Test #4 Flashcards
1
Q
social psychology
A
The scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another.
2
Q
difference between social psychology and sociology
A
- Most sociologists study groups, and how things like social class, social structure, and social institutions influence society.
- Social psychology studies the individual within the group.
- Social psychologists rely more heavily upon manipulating a factor to see what effect it has on behaviour. They conduct experiments. (situational)
- The goal of social psychology is to identify universal properties of human nature that make everyone susceptible to social influence regardless of social class or culture
3
Q
personality psychology
A
- The focus is on individual differences. The aspects of one’s personality that make them different from others.
4
Q
the fundamental attribution error
A
- Ignoring situational factors when explaining another’s behaviour. (eg. someone bumps you and you assume they are just rude and you don’t think maybe something happened at home → ignoring situational factors)
- Implications? Those who attribute poverty and unemployment to personal dispositions (“They’re just lazy and undeserving”) tend to lack sympathy toward such people. Those who make situation attributions (“If we were to live with the same overcrowding, poor education, and discrimination, would we be any better off?”) tend to adopt political positions that offer more direct support for the poor.
Looking at situational factors = more sympathetic
5
Q
dispositional attribution
A
- explain the cause of the behaviour as something that is inherent to the person (something about them personally) (eg. they bumped me cause they are rude)
6
Q
situational attribution
A
explanation of behaviour that has something to do with a situation or the context (eg. that person bumped me because they were distracted by something and didnt see me)
7
Q
self serving bias
A
We take credit for success (dispositional attribution) yet blame others or the situation for failure (situational attribution). Why? (we see ourselves favourbly)
- Do well on test: “I’m very gifted”
- Do poorly on test: “That test was unfair, my roomates made it hard to study”
8
Q
actor/observer effect
A
- When we act, we are aware of situational influences on us. When we see others act, we are less aware of situation influences affecting them. We are less likely to commit the fundamental attribution error if we have been in the same situation ourselves, perhaps because taking a walk in others’ shoes helps us grasp what they must contend with.
- You are more sympathetic for someone when you have experienced the same thing as them → when you understand their situation
- Japanese and Chinese people seem to do so less. Unlike those in Western society, they may be more likely to view behaviours within a context, and see others’ behaviour as a mix of both dispositional and situational influence.
9
Q
social comparison theory
A
- We seek to evaluate our abilities and beliefs by comparing them with those of others
- Upward social comparison - we compare ourselves with people who seem superior to us
- Downward social comparison - we compare ourselves with people who seem inferior to us
10
Q
conformity
A
A change in behaviour or belief associated with real or imagined group pressure. Would you do the same thing without the group present?
11
Q
compliance
A
Conform to request, but privately disagree.
12
Q
obedience
A
Complying with an explicit command.
13
Q
acceptance
A
Conformity that involves both acting and believing in accord with social pressure.
14
Q
Asch’s Study of Group Pressure
A
- experimenter asks you and the others to indicate which of three comparison lines is identical in length to a standard line.
- On the third set of lines, the first participant selects what is quite clearly the wrong line.
- Then the next 4 subjects choose the same wrong line
- In a control group, when alone, 99% answered correctly. Yet Asch’s participants went along with the incorrect majority about 37% (75% at least once) of the time!!
- Similarly high levels of conformity were observed when Asch’s study was repeated thirty years later and in recent studies involving cognitive tasks.
- 25% of participants never yielded to group pressure.
15
Q
Berns replication
A
- Berns placed subjects in an fMRI scanner and showed them two figures. They asked them to decide whether the figures were the same or different by mentally rotating the figures. The researchers led subjects to believe that 4 others were making the same judgments along with them. In fact, these judgments were preprogrammed into a computer.
- On some trials, the other “participants” gave correct answers. On others, they gave incorrect answers. Like Asch, high levels of conformity were found: Participants went along with others’ wrong answers 41% of the time
- Their conforming behavior was associated with activity in the amygdala, which triggers anxiety in response to danger cues. This finding suggests that conformity may come with an anxiety price tag.
16
Q
predicting conformity
A
- Group Size: 3 to 5 elicits more conformity than 1 or 2. Beyond five yields diminishing returns. Two groups of three elicit more conformity than one group of six, and three groups of two elicit even more
- Unanimity: If one person agrees with you, you don’t waver.
- Cohesion: Cohesive group members don’t like disagreeing.
