Lecture 4

PSYCHOLOGICAL LITERACY

 Most important selection criteria when recruiting graduates:

o Interpersonal & communication
o Cultural alignment/values fit
o Emotional intelligence
 Least admirable characteristics:
o Arrogance
o Poor communication skills
 Scientific literacy
o Capacity to apply skills to everyday life and the workplace
 Describe, explain, predict natural phenomena
 Engage in social conversation about validity of conclusions
 Evaluate quality of scientific information on basis of source & methods
used
 Identify scientific issues underlying national & local decisions
 Psychological literacy
o Ability to apply psychological knowledge to personal, family, occupational,
community, and societal challenges
 Understand basic principles and concepts of psychology
 Having problem solving skills
 Acting ethically
 Critical evaluation
 Having self-awareness and cultural competence/respect
 Thinking stages – analytic vs. intuitive
o Analytic -> logical -> psychologically literate
o Intuitive -> initial assumptions -> cognitive short cuts
 The “dress” dilemma
o Colour constancy
 Day time people think it’s white; night time people think it’s black
 Gender role conformity
o More men binge drink & get drunk in public because it’s seen as more acceptable
o More men are aggressive for the same reason
 Women find aggressive men more attractive; men are also respectful of
other aggressive men
 Men find aggressive women less attractive; women also don’t like other
aggressive women

Lecture 5
PATHWAYS TO REGISTRATION

1. 4 + 2 internship program
 3 year degree + diploma
 Honours degree
2. 5 + 1 internship program (under development)
3. Accredited professional degree (masters or doctoral)

 Emotional problems affect us all (Wesley Mission, 2010) – why we need psychologists:
o 53% of people have had psychological disorder by that point in their life
o In that year, 26% of people had a psychological disorder
o There are about 200 disorders in DSM but normally only 30 gets tested; therefore
these numbers are excluding additional disorders
 7% of people would not see a doctor for a physical problem but 55% would not seek help for
a psychological problem
 Future changes & implications
 o Macquarie university is moving towards a 5 year degree (3 + 2)
o All students must complete a Masters program (advice: get into 4 th year program
and complete training ASAP)
 Non-psychologist alternatives
o School/relationship counseling
o Coaching
o Well-being

