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PSYC1030 – Study Notes

Week 1 – 29th November

Lecture 1 Part A – Introduction

Assessment

 Research = 6%
 Online Quiz = 9% (10th-12th December)
 Lab Report draft = 0% (14th December)
 Lab Report = 35% (18th January)
 Final Exam = 50%

Lecture 1 Part B – Persuasion

Compliance

 Agreeing to a request from someone without authority

 The extent to which you are willing to comply is dependent on a lot of things such as business,
how much you like the person, the size of the task etc
 Commitment
o A feeling of pressure to act consistently despite costliness
o Commitments cause people to add new reasons to justify decisions despite the original
reason for the decision being taken away
o Negatives are rationalized away and positives are focused on
o Commitment is important for avoiding regret
o Optimal conditions
 Commit in writing
 Public commitments
 Feels that the commitment was freely chosen, not forced
 Compliance can be influenced by strategies…

Compliance strategies

 Foot-in-the-door: a small request followed by a larger related request

o Can you help me move tomorrow?.....oh great, can you bring your ute and help me
move furniture to my new place?
o Freedman & Fraser (1966): household products survey, then larger request
 Low-balling: sticking to a commitment despite a hidden cost afterwards

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 o Cialdini (1978): asked for people to take part in an experiment, then said it started at
7am (56% agreed); saying that it started at 7am from the start showed 31% agreeing.
o Used car salespeople let people take the car away and say how great it is, then later
reveal a lot of hidden cost to the buyer.
 Door in the face technique: asking for a large thing, then a more reasonable request
 Cialdini (1975): asked for college students to spend 200 hours counseling juvenile delinquents
(nobody agreed), then asked if they would be willing to chaperone a group of juvenile
delinquents to the zoo (50% agreed). Just asking the second one showed 17% agreeing)

Reciprocation

 Doing something nice for somebody who does something nice for you
 Regan (1971): buying a coke for somebody then asking to buy raffle tickets
 We feel compelled to repay a favour even if the generosity comes from a complete stranger
(free gifts from companies)
 Reciprocal concessions: if someone makes a concession to us, we feel obliged to make a
concession (politics etc), meeting people halfway (asking for something higher, then making the
concession and expecting the other person to make a concession)

Contrast effects: people are only good at making relative judgements (salespeople can take advantage
by showing expensive things then selling the more reasonable thing)

Obedience: an authority commands us to change our behaviour (Milgram’s 1963 electric shock
experiment).

 Empathy: people will be less obedient if they are in contact with the person
 Clear cut point for disobeying (smaller increments make it less clear when to stop)
 Belief that authority will take responsibility will increase obedience
 High status of the authority figure will increase obedience

Tutorial 1 – Experiment and Report Discussion

Lecture 2 Part A – Aggression and Prosocial Behaviour

Why are people aggressive?

 Biological explanations
o Amygdala regulates aggression
o Genetic link to criminal behaviour
o Alcohol reduces risk assessment capabilities
o Social psychologists: investigate social factors and patterns of thinking  aggression
 Observational learning explanations (modelling)

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 o People learn to behave watching others so people behave aggressively because they see
others doing the same thing
o strong indication that TV = violence in children but aggressive kids watch violent TV so
there is an unclear loop
o Josephson (1987): children played more aggressively after watching a violent TV
program than when they watched a non-violent TV program. Effect was enhanced when
a cue was used (walkie talkies like the police officers in the program)
o The copy-cat effect: people witness or hear about acts of violence then repeat
o Werther effect: high profile suicide = increase in suicide and accidental death rates
o Copy-cat crimes against others: suicides = single-passenger car fatalities, murder-
suicides = multiple-passenger car fatalities, Plane hijackings, school shootings, product
tampering etc…
 Social cognitive explanations: people develop aggressive tendencies due to maladaptive thinking
o People have dysfunctional and aggressive belief structures (people see the world
through a lens of mistrust)
o The challenges is to allow people to change their belief systems

Crowd behaviour & de-individuation

 “Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd he is a barbarian.” Le Bon 1908

 People are essentially aggressive which they inhibit to be civilized but in crowds they are
anonymous so we they can revert to their impulsive instincts.
 Evidence for de-individuation:
o Wearing lab coats, people felt more comfortable making negative comments about their
parents and using more obscene language than without them.
o People gave more electric shocks to strangers whilst wearing cloaks and hoods.
o Larger crowds and at night tend to bait potential suicide victims
 It is thought that people will take on whatever role is implied by a situation (antisocial or
prosocial)
 Zimbardo’s prison study (1971): showed that people adapt to their implied or assigned role

Ostracism

 Kip Williams’ Ball throwing paradigm: people being ostracized = lower mood, self-esteem, sense
of belonging, sense of control over their lives, sense that life is meaningful and a heightened
awareness of death
 Cyberostracism: participants know that somebody has been instructed to ostracize them but still
feel these effects (it is thought that our negative reaction to ostracism is an evolutionary
response which bypasses logic)
 Aggression and rejection: ostracized individuals showed more aggression.
 Baumeister (2001): people were told they were not liked and that they were likely to have
troubles being accepted by others all their life. These people displayed interpersonal aggression
to strangers (maybe a trigger for mass-murder etc?)

