PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES

Every living being is equipped to survive in the continually

changing environment. One has to be able to recognize
danger, find food, remember information, learn form
experience, communicate with others, etc.
Cognitive processes allow people to recognize their
environment thanks to sensation (using our five senses)
and perception (reasoning, thinking, speaking…), to
consequently process the information by using
our memory (remembering, storing, retrieving) and
to react in a manner corresponding with our motivations (by
using emotions, feelings and will).

SENSATION vs. PERCEPTION

Sensation is the registration of
information. Perception is the interpretation of that
information.
Sensation in general is the detection of stimuli—energies
from the world around us that affect us in some way. Our
eyes, ears, and other sensory organs are packed
with receptors—specialized cells that convert environmental
energies into signals for the nervous system.
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Gathering information about the world involves two steps.
In the first step, electrical signals reach the brain and are
changed into sensations. In the second step, the brain quickly
changes sensations, which you’re not aware of, into
perceptions.
MEMORY

Memory refers to the retention of information. It includes

skills such as riding a bicycle or eating with chopsticks. It also
includes facts that never change (your birthday), facts that
seldom change (your mailing address), and facts that
frequently change (where you last parked your car). You
remember repeated events, most of the important events of
your life, and some of the less important events.
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According to the information-processing model, human
memory resembles that of a computer in this
regard: Information that enters the system is processed,
coded, and stored (Picture 2). According to a popular version
of this model, information first enters a sensory store (like
the computer’s buffer). Some of that information is stored in
short-term memory (like RAM), and some short-term memory
transfers into long-term memory (like a hard disk).

Picture 2. The information-processing model

For more information about the information-processing
model see Additional materials to Chapter 7.
Today, most researchers emphasize temporary memory
storage as the information you are working with at the
moment, regardless of whether you ever store it as a more
permanent memory. To emphasize this different perspective,
they speak of working memory instead of short-term
memory.
  Working memory is a system for working with current
information. It is almost synonymous with someone’s current
sphere of attention.  
PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES

A consistent, long-lasting tendency in behaviour, such as

shyness, hostility, or talkativeness, is known as a trait. In
contrast a state is a temporary activation of a particular
behaviour. For example, being afraid right now is a state;
being nervous most of the time is a trait. Being quiet in a
library is a state; being quiet habitually is a trait.
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Meteorologists distinguish between climate (the usual
conditions - an average over time) and weather (the current
conditions). For example, the climate in Scotland is moister
and cooler than the climate in Texas, but on a given day, the
weather could be warm in Scotland and cool in Texas.
Similarly, psychologists distinguish between long-lasting
personality conditions and temporary fluctuations.
Cognitive processes (thinking, gaining knowledge, using
knowledge) are influenced by our psychological state.
Cognition begins with attention – by focusing on something
(attending to it) we can determine what it is (categorize it).
However, human cognition cannot deal with all the
information that the world provides. You are constantly
bombarded with sights, sounds, smells, and other stimuli.

ATTENTION

  Attention is a psychological state that enables you

to respond to some stimuli more than others at any given
time or to remember some more than others. Attention
shifts, enabling you to respond to different kinds of
information at different times.  
 Attending to one thing detracts from attending to
something else (Pashler, 1994). This characteristic of
attention is called - shifting attention.
Many years ago, when automobile radios were introduced,
people worried that listening to the radio would distract
drivers and cause accidents. We no longer worry so much
about radio, but we do worry about drivers using cell phones,
and some states and countries have outlawed driving while
holding a cell phone. Even if you don’t have to hold the
phone, listening with a phone on one ear tends to shift your
attention toward that side of the body instead of straight
ahead (Spence & Read, 2003).
Movie directors discovered long ago that if they shot
different parts of a story on different days, few viewers
noticed the changes in background props or the actors’
clothes (Simons & Levin, 2003). Psychologists have named
this phenomenon change blindness—the frequent failure to
detect changes in parts of a scene.
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If nothing calls your attention to a particular spot, how well
could you recall it? If you scan the scene, briefly fixating
everything, do you know everything in the scene? How many
changes can track in this video?