- Those with low self-esteem are more likely to conform
- Asian cultures are more collectivist than American cultures and more likely to conform.
- If you responded first, and then were given a chance to change your mind after the rest of the group disagreed with your (correct) judgment. Most people won’t change their answer.
17
Q
deindividuation
A
- Tendency of people to engage in uncharacteristic behaviour when they are stripped of their usual identity
- The loss of self- awareness and self-restraint in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity. This can lead to impulsive and deviant acts.
- flaming - sending insulting messages to others
- Although crowds sometimes engage in irrational, even violent, behaviour, research suggests crowds are not necessarily more aggressive than individuals.
18
Q
Diener - Halloween Candy Experiment (deindividuation)
A
- Had experimenters observe 1352 children trick or treating in each of 27 homes in the city. Each experimenter told the children to “take one of the candies” and then left the room.
- Compared to solo children - those in groups were more than twice as likely to take the extra candy.
- Children were more likely to transgress by taking extra halloween candy when in a group, when anonymous, and especially when deindividuated by the combination of group immersion and anonymity
- In a recent study, participants were more likely to cheat in a dim room than in a fully lit room. Oddly enough, they even were more likely to behave selfishly - helping themselves to more than their fair share of money - when asked to wear sunglasses, even though they were no less anonymous than when not wearing sunglasses. Apparently, even the mere illusion of anonymity can foster deindividuation.
19
Q
stanford prison blues (zimbardo)
A
- Role: a set of norms that define how people in a given social position ought to behave.
- zimabrdo wondered whether conditions in prisons stemmed from peoples’ personalities, or from the roles they’re required to adopt
- What if ordinary people played the roles of prisoner and guard? Would they assume the identities assigned to them?
- He randomly assigned 24 male undergrads, to be either prisoners or guards
- Zimbardo transformed the basement of the Stanford psychology department into a simulated prison, complete with jail cells. To add to the realism, actual Palo Alto police officers arrested the would-be prisoners at their homes and transported them to the simulated prison.
- Prisoners and guards were forced to dress in clothes befitting their assigned roles. Zimbardo (the prison superintendent) instructed guards to refer to prisoners only by numbers, not by names
- The Results: The first day passed without incident. But then the guards began to treat prisoners cruelly and subject them to harsh punishments like humiliating push-ups, singing, stripping naked, and cleaning filthy toilets with their bare hands.
- By day two, the guards began using fire extinguishers on prisoners and forcing them to simulate sodomy. Soon, many prisoners became depressed, hopeless, and angry.
- At day six, Zimbardo ended the study 8 days early. The prisoners were relieved, yet some guards were disappointed. Perhaps Zimbardo was right. Prisoners and guards who lost their individuality, adopted their assigned roles even more easily than imagined.
- Yet…Zimbardo’s study wasn’t carefully controlled: In many respects, it was more of a demonstration than an experiment. His prisoners and guards may have experienced demand characteristics to behave in accord with their assigned roles. Moreover, at least one attempt to replicate the Stanford prison study was unsuccessful, suggesting that the effects of deindividuation may not be inevitable.
20
Q
Miligram’s Study
A
- Milgram’s experiments on what happens when the demands of authority clash with the demands of conscience (interested in the influence of authority figures on obedience)
- Milgram’s original experiment involved randomly assigning participants to partake in a study of learning and memory. One person was assigned the role of “teacher” while the other was assigned the role of “learner” (a confederate in another room).
- In teaching the “learner” a list of words, the teacher is required to shock the learner after each mistake (the shocks never really reached the learner).
- Many of the actual participants experienced considerable distress during the procedure, and some were understandably troubled by the fact that they delivered what they believed to be extremely painful—even potentially fatal—electric shocks to an innocent person
21
Q
Miligram’s Study: Results
A
- 65% of the sample (40 men) went clear to 450 volts.
- Even after the “learner” mentioned his “heart condition” in a follow-up study with 40 new men, and the experimenter’s reassurance that “although the shocks may be painful, they cause no permanent tissue damage”, 63% fully obeyed
- Many “teachers” trembled, bit their lips. Some burst into fits of nervous laughter. Yet few appeared to be sadistic. And most still continued on.
- The Milgram study was replicated in 2009 by stopping the research after the participant shocked the learner up to 150 volts. The researchers chose the 150-volt mark because 79% of participants who shocked past 150 volts continued to the maximum shock value. The researchers found that the rates of compliance were only slightly lower than in the original Milgram study!
