Psychology 102 Reading notes

Textbook: Biswas-Diener, R., & Diener, E. (2018). Discover psychology 2.0: A brief
introductory text. DEF Publishers.

Chapter 1 – Drive States

 Drive state: “affective experiences that motivate organisms to fulfill goals that are
generally beneficial to their survival and reproduction”
 Homeostasis: “the tendency of an organism to maintain a stable state across all the
different physiological systems in the body.” – Maintained through two main factors
 Homeostatic set point: “an ideal level that the system being regulated must be
monitored and compared to”
 Ability to return to the set point and restore homeostasis (homeostatic
mechanisms – many of these are nonconscious and automatic)
 Drive states result in attention narrowing (a focus on satisfying the drive state before
anything else, the here a now, immediate gratification, selfish gain)
 Hypothalamus: “a portion of the brain involved in a variety of functions, including the
secretion of various hormones and the regulation of hunger and sexual arousal”
 Satiation: “the state of being full to satisfaction and no longer desiring to take on more”
 Reward value: “a neuropsychological measure of an outcome’s affective importance to
an organism”
 Preoptic area: “a region in the anterior hypothalamus involved in generating and
regulating male sexual behavior” – (“the ventromedial hypothalamus fulfills that role for
females”)
 Lordosis: “a physical sexual posture in females that serves as an invitation to mate”

Chapter 2 – Culture and Emotion

 Universalism: “proposes that there are single objective standards, independent of culture,
in basic domains such as learning, reasoning, and emotion that are a part of all human
experience” – “despite cultural differences in customs and traditions, at a fundamental
level all humans feel similarly”
 emotions are described as being intrinsic, instinctual, natural
 Social constructivism: “proposes that knowledge is first created and learned within a
social context and is then adopted by individuals” – “despite a common evolutionary
heritage, different groups of humans evolved to adapt to their distinctive environments”
 Are emotions events within people or exchanges between people?
 “people are often unaware of how their feelings are shaped by their culture”
 “there are universally recognized emotional facial expressions”
  However, there are still social differences that are dependent on the culture.
 “Today, most scholars agree that emotions and other related states are multifaceted, and
that cultural similarities and differences exist for each facet.”
 It’s not viewed as an either/or anymore.
 North America has a more individualistic, independent culture, while East Asia has a
more collectivistic, interdependent culture.
 Independent self: “A model or view of the self as distinct from others and as
stable across different situations. The goal of the independent self is to express
and assert the self, and to influence others. This model of self is prevalent in many
individualistic, Western contexts (e.g., the United States, Australia, Western
Europe)”
 Interdependent self: “A model or view of the self as connected to others and as
changing in response to different situations. The goal of the interdependent self is
to suppress personal preferences and desires, and to adjust to others. This model
of self is prevalent in many collectivistic, East Asian contexts (e.g., China, Japan,
Korea).”
 Emotions are studied in three main ways
 Physiology
 Subjective experience
 Facial expressions
 “Physiological responses to emotional events are similar across cultures” but culture
influences the way we express those emotional responses.
 Facial Expressions
 “People suppress their emotions across cultures, but culture influences the consequences
of suppression for psychological well-being”
 “significant empirical research shows that suppressing emotions can have
negative consequences for psychological well-being in North American contexts”
 Clinically depressed European Americans show less emotional expression, while
clinically depressed East Asian Americans show average or increased emotional
response
 “muted responses (which resemble suppression) are associated with depression in
European American contexts, but not in East Asian contexts”
 East Asian cultures are more likely to accept that “positive and negative feelings can
occur simultaneously”
 Affect: “feelings that can be described in terms of two dimensions, the dimensions of
arousal and valence (Figure 2). For example, high arousal positive states refer to
excitement, elation, and enthusiasm. Low arousal positive states refer to calm,
peacefulness, and relaxation. Whereas “actual affect” refers to the states that people
actually feel, “ideal affect” refers to the states that people ideally want to feel”
 “people in North American contexts lean toward feeling excited, enthusiastic, energetic,
and other “high arousal positive” states. People in East Asian contexts, however,
generally prefer feeling calm, peaceful, and other “low arousal positive” states”
  “An alternative explanation for cultural differences in emotion is that they are due to
temperamental factors—that is, biological predispositions to respond in certain ways.
(Might European Americans just be more emotional than East Asians because of
genetics?)”
 It is most likely that both culture and temperament play a role

