based on:
1. how many responses, how much time?
2. person’s interpretation determined only by shape or were color and movement included in perception?
3. was figure seen as a whole or in separate parts?
4. what did subjects see?
Results: Administered to different groups of people: individuals of varying levels of education, schizophrenic patients, people with manic-depressive disorders
Generally, 15-30 responses for average person, depressed individuals gave fewer answers and people with schizophrenia varied in number of answers but often refused to answer.
-More holistic interpretations indicate integrative conceptual thinking, high proportion of small details suggests compulsive rigidity, use of white space a sign of rebelliousness, movement indicates rich inner life, color suggests emotionality or impulsivity
-Discussion: can be diagnostic tool but should not be used alone, dream interpretation and free association superior methods of exploring the deep unconscious
-Criticism:
-is it valid? Many response differences can be attributed to other things like verbal ability, age, amount of education…
-Not used very seriously but often opens up lines of communication during therapy and helps therapist get to know client
-May need greater modification in the future
- Picture This! Murray- explorations in personality
-Thematic Apperception Test: focused on content depicting people in ambiguous situations, client makes up a story about each drawing, behavior will likely reflect something about yourself (fears, desires, conflicts)
-Theoretical perceptions:
Goal of Murrays test is to expose unconscious conflicts so they can be treated
- Method: participants asked to describe events leading up to picture and events after, (20 images picked from hundreds), its thought that widespread publication might compromise validity today, said they were testing “creativity and imagination”, later interviews to figure out how much of the stories were from experience or imagination
-results:
Stories came from: books and movies, real-life events involving friends or relatives, personal experiences, participants conscious and unconscious fantasies
-participants clearly projected their emotional, personal, psychological existence into stories
-Criticism: Criticized for poor reliability and validity, different clinicians offering differing interpretations of the same set of TAT responses (clinicians might inject their own unconscious feelings into it)
-Fails to make distinctions with people with different psychological disorders
-May only tap into temporary state and not real underlying self
-Individuals responses may be better accounted for by: hunger, lack of sleep, drug use…
-Very varied responses cross-culturally, may be invalid
- A Prison by another name, Zimbardo- the pathology of imprisonment
Hypothesis: the environment often determines how you behave more strongly than who you are
- Method: Randomly assigned participants to “guard” or “prisoner”, observed how assigned role would lead to different actions in measures of interaction, emotional measures of mood and pathology, attitudes towards self, coping and adaptation to a prison environment.
- Participants: $15/day, extensive screening about motives, 24-college age men
- Conditions for prisoners intended to simulate humiliation, entrapment and repression inmates experience in real prisons
- Guards had 8-hr shifts, no training
- Results: True identities seemed to vanish as the roles they were asked to play took over
- Prisoners seemed to forget they were college studenrts with free will, became dejected but obedient
- Guards took to tormenting prisoners, enjoyed their power
- Zimbardo terminated experiment for 6 days out of fear for prisoner participants and scared for the ease in which he took on the role of prison superintendant
- Recent applications: Systemic abuse of prisoners has been well documented
- U.S. has highest prison population of any country in the world
- Goal of rehabilitation has been abandoned, now punishment and incapacitation
- Abusive interrogation techniques and harsh treatment of prisoners authorized from top down during Bush administration
- Results haven’t reformed the prison system at all
- People who volunteered for this study might have certain personality tendencies (agression, less altruism)
- Asch, the power of conformity, opinions and social pressure
- Conformity: individual behavior that adheres to the behavior patterns of a particular group of which the person is a member
- Asch focused on perceptual conformity
- Research q: Can researchers manipulate a person’s behavior using the pressure to conform?
- Method: Go down the row answering which line from a group of lines matched one on another picture, easy perceptual test, participant answered after majority of other 6 confederates
- Results: 75% went along with the groups’ incorrect consensus at least once
- For all trials participants agreed with incorrect responses 33% of the time
- Discussion: 1. Showed real power of social pressure
2. Related research:
a. social support- having a single ally can help aleviate social pressure, only 5% conformed
b. attraction to group- conformity stronger with reference group
c. size of group: 6-7 members, most conformity, greater levels off
d. sex- women conformed more, possibly biased though - Criticism: can it be generalized outside the lab setting?
- conformity to peer pressure can predict high risk sexual behaviors
- Latane, To help or not to help- Bystander intervention in emergencies, diffusion of responsibility
-Prosocial behavior: behavior that produces positive social consequences (altruism, cooperation, helping)
-Bystander intervention: how witnesses react to emergencies
-Hypothesis: The larger the number of people witnessing a violent event, the decrease in willingness of any 1 individual stepping in and helping (diffusion of responsbility)
-Method: Students told they would be talking about adjustment to university with other students about the transition to college. They would talk over an intercom so that it was anonymous and people would be more comfortable sharing their experiences. Split up into 3 groups: 1. Told they would be talking to 1 other person, 2. 2 other people 3. 5 others
Some (or 1) students talked, participant talked, and then a recording of student 1 having a seizure played. Participants response times in alerting researchers were recorded.
-Results: Supported their hypothesis, the larger the number of “participants” the longer their reaction times
Group 1. delay in response was only less than a minute for 100% of participants
Group 2: 85% reported the emergency
Group 3: 60% reported emergency in under 3 minutes
-Discussion: Researchers wondered, What about the presence of others was so influential?
Perhaps with more people, the diffusion of responsibility, less personal responsibility to take action, less blame if they don’t help
- Obey, but at what cost? Milgram- Behavioral study of obedience
-Milgram believed that in some situations, the tendency to obey is so deeply ingrained and powerful that it cancels out a person’s ability to behave morally, ethically, or sympathetically.
-Hypothesis: People who would never intentionally harm someone would inflict pain on a victim if ordered to do so by a person whom they perceive to be a powerful authority figure
-Method: 40 males between ages of 20 and 50, werew paid $4.5o but were told they could keep the money once they arrived regardless of what happened after they arrived- so they didn’t feel coerced into participating.
47-year old confederate was the “learner” and participant was the “teacher”– told this was a test on punishment and learning
-Confederate hooked up to a chair to recieve electric shocks (fake) could press buttons a.b.c.d, teacher instructed by the administrator to administer electric shock when learner got word pairs wrong, actor would scream to be let out, everything at predetermined dialogue so it was the same among participants, would be scored from 0-30 at when they stopped the shocks.
-Results: Every participant continued to at least 300 volt-level shock (when the confederate banged on the wall to be let out), 65% participants proceeded to top of the shock scale, many people exhibited signs of extreme stress from ordeal of shocking the person, were debriefed after and learned was brought in for a friendly reconciliation with the patient.
-Discussion:
-The situation carried a force of its own and created an atmosphere of obedience
-Found similar results on unpaid college students and women in following repetitions of the study, distance played a role: when learner could not be seen or heard 93% obedience rate, in the same room, dropped to 30%; distance of experimenter also played a role
-Criticism: unacceptable levels of stress on participants, may lead to participants not trusting psychologists and not participating in the future,
-in follow ups, only 1% of participants regretted the experience
-Brings up the question: what should be done toprotect participants from irresponsible deceptive practices in psychological research while allowing for some deception when absolutely necessary for scientific advancement?
-Ethics of deception
