Introduction to Psychology

• Psychology is scientific study of behaviors and mental processes

• Psychologist use scientific methods to describe, predict and explain human behavior and
mental processes

• In psychology, evidence and proof is necessary whereas it is not in philosophy

Subfields of Psychology

• Behavioral Neuroscience: How does the brain and the nervous system (+ other
biological elements) affect behavior

• Cognitive Psychology: Focuses on thinking, memory, problem solving, reasoning,

judging, problem solving etc

• Developmental Psychology: Studies how people grow and change

• Personality Psychology: Focuses on the consistency in people’s behavior and how traits

differentiate

• Health Psychology: Explains relationships between psychological ailments and

diseases

• Clinical Psychology: Study, diagnosis and treatments of disorders

• Counseling Psychology: Educational, career and social adjustment problems

• Social Psychology: How people’s thoughts actions and feelings affect others

• Cross-cultural Psychology: Similarities and differences between different ethnic groups’

psychologies

• Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Psychology applied in workplaces

Roots of Psychology

• Buddha: World is subjective, perspectives form ideas

• Confucius: Memories are not passive

• Socrates & Plato: Mind is separable from body, pre-existing knowledge exists

• John Locke: Tabula Rasa

• Wilhelm Wundt: Father of experimental psychology, structuralism and introspection

• Structuralism: Uncovers fundamental mental components of consciousness and thinking

• Introspection: Description of emotions when exposed to a stimulus (Description of emotions

can be hard and inaccurate sometimes) (Looking inward)

• William James: Investigates purpose of consciousness not its structure

• Functionalism: What mind does and how behavior functions

• Gestalt Psychology: Whole is different form parts, what you perceive depends on your focus,
may be shaped by social psychology

Today’s Perspectives in Psychology

• Neuroscience: Views behavior from the perspective of brain and nervous system

(Humans are basically animals)

• Cognitive: Focuses on how consciousness and unconsciousness deals with senses and

thinking processes, how people think and understand the world (McGurk Effect: Ba-Fa)

• Behavioral: Observable behavior is the focus od study (John Watson’s Little Albert

Experiment: Phobias and behaviors can be learned)

• Psychodynamic: Behavior is motivated by inner forces and conflicts (Little or no

awareness/control)

• Humanistic: All people are good and have free will, conflicts with determinism)

Key Issues

• Nature vs Nurture: How much of our behavior is based on heredity and environment

• Conscious vs Unconscious: How much of our behavior is produced by forces which

we’re fully aware of

• Observable Behavior vs Internal Mental Processing: Should psychology only focus on

behavior or should it focus on unseen thinking processes

• Freewill vs Determinism

• Individual Differences vs Universal Principles: How much of behavior reflects unique

quality and how much reflects culture and society

Personality

• Pattern of enduring characteristics that produce consistency and individuality in a person

• Reflection of who we are

Different Approaches to Personality

• Humanistic Approach: Emphasized people’s innate goodness

• Self Actualization: Self fulfillment where people realize their full potential

• Unconditional Positive Regard: Attitude of unconditional acceptance and respect

• Advantages: Development of a form of therapy, highlight uniqueness of humans

• Limitations: Difficult to verify basic assumptions of the approach

• Biological and Evolutionary Approach: Important components of personality are

inherited by genes
 • Genes are not the sole cause of personality, their interaction with the environment
shapes who we are

• Learning Approaches: Skinner’s Behavioral Approach “Personality is a combination of

learned behavior”

• Humans are infinitely changeable (repeated observation the others’ behavior

• Social Cognitive Approaches: Emphasize the influence of a persons cognitions and

observation other’s behavior

• Self-esteem: Encompasses our positive and negative self-evaluations

• Advantages: Made personality into a scientific venture

• Limitations: Has a deterministic point of view

• Trait Theory: Seeks to identify basic traits to describe personality

• Trait: Consistent personality characteristics and behaviors

• All people possess certain traits but their degree changes

• Big Five Personality Factors: Openness to experience, conscientiousness,

extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism

• Advantages: Straightforward explanation of behavioral consistency, allows for

comparison

• Limitations: Trait conception of personality is questionable, only describes behavior

doesn’t explain

• Psychodynamic Approaches: Personality is unconsciousness and motivated by inner

forces and conflicts which people have no awareness or control over

• Freud: “To understand personality, we must understand the unconscious”

• Unconscious: Dreams, drives, urges, slip of tongue

• Personality=Id+Ego+Superego

• Id: Raw, unorganized, animal part of personality, reduces the tension created by
primitive drives, “pleasure principle=reduce tension, maximize satisfaction”