Chapter 3 – Social Psychology

 Social psychology: “the branch of psychological science mainly concerned with
understanding how the presence of others affects our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors”
 Can be grouped into 5 broad categories
 Attraction
 Attitudes
 Peace and conflict
  Social influence
 Social cognition
 Need to belong: “A strong natural impulse in humans to form social connections and to
be accepted by others”
 “the need to belong is rooted in developmental psychology. Developmental
psychologists have long paid attention to the importance of attaching to a
caregiver, feeling safe and supported during childhood, and the tendency to
conform to peer pressure during adolescence.”
 Levels of Analysis: “Complementary views for analyzing and understanding a
phenomenon”
 “chemical, emotional, behavioral, and social processes occur simultaneously”
 Observational learning: “Learning by observing the behavior of others”
 Hypothesis: “A possible explanation that can be tested through research”
 Attraction: “The psychological process of being sexually interested in another person.
This can include, for example, physical attraction, first impressions, and dating rituals.”
 Blind to the research hypothesis: “When participants in research are not aware of what is
being studied.”
 Attitude: “A way of thinking or feeling about a target that is often reflected in a person’s
behavior. Examples of attitude targets are individuals, concepts, and groups.”
 Stereotyping: “A mental process of using information shortcuts about a group to
effectively navigate social situations or make decisions”
 “Stereotypical information may or may not be correct. Also, stereotypical
information may be positive or negative.”
 Prejudice: “An evaluation or emotion toward people based merely on their group
membership” (pre-judging)
 Discrimination: “behavior that advantages or disadvantages people merely based on their
group membership”
 Stigmatized group: “A group that suffers from social disapproval based on some
characteristic that sets them apart from the majority”
 Culture of honor: “A culture in which personal or family reputation is especially
important”
 Research confederate: “A person working with a researcher, posing as a research
participant or as a bystander.”
 Research participant: “A person being studied as part of a research program”
 Social influence: “When one person causes a change in attitude or behavior in another
person, whether intentionally or unintentionally”
 Conformity: “Changing one’s attitude or behavior to match a perceived social norm”
 Obedience: “Responding to an order or command from a person in a position of
authority.”
 Persuasion: “the act of delivering a particular message so that it influences a person’s
behavior in a desired way”
  Reciprocity: “The act of exchanging goods or services. By giving a person a gift, the
principle of reciprocity can be used to influence others; they then feel obligated to give
back.”
 Social cognition: “The way people process and apply information about others”
 Social attribution: “The way a person explains the motives or behaviors of others.”
 Fundamental attribution error: “The tendency to emphasize another person’s personality
traits when describing that person’s motives and behaviors and overlooking the influence
of situational factors”

