Week 1 (Psych Theory + Values, Attitudes) Flashcards
What is psychology?
The study of mental activity and behaviour of human (…)
What is a psychologist?
- Used broadly
- Someone whose career involves understanding mental life or predicting behaviour (Not all psychologists study, asses and treat people with psych disorders –> That is the focus of Clinical Psychology (W12 Tutorial) –> e.g. Psychologists who work side by side with police: They don’t treat any patients but they see the suspects and try to figure out whether they are lying or not, how to persuade/ trick the criminals to tell the truth, or I guess that when IS was still threatening other people’s lives and kidnap many people to scare the governments, maybe psychologists would work to predict what are the next steps of the IS)
- Generally seek to understand mental activity (both normal and abnormal), the biological basis of that activity, how people change following the ageing, how people vary in response to social settings, and how people acquire behaviours (both healthy and unhealthy)
What is psych science?
The study, through research, of mind, brain and behaviour
How has psychology theory and thinking evolved over time?
- Before: For many years, psychological science largely focused on behaviour rather than on “mental states” due to inadequate objective techniques for assessing the “mind”
- Current: The advent of technology to observe the working brain in action has enabled psychologists to study mental states and have a fuller understanding of human behaviour
What does psychology theory offer to Allied Health Professionals to support critical thinking and reasoning skills?
- Provide basic, state-of-the-art understanding about the methods of psychological science
- Provide good understanding of the field’s major issues, theories, and controversies
= Make you become psychologically literate
→ Enable you to avoid common misunderstandings about psychology, separate the believable from the incredible, and spot the poorly designed ones
→ Build skills for critical evaluation of scientific research findings claimed in the popular media
In order to understand human behaviour, what do psychologists do?
Examine how humans think, feel, act and learn
When applying psychological theories to people from different cultures, what to keep in mind?
Different cultures other than the Western ones have culturally different ways of understanding psychology (human thoughts and behaviours) (…)
Why are there different subfields in Psychology?
Psychology is a broad field and there are many topics and therefore many questions and problems arising from different perspectives –> Psychology has branched into subfields that focus on questions and problems from a specific perspective
What is Social/ Cultural/ Health/ Clinical Psychology?
- Social: Groups/ Others influence one’s behaviours
- Cultural: Cultural factors/ Societal rules that dictate behaviour in one’s cultures influence one’s behaviours
- Health: Biological, psychological/ behavioural, and social/ environmental factors influence human health and illness
- Clinical: Assessment and treatment of mental illness, maladaptive behaviour and psych disorders; Etiologies and treatments of psych disorders
- p.24
Distinguish Health & Clinical Psychology?
Why allied health professionals need to have a grounding in/ an awareness of psychological theory and principles?
- Collaborative and comprehensive practice between the health professional and the client: One client’s cognitions and behaviours are shaped/ driven/ affected by multiple factors, and there are differences in cognitions and behaviours related to healthcare between professionals and clients or among clients –> Psychology provides us insights into/ knowledge about the factors and the reasons behind these differences
–> The professionals can understand the client (their cognitions and behaviours - e.g. their motivation to work towards health goals, their perceptions of health and illness which may be different from ours, …) + tailor assessments and treatments to be appropriate for the client and meet their unique needs and circumstances (i.e. provide appropriate care to the client) + work effectively within broader social contexts (e.g. advocate for greater policies which improve the distribution of healthcare facilities and workforce in order to work towards to equity in healthcare - because certain of the forces on one’s cognitions and behaviours are not under their own control, are not individual factors but broader contextual factors; e.g. (self-made examples) learning about moden prejudice/ racism helps me realise that sometimes even though people who explicitly reject racist attitudes don’t really have no negative attitudes at all and if we aren’t aware of this, we can even be the ones who show modern prejudice and stop advocating for fighting against prejudice because we think it’s not there anymore –> Mình nhớ có bài báo nào hay khúc nào mình từng đọc bảo là bên Mỹ mấy người da trắng sẽ thường được bác sĩ chữa cách nhẹ nhàng hơn, tốt hơn)
What are attitudes?
- Feelings, opinions and beliefs about (i.e. evaluations of) particular things which could be a person, an idea, an object, or an event.
- The way one thinks and feels towards a person or a thing
- How you treat others and approach situations
- One’s learned tendency evaluate things in a particular way
- Shape how we evaluate and interact with other people and things
How attitudes are formed/ shaped, develop, and change?
- In childhood, our attitudes develop from our parents, friends and society they grew up in
–> We grow through adolescence and into adulthood = Develop our own attitudes
–> We then may discard some attitudes we inherited during child and adopt new ones as the result of new experiences and learning - We form attitudes through experience and socialisation
+ Encounter new things (people/ objects/ situations) -> Gain information that shapes our attitudes
–> Processes by which our attitudes are shaped through experiences
+ Mere-exposure effect: The more we are exposed to sth, the more we tend to like it
+ Conditioning (classical, operant): Our associations between things and their meaning can change and this leads to that attitudes can be (re)conditioned and thus modified (W2 Behaviourism John B. Watson)
+ Socialisation: Other people (not only parents, friends but also teachers, politicians, media figures, …) guide our attitudes about many things + Society instills many basic attitudes (e.g. which things are edible)
What are features of attitudes?
- Are enduring, but can change through new experiences and learning
- Explicit attitudes: We know about, we are consciously aware of, we can report them to others; Held consciously
- Implicit attitudes: Influence our feelings and behaviours at an unconscious level; Subconscious to us; Remain below conscious awareness
- Have an important influence on behaviour
How attitudes influence behaviour?
- Attitudes stronger and more personally relevant = Are more likely to predict behaviour
- Attitudes more specific = More predictive of behaviour
- Attitudes formed through direct experience = More predictive of behaviour
- How quickly the attitudes come to mind, how easily activated they are, how quickly you recall them = The attitudes are more stable, predictive of behaviour and resistant to change (*This reminds me of Availability Heuristic W8)