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Altruism: voluntary helpfulness motivated by concern about the welfare of people rather than reward

 People can behave kindly for selfish reasons:

o We want to avoid personal pain of seeing someone suffer or guilt of not helping
o We want to share the job that someone else feels
 More likely to be altruistic when you’ve seen another person being altruistic (modelling)
 The extent to which someone feels compassion = altruistic tendencies
 Altruism is more likely when people are not in a rush, in smaller towns and in men to strangers/
in women to family and friends

Lecture 2 Part B – Prejudice and Stereotyping

Prejudice: unfavourable attitude towards a social group and its members (prejudgment)

 Cognitive: beliefs/stereotypes
 Affective: feelings (usually negative) about a group
 Behavioural: intentions to behave in negative ways

Sexism

 Men are competent and independent while women are warm and expressive
 People who violate the stereotype are sub-typed
 Disconfirming evidence of stereotypes are explained away or attributed to other factors
 Men justify power be legitimizing the myths
 Bartol & Butterfield (1976): female leaders were valued less (could not be detected during
1980s)
 1960s: work attributed to women was downgraded relative to the man’s but this has
disappeared
 Hostile sexism: women exaggerate problems they have; when women lose, they complain
 Benevolent sexism: in a disaster, women deserve to be saved before men; men should sacrifice
their lives in order to provide financially; women should be cherished by men
o Traditional and puts women on a pedestal but reinforces their subordination

Racism

 Until recently, racist attitudes were seen as scientific orthodoxy (races differed in intelligence,
sophistication and morality)…this lead to the holocaust. This is old fashioned racism
 People act differently to the way in which they truly feel
o LaPiere (1934): travelled with a Chinese American couple and were only refused entry in
1/250 places yet only 1% of places said that they would when they were called up.
 Aversive racism: people want to maintain a non-prejudiced self-image subconsciously harbor
negative feelings towards minorities which leaks out in situations where behaviour can be
justified
o Gaetner & Dovidio (1986) investigated this somehow

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 o When people are described in negative ways, people are more hostile to minorities
which people can legitimize by focusing on the person’s negative traits rather than their
race.
o When looking through the lens of stereotypes, unthreatening behaviour can be re-
interpreted as aggressive
 Duncan (1976): students observed on TV an argument between a black man and a white man
during which one person lightly shoved the other. 15% said that when the white person pushed,
it was violent while 75% said that it was violent when the black person pushed.
 Correll et al. (2002): made a computer game in which people had to either shoot or not shoot
people. people were much more likely to mistakenly shoot an unarmed black person and less
likely to not shoot an armed one than with white people.
 Those who attribute a failure to discrimination are less likable than those who take it on the chin
 People understand the negative consequences of claiming discrimination. When asked what
they would do, so many people said they would do something about it yet almost nobody did
anything when put into practice.
 Stereotype threat
o When stigmatized groups are conscious that other people might treat them differently,
they feel anxiety and their performance was impeded.
o Steele & Aronson (1995): black and white students anticipate taking a very difficult test
that was defined as being a test of intellectual ability or just a laboratory exercise then
completed ambiguous word fragments. Black students wrote race-related anxiety words
on the word fragment task and did a lot worse on the test when it was described as a
diagnostic test of intellectual ability.
 Self-fulfilling prophecies: expectations of a person change the way in which you interact with
them which changes their behaviour in line with negative expectations
o Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968): IQ test and told teachers that certain students were
particularly bright (the students were assigned randomly) and were seen to improve far
quicker than the rest of the students.

Week 2 – 6th December

Lecture 3 Part A – Indigenous Perspectives

Aboriginal disadvantage

 Health
 Education
 Employment
 Housing
 Racism

Psychology helps with

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  Reconciliation
 Clinical help
o Grief counseling
 Anti-racism strategies

Types of racism

 Internalized Racism: Acceptance of attitudes by members of an ethnic group about the

inferiority of ones’ own group
 Interpersonal Racism: Interactions between people to exhibit avoidable inequalities across
ethnic groups
 Systemic/systematic racism: requirements, conditions, practices or policies which exhibit
avoidable inequalities across ethnic groups

Reactions to racism

 Anger – 67%
 Feeling sorry for the perpetrator – 31%
 Sadness – 28%
 Shame – 17%
 Physical reaction – 12%

Responses to racism

 Telling somebody about it - 38%

 Avoiding the person or situation – 33%
 Trying to do something about the person – 30%
 Forgetting about it – 28%
 Keeping it to yourself – 18%
 Changing yourself – 9%

Ill health due to racism

 Reduced access to resources (employment, education, housing, medical)

 Exposure to risk factors
 Stress and emotional
 Negative responses (addiction)
 Physical injury due to assault

How to combat racism

 Dispelling false beliefs

 Highlighting the discrepancies between egalitarian principles and racist attitudes
 Encouraging empathy for targeted groups

6
  Facilitating cooperation between groups
 creating policies and practices
 Promoting non-racist media
 Eliminating systematic racism

Lecture 3 Part B – Attitudes

Attitudes

 association between an act/object and evaluation

 Have three components
o Beliefs
o Feelings
o Behavioural tendencies
 Are not
o Values: broad abstract goals that lack specific reference point
o Opinions: verbal manifestations of an attitude
o Schemas: not necessarily affective, while attitudes are
 Attitudes should predict behaviour but they often don’t
o You need to measure attitudes and behaviour in the same way
 Attitudes towards saving the environment don’t predict recycling, attitudes
towards recycling do
o Other things influence behaviour other than attitudes
 Habit
 Behavioral control
 Norms and groups

Yale studies focused on 4 factors for change in attitude: communicator, audience, message and channel

Communicator factors: credibility, attractiveness and similarity for matters of taste

 Hovland & Weiss’s study using a scientific paper and asking people if they believed it
o More credible sources have more effect on attitude than non-credible immediately
o The sleeper effect sees the credibility evening out over time as people forget who said it
 Discounting: initially given less credence due to the unreliable source
 Disassociation: the message content and the source is uncoupled over time
 Attractiveness: attractive people are more persuasive only for a strong message, not a weak one

Message factors: Two sided arguments and fear

 Fear is often used but high fear messages are often less effective, but depends on whether
information is provided with how to respond to the message

Audience factors: self-esteem, gender and age

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  Self-esteem: extremes were less easily persuaded by messages
 Gender and age: mixed results, not very clear

The process of attitude change


 Central route
o the issue is important to us
o Time to think about the issue
o Cognitive capacity to think about the issue
 Peripheral route
o Limited time to think
o In a good mood
o Distracted
o Issue is not important

Cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957)