Chapter 4 – Social Cognition and Attitudes

 Social cognition: “The way people process and apply information about others”
 “humans are adept at distilling large amounts of information into smaller, more usable
chunks”
 Schema: “A mental model or representation that organizes the important information
about a thing, person, or event”
 Think of the word “schematic” – its like a mental blueprint
 “We can hold schemas about almost anything—individual people (person
schemas), ourselves (self-schemas), and recurring events (event schemas, or
scripts).”
 Heuristics: “A mental shortcut or rule of thumb that reduces complex mental problems to
more simple rule-based decisions”
 Representativeness heuristic: “A heuristic in which the likelihood of an object
belonging to a category is evaluated based on the extent to which the object
appears similar to one’s mental representation of the category.”
 Availability heuristic: “A heuristic in which the frequency or likelihood of an
event is evaluated based on how easily instances of it come to mind”
 Planning fallacy: “A cognitive bias in which one underestimates how long it will take to
complete a task”
 Affective forecasting: “Predicting how one will feel in the future after some event or
decision.”
 “accurate in some ways but limited in others” (we often know how what emotions
we’ll feel, “but we often incorrectly predict the strength or duration of those
emotions”
 Impact bias: “the tendency for a person to overestimate the intensity of their
future feelings.”
 Durability bias: “A bias in affective forecasting in which one overestimates for
how long one will feel an emotion (positive or negative) after some event.”
 Hot cognition: “The mental processes that are influenced by desires and feelings”
 Directional goals: “The motivation to reach a particular outcome or judgment.”
 Motivated skepticism: when “we are skeptical of evidence that goes against what we
want to believe despite the strength of the evidence”
 Need for closure: “The desire to come to a decision that will resolve ambiguity and
conclude an issue.”
 “Often induced by time constraints”
 Mood-congruent memory: “The tendency to be better able to recall memories that have a
mood similar to our current mood.”
 “The mood we were in when the memory was recorded becomes a retrieval cue;
our present mood primes these congruent memories, making them come to mind
more easily”
 Many of our behaviours are automatic
 Automatic: “A behavior or process has one or more of the following features:
unintentional, uncontrollable, occurring outside of conscious awareness, and
cognitively efficient”
 Chameleon effect: “The tendency for individuals to nonconsciously mimic the postures,
mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one’s interaction partners”
 Primed: “A process by which a concept or behavior is made more cognitively accessible
or likely to occur through the presentation of an associated concept”
 Stereotypes: “Our general beliefs about the traits or behaviors shared by group of people”
 Attitude: “A psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity
with some degree of favor or disfavor.”
 Explicit attitude: “An attitude that is consciously held and can be reported on by
the person holding the attitude.”
 Implicit attitude: “An attitude that a person cannot verbally or overtly state”
 Implicit measures of attitudes: “Measures of attitudes in which researchers infer
the participant’s attitude rather than having the participant explicitly report it”
 Implicit Association Test: “An implicit attitude task that assesses a person’s
automatic associations between concepts by measuring the response times in
pairing the concepts”
 Evaluative priming task: “An implicit attitude task that assesses the extent to
which an attitude object is associated with a positive or negative valence by
measuring the time it takes a person to label an adjective as good or bad after
being presented with an attitude object”
 “even though individuals are often unaware of their implicit attitudes, these
attitudes can have serious implications for their behavior”
 “our decisions are influenced by our experiences, expectations, emotions, motivations,
and current contexts”
Chapter 5 – Conformity and Obedience
 “We often change our attitudes and behaviors to match the attitudes and behaviors of the
people around us. One reason for this conformity is a concern about what other people
think of us.”
 Conformity: “Changing one’s attitude or behavior to match a perceived social norm”
 Normative influence: “Conformity that results from a concern for what other people think
of us”
 “although we see the effect in virtually every culture that has been studied, more
conformity is found in collectivist countries such as Japan and China than in
individualistic countries such as the United States”
 Informational influence: “Conformity that results from a concern to act in a socially
approved manner as determined by how others act.”
 Descriptive norm: “The perception of what most people do in a given situation.”
o “it’s not always easy to obtain good descriptive norm information, which means
we sometimes rely on a flawed notion of the norm when deciding how we should
behave”
 Obedience: “Responding to an order or command from a person in a position of
authority”

Chapter 6 – Persuasion
 “When persuasion is well-meaning, we might call it education. When it is manipulative,
it might be called mind control”
 There are central and peripheral routes to persuasion
 Central route to persuasion: “Persuasion that employs direct, relevant, logical
messages”
 Peripheral route to persuasion: “Persuasion that relies on superficial cues that
have little to do with logic”
 “exploits rule-of-thumb heuristics”
 Fixed action patterns: “Sequences of behavior that occur in exactly the
same fashion, in exactly the same order, every time they are elicited.”
 Trigger features: “Specific, sometimes minute, aspects of a situation that
activate fixed action patterns.”
 “three characteristics that lead to trust: perceived authority, honesty, and likability” this is
known as the triad of trust
 Manipulating the perception of trustworthiness and other forms of persuassion
 Testimonials and endorsement
 Presenting the message as educational
 Word of mouth (we turn to people in our lives to make decisions for us)
 The Maven (a Yiddish word that refers to a person who’s an expert or
connoisseur, as in a friend who knows a lot about a certain topic or has great
 advice. Someone who knows a lot of people, communicates with people a lot, are
the go-to for opinions, and enjoys spreading the word about what they
know/think. They are trusted)
 The norm of reciprocity: “The normative pressure to repay, in equitable value,
what another person has given to us”
 Social proof: “The mental shortcut based on the assumption that, if everyone is
doing it, it must be right.”
 Foot in the door: “Obtaining a small, initial commitment.”
 Gradually escalating commitments: “A pattern of small, progressively
escalating demands is less likely to be rejected than a single large demand
made all at once.”
 Door in the Face: asking for a big favour, knowing it will be rejected, and then
asking for something smaller
 That’s not All (a variation of door in the face)
 Sunk cost trap: relies on a person feeling already invested and not wanting their
effort/money to go to waste, so they give more
 The rule of scarcity: “People tend to perceive things as more attractive when their
availability is limited, or when they stand to lose the opportunity to acquire them
on favorable terms.”
 Psychological reactance: “A reaction to people, rules, requirements, or offerings that are
perceived to limit freedoms.”