- women exhibited the same level of obedience (65% to 450v). Milgram found no consistent sex differences; this finding has held up in later studies using his paradigm.
- Women were slightly more compliant and less concerned
- The overall rates of obedience among Americans don’t differ significantly from those of non-Americans, including:
22
Q
bystander apathy
A
when other people are around, people don’t care
23
Q
psychological paralysis
A
bystanders in emergencies typically want to intervene, but often find themselves frozen, seemingly helpless to help.
24
Q
bystander effect
A
- Occurs when the presence of others inhibits helping.
- Participants’ responses to an emergency are strongly influenced by the size of the group
- In one study, almost all participants who thought that only they knew about a staged emergency (seizure victim in another room) left the room to try to get help.
- In the larger groups, participants were less likely and slower to intervene. A full 38% of the participants in a six-person group never left the room at all
- Bottom line – If you need help in an emergency, you may be better off if there is only one witness to your plight than if there are several.
25
Q
two main factors that affect helping
A
- we first need to recognize that the situation is really an emergency. We look around, notice that nobody is responding, and assume - perhaps mistakenly - that the situation isn’t an emergency.
- pluralistic ignorance - A false impression of how other people are thinking feeling or responding. Error of assuming that no one in a group perceives things as we do (“I’m the only one who thinks this is an emergency”) (“i’m the only one who didn’t understand that lecture”)
26
Q
diffusion of responsibility
A
- The presence of others makes each person feel less responsible for the outcome.
- The more people present at an emergency, the less each feels responsible for the consequences of not helping.
- Diffusion of responsibility will not occur if a person believes only he/she is aware of the victim’s need
27
Q
Smoke room experiment
A
- What would you do if while in a room, smoke began to seep into the room through a vent?
- Within 4 mins, 50% of students working alone acted
- Within 6 minutes (max time allotted in the study) – 75% of these participants acted (reported smoke, got help).
- They interpreted the smoke as a potential emergency
- groups of 3: Only 4% of participants acted within 4 minutes, and only 12% did so before the end of the study - even though by then the smoke was so thick they had to fan it away from their faces to see the questionnaire
- Instead, they coolly examined the reactions of the others in the room, saw nobody else seemed too concerned, and assumed nothing was wrong (pluralistic ignorance)
28
Q
unambiguous emergencies
A
(the emergency is clear) - groups of people in similar studies are only slightly less likely to help than single bystanders. The presence of others inhibits helping if the emergency is ambiguous and the other bystanders are strangers who cannot easily read one another’s reactions.
29
Q
social loafing
A
- phenomenon where people become less productive in groups
- the tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool their efforts toward a common goal than when individually accountable.
- Blindfolded people in a tug-of-war device asked to “pull as hard as you can” pulled 18% harder when they thought they were pulling alone than when they believed that two to five people were also pulling
- Social loafing may be a variant of bystander non-intervention. It appears to be due in part to diffusion of responsibility: People working in groups typically feel less responsible for the outcome of a project than they do when working alone. As a result, they don’t invest as much effort.
30
Q
cognitive dissonance
A
- unpleasant mental experience of tension resulting from two conflicting thoughts or beliefs
- We feel tension (dissonance) when we are aware that we have two thoughts that are incompatible or when our behaviour is inconsistent with our attitudes. To reduce this unpleasant arousal, we adjust our thinking.
31
Q
insufficient justification effect
A
- subjects were asked to tell people that a very boring experiment they participated in was interesting
- When people were paid less to say the experiment was interesting they believed they must have enjoyed the experiment a little bit because the external reward ($1) wasn’t a lot
- vs when paid more ($20) they figured they were only saying the experiment was interesting because they were being paid so much and they did not enjoy it
- Reduction of dissonance by internally justifying one’s behaviour when external justification is “insufficient”
32
Q
foot in the door phenomenon
A
- The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request
- Others were first approached with a small request: Would they display a 3-inch “Be a safe driver”window sign? Nearly all readily agreed. When approached two weeks later to allow the large, ugly sign in their front yards, 76% consented.
- It appears that by agreeing to a small request, people come to view themselves as the kind of person who helps others. Once this self-image is in place, it makes people more likely to agree to the second, larger request that comes later. Also, refusing the larger request would be inconsistent with our previous behaviour. We like to appear consistent!