 Dissonance: inconsistency between cognitions = an aversive psychological state

o Can be reduced by changing, reducing the importance of and adding a cognition
 Boring task then offered $1 or $20 to tell the next person that the task was enjoyable then rated
how much they enjoyed the task
o Low dissonance: said the task was fun, got paid $20 but thought the task was boring
o High dissonance: said the task was fun, got paid $1 and said the task was fun
o No dissonance: said the task was boring and thought the task was boring
 The theory states that when there is a disconnect between a person’s behaviour and attitude,
they will change their attitude to justify their action, such as thinking a task was fun because
they said it was even though it wasn’t.
 Zimbardo also did a grasshopper study
o A person was asked to eat a grasshopper by a friendly or unfriendly person
o people who ate the grasshopper when asked by the unfriendly person said that they
wanted to eat it

Hypocrisy

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  Positive self-concept is inconsistent with feelings of hypocrisy
 When people were made mindful of their prior water usage, they were more likely to take
shorter showers to conserve water

Tutorial 2 – Assignment Prep and Social Psychology

Lecture 4 Part A – Social Cognition

Impression formation

 Algebraic models (Anderson, 1978)

o Impressions are formed on the basis of a mechanical combination of information about
a person
 Summative, averaging and weighted averaging models


 Configurational model
o Gestalt principles: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts
o Central and peripheral traits
o A single word was changed in a person’s description and a person’s impression was
completely changed

Schemas

o Cognitive structures about a concept or stimulus (formed by past experience)

o Event schemas: like scripts
o Role schemas: everyone needs to stay within their role
o Person schemas: stereotypes, implicit personality theories, specific people
o Self-schemas

Social judgement and heuristics

 Heuristic: social cognitive process which yields quick estimates

 Availability heuristic: people can judge and event’s frequency by the ease with which they can
bring it to mind

9
 o It’s easier to think about being killed by something normal so we assume it happens for
often (falling plane parts vs shark attacks etc)
 Representative heuristic: people judge the likelihood of group membership by comparing
features of particular case to the prototype
o 70 lawyers and 30 engineers, person likes building things, is he more likely to be a
lawyer or engineer? Representative heuristic says engineer but probability says lawyer

Heider & attribution

 Attribution: The process by which people infer the causes of their own and others’ behaviour
 Social perception is motivated by the need to predict and control the environment
o Situational factors: stimuli
o Dispositional factors: personality
 Kelley’s covariation model: we attribute a behaviour to the cause with which it covaries over
time
o Person attribution: varies across people (consensus) – Tom is angry
o Target attribution: varies across targets (distinctiveness) – Tom is only angry with Chuck
o Situational attribution: depends on how often the behaviour occurs (consistency) – Tom
only angry with Chuck when they go shopping
 Errors in attribution
o attribution is highly rational but can be biased
o The tendency to attribute another’s behaviour to their qualities rather than to a
situation
o The pro and anti-Castro speeches were said to be either freely written or assigned

o
 Actor-observer bias: tendency to attribute own behaviour to external factors and others’
behaviours to dispositional causes
 Self-serving bias: tendency to attribute successes to internal factors and failures to external
 False consensus effect: see own behaviour as typical to maintain self-esteem
 We sometimes distort our attributions to look good and feel better about situations

Lecture 4 Part B – Nonverbal Communication

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  gaze, facial expression, posture, touch
 60-65% of communication
 Judging leadership ability requires nonverbal cues more
 Nonverbal cues are more important when it conflicts with verbal cues
 Children rely more on verbal cues
 Words = facts, nonverbal = emotion, attitude and interpersonal info
 Emblems: gestures which replace or stand in for spoken language
 Illustrators: nonverbal which complement/clarify meanings (hand gestures etc)
 Emotion: facial expressions
o 6 basic emotions: Happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, disgust & anger

Theories for emotional expression

 Universalists: they are innate and developed through evolution

o emotions are consistent across cultures
o Babies display emotions
o Blind and deaf children encode emotional expressions
o Also resemble those of other species
 Neurocultural theory
o Expressions are innately pre-wired into the brain but experience allows people to learn
rules for their display

Cross-cultural differences between expressions

 can be offensive to other cultures

 Emblems can have different meanings (Nixon)
 Eye contact: some cultures are taught to avoid eye contact, others see it as rude to look away
 Posture: some things are rude, eg pointing feet at people in Thailand and samoa
 Vocal features: Arabs see loudness as strong and sincere; American whites and blacks indicate
interest differently

Deception

 True: pupils dilate, more blinking, speech errors, hesitations, higher pitch
 False: smiling, longer latencies, shrugging, head and body movement, longer statements, faster
speech
 Accuracy in detecting deception: listening to it in speech only is much easier to correctly
determine if someone is lying because the voice is less easily controlled than the face.
 Micro-expressions may be used to detected liars as they are difficult to control

Week 3 – 13th December

Lecture 5 Part A – Health Psychology

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  Health: a state of complete physical, emotional and social well-being
 Health psychology: specialization in understanding the relationships between psychological
factors and health and illness
o Health promotion: illness prevention
o Clinical health: applying psychology in illness diagnosis and treatment

Models of health

 Biopsychosocial model: connecting the biological, psychological and social systems

o complex interactions
o Holistic
o Interactive
o Emphasises health
o Interdisciplinary
 Medical model
o Biochemical
o Single factor
o emphasizes illness

Stages of intervention

 Primary prevention: working with healthy people to maintain health

 Secondary prevention: working with symptomatic or chronic illness to prevent major disease
 Tertiary prevention: improving quality of life

Levels of intervention

 Individual - counseling
 Small-group – smoking cessation groups
 Community – nonsmoking areas
 Population – changing whole attitudes towards smoking
 Policy development – changing smoking laws

Why do we need health psychology?

 changing patterns of mortality

 effective strategies for change
 Expansion of health care/higher expectations for quality of life

Relationships between behaviour and health

 smoking has been proven to cause cancer, heart disease, miscarriage etc
 studies have found that not smoking or quitting smoking vastly increases life expectancy

The Transtheoretical model of behaviour change

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  States of change
o Precontemplation
o Contemplation
o Preparation
o Action
o Maintenance
o Relapse

Lecture 5 Part B – Stress and Coping

Stress: circumstances which threaten one’s well-being and tax one’s coping abilities