• Ego: Balance between id & superego (outside world), “reality principle=reduces

instinctual energy to maintain safety

• Superego: Controls the impulses from id, represent rights and wrongs of society

• Freud: “Ego struggles to balance the demands of id and commands of superego”

 How Personality Develops

• Psychosexual Stages: Conflicts between demand of society (superego) and their

sexual urges (id) in all developmental stages in life, this creates personality

• Fixations: Psychosexual conflicts which are not resolved in developmental

stages

• Oral: Sucking, eating, mouthing, biting (12-18 months)

• Anal: Holding feces, toilet training (1-3 years)

• Phallic: Interest in genitals, coming to terms with Oedipal conflict (3-6 years)

• Latency: Sexual concerns largely unimportant (6-adolescence)

• Genital: Reemergence of sexual interests (adolescence-adulthood)

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

• Defence Mechanisms: Underlying dynamics of personality is related to anxiety

which arise from the conflict between id and superego, people use defence

mechanisms to reduce anxiety (distorting reality/concealing the source)

• Repression: Unpleasant impulses are pushed back to the unconscious

• Limitations: Unobservable, abstract concept, no evidence, is subjective and has

gender differences

Assessing Personality

• Self Report Measures: Asks people questions about a sample of their behavior to
determine personality (MMPI)

• Projective Personality Tests: Shown an ambiguous stimulus and asked to describe it

(Rorschach Test: Describe the symmetric ink pattern, Thematic Apperception Test/TAT:

Write a story about the image shown)

Psychological Disorders

• Abnormal Behavior: Causes people to experience distress and prevents them from
functioning in their daily lives, it’s a continuum(spectrum)

Perspectives on Abnormality

• Medical Perspective: Abnormal behavior of an individual has the source found in

physical examination (Brain injury, hormonal imbalance, chemical deficiency)

• Psychoanalytic Perspective: Sees abnormal behavior caused by childhood conflicts

over opposing wishes regarding sex and aggression

• Behavioral Perspective: Claims abnormal behavior to be a learned behavior

 • Cognitive Perspective: Assumes people’s thoughts and beliefs to be the cause of
abnormal behavior

• Humanistic Perspective: People have responsibility of their behavior even it is abnormal

• Sociocultural Perspective: People’s behavior is shaped by the society and their culture

• DSM-5: Used to diagnose and classify (precise) abnormal behavior, communication between
mental health professors and theoretical approaches

• David Rosenhan: Sent people to mental hospital whether they heard voices or not, pseudo-
patients acted normal after that but they were still diagnosed with several abnormalities,

after initial diagnosis mental health professionals overlook other diagnostic possibilities

Disorders

• Anxiety Disorders: Occurrence of anxiety without any any obvious cause that affects
daily functioning

• Phobic Disorders:Intense and irrational fear of an object or situation

• Social: Public speaking, eating in front of others etc

• Agoraphobia: Being away from a safe place or a person that makes you feel safe

• Specific: Heights, snakes, flying etc

• Panic Disorder: Anxiety rises to a peak, person feels doom and leads to panic attacks

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Long term persistent anxiety and worry, accompanied

by physical symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, muscle tension, insomnia etc

• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD): Persistent, unwanted thoughts followed by

repetitive behaviors formed to avoid the unwanted outcome

• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Disturbance caused by major traumatic event

(Re-experiencing, elevated arousal and anxiety, avoidance and numbing)

• Anxiety disorders are caused by biological causes, environmental factors and cognitive

perspective

• Somatoform Disorders: Psychological difficulty to take on a physical form without any

medical cause

• Hypochondriasis: Constant fear of illness

• Conversion Disorder: Physical disturbance such as inability to use a sensory organ,

the cause is purely psychological

• Dissociative Disorders: Separation of different facets of one’s personality

 • Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID): Person displays two or more distinct
personalities

• Dissociative Amnesia: Significant, selected memory loss (Forgotten memories are

repressed)

• Dissociative Fugue: Person leaves home and becomes someone else, after sometime
realizes the reality

• Mood Disorders: Disturbances in emotional experience intrudes on daily life

• Major Depression: Interferes with decision making, concentration and sociability

• Mania: Extended state of wild, intense elation

• Bipolar Disorder (Manic-Depressive Disorder): Periods of alternating mania and

depression, periods of depression are usually longer

• Schizophrenia: Distortion of reality occurs, disturbances of thought and language,

delusions and hallucinations,

• Causes: Biological, Environmental (Emotional and communication patterns of

families), Cognitive (Over-attention and under-attention to stimuli in the

environment), Multiple Causes (Predisposition Model: Inherit a predisposition or

inborn sensitivity to schizophrenia)