33
Q
low ball technique
A
- persuasive technique in which the seller of a product starts by quoting a low sales price and then mentions all of the add on costs once the customer has agreed to purchase the product
- People who agree to an initial offer (but where the offer has not yet been filled) will often still comply when the requester ups the ante by changing the offer. People who receive only the costly offer are less likely to comply with it (car dealership example!)
- Why?
- First, while the buyer’s decision to buy is reversible, a commitment of sorts does exist, due to signing a cheque for a down payment. This creates the illusion of irrevocability
- Second, this commitment triggers the anticipation of an exciting event - driving out with a new car! To thwart the anticipated event by not going ahead with the deal would produce disappointment.
- Third, while the final price is higher than the buyer thought it would be, it is likely only slightly higher than the price at another dealership. So the buyer might concede, “Oh, what the heck. I’m already here, I’ve already filled out the forms, I’ve already written out the cheque – why wait?”
34
Q
prejudice
A
- Some scholars contend that “much prejudice, particularly that of Caucasians toward African Americans, has merely “gone underground” and is merely subtler
- 97% of Whites say they want their child attending an integrated school. However, 57% said they would be unhappy if their child married a Black person.
- People are slower to detect prejudice when it occurs within a group (e.g., female against female). Chris Rock?
35
Q
automatic prejudice
A
- We quite easily, and perhaps quite naturally, associate people from other races with scary things
- In shock experiments, White people give no more shock to a Black than to a White person – except when they are angered or when the recipient can’t retaliate or know who did it
- White people in one study reported more liking for black people when viewing slides of Whites and Blacks but when viewing Blacks their facial muscles showed more frowning than smiling
- Studies show that when primed with a Black rather than White face (no Black participants in study) White people think guns: They more quickly recognize a gun and they more often mistake a tool, such as a wrench, for a gun
- When fatigued or feeling threatened, people become even more likely to mistakenly shoot a minority person
- The participants (both Blacks and Whites) more often mistakenly shot targets who were Black. Follow-up simulations revealed that it’s Black male suspects that are more likely to be associated with threat and to be shot
- members of stigmatized groups (e.g., Black people, gay people, older people) tend to have slightly more positive implicit attitudes toward their groups than do people not in the group, BUT there is still a moderate preference for the more socially valued group
36
Q
social identity
A
- We categorize: We find it useful to put people, ourselves included, into categories as a short-cut to understanding other things about others
- We identify: we associate ourselves with certain groups (our in-group) and gain self-esteem
- We compare: we contrast our groups with other groups (out-groups) with a favorable bias toward our own group
- In-group bias – favoritism to one’s own group.
37
Q
just world phenomenon
A
- belief that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.
- We are taught that good is rewarded – evil is punished
- This motive is so strong that it can lead people to ignore injustice and instead see no justice at all
- Those who assume a just world believe that rape victims must have behaved seductively, that battered spouses must have provoked their beatings and that sick people are responsible for their illnesses
38
Q
outgroup homogeneity effect
A
- The perception of out-group members as more similar to one another than in-group members. Thus “they” are alike; “we” are different. (we think everyone in a group is the same, the more we get to know the group we realize this is not true)
- And once we assign people to groups (psychology profs, drama majors, athletes) we are likely to exaggerate the similarities within groups and the differences between them
- Research indicates that the more familiar people are with an outgroup, the less likely they are to perceive it as homogeneous
39
Q
own race bias
A
- The tendency for people to more accurately recognize faces of their own race
- Both Black and White subjects more easily recognize a face of their own race
- It’s not that we cannot perceive differences among faces of another race. When looking at a face from another racial group, we often pay attention first to race rather than to individual features
40
Q
subtyping
A
- accommodating groups of individuals who deviate from one’s stereotype by thinking of them as a special category of people that are different.
- In stereotype-disconfirming situations people tend to explain away the behavior as an exception to the rule
41
Q
group serving bias
A
- attributing outgroup members’ negative behaviours to their dispositions (and excusing such behaviour from our own group).