 Frustration
o Pursuit of a goal is thwarted: failures and losses
 Conflict: Incompatible motivations
o Approach-approach – least stressful (choosing between two desirables)
o Avoidance-avoidance – most stressful (choosing between two undesirables)
o Approach-avoidance – vacillation (the goal is desirable and undesirable)
 Change: alterations in one’s living requirements
o measured by the social re-adjustment rating scale (SRRS)
 Pressure: expectations/demands for someone to behave in a certain way

Responding to stress

 Potentially stressful event  cognitive appraisal  response (emotional, physiological and

behavioural)
o Event: exam or date or something can lead to frustration, conflict, change or pressure
o Cognitive appraisal: perceptions of the treat influenced by control over the event
o Emotional response: feelings of annoyance, anger, anxiety, fear, grief
o Physiological response: arousal, hormonal and neurochemical changes (fight or flight)

13
  cortisol and adrenaline/noradrenaline release
o Behavioural response: coping efforts
 Adaptive and maladaptive coping
 General adaption syndrome: model of body’s stress response
o Alarm reaction (resistance drops)
o Resistance (coping begins as physiological response stabilizes)
o Exhaustion (can lead to collapse)
 Constructive coping: healthy efforts to deal with stress
o confronting problems, task oriented, action focused, realistic

Effects of stress

 Impaired task performance (choking under pressure & suppression of thoughts)

 Burnout (physical and emotional exhaustion)
 PTSD: psychological disturbance
o nightmares, flashbacks, emotional numbing, alienation, vulnerability, anxiety, anger,
guilt
 Problems: poor academic performance, insomnia, sexual, alcohol/drugs
 Disorders: depression, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, eating disorders
 Positive effects: personal growth/self-improvement, new skills, priority re-evaluation, coping
abilities, enhanced self-concept
 Physical effects: type A personality, hostility and heart disease, emotion reactions, depression,
immune suppression
o Type A personality: strongly competitive, impatient, angry and hostile, can lead to heart
disease
 Anger & depression = heart attacks/heart disease
o Type B personality: calm, relaxed, patient
 Crowding, shock, hunger & restraint reduce immune functioning

Moderating the impact of stress

 Social support: various types of aid, higher levels of support related to immune function
 Optimism: associated with effective immune functioning, stress is dealt with effectively, seek
social support, positive appraisals of events

Tutorial 3 – Assignment Method/Results & Developmental Psychology

 Piagetian tasks
o Object permanence (A not B) understood before 2 years
o Conservation: understood 9-11 years
 Older adults
o Negative stereotypes have a negative effect
o Talking in a patronising tone will cause older adults to speak, move and think slower

14
 o Subliminally priming people for old age stereotypes produce deteriorated and shaking
handwriting as well as slower walking

Lecture 6 Part A – Infancy

 Senses
o Vision: 20cm fixed, adult vision by 8 months
o Hearing: sound localization, listening preferences (mother’s voice etc)
o Taste: sweet things are preferred
o Touch: skin-skin contact is important in early development
o Smell: 1 month – recognise mum’s smell
 Reflexes
o Moro(startle): arms spread out then contract in when support is removed
o Grasping: hand will close around things
o Rooting: finding the boob (stroking the baby’s cheek turns their head)
o Suckling: will suck on things put in its mouth (breast-feeding)
o Stepping: will step when walking is simulated
 Temperament: easy, difficult, slow to warm up
 Baby experiments
o Reflexes, habituation, surprise etc must be used since babies can’t talk
o Preferential sucking technique: babies suck a dummy to make a tape play
o Preferential looking: babies look at things they’re more interested in (human faces)
o Habituation: babies look at one thing until bored then another (can tell male from
female)
o Violation of expectation paradigm: pushing the block off and seeing if the baby looks
longer at things that seem impossible (6 months old will look longer)
 Nature vs Nurture
o Plasticity: brain doubles in size in the first two years of life
o Gene-environment interactions
o Genetics drive us to particular environments for the nurture so they’re intertwined

Lecture 6 Part B – Attachment

 Dependency theory (“cupboard love”)

o baby loves his mother because she satisfies his needs (food)
 Ethological studies: Lorenz and his ducks showed that it’s not based on food
 Harlow & Harlow’s Monkey studies
o clung to soft mum
o feeding and soft mums clung to soft but fed when it needed to
o no soft mum = bizarre behaviour
o Reintroduced: aggressive, loners, males couldn’t mate, females were incompetent
mothers
 Attachment theory (Bowlby the psychoanalyst)

15
 o Baby loves because mother provides security (infants want to feel safe)
o Babies goal is to be close to the caregiver
o Separation anxiety
o attachment behaviour coupled with locomotion, synced to feeding and mating
 Secure base model
o If there’s no danger, explore
o If there’s a threat, seek proximity to the caregiver
 Attachment classifications
o A: anxious avoidant
 30% of infants
 Explore, no distress, no proximity seeking at reunion with mother, less
avoidance of strangers
 Mothers report disliking contact with infants
o B: Secure
 55% of infants
 Explore after warming up, prefers mum, distressed and seeks contact at reunion
with mother
 Mothers are more sensitive, spend time face-to-face, quick response to crying
o C: Anxious ambivalent
 15%
 Can’t cope properly, little exploration, hysteria, aggressive at reunion
 Mothers are inconsistence in responses to infants
o Influenced by culture, baby and parent personalities
 Critical period hypothesis: there’s a critical period for attachment to occur, after which lifelong
psychological malfunction will ensue
o Challenges: Harlow’s study shows that female isolates were better mothers the second
time around, isolates housed with juveniles recovered, orphans have overcome effects
of early deprivation

Week 4 – 20th December

Lecture 7 Part A – Language Development

 1000 gestures and words – 5 years old – has been reached by Koko the gorilla after 40 years
 Babies are born with a Universal ear (linguistic sensitivity) – can discriminate between similar
sounds but lose it soon after
 High pitch voice when talking to babies – “motherese” – babies prefer it (protoconversation)
 Babies babble – try to sound like the language they will learn (deaf babies babble with hands)
 start pointing before speaking: to show something or to replace words – helps learn language
 Joint attention: look to see what people are talking about when they speak to map words
 Deaf parents with hearing children put their kids in front of the TV, didn’t work