Chapter 7 – Personality Traits

 “Personality traits reflect people’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors”
 Personality: “Enduring predispositions that characterize a person, such as styles of
thought, feelings and behavior”
 Personality traits: “Enduring dispositions in behavior that show differences across
individuals, and which tend to characterize the person across varying types of situations”
 Trait psychologists say that there is a limited number of personality traits and we all fall
on the scale of high to low for each trait
 Continuous distributions: “Characteristics can go from low to high, with all
different intermediate values possible. One does not simply have the trait or not
have it, but can possess varying amounts of it.”
 Independent: “Two characteristics or traits are separate from one another-- a
person can be high on one and low on the other, or vice-versa. Some correlated
traits are relatively independent in that although there is a tendency for a person
high on one to also be high on the other, this is not always the case”
 Five-Factor Model (the Big Five): “a widely accepted model of personality traits.
Advocates of the model believe that much of the variability in people’s thoughts,
feelings, and behaviors can be summarized with five broad traits”
  Openness: “a person’s tendency to seek out and to appreciate new things,
including thoughts, feelings, values, and experiences”
 Conscientiousness: “a person’s tendency to be careful, organized, hardworking,
and to follow rules”
 Extraversion: “a person’s tendency to be sociable, outgoing, active, and assertive”
 Agreeableness: “a person’s tendency to be compassionate, cooperative, warm, and
caring to others. People low in agreeableness tend to be rude, hostile, and to
pursue their own interests over those of others”
 Neuroticism: “the tendency to be interpersonally sensitive and the tendency to
experience negative emotions like anxiety, fear, sadness, and anger”

 The lexical hypothesis: “the idea that the most important differences between people will
be encoded in the language that we use to describe people. Therefore, if we want to know
which personality traits are most important, we can look to the language that people use
to describe themselves and others”
 Factor analysis: “A statistical technique for grouping similar things together according to
how highly they are associated”
 Facets: “Broad personality traits can be broken down into narrower facets or aspects of
the trait. For example, extraversion has several facets, such as sociability, dominance,
risk-taking and so forth”
 “Facets can be useful because they provide more specific descriptions of what a
person is like”
 The HEXACO model: “an alternative to the Five-Factor Model. The HEXACO model
includes six traits, five of which are variants of the traits included in the Big Five
(Emotionality [E], Extraversion [X], Agreeableness [A], Conscientiousness [C], and
Openness [O]). The sixth factor, Honesty-Humility [H], is unique to this model”
 (emotionality replaces neuroticism in this modle)
 People who are high in the honesty-humility trait “are sincere, fair, and modest,
whereas those low in the trait are manipulative, narcissistic, and self-centered”
  Person-situation debate: “a historical debate about the relative power of personality traits
as compared to situational influences on behavior. The situationist critique, which started
the person-situation debate, suggested that people overestimate the extent to which
personality traits are consistent across situations”

Chapter 9 – Self-Regulation and Conscientiousness

 Self-regulation: “The process of altering one’s responses, including thoughts, feelings,
impulses, actions, and task performance”
 Self control is good, but one can be over-controlled
 Three things important to self-regulation
 Standards: “Ideas about how things should (or should not) be” – “include goals,
laws, moral principles, personal rules, other people’s expectations, and social
norms”
 Monitoring: “Keeping track of a target behavior that is to be regulated”
 Capacity to change oneself (sometimes known as willpower)
 Ego depletion: “The state of diminished willpower or low energy
associated with having exerted self-regulation.” – in this state people are
more likely to make bad decisions
 “a person’s capacity for self-regulation is not constant, but rather it fluctuates”
 “It’s not doing math problems or learning to spell at age 3 that increases subsequent adult
success—but rather the benefit comes from having some early practice at planning,
getting organized, and following rules”
 Conscientiousness: “A personality trait consisting of self-control, orderliness,
industriousness, and traditionalism.”
 “the trait self-control is one big part of conscientiousness, but there are other
parts”
 “Psychologists prefer not to make a value judgment about whether it is better to be high
or low in any personality trait. But when it comes specifically to self-control, it is
difficult to resist the conclusion that high self-control is better, both for the person and for
society at large”