42
Q
need to belong theory
A
humans have a biologically based need for interpersonal connections
43
Q
mass hysteria
A
outbreak of irrational behaviour that is spread by social contagion
44
Q
collective delusions
A
many people become simultaneously convinced of bizarre things that are false
45
Q
urban legends
A
false stories repeated so many times that people believe them to be true
46
Q
social facilitation
A
enhancement of performance brought about by the presence of others
47
Q
Attribution
A
process of assigning causes to a behaviour
48
Q
social disruption
A
a worsening of performance in the presence of others
49
Q
social influences on conformity
A
- uniformity of agreement (if everyone agrees on the wrong answer, you are more likely to conform. if one person agrees with you conformity plummets)
- difference in the wrong answer (knowing someone else in the group differed from the majority, made the participants less likely to conform)
- size (size of the majority makes a difference up to 6 people)
50
Q
online disinhibition effect
A
posting nasty anonymous online comments
51
Q
groupthink
A
emphasis on group unanimity at the expense of critical thinking
52
Q
group polarization
A
tendency of group discussion to strengthen the dominant positions held by individual group members
53
Q
cult
A
group of individuals who exhibit intense and unquestioning devotion to a single individual or cause
54
Q
inoculation effect
A
approach to convincing people to change their minds about something by first introducing reasons why the perspective might be correct and then debunking these reasons
55
Q
prosocial behaviour
A
behaviour intended to help others
56
Q
enlightenment effect
A
learning about psychological research can change real world behaviour for the better
57
Q
altruism
A
helping others for unselfish reasons
58
Q
influences on aggression
A
- interpersonal provocation
- frustration
- media influences
- aggressive cues
- arousal
- alcohol/drugs
- temperature
59
Q
relational aggression
A
form of indirect aggression prevalent in girls, involving spreading rumours , gossiping, and using non verbal putdowns for the purpose of social manipulation
60
Q
self monitoring
A
personality trait that assesses the extent to which peoples behaviour reflects their true feelings and attitudes
61
Q
recognition heuristic
A
we are more likely to believe something we’ve heard many times
62
Q
self perception theory
A
theory that we acquire our attitudes by observing our behaviours
63
Q
impression management theory
A
theory that we don’t really change our attitudes, but report that we have so that our behaviours appear consistent with our attitudes
64
Q
dual process models of persuasion
A
- central route - evaluate the merits of an argument thoughtfully and carefully
- peripheral route - respond to arguments on the basis of snap judgements
65
Q
foot in the door technique
A
persuasive technique involving making a small request before a bigger one
66
Q
foot in the face technique
A
persuasive technique involving making an unreasonably large request before making the small request we hope to have granted
67
Q
“but you are free” technique
A
persuasive technique in which we convince someone to perform a favour for us by telling them that they are free not to do it
68
Q
ultimate attribution error
A
assumption that behaviours among individual members of a group are due to their internal dispositions
69
Q
adaptive conservatism
A
evolutionary principle that creates a predisposition toward distrusting anything or anyone unfamiliar or different
70
Q
scapegoat hypothesis
A
claim that prejudice arises from a need to blame other groups for our misfortunes
71
Q
just world hypothesis
A
claim that our attributions and behaviours are shaped by a deep seated assumption that the world is fair and all things happen for a reason
72
Q
explicit prejudice
A
unfounded negative belief of which we’re aware regarding the characteristics of an outgroup
73
Q
implicit prejudice
A
unfounded negative belief of which we’re unaware regarding the characteristics of an outgroup
74
Q
jigsaw classroom
A
educational approach designed to minimize prejudice by requiring all children to make independent contributions to a shared project
75
Q
what is personality
A
- A person’s characteristic way of thinking, feeling, and acting (has to be consistent over time or else it is an emotion or a mental state)
- A person’s unique and stable pattern of characteristics and behaviours
- Identical twins reared apart tend to be very similar in their personality traits. They’re also far more similar than fraternal twins reared apart.
- It’s also evident that identical twins reared apart are about as similar as identical twins reared together! So environmental factors (shared environment - experiences that make individuals within the same family more alike) appears to play little role in adult personality
76
Q
Psychoanalytic theory (freud)
A
- experiences in childhood (like feelings of love and care from parents) influence your adult behaviour (like intimate relationships)
- the contents of your dreams are meaningful and interpretable
- talking about your problems can relieve those problems, even problems like paralysis and memory loss
- freud was not the inventor of these ideas, they already existed he just made them more digestible and readily accessible to the average person
- Freud: A neurologist. His patients’ disorders made no neurological sense. For instance, a patient might have lost all feeling in a hand, yet no sensory nerves show damage.