16
  Indeterminacy problem: infants can distinguish what people are talking about when they point
at something – associate words with whole objects – difficult to teach parts of the object
 First words: Object names (ball), simple actions (give) and pragmatic functors (bye-bye)
 Language learning across cultures is uniform
 Overextensions: learns “moon” and calls all round things “moon”
o theory that they just want to talk
 Underextensions: only calls their dog a “dog”
 9 new words per day until age 6
 2 word stage - “Telegraphic speech”: leave out words
 Word order errors: very rare (teddy eat vs eat teddy)
 3 word stage: language complexity increases – errors are noticeable (eg blowed up/bloweded
up) – U curve: get it right early and later but wrong in between
 Nature: language is built in
o Innate: poverty of input: children can say things they’ve never heard and learn
grammatical rules then apply them
 Nurture: repeated by children
o social learning theory: children are corrected then rewarded when the conversation is
able to continue
 Early deprivation of language: cannot develop fully – limited telegraphic speech
 must learn sign language before age 7 for full fluency
 must learn second language before age 7 to have no accent

Lecture 7 Part B – Social Development

 “theory of mind”: predict and explain behaviour with reference to people’s internal mental
states – we can infer what other people are thinking and feeling
 the ability to recognise that people have different mental states to yours
 Altruism: toddlers can recognise what other people want and can help them
 Contrastives: understand that other people have other opinions after age 3
 Visual perspective taking task: child can tell which way the experimenter can see a picture when
they’re looking at it from different sides
 Understanding desire: “I want – you want” test – child tries to understand what other people
want to read
 False belief test: child watches one person put a ball in a basket then leave the room, another
person moves it and the first person comes back. They ask the child “where will they think the
ball is?” and 5 years olds can understand that the person will think it’s in the basket even though
it’s not.
 Age 3: fail perspective swapping tasks
 Autism:
o Life without theory of mind?

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 o Developmental disorder
o Difficulty with social relationships
o Difficulty with non-verbal and verbal communication
o Insistence on repetition
o poor judgement of false belief
o Difference, not a deficit


Tutorial 4 – Assignment Discussion & Consultation

Lecture 8 Part A – Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

 Piaget: interested in the biological basis of intelligence and developed his stage theory
 Thinking is based on actions: babies grab things and suck on them to construct information
 Schemas: formed through learning
 Assimilation and accommodation: taking in environmental elements and modifying responses
 Stages of development
o Infancy: Sensori-motor development
 Reflexes
 Modifiable starting-state schemas: Basis for later schemas
 Development of concepts is constructed through action on the world
 Object permanence is not understood (A not B error)
 Caused by the development of a schema – A is a part of the object so
they look for it there
 Object permanence: understanding that objects exist when they are not visible
is not reached until age 2
 Development of mental representations marks the end of infancy
o Early Childhood: Preoperational Thought
 Understand object permanence at 9-11 years
 Baby reflexes are lost
 Don’t need to touch everything anymore
 Egocentrism: without regard for other peoples’ perspective
 3 mountains task: child attributes their own perspective to a doll which is on the
other side of the mountains
 nonconservation: failure to recognise that quantities do not change despite
changes in appearance
 Conservation of numbers
 Transitional logic: can’t decide
o Middle childhood: Concrete Operational Thought
 Coordination of 2 perspectives
 Conservation of mass, conservation of liquid (clay and water movement)

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  Start thinking logically
o Formal Operational thought: adolescence & Adulthood
 Possibility
 Can think logically, abstractly and hypothetically
 Puberty – adulthood
 Questioning the theory:
o importance of action
o Thalidomide tragedy: children couldn’t grasp things but still could develop beyond
infancy, though the development was delayed
o Infants which are born blind show no major disruption of
cognitive development even when early action schemas
are atypical
o Mental representation: object permanence in the dark –
infants start to look for toys when lights are off
o Egocentrism: conversational perspective taking: children
simplify their speech for younger peers
o Child friendly perspective taking tasks can be passed
o Children do better on the “naughty teddy” conservation
task than the standard coin row spreading task
o Repeated questioning: children feel that they need to change their answer if they think
they’re wrong

Lecture 8 Part B – Moral Development

 Learning right from wrong

 Social learning theory
o Children learn to be moral by imitating adults and being rewarded or punished where
parents are their major influence
o Bobo doll experiments (1960’s) where children imitate aggressive behaviour
 Problems with social learning theory
o Children can be more moral than their parents
o Stages of development where children think about right and wrong but in a different
way to adults

Piaget & Kohlberg’s Cognitive theories

 Piaget
o Moral dilemmas investigated reasoning about moral issues
o Once children have pre-operational thinking, they can think about right and wrong
o Piaget’s moral stories: cup breaking story
o Piaget’s stages of moral development
 Heteronomous morality: 4-8 y/o
 Subject to another’s law

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  Outcomes are the most important
 Autonomous morality: 8 y/o - adult
 Subject to one’s own law (thinking for ourselves)
 Laws are relative and socially constructed
 Intentions are the most important
 Kohlberg
o Took Piaget’s work further
o tested 84 boys fromKohlberg’s
5-adult Moral Dilemma I
o 6-stage developmental progression
Joe is a 14-year-old boy who wanted to go to camp very much. His father
promised him he could go if he saved up the money for it himself. So Joe
worked hard at his paper route and saved up the $100 it cost to go to camp and
a little more besides. But just before camp was going to start, his father
changed his mind. Some of his friends decided to go on a special fishing trip,
and Joe’s father was short of the money it would cost. So he told Joe to give
him the money he had saved from the paper route. Joe didn’t want to give up
going to camp, so he thinks of refusing to give his father the money.