• Personality Disorders: Characterized by a maladaptive, inflexible behavior that makes

people not function accordingly in society

• Antisocial Personality Disorder: No regard of moral and ethical rules of society, very

manipulative, lack guilt or anxiety about wrongdoing

• Borderline Personality Disorder: Can’t develop a secure sense of who they are, tend

to depend on relationships to define themselves, impulsive and self-destructing

behavior, rejections are devastating, feel alone and empty

• Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Exaggerated sense of self-importance, expect

special treatment from others, inability to experience empathy

Treatments of Psychological Disorders

• Psychotherapy Approach: A therapist uses psychological techniques to help someone

overcome psychological difficulties and disorders, not enough if there is something wrong in

the body

• Biomedical Approach: Relies on drugs and medical procedures to improve psychological

functioning, work hand in hand with psychotherapy
• Eclectic Approach: Assumes psychological disorders to be product of both psychological and
biological processes, many perspectives should be considered

• Psychodynamic Approach: Seek to bring unresolved past conflicts from the unconscious to the
conscious

• Defence Mechanisms: Repression (Pushing unwanted memories to the unconscious)

• Psychoanalysis by Freud: Those memories can be reached by dream interpretation and free

association

• Manifest Content: Surface description

• Latent Content: Underlying meaning

• Resistance: Inability or unwillingness to reveal certain memories

• Transference: Transfer of feeling to the psychoanalyst that was originally directed to a

relative or close one

• Criticisms: Too expensive, takes lots of time, effectiveness of therapy cannot be

determined accurately because of subjectiveness, would be more effective on more

sociable patients

• Contemporary Psychodynamic Approaches: Less emphasis on childhood, shorter duration,

focuses on current relationships

• Behavioral Approach: Uses basic processes of learning like reinforcement

• Criticisms: Inside thoughts and expectations can’t be gained

• Benefits: Eliminates phobias, anxiety disorders and establishes control over impulses

Classical Conditioning Treatments

• Aversive Conditioning: Reduces frequency of undesired behavior

• Extinction of behavior will be seen eventually

• Systematic Desensitization: Gradual exposure to an anxiety producing stimulus paired

with relaxation (Muscle relaxation)

• Exposure Treatments: People confronted gradually/suddenly with a stimulus they fear

• Operant Conditioning Techniques to Treatment: Token system, contingency

contracting, observational learning

• Cognitive Approach: Teaches people to think in more adaptive ways by changing their
dysfunctional cognitions about the world and themselves

• Therapy is very structured and depends on concrete problems

• Cognitive Behavioral Approach: Uses basic learning behaviors to change how people think
 • Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy: Negative Activating Condition —> Irrational Belief
System —> Emotional Consequences

• Humanistic Therapy: People have control over their own problems and are responsible for
solving them, unconditional positive regard is visible

• Self-actualization: State of fulfillment where people realize their highest potential

• Criticism:Not specific, not precise, not scientifically proven or developed

• Group Therapy: Centers on a common difficulty like alcoholism

• Benefits: Timesaving and less costly

• Family Therapy: Focuses on the family and its dynamics

Effectiveness of Psychotherapy

• Works for most of the people but not all

• Client has a positive relationship with the therapist

• Receives explanation of their symptoms

• Able to confront negative emotions

Other Methods of Therapy

• Drug Therapy: Alters the operation between the brain and neurotransmitters.

• Antipsychotic Drugs: Temporarily reduce psychotic symptoms like hallucinations ,

may have long term side effects, symptoms may come again when drug is withdrawn

• Antidepressant Drugs: Improve the mood and feelings of a severely patient, works by
changing the specific concentrations of some neurotransmitters

• Mood Stabilizers: Treats mood disorders and prevents manic episodes of bipolar
disorders

• Antianxiety Drugs: Reduces anxiety by reducing the excitability and increasing the
feelings of well being, its combination with alcohol is very dangerous

• Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): Used in the treatment on severe depression

• 70-150 Volts of electric applies to patient’s head

• Causes seizures and loss of consciousness

• Transcranial Magnetic Simulation (TMS): An alternative to ECT, directs magnetic pulse

to specific areas of the brain

• Psychosurgery: Used to reduce the symptoms of a mental disorder

• Prefrontal Lobotomy: Surgically destroying or removing frontal lobes which control emotions

• Cingulotomy: Used in severe cases of OCD