- Freud concluded that many mental disorders were not somatogenic (i.e., physiologically caused). Thus, the cornerstone of his psychoanalytic theory.
77
Q
psychoanalytic theory rests on 3 core assumptions:
A
- Psychic Determinism - assume all psychological events have a cause. We aren’t free to choose our actions. There is a reason for everything.
- Symbolic meaning - To Freudians, no action, no matter how trivial, is meaningless. Almost all have symbolic meaning and are attributable to preceding mental causes, even if we can’t always figure out what these causes are (something going on unconscious)
- Unconscious motivation - We rarely understand why we do what we do. The mind is like an iceberg, with the unconscious being the vast portion hidden underwater.
Example: The peculiar loss of feeling in one’s hand might be caused by fear of touching one’s genitals; unexplained blindness caused by not wanting to see something that aroused intense anxiety.
78
Q
free association
A
Freud told the patient to relax and say whatever came to mind, no matter how trivial. He believed this would allow them to retrieve and then release unconscious memories from childhood. This is called psychoanalysis.
79
Q
Freud’s view of the unconscious mind and personality
A
- Freud viewed our mind like an iceberg, with conscious awareness like the part that floats above the surface. Below the surface is the larger unconscious, holding thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories, of which we are unaware.
- Some thoughts are stored in our preconscious from which we can retrieve them from conscious awareness.
- Freud believed that the human psyche consists of three parts: id, ego, and superego. The interplay among these components and their strength give rise to our personality and differences in our personality respectively
- id (basic instincts) - resoviour of our most primitive impulses (sex and aggression). strives to survive, reproduce and aggress (impulsivity, get pleasure now). It uses the pleasure principle – seeks instant gratification
- ego (mediator) - psyches executive and principal decision maker, recognizes the demands of the superego
- superego (our conscience) - sense of morality, leads the ego to focus on how one ought to behave (responsibility, obligation)
- Physiological distress results from conflict between the 3 components
- In Freud’s view, human personality, including its emotions and strivings, arises from a conflict between our aggressive, pleasure-seeking impulses and the internalized social restraints against them
80
Q
Freud’s Psychosexual Development
A
- Freud believed personality forms during life’s first few years. He concluded that children pass through a series of psychosexual stages.
- He believed that conflicts unresolved during earlier psychosexual stages could surface as maladaptive behaviour in the adult years.
- oral stage
- anal stage
- phallic stage
- latency stage
- genital stage
- Conflict during the oral, anal, or phallic stages, could lock (fixate) the person in that stage.
- A person who had been either orally overindulged or deprived might fixate at the oral stage, for example. This orally fixated adult could exhibit either passive dependence or an exaggerated denial of this dependence - perhaps by acting tough and uttering biting sarcasm. Or they might seek oral gratification by smoking and overeating.
81
Q
oral stage
A
- birth to 12-18 months
- focuses on the mouth
- sucking and drinking
82
Q
anal stage
A
- 18 months - 3 years
- focuses on toilet training
- alleviating tension by expelling feces
83
Q
phallic stage
A
- 3-6 years
- focuses on genitals
- Oedipus complex - conflict during phallic stage in which boys supposedly love their mothers romantically and want to eliminate their fathers as rivals
84
Q
latency stage
A
- 6-12 years
- dormant sexual pleasure
- sexual impulses are submerged in the unconscious
“boys are yucky”
85
Q
genital stage
A
- 12+
- renewed sexual impulses, emergence of mature romantic relationships
86
Q
defense mechansims
A
- Freud proposed that the ego protects itself from anxiety with defenses - tactics that reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality (defense mechanisms). Freud: Excessive reliance on these reveals pathology.
- repression
- regression
- reaction formation
- projection
- rationalization
- displacement
- sublimation
- There is little scientific support for many Freudian defence mechanisms as explained by psychoanalytic theory.
- Modern researchers suggests that these mechanisms do not relieve unconscious conflict over libidinal desires. Instead, defense mechanisms protect self-esteem
87
Q
repression
A
- rids anxious thoughts and feelings from consciousness. Freudians assert that infantile amnesia is caused by repression. However, research has found infantile amnesia in mice and rats
- a person who has witnessed a traumatic combat scene finds himself unable to remember it
88
Q
regression
A
- retreat to an earlier, more infantile stage of development. A child may regress to the oral comfort of thumb-sucking when under stress.