Should Joe refuse to give his father the money? Why or why not?
o
 Kohlberg’s stages of moral development
Preconventional morality: age 0-9, individual perspective, concrete and ego centric
o 1. Joe should give the money because he’ll get punished
o 2. Joe shouldn’t give the money because he can do whatever he wants
Conventional Morality: adolescents and adults, Member of society perspective,
interpersonal
o 3. Joe shouldn’t give the money because he has sacrificed and worked hard for it
o 4. Joe shouldn’t give the money because respect for property is important
Postconventional Morality: Minority of Adults, universal reasoning, prior to society
perspective
o 5. Joe shouldn’t give the money because each person is free and entitled to the use of
his property
o 6. Based on personal conscience, not social contract. (Theorised: Gandi, Dalai Lama,
Mother Theresa)

Modern approaches to moral development

 Gender differences
o Women are most often in stage 3 (reasoning towards relationships/cooperation)
o Men are most often in stage 4 (reasoning towards justice)
 Domains of reasoning about right and wrong
o Moral rules vs social convention
 Morality = harm welfare and fairness

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  Social convention = social order and organization (can be changed)
 Children as young as 4 can distinguish between moral rules and conventional
rules
 The role of parents
o Discipline: harsh discipline is linked to hostility and aggression
o No effect on moral development

o
 Parenting Styles
o Authoritarian: my way or the high way
 Children maintain punishment/reward orientation
o Authoritative: rules are there for a reason and parents are loving
 Socially responsible and altruistic
o Indulgent: everything is okay
 Children have a lack of social responsibility and have problems with authority
o Neglectful: ignore kids entirely in terms of discipline
 Children have a lack of social responsibility and have problems with authority

Week 5 – 10th January

Lecture 9 Part A – Adolescence

Definitions

 Chronological: teenage = 13-19

 Biological: height spurt to reproductive maturity
 Sociological: time between puberty and assumption of adult responsibilities

Tasks of adolescence

 Accept physical changes

o Puberty: alters body shape, size and functional; marked by a height spurt

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  Forge an identity: decide you they are and how they fit into society
o love, work, ideology

Pubertal timing consequences

Boys

Girls

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What would adolescents change about themselves?

 Boys: 47% scholastic ability or achievement, only 14% for appearance

 Girls: 39% personality, 27% scholastic ability/achievement, 24% appearance
 Body dissatisfaction however is very high as girls wish they were thinner etc
 Risk factors of body dissatisfaction
o Personality (perfectionism, internalizing)
o Stressful home environment (conflict, loss, criticism)
o Media consumption
 High body satisfaction: high self-esteem, positive peer relationships
 Low body satisfaction: depression, eating disorder, exercise dependence, steroid use

Identity

 Erik Erikson: “identity crisis”

 Stressed the importance of rites of passage
o adult status, marriage, work role, independence, owning property, becoming a parent
 Puberty and marriage in traditional societies
o girls usually marry within 2 years of puberty
o Boys required achievement to marry, usually within 4 years of puberty
 puberty and marriage in contemporary societies
o Average age of menarche has declined to about 12
o Average age of first marriage in Australia is 28 for women and 30 for men
 Identity formation
o in contemporary society: social roles acquired 10+ years after puberty, adolescence is 8-
15 year interval, more time to think about life
o In traditional society: 2-4 year interval

 Achievement: A crisis was experienced and a resolution was found, identity has been found
o I’ve thought about my career and it’s the right choice

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  Foreclosure: A commitment was made before any crisis happened so identity has not been
formed as the choice was not made freely
o I’m like my dad, if it works for him it’ll work for me
 Moratorium: The middle of a crisis, not sure what to do but know that a choice needs to be
made
o I don’t know how capable I am and I can’t choose a course of study until I figure it out
 Diffusion: No crisis or commitment has been made yet
o I haven’t thought about it so I guess I’ll wait until something better comes along


 Forging an identity
o Long process (age 21 usually)
o May have different statuses across domains (love, work, ideology)
o Associated with: open mindedness, high self-esteem, psychological well-being

Survival

 200-300% mortality rate increase from childhood to late adolescence

 Less behavioural control (accidents, suicide, substance abuse etc), risk taking
 Education is ineffective in lowering recklessness
 Nucleus accumbens (NAc) – motivation to get desirable things develops before the prefrontal
cortex (PFC)
 Synaptic reorganization: connections are pruned, late PFC development = creativity

Lecture 9 Part B – Sex

 Coitus: coming together

 Copulation: sexual intercourse (joining together)

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Havelock Ellis (1890s-1930s)

 Sexual inversion (1897)

 Evolution of Modesty, the phenomena of sexual periodicity, auto-eroticism (1900)
 Early study of transgenderism, homosexuality, autoeroticism, narcissism, influenced Freud

Sigmund Freud (1890s – 1930s)

 Psychosexual development (oral, anal, phallic stages)

 Id (libido), ego, superego
 Pleasure principle, complexes

Alfred Kinsey (1930s – 1950s)

 took sexual info from 5300 men and 7789 women

 Found that sexuality changes all the time, masturbation is not damaging

Masters and Johnson (1950s – 1990s)

 Observed people having sex to study psychology and physiology

 Documented mechanisms of vaginal lubrication and orgasmic responses
 Sexual response cycle
o Excitement: initial arousal
o Plateau: gradually triggers orgasm
o Orgasm: total body response due to the discharge of sexual tension
o Resolution: the body returns to an unaroused state

Female hysteria

 thought to be a mental disorder

 neurotic behaviour, sexual desire, fluid retention, irritability, trouble making
 treatment was intercourse or vaginal massage

Health & relationships

 people satisfied with their sex lives are more likely to rate physical health as excellent and say
they’re happy
 People with more satisfying sex lives report being more in love, satisfied and committed to their
partner
 Oxytocin: linked to feelings of love

Problems

 Promiscuity: divorced parents, body image, sexual abuse, low self-esteem, victim of social
stigma

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  Disorders: paraphilias, frotteurism, vaginismus, hypoactive sexual desire, erectile dysfunction,
sexual aversion etc

Tutorial 5 – Clinical and Organisational Psychology

Job interviews:

 Halo effect: biases

 Contrast effect: comparison to other employees
 Confirmation bias: assess the employee just to confirm opinions
 STAR technique
o Situation/Task: the situation or task faced by the person
o Action: what did the person do?
o Result: what result came out of it?