Lecture 6
HUMAN AGGRESSION

 Violence is aggression that has extreme harm as its goal

 All violence is aggression, but not all aggression is violence
 Anger and aggression are different. Anger is an emotion, and can be channeled (e.g. Martin
Luther King, Gandhi, Mother Theresa), whilst aggression is a behaviour
 Human aggression peaks between ages 2-4, as you have no frontal lobe, and no conflict
resolution ability. All you know is to hit someone to get what you want.
 Animal behaviour:
o Males are more likely to attack/fight
o The “Hydraulic Hypothesis”
 Aggression is instinctual, not caused by environment
 Needs to be released regularly or aggression becomes pent up
 COMPLETELY UNTRUE, LACKS EMPIRICAL SUPPORT
o Animal research has problems with generalizing to humans, as our frontal lobe is
much bigger/better, which allows greater ability to override our instincts and
automatic behaviour.
 Personality:
o We don’t diagnose people as psychopaths; the proper diagnosis is Anti-Social
Personality Disorder
o People with Anti-Social Personality Disorder, Narcissistic & Borderline Personality
Disorder are all very aggressive
o Conduct Disorder in children is the precursor to Anti-Social Personality Disorder
o Intermittent Explosive Disorder -> uncontrollable rages
o Adjustment Disorder with conduct disturbance
o Problems often related to abuse or neglect
 Additions (esp. alcohol, amphetamines, ice) have the ability to turn off your frontal lobe,
therefore linking with aggression
 Neural networks
o When we experience something a cluster of neurons (a node) is set aside to
recognise it again
o When we experience it again, the node becomes activated and the more often
nodes are activated together, the stronger the links become.
o Because of these links, activating one node will begin to activate linked nodes.
o E.g. the more aggression & violence we experience, the greater the number of
nodes and strength of connections.
 Cognitive Neo-Association Theory
o Assumes that memories, emotions, thoughts, and plans for action are linked
together in the brain in the neural network manner
o What’s most activated in the brain, drives your behaviour
o Fight tendencies -> anger
Flight tendencies -> fear
 Script Theory
o When a situation is very familiar, we tend to play things out in a similar way until the
response becomes automatic
 Emotions linked with aggression
 o Anger
o Shame
o Humiliation
o Jealousy
o Frustration-Aggression hypothesis
 Frustration in pursuit of pleasure
 When blocked from attaining a goal, frustration ensues and leads to anger
 NOT ALWAYS TRUE, BUT OFTEN IS
 Developmental psychology
o Constancy of trait aggression across lifespan
o Influence of parents, media, environment
o Gene-environment interactions -> EPIGENETICS
 Psychopathic & aggressive genetic market
 Polymorphism in serotonin transporter gene
 Polymorphism causes kids to not learn from punishment very well,
however if parents persist and are warm, kind, and loving, by the
age of 5, their kids look just like regular kids
 If parents are cold and harsh then their kids look very different
from regular kids and end up doing crimes, taking drugs etc.
o Hostile Attribution bias -> always assume peoples actions are hostile
 Evolutionary psychology
o Aggression is “hard-wired”
o Reproductive success, survival of the fittest
 Mate guarding
 Defending against attack
 Deterring infidelity
 Health psychology
o Type A personality and heart disease
o Anger & hypertension
o Alcoholism and aggression
o Injury, recovery, and trauma
 In car accidents people tend to become more aggressive due to injury to
their frontal lobe as frontal lobe inhibits behaviours and thinks through
consequences
 Also activates limbic system (“old” part of brain) in charge of primitive
instincts & survival -> especially in amygdala (emotion centre)
 Learning theories
o Explains both acquisition and maintenance of aggressive behaviour
o Aggression is often learned:
 Classical conditioning
 Operant/instrumental conditioning
 Reward aggression
 Not punishing aggression
 Punishing non-aggression
 Seen at home or on TV
 Social learning -> copying role models
o More likely to copy role models who are liked and
respected, familiar or similar, rewarded for their
behaviours, and if we have self-efficacy for aggression
o Imitation is hard-wired from birth
o Neural networks
o What we learn shapes development
 Neurological approaches
o 16-17 genes are linked to aggressive behaviour, but not directly linked
  Usually in conjunction with environment or predisposition (e.g. impulsivity)
that enhances likelihood of aggression
 Therefore no gene makes a person aggressive, just genes that link to traits
or temperament variables that influences aggression
o Serotonin deficits linked to aggression
 Serotonin linked with impulse control -> lower serotonin, lower impulse
control
 Serotonin deficits also linked with depression & anxiety, so if you’re
clinically depressed you’re likely to be prescribed a serotonin reuptake
inhibitor to increase serotonin levels
o Dopamine also linked to impulsivity, which is linked to aggression
o High testosterone also linked to aggression; especially when low cortisol &
serotonin
o Low cortisol, low oxytocin, low oestrogen, low progesterone
 Biological approaches
o Damage to frontal lobes -> more aggressive behaviour
 Orbitofrontal cortex
 Anterior cingulate cortex
 Dorsolateral frontal cortex
o People who are more aggressive tend to have less arousal
 Lower resting heart rate
 Under-arousal of central nervous system & autonomic nervous system
 Lower basal cortical levels (stress hormones)
 Personality approaches
o Sigmund Freud -> aggressive drive
o Impulsivity
o Trait anger
o Emotional susceptibility
o Callous & unemotional traits – Dark Triad
 Psychopathy
 Machiavellianism
 Narcissism
o Shame proneness
o Rumination (low dissipation)
o Big 5
 High neuroticism
 Low everything else
 Big “6” HEXACO
 Low honesty/humility
 Social psychology
o Aggression elicited by situation rather than personality
o Cognitive dissonance theory
o Social cognition
 Scripts, schemas
 Learned social behaviours
 Triggers & cues
 Media effects
 Automaticity, priming
 General Aggression Model
o Incorporates individual & situational aspects that trigger aggression
 Immediate arousal -> automatic response
Reappraisal -> search for alternate view of situation
If immediate arousal is both important and unsatisfying, people will engage in a more
effortful set of appraisals.

Lecture 7
 MEDIA PSYCHOLOGY

 Teenagers are consuming almost 9 hours of media each day on average

 Estimated in 1992 that by 18 y.o. US children have witnessed 200,000 acts of violence and
8,000 murders on TV alone -> more recent estimate is 40,000 murders
 Effects of violent media
o Both short & long term effects
o Increases aggressive behaviour
o Emotional desensitization to violence
o People become more fearful
o Hostile attribution bias
o Increase in normative beliefs approving aggression
o Aggressive problem solving scripts
o Violent media use is a stronger risk factor for aggression than abusive parenting and
violent neighbourhoods
 Underlying psychological processes
o Biology
 Amygdala
o Initiates fight or flight
o Senses danger
 Posterior cingulate
o Associated with trauma memories
 Prefrontal cortex
o Disinhibition of aggression
 Right hemisphere
o Negative emotions -> positive tends to be in left
hemisphere
 Violent media involves
 Reduced involvement of prefrontal cortex -> responsible for
rational planning and inhibition
 Activation of limbic system, starting with amygdala
 Selective activation of right hemisphere
 Appears that violence images are stored in posterior cingulate ->
patterns are similar to the memory storage of traumatic events by
PTSD patients
o Psychological acquisition
 Imitation -> mirror neurons
 Aggression rewarded & non-punished
 Pairing aggressive behaviour with multiple cues
 Scripts & neural networks
o Psychological remediation
 In a maximum security forensic hospital, after removing MTV for 22 weeks,
there was a 32.4% reduction in verbal aggression, 51.7% reduction in
aggression against objects, and 47.5% reduction in aggression against
others.
o In the DSM-V (2013), there was a new possible addition added to the appendix:
 Internet Gaming Disorder
 Screen addiction to online gaming
 In China, neuroimaging studies have found that in screen addicts
had the same pattern of neural activation as ice/heroin addicts,
alcoholics, and gambling addicts
o First few years of child’s life involves significant and rapid brain development
 A child of 3 years old has 3x the synaptic connections that use 3x the
amount of glucose as an adult
 o Adolescence is the other crucial time in development, as brain gets rid of 2/3 of
those synaptic connections, and wires the others in more strongly. The neurons
work more efficiently and faster, with more capacity for processing.
o Violent media seems to activate emotion centres and bypass behavioural inhibition
mechanisms such as those in the frontal lobe.
o Changes to neural networks via learning – associative, instrumental, imitative