- college student sucks thumb during a difficult exam
89
Q
reaction formation
A
- turning an anxiety-provoking feeling into its opposite. Feelings of inadequacy become bravado (overconfident). Overcompensating. Harley riders have small penises?
- a married woman who’s sexually attracted to a coworker experiences hatred and revulsion toward him
90
Q
projection
A
- unconscious attribution of our negative traits to others. “He doesn’t trust me” may really mean “I don’t trust him”.
- a married man with powerful unconscious sexual impulses toward females complains that other women are always “after him”
91
Q
rationalization
A
- unconsciously generating reasonable-sounding explanations for our failures. Bill says he didn’t get the job because he “doesn’t have connections”.
- a political candidate who loses an election convinces herself that she didn’t really want that position after all
92
Q
displacement
A
- diverts an impulse from a socially unacceptable target onto a safer, more acceptable target. Angry at his parents, a child kicks his dog (punch the wall)
- golfer angrily throws his club into the woods after missing an easy putt
93
Q
sublimation
A
- turns a socially unacceptable impulse into an admired goal. Working out at the gym 7 days a week because you aren’t having sex.
- a boy who enjoys beating up on other children grows up to become a successful professional boxer
94
Q
criticisms of psychoanalytic theory
A
1) unfalsifiability
2) failed predictions
3) lack of evidence for defence mechanisms
4) questionable conception of the unconscious
5) unrepresentative samples
6) flawed assumption of shared environment influence (behaviour-genetic studies have shown that shared environment plays little or no role in adult personality)
95
Q
wrong of freud
A
- Freud and others believed that dreams only occurred for a few seconds.
- Freud claimed that “wish fulfillment is the meaning of every dream”. If so, we’d expect dream content to be mostly positive. However, positive dreams are less frequent than negative ones. And nightmares clearly aren’t wish fulfillments and they aren’t at all uncommon in either adults or children.
- Freud believed that most dreams are sexual in nature. But sexual themes account for about only 10% of dreams we recall
- Freud claimed that dreams are disguised wishes. Yet up to 90% of dream reports are straightforward descriptions of everyday activities and problems, like talking to friends
- Painful memories, such as memories of the Holocaust are not repressed, but well remembered, if anything, remembered too well
- Freud suggested that personality develops fully by age 6. If this was true you would expect to see much more trait stability in children.
96
Q
right of freud
A
- Freud suggested that early loss can render us vulnerable to depression later in life. Evidence suggests this is true
- Freud noted that some memories are reconstructive
97
Q
projective tests
A
- Projective tests - test consisting of ambiguous stimuli that examinees must interpret or make sense of (inkblots)
- This clinician presumes that the hopes, fears, and interests expressed in this boy’s descriptions of a series of ambiguous pictures in the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) are projections of his inner feelings.
- Consists of 31 cards depicting ambiguous interpersonal situations
- Shown a daydreaming boy, those who imagine he is pondering achievement goals are presumed to be projecting their own goals.
- Projective tests aim to provide a “personality x- ray” by presenting an ambiguous stimulus and then asking test-takers to describe it or tell a story about it.
- TAT interpretations do not generate scores with adequate reliability or validity. And TAT scores often fail to distinguish mental disorders (e.g., depression vs. nonpatients) or to correlate in predicted directions with personality traits
98
Q
ability of clinical judgement
A
- Loren & Chapman showed college students a series of concocted human figure drawings containing certain physical features (such as large eyes and large genitals) along with a random description of the personality traits of the person who supposedly produced each drawing (such as paranoid and overly concerned about sexuality).
- They then asked subjects to estimate the extent to which these physical features and personality traits co-occurred in the drawings
- Students who believed that suspicious people draw suspicious eyes on the test perceived just that, even when shown cases where suspicious people drew peculiar eyes LESS often than non-suspicious people. This is called..An Illusory correlation
- Of note, these were the same drawing features that experienced clinicians tend to believe are associated with these traits - and which research has shown to be invalid
- The Barnum Effect
99
Q
The Barnum effect
A
the tendency of people to accept descriptions that apply to almost everyone as applying specifically to them (horoscope). It demonstrates that personal validation (subjective judgments of accuracy) - is a flawed method of evaluating a test’s validity. We may be convinced that the results of a personality test fit us to a “T”, but that doesn’t mean the test is valid.
100
Q
cognitive errors
A
- Why do clinicians show confidence in uninformative tests?
- They may believe that a relationship exists between two things, and are likely to notice confirming instances. This is…Confirmation Bias! Look and you will find!
- Clinicians can be fooled, because things that seem similar on the surface don’t always go together in real life. This is called ….The Representativeness heuristic!
- They may only easily recall cases in which drawing signs correspond to personality traits! This is called..The Availability Heuristic!
- Although some claim that the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is helpful for predicting job performance and satisfaction, research on its reliability and validity is unfavourable. Most respondents don’t obtain the same MBTI personality type on retesting only a few months later, and MBTI scores don’t relate in especially consistent ways to either the Big Five or measures of job preferences
- Personal experience, while useful in generating hypotheses, can mislead when it comes to testing them. Only scientific methods, that are safeguards against human error, allow us to determine whether we should trust our personal experience or disregard it in favour of evidence to the contrary.
101
Q
criminal profiling
A
- Investigative strategy used by law enforcement agencies to identify likely suspects and has been used by investigators to link cases that may have been committed by the same perpetrator.
- derives from the Barnum Effect
- Granted, if we’re probing a homicide, we’ll do better than chance by guessing that the murderer was a male between the age of 15 and 25, with psychological problems (most murders are committed by men, between these ages, who have suffers from such problems).
- But criminal profilers purport to go beyond such statistics. They typically claim to be able to harness years of experience to outperform statistical formulas. Yet, there’s no convincing evidence that they do better than statistical formulas that take into account the psychological traits of known murderers.
- Research finds that police officers can’t distinguish genuine criminal profiles from bogus criminal profiles consisting of vague and general personality traits (e.g., “he has deep-seated issues with hostility”). This suggests that profilers may base their conclusions about criminals on little more than Barnum statements
- Criminal profiling may be more of an urban legend than a scientifically demonstrated ability. Yet tradition dies hard, and the FBI, RCMP, and other organizations remain in the full-time business of training criminal profilers.
102
Q
Graphology
A
- The psychological interpretation of handwriting. Over 3000 firms in the US have used graphology and some use it to detect dishonest behavior in potential employees
- Graphologists use handwriting signs that rely heavily on the representative heuristic (some handwriting features bear a superficial similarity to certain traits, so it’s assumed they go together. Some graphologists claim that those who cross their t’s with little whips are sadistic)
- Graphological interpretations have low reliability. Goldenburg gave professional graphologists a person’s writing but said that it was made by different people over time. The interpretations changed whenever they believed it was made by a different person.
- Well controlled studies show no correlation between handwriting and personality traits or job performance. And graphologists typically make vague and hard to verify predictions (eg. honest, insightful) yet refuse to predict the gender of writers (untrained people guess right 70% of the time).
- Positive graphological studies have used autobiographies of participants, which could have yielded cues to their personalities rather than their handwriting. When participants wrote identical passages, the validities of graphological interpretations plummeted to about zero.
103
Q
trait perspective
A
- Trait researchers attempt to define personality based on stable and enduring behavior patterns.
- Factor analysis – statistical technique that analyzes the correlations among responses on personality inventories and other measures
- If people who describe themselves as outgoing also say they like excitement and dislike quiet reading, such a statistically correlated cluster of behaviours reflects a basic factor, or trait – extraversion
- sociability, popularity, liveliness = extraversion
- risk taking, sensation seeking, and impulsivity = fearlessness
104
Q
Assessing Traits: 5 Factor Analysis
A
- Personality inventories: questionnaires designed to assess several traits. NEO Personality Inventory!!
- Design to assess normal personalities (not disordered personality)
- Big Five - five traits that have surfaced repeatedly in factor analyses of personality measures (extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience) OCEAN or CANOE
- Extraversion: sociability and liveliness
- Neuroticism: emotional instability (tense and moody)
- Conscientiousness: dependability (careful and responsible)
- Agreeableness: friendliness (easy to get along with)
- Openness to experience: open-mindedness (intellectual curiosity)
- In adulthood, the Big Five traits are quite stable
- The Big Five dimensions describe personality in various cultures reasonably well
- High openness to experience and agreeableness, and low neuroticism, are associated with successful job performance and good grades. Extroversion may be positively related to sales performance.
- Mentally stable people tend to get median scores for all, mentally ill people tend to get extreme scores (very high or very low)