If anything moves or changes its appearance suddenly, it

automatically draws your attention. However, if a similar
change occurs slowly or while you are blinking or moving your
eyes, you might not notice (Henderson & Hollingworth,
2003b).

People vary in their ability to maintain attention, as in

anything else. Attention-deficit disorder (ADD) is
characterized by easy distraction, impulsiveness, moodiness,
and failure to follow through on plans (Wender, Wolf, &
Wasserstein, 2001).

EMOTIONS

Although most people think they know what they mean by

the term emotion, defining it is difficult. Psychologists usually
define it in terms of a combination of cognitions, physiology,
feelings, and actions (Keltner & Shiota, 2003; Plutchik, 1982).
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For example, you might have the cognition “he was unfair
to me,” physiological changes that include increased heart
rate, a feeling you call anger, and behaviors including a
clenched fist. However, these different kinds of elements
don’t always go together. You might have the cognition of
being unfairly treated, without any feeling of anger. At
another time you might feel angry without any cognition of
why (Berkowitz, 1990). For the way most people use the term
emotion, the key component is the feeling.
Psychologists measure emotions by self-reports, behavioral
observations, and physiological measures. Each method has
its strengths and weaknesses.

Picture 3. Researchers aroused emotions in various ways

and then used PET or fMRI scans to identify which brain areas
became aroused. No brain area appears specific to one type
of emotion. (Source: Phan, Wager, Taylor, & Liberzon, 2002)
Are emotions useful for anything? Presumably, they must
be, or we would not have evolved the capacity to feel them.
One function is that emotions focus our attention on
important information. You also remember emotionally
arousing information better than neutral information.

When you are distracted, you forget much of what you see
and hear, but if you see or hear something frightening, you
usually remember it despite the distraction.
Emotions or moods also adjust our priorities.

Functions of emotions

Emotions have three important functions. Emotions send

powerful social signals about how you feel; emotions help
you adapt and survive in your world; and emotions arouse
and motivate many of your behaviors.

Exercise: Try yourself

(Show solution...)
→ the function is: sending social signals.

Exercise: Try yourself

(Show solution...)
→ the function is: surviving.
The evolutionary theory of emotions says that one
function of emotions is to help us evaluate objects, people,
and situations in terms of how good or bad they are for our
well-being and survival.
If you see something frightening, you concentrate on the
danger and virtually ignore everything else. For example, if
you are running away from a mad attacker with a chainsaw,
you don’t stop to smell the roses.
→ the function: focusing one’s attention.
Additionally, your body creates physiological responses,
such as heart pounding and adrenaline pumping, that cause
arousal, which prepares the body for some action.
→ the function: to produce general arousal.
Strong emotions trigger hormone secretion that causes
memories to be “written in stone”. This results in better
remembering events that are beneficial or dangerous to our
well-being.
→ the function: to increase memory of emotionally
charged events.

When you are in a happy mood, you expand the focus of

your attention. You explore new possibilities, think creatively,
notice the details in the background that you ordinarily
overlook, and increase your chance for good new experiences
that will help maintain your happy mood (Fredrickson &
Losada, 2005).
On the other hand, a mildly sad mood is helpful under
some conditions. People in a happy mood tend to
overestimate their own abilities. Sad people tend to be more
cautious and examine evidence more carefully before making
a decision.

CONSCIOUSNESS

Rubin and McNeil (1983) define consciousness as ‘our

subjective awareness of our actions and of the world around
us’. So, consciousness points inwards, towards our thoughts,
feelings, actions, and so on, and outwards, towards
external, environmental events (including other people).
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If by conscious we mean having self-consciousness, then
humans may be unique. According to Singer (1998), self-
awareness is the experience of one’s own individuality, the
ability to experience oneself as an autonomous individual with
subjective feelings. It’s considered to be ‘the result of social
interactions, and hence of cultural evolution. This suggests
that it’s a rather human thing to have.
When we say we’re conscious, we usually mean that we
perceive and remember in a way that makes it possible
to report about the perceived and remembered content, or to
deliberately control our actions or cognitive abilities. Given
the crucial role of language in these processes, consciousness
is considered as a characteristic of human beings.

LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Consciousness refers to different levels of awareness of

one’s thoughts and feelings. It may include creating images in
one’s mind, following one’s thought processes, or having
unique emotional experiences.
Freud saw consciousness as a whole comprising three
levels:

 The conscious

 The preconscious

 The unconscious
 Most psychologists would agree that thoughts, feelings,
memories, and so on, differ in their degree of accessibility.
But most wouldn’t accept Freud’s formulation of the
unconscious (based on repression). Indeed, other
psychodynamic theorists, in particular Jung, disagreed
fundamentally with Freud’s view of the unconscious and
introduced the collective unconscious (see Chapter 4 in
Section 1).
For information on the continuum of
consciousness see Additional materials to Chapter 9.

 .
 ... judge, comprehend, and reason.
 ... understand and deal with people, objects, and
symbols.
 ... act purposefully, think rationally, and deal effectively
with the environment.

Some famous definitions

... the aggregate of the global capacity to act purposefully,

think rationally, to deal effectively with the environment
Wechsler, 1944

    Intelligent activity consists in grasping the essentials in a

situation and responding appropriately to them.

Two-Factor Theory (Spearman, 1904)

The oldest and perhaps the most widely accepted theory of

intelligence. This theory says that intelligence has two
factors: a general mental ability factor, g, which represents
what different cognitive tasks have in common, plus many
specific factors, s, which include specific mental abilities
(mathematical, mechanical, or verbal skills).

Today, factor g is defined and measured by a person’s

performance on various and related cognitive abilities. In
other words, modern intelligence tests have essentially
changed or transformed Spearman’s g into an objective
score, which is commonly known as the IQ score. Today,
many psychologists believe that g, as represented by IQ
scores, is a good measure of a person’s general intelligence
(Jenson, 2005).

Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence (Cattell,

1987)

Although Spearman and most later psychologists have

regarded g as the key to intelligence, it does not account for
everything. One proposed distinction is between fluid
intelligence and crystallized intelligence (Cattell, 1987).

 Fluid intelligence

o is the power of reasoning and using information.

o It includes the ability to perceive relationships,
solve unfamiliar problems, and gain new
knowledge. It reaches its peak before age 20.

 Crystallized intelligence
 E.g. fluid intelligence is the ability to learn new skills in a
new job, whereas crystallized intelligence includes the job
skills that someone has acquired over years. The analogy is to
water: Fluid water fits into any shape of container, whereas
an ice crystal fits only one shape.

Binet-Simons’s tests and the Mental age

Alfred Binet (1857 – 1911)

In the late 1800s, a gifted French psychologist named

Alfred Binet realized that Broca (famous neurologist) and
Galton had failed to assess intelligence by measuring brain
size. Binet strongly believed that intelligence was a collection
of mental abilities and that the best way to assess intelligence
was to measure a person’s ability to perform cognitive tasks,
such as understanding the meanings of words or being able to
follow directions.
In 1905, Binet and psychiatrist Theodore Simon succeeded
in developing the world’s first standardized intelligence test,
the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale. The original goal of
intelligence tests was to identify the least capable children,
who could not learn from ordinary schooling.
(Show more...)
Gradually, for each test item, Binet determined whether an
average child of a certain age could answer the question
correctly. For example, a child at age level 3 should be able to
point to various parts of the face. This led him to define to
concept of Mental age.
(Show more...)
In 1916, Lewis Terman came up with a new and better
method to compute the final score. Improving on the concept
of expressing the test results in terms of mental age, Terman
devised a formula to calculate an intelligence quotient (IQ)
score.
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By dividing a child’s mental age (MA), as measured in an
intelligence test, by the child’s chronological age (CA) and
multiplying the result by 100. For example, an 8-year-old who
performed like an average 10-year-old would have a mental
age of 10, a chronological age of 8, and an IQ of 10 / 8 * 100
= 125.