Lecture 8
PSYCHOLOGY OF DRIVING

 Psychology of driving = traffic psychology

 Men are around 3x more likely to end up in a fatal car crash
 Annual deaths from crashes involving younger drivers have decreased whilst deaths with
older drivers have increased.
 Unsafe Acts
o Unintended action
 Slip – attentional failure (e.g. distraction)
 Lapse – memory failure (e.g. forgetting in school zone after traffic light)
o Intended action
 Mistake – rule & knowledge mistakes (e.g. wrong lane exiting roundabout)
 Violation – intentional non-compliance (e.g. texting & driving)
o Slip, lapse, and mistakes are ‘human errors’
 Males take more risks both as drivers & pedestrians
 Developmental factors:
o Dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex not fully developed till around 25.
o Prefrontal cortex involved in:
 Impulse control
 Coordinating/adjusting complex behaviour
 Focusing and organising attention
 Considering and prioritizing competing & simultaneous information
 Ability to ignore external distractions
o Drivers aged <21 are involved in 2x more crashes than 21+
o Older drivers are more fragile and are more likely to suffer fatal injuries in crash
 They also have impaired vision, cognition, and lower motor functions
 More likely to crash at intersections where right hand turn is involved
 Older drivers’ fatigue cycle starts around 10pm
 Speeding is the greatest cause of driving fatalities
 Personality factors
o Type A personality
o Aggressiveness
o Sensation-seeking personality
 Cognitive factors
o Effort or arousal -> excitability/fatigue
o Capacity of resources -> for information processing
o Selective attention -> allocation of attention
 Perceptual factors
o Rain
 Reduces contrast
 Headlight beams reflect into driver’s eyes, instead of obstacles on road ->
“back scatter”
o Night
 Road marking can’t reflect light
o Fog
 We judge motion to be slower and is more difficult to differentiate
between moving and still objects
 How do we change drivers’ behaviours?
 o 3 E’s
 Enforcement
 Education
 Engineering
 We have biased decision making
o Underestimate own risk, and think we’re invulnerable
o Risk factors such as speed and BAC increase exponentially, but we tend to think they
increase linearly

Lecture 9
PROFESSIONAL ORGANISATION

 What is the APS?

o Largest professional membership organisation for psychology
o Advice, guidance, and support for members
o Distinct from Psychology Board of Australia (PsyBA)
 What does the APS do?
o Advocates for psychology and wellbeing of Australians
o Committed to advancing the field for students
 APS commits to community health and wellbeing
o Promotes contribution to psychology through:
 Disaster relief and recover support
 Advocating for Indigenous mental health & wellbeing
 Online APS Find a Psychologist service
 Community Awareness campaigns
 Submissions to government, position statements, and literature reviews on
community issues
 Advocacy & media campaigns in support of community access to
psychological services
 APS offerings to psych student members:
o Networking and professional development opportunities
o Discounted rates for events, conferences, and workshops
o Access to member-only professional & ethical resources
o Evidence-based practitioner tools & resources
o Free online APS journal access
 APS provides range of resources & information to guide students on their career journeys
including:
o APS Psych Student HQ
o “AskAPS”
o Psychologists’ Stories
o Social media
o Range of APS awards, grants, & scholarships
o Member Assistance Centre phone support
 Networking opportunities
o Social media
o Mentoring events
o APS conferences
o 9 APS Colleges
o 43 APS Branches
o 48 APS Interest Groups
 Benefits for Early Career Psychologists
o Reduced APS membership fees (save up to 50%)
o Discounted professional indemnity insurance
o PsychXchangejobs website
o College Supervisors Directory
 o Member directories for networking and peer consultation
o Member rates for professional development
o Access to the APS online professional development logging tool
o AskAPS phone and email advice services
 APS student subscribers
o Up to 15 months membership for price of 12
o Free copy of the APS Code of Ethics and Ethical Guidelines (normally $90 for non-
members)
 What is the PsyBA?
o Government appointed regulatory body for psychologists and a separate
organisation from the APS
o Functions include:
 Registration of psychologists
 Setting registrations requirements
 Handling notifications, complaints, investigations, and disciplinary hearings