Employee evaluation

 Standardized approach: reduces biases and increases fairness

 360 degree approach: considering full spectrum (on the job observations)
 Assessment via key selection criteria

Lecture 10 Part A – Organisational Psychology

 Application of psychological principles, theory and research to aid organisations

 We need org psych to run successful businesses
 Google: people are our most important asset

Hawthorne’s studies

 Changed lighting in factory worker rooms and found improvement no matter what he did
 Hawthorne effect: just by being watched by Hawthorne, productivity increased
 Any changes to work conditions seemed to increase productivity

Contemporary psychological assumptions

 Theory X = traditional
 Theory Y = modern

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Motivation

 Processes which direct towards a goal

 Goal setting is very effective
o Assign specific, difficult, acceptable goals and provide feedback

Fairness and justice

 Intel’s CEO works in a cubicle like everyone else and they are more productive
 If everyone gets a pay cut, people see it as fair and will be more accepting
 Employers need to be more empathetic or employees will rebel/leave/steal etc

Lecture 10 Part B – Sport Psychology

 Study of behaviour in sport/physical activity

 3 Branches
o Research
o Clinical
o Education
 Psychological skills training (PST)
o Enhances performance, enjoyment and well-being
o Activation/anxiety regulation
o Imagery
o Self-confidence
o Goal-setting
o Concentration
o Self-talk
 Anxiety

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 o Trait (the player) vs State (the game)
o Cognitive (thoughts) and somatic (body)
o Paralysis by analysis: cognitive and somatic reaction
o Caused by importance placed on outcome and uncertainty
 Group/team dynamics
o Group cohesion (team building)
o Leadership
o Communication
 Health and well-being
o Psychological and physical well-being
o Injuries
o Substance abuse/eating disorders
o Burnout and overtraining
 Growth and development
o Children’s development through sport
o Aggression
o Character development and sportsmanship

Week 6 – 17th January

Lecture 11 Part A – Psychological Therapies

 Science-practitioner model: learn the science then apply it

 Phrenology: study of head lumps
 Psychotherapy: treatment through therapy
 Assessment (diagnosis)  formulation (cause?)  intervention (treatment)
 Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT): good for depression
 Evidence-based: usually works best
 Principles: empathy, rapport, evidence based, individual, homework

Types of therapy

 Psychodynamic: Freud and his subconscious theories

o Post-freudian era uses therapy to uncover childhood and develop an understanding of
difficulties to allow people to cease relying on ego defences
o Transference relationship: the client may act as though the therapist is of authority
 Humanistic: Carl Rogers and his meditation
o Client-centred, getting in touch with feelings
o Gestalt theory: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts
o Discovering true self, positive relationships
o Unconditional positive reassurance is the key
 Behavioural therapy

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 o Maladaptive behaviour is learned
o Can be tested
o Present problems vs historical causes
o Classical conditioning: pairing urges to drink with people and places etc
o Operant conditioning: pairing tantrums and positive outcomes
o Problems:
 Excesses
 Deficits
 Inappropriate behaviour
o Trigger (stress)  behaviour (nail biting)  consequences (bad fingernails)
 Cognitive behaviour therapy: Aaron Beck
o We’re not just stimulus-response machines
 Thoughts about situations influences emotions and behaviour
 Psychological problems do not arise from events but meanings we give to them
o Event (failed exam)  interpretation (I’m stupid)  Behavioural response (sad, reduce
study effort)
o Changing ways of thinking in CBT

o
o Activity scheduling: activities client has enjoyed is scheduled
o Behavioural experiments: testing out theories

Evaluation of psychotherapy

 Evidence for psychotherapy: 85% reduction in depression

o Testing whether therapy works: ethical requirements, must show that people with
treatment are better than those without
o Randomised controlled testing

o
 Treatment is not always effective obviously

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  Depends on the therapist as some may not be as enthusiastic as others
 Evaluations of therapy need to be concerned with:
o The ability for therapist to deliver therapy
o Client satisfaction
o Cost-effectiveness

Lecture 11 Part B – Depression and Anxiety Disorders

 Mental Health: a state of emotional and social wellbeing in which people can function normally
 Mental illness: a group of illnesses which affect the brain
 Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-IV)
o Axis I: clinical syndromes – Major depressive disorder
o Axis II: chronic problems (personality and developmental disorders) – Opiate
dependence
o Axis III: Medical conditions – back injury/chronic pain
o Axis IV: Environmental stressors - Unemployment
o Axis V: global assessment of functioning (percentage scale) – 50% at intake (what does
this mean?)

Anxiety disorders: 10% of adults

 Anxiety disorders: excessive anxiety in the absence of danger

 Specific phobias: (common and unusual) - 10%
 Social phobia – 2-5%
 Generalised anxiety disorder (worrying, hypervigilance) – 3-4%
 Panic disorder: panic attacks
o Physical symptoms (heart-rate, sweating, shortness of breath)
o can coexist with substance abuse and depression
o Avoidance of triggers can lead to agoraphobia
 OCD: 2-3%
o Rituals (hand washing, counting etc) used to prevent feared consequences
o Chronic and easily relapsing
 Causes of anxiety disorders
o Phobias, panic disorder, GAD, environmental triggers, genetic factors
 Treatments
o Medications, CBT, education

Depression: 16% of adults

 Depressive disorders: persistent and pervasive feelings of sadness

 Bipolar disorders: radical fluctuations in mood
 Major depression: opposite of hedonia
o Has specific criteria for diagnosis

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 o At least 2 weeks with 5 symptoms:
 Persistent sad mood (most of the time)
 Loss of interest or pleasure
 Increase or decrease in appetite or weight
 Increase or decrease in sleep
 Psychomotor agitation/retardation
 Fatigue
 Worthlessness/guilt
 Difficulty concentrating
 Thoughts of death or suicidal thoughts/plans
o Must not be coupled with drug use
o Must not be accounted for by other disorders or transient problems
 Dysthymia: long lasting depressed mood (2 years) with 2 or more symptoms
o Appetite, sleep, fatigue, self-esteem, concentration, hopelessness
 Bipolar
o Manic episodes: euphoric, grandiosity, ideas, distractibility, goal directed, hedonistic
o Bipolar I: major depression and mania
o Bipolar II: major depression and hypomania
o Cyclothymia: hypomania and mild depression
 Bereavement: emotional upset
o 40% are fearful at some point that they’re going crazy
o Hallucinations and suicidal thoughts
 Suicide risk factors
o Demographics (elderly, male, alone)
o Prior attempts
o Family history
o Medical illness
o Psychosis
o Substance abuse
o Access to means