Chapter 10 – Creativity
 Criteria for something to be considered creative
 Originality: “When an idea or solution has a low probability of occurrence”
 Usefulness – must be an idea of value
 Surprise – should be nonobvious
 Little-c creativity: “Creative ideas that appear at the personal level, whether the home or
the workplace. Such creativity needs not have a larger impact to be considered creative”
  Big-C Creativity: “Creative ideas that have an impact well beyond the everyday life of
home or work. At the highest level, this kind of creativity is that of the creative genius”
 Tests of creativity
 Remote associations: “Associations between words or concepts that are
semantically distant and thus relatively unusual or original”
 Unusual uses: “A test of divergent thinking that asks participants to find many
uses for commonplace objects, such as a brick or paperclip”
 Divergent thinking: “The opposite of convergent thinking, the capacity for exploring
multiple potential answers or solutions to a given question or problem (e.g., coming up
with many different uses for a common object).”
 Convergent thinking: “The opposite of divergent thinking, the capacity to narrow in on
the single “correct” answer or solution to a given question or problem (e.g., giving the
right response on an intelligence tests).”
 Creativity is more related to personality than intelligence. But high intelligence is an
important factor of what makes a creative person (especially a big-C creative one).
 Creative people usually score higher on openness to experience in the big five test
 Latent inhibition: “The ability to filter out extraneous stimuli, concentrating only on the
information that is deemed relevant. Reduced latent inhibition is associated with higher
creativity”
 “reduced latent inhibition is also connected with mental illness”
 BUT mental illness is not directly associated creativity
 Multicultural experiences: “Individual exposure to two or more cultures, such as obtained
by living abroad, emigrating to another country, or working or going to school in a
culturally diverse setting.”

Chapter 11 – Happiness
 Subjective well-being: “The name that scientists give to happiness—thinking and feeling
that our lives are going very well.”
 Happiness: “The popular word for subjective well-being. Scientists sometimes avoid
using this term because it can refer to different things, such as feeling good, being
satisfied, or even the causes of high subjective well-being”
 “Top-down” or internal causes of happiness: “The person’s outlook and habitual response
tendencies that influence their happiness— for example, their temperament or optimistic
outlook on life.”
 Inborn temperament
 Personality and temperament
 Outlook
 Resilience
  “Bottom-up” or external causes of happiness: “Situational factors outside the person that
influence his or her subjective well-being, such as good and bad events and
circumstances such as health and wealth”
 Sufficient material resources
 A certain amount of money is necessary to meet one’s needs and gain life
satisfaction, but it has diminishing returns, and “high materialism seems to
lower life satisfaction”
 Sufficient social resources
 Desirable society
 Three major “types of happiness,” together form subjective well-being
 Life satisfaction: “A person reflects on their life and judges to what degree it is
going well, by whatever standards that person thinks are most important for a
good life”
 Positive feelings: “Desirable and pleasant feelings. Moods and emotions such as
enjoyment and love are examples.”
 Infrequent negative feelings (Negative feelings: “Undesirable and unpleasant
feelings that people tend to avoid if they can. Moods and emotions such as
depression, anger, and worry are examples.”)
 Adaptation: “The fact that after people first react to good or bad events, sometimes in a
strong way, their feelings and reactions tend to dampen down over time and they return
toward their original level of subjective well-being”
 Subjective well-being scales: “Self-report surveys or questionnaires in which participants
indicate their levels of subjective well-being, by responding to items with a number that
indicates how well off they feel.”

Chapter 13 – Positive Psychology

 Positive psychology: “The science of human flourishing. Positive Psychology is an
applied science with an emphasis on real world intervention”
 Flourishing: “To live optimally psychologically, relationally