Since the original Binet-Simon scale in 1905, IQ tests have

become very popular and have grown into a large business.

Culture-Reduced Testing

The Stanford-Binet and Wechsler tests have one major

limitation: Because they require use and comprehension of
the English language, they are unfair to immigrants, people
with hearing impairments, and anyone else who does not
speak English well.

To language problems, psychologists have tried to devise a

culture-fair or culture-reduced test. Still, every test is based
on familiarity with some customs that are more common in
one culture than in another. Thus, no task is free of cultural
influences (Rosselli & Ardila, 2003). However, a test with no
language is at least fairer. The most widely used culture-
reduced test is the Progressive Matrices test devised by
John C. Raven.
CREATIVITY

Creative thinking is a combination of flexibility in thinking

and reorganization of understanding to produce innovative
ideas and new or novel solutions (R. J. Sternberg, 2001).
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People can show evidence of creative thinking in many
different ways. For example, recognized creative individuals
include Albert Einstein, who formulated the theory of
relativity; Michelangelo, who painted the Sistine Chapel;
Sigmund Freud, who developed psychoanalysis; Shawn Carter
(Jay-Z), who is a rapper, etc.
Psychologists have used different approaches to measure
creativity: the psychometric approach uses objective
problem-solving tasks to measure creativity, focuses on the
distinction between two kinds of thinking
— convergent and divergent (Guilford, 1967; Runco,
2004).

 Convergent thinking

 Divergent thinking

o means beginning with a problem and coming up

with many different solutions (another definition of
creative thinking). For example, problem-solving
tasks such as nine-dot and candle-match puzzles
are used to assess divergent thinking.

TEMPERAMENT AND PERSONALITY

 Way down deep, are we good, bad, both, or neither? We
cannot expect a firm scientific answer, but psychologists have
developed many approaches to exploring personality.
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Temperament refers to relatively stable and long-lasting
individual differences in mood and emotional behavior, which
emerge early in childhood because these differences are
largely influenced by genetic factors.
Personality consists of all the consistent ways in which the
behavior of one person differs from that of others, especially
in social situations. (Differences in learning, memory,
sensation, or muscle control are generally not considered
personality.)
The basic unit for measuring personality characteristics is
the trait (a relatively stable and enduring tendency to behave
in a particular way).

The Big Five theory

The five-factor model organizes personality traits and
describes differences in personality using five categories,
which
are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeab
leness, and neuroticism.

 Openness to experience

 Conscientiousness

 Extraversion

 Agreeableness

 Neuroticism
 These five factors became known as the Big Five and are
easy to remember if you note that their first letters make the
acronym OCEAN. Each of the five factors actually represents a
continuum of behavior, as briefly described in the figure
below.

You can think of each Big Five factor as

a supertrait because each factor’s thermometer includes
dozens of related traits at the hot and cold ends. For
example, conscientiousness, at the hot end, includes the
traits of being dependable, responsible, deliberate,
hardworking, and precise; at the cold end are the traits of
being impulsive, careless, late, lazy, and aimless.

Stress affects your body, mind and actions.

Body: (Hide)
Chest pains, Fatigue, Headaches, Backache Tension – pent
up anger, Stomach ache – ulcers, Loss of Appetite, Grey Hair,
Hair Loss, Wrinkles...
Mind: (Hide)
Headaches, Muddled thinking, Mental Tiredness,
Depression, Worrying, Poor Concentration, Procrastination,
Agitated, Panic Attacks...
Actions: (Hide)
Mood Swings, Irrational Behaviour, Forgetting, Rushing
through tasks, Drink /Eat too much, Arguing, Insomnia,
Smoking more /drugs...