Mental illness overview

 20% of people over their lifetime, varies with age, gender and culture
 Depression: 7-20% of people in lifetime, more in women, symptoms of depression is much more
prevalent (48%)
 Bipolar: only about 1%, associated with higher SES (socioeconomic standing)
 Anxiety disorders: 10% affected in the past year, more women, 25% receive treatment
 Causes of mental illness
o Biological: neurotransmitter deficiencies, biological rhythms, genetic risk (twin studies
etc)
o Behavioural: low rate of positive reinforcement, learned helplessness

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 o Cognitive: negative thoughts about self
o Pessimistic explanatory style: bad events attributed to internal, stable global factors
o Environmental: trauma, abuse, neglect, hostile emotional, negative life events
o Diathesis stress model: creates vulnerability (diathesis)  stress  development of
illness
 Treatments for mood disorders
o Effective treatments depend on etiology (origin of issue), biology is not destiny
o Antidepressants, diet, electroconvulsive therapy
o CBT
o Behavioural activation
o Interpersonal therapy
o Psychodynamic therapy
 Causes/exacerbation of mood disorders
o Neurological illness: parkinson’s, epilepsy, sleep apnoea
o Systemic conditions: infections
o Endocrine disorders: thyroid, post-partum effects (postnatal depression)
o Vitamin deficiencies: (B12, folate)
o Other diseases: cancer, kidney disease
 Treatments for anxiety disorders
o Psychoeducation, exposure therapy, cognitive restructuring, medication

Tutorial 6 – Cross-Cultural Psychology and Practice Exam

Lecture 12 Part A – Clinical Psychology and Older Adults

 Focus on healthy aging

 Definitions of old
o UN: 60+
o APA: 65+
o WHO: 50+ (for purposes of health trends in Africa)
o Young old: 65+, old-old: 75+, very old: 85+, supercentenarians: 110+
 In Australia
o ~25% over 65 by 2050
o Over 70’s represent the highest level of growth as a percentage of the population
o 6% of 65+ are in aged care, 91% in private dwellings, 72% of 80+ report disability

Gerontological Principles

1. Increasing heterogeneity with increasing age: comparisons need to be made to the individual’s
history rather than other people as people are more different in old age

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 2. Cohort effects: generations are different due to past events/history (eg wars make them more
susceptible to mental illness)
3. Primary vs Secondary aging:
 primary is due to time (vision, lung capacity, memory etc) that can’t be controlled
 Secondary is due to disease: alzheimer’s or depression

Being old

 Physical changes, poor health

 Negative stereotypes are associated: loss of meaning in life, disrespect
 Just a state of mind, sense of self-guided by an individual, family and friends, society
 Life satisfaction at any age comes from being active, social, independent and healthy
 Aging is related to increasing life satisfaction

Successful aging: Freund, Li and Baltes (1999) highlight 3 assumptions

 Growth is bound by people’s resources and demands of the environment

 Resources are finite and fluctuate
 There is a dynamic relationship between gain and loss

Selection, Optimisation & compensation (SOC) theory of successful aging

 Developed by Baltes and Baltes (1990)

 Suggests that successful aging occurs in 3 stages
o Selection: identifying goals
o Optimisation: maximising performance to be successful
o Compensation: adapting to limitations that interfere with goals
 Involves making active choices to facilitate aging at an individually determined level of success

Socio-emotional selectivity theory

 Laura Castensen (1991)

 Motivations which shape the size, composition and change of social networks
 Time is short so people participate in relationships that are more meaningful
 Quality over quantity
 Emotional stability is required

Psychiatric disorders

 Mental disorders with serious symptomology

o 15-25% of 65+
o 70-90% in nursing homes
o Not often assessed or treated
 Depression: generational and social factors can influence reporting and treatment

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 o Underreported & reluctant to seek support
o Belief that depression is normal
o Physical symptoms are a priority over psychological
o Clinical representation may be different to younger people
 Greater cognitive and functional decline
 May have more chronic, comorbid conditions
 Cognitive decline due to depression can just look like dementia
 Anxiety
o Symptoms can look like physical illness just like depression
o Phobias are a common cause of anxiety
o Anxiety does not increase with age
 Barriers to treatment
o Patient barriers (emphasis on physical symptoms)
o Provider barriers: lack of awareness
o Mental health delivery system barriers: time and money problems

Lecture 12 Part B – Positive Psychology

Post WWII psychology

 Before, psychology had better balance

 Focus on disease model of human functioning
 Money  treatments
 1955: introduction of drugs for the treatment of depression and psychosis

Martin Seligman

 Learned helplessness
 Nikki and the weeds story
 Authentic happiness
 Created and developed positive psychology

Positive psychology movement

 Used to focus on treatments for

o Depression, anxiety, neurosis, paranoia, delusions, obsessions
 New focus on
o Happiness, zest, forgiveness, love, creativity, wisdom, fulfilment, engagement
 Extra strength can buffer mental illnesses
 Need to create a science of human strength, mission is to understand and foster virtues in youth
 Attempts to eliminate social problems (substance abuse and criminal behaviour)
 3 Concerns

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 o Subjective states: experience and positive emotions (well-being, contentment,
optimism)
o Individual traits: character strengths, virtues, humanity, creativity, excellence etc
o Institutions: places which can enrich human potential (nurturance, altruism etc)
 3 paths to happiness
o The pleasant life: past, present, future (blessings, savouring, mindfulness, appreciation)
o The good life: strengths and virtues, achieving flow (who am I, who are my friends,
building strengths)
o The meaningful life: (being loyal, dependable, going beyond norms to help)
 Signature strengths
o Wisdom & knowledge
o Courage
o Love
o Justice
o Temperance
o Transcendence

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