Week 12 - Overlap and Integration among Perspectives

Question 1

Commonality between psychodynamic and evolutionary

Answer 1

Sum: Leak and Christopher (1982) suggested that the ego (conscious rationality) is a behavioral management system, for which the id and the superego provide motivation. There are two types of motivation—selfish and group-related—with adaptive value. The id adapts to the physical environment, where competition for resources is intense and selfish. The superego comprises the tendencies that evolved in response to pressures from group living.

Details:

Leak and Christopher (1982) noted that the evolutionary view sees behavior as self-serving, as does the Id, which is primitive and single-minded about its desires. The id represents the self-interested animal that our genes make us, as those genes try to continue their existence.

The id isn’t rational, and neither are genes. Leak and Christopher (1982) argued that genes also need help in dealing with the complexities of reality and that the cerebral cortex evolved to serve this purpose. Evolution of the cortex in humans would parallel evolution of the ego in the person. Both structures—cortex and ego—permit greater planfulness and care in decision making. Both are adaptations that foster survival.

Because people are so interdependent, they sometimes do better in the long run by letting group needs override personal needs in the short run - superego. Mirror neurons. Empathy. reciprocal altruism.

Question 2

Self-regulatory and psychoanalytic similarity

Answer 2

(heirarchy)
When attention is diverted from the higher levels, behavior is more spontaneous and responsive to cues of the moment. It’s as though low-level action sequences, once triggered, run off by themselves. In contrast to this impulsive style of behavior, actions being regulated according to higher-order values (programs or principles) have a more carefully managed character.

Aspects of this description hint at similarities to Freud’s three-part view of personality. It’s worth noting, though, that alcohol intoxication and deindividuation, which seem to reduce control at high levels (see Chapter 13), often lead to sexual or destructive activity.

An obvious difference is Freud’s assumption that id impulses are primarily sexual or aggressive, whereas the self-­regulation model makes no such assumption. The link between id processes and low-level control is a bit tenuous

Program control involves planning, decision making, and behavior that’s pragmatic, as opposed to either impulsive or principled. These qualities also characterize the ego’s functioning.

Levels higher than program control resemble, in some ways, the functioning of the superego.

Question 3

Perceptual defense

Answer 3

Screening out a threatening stimulus before it enters awareness.

Question 4

Preparedness

Answer 4

The idea that some conditioning is easy, because the animal is biologically prepared for it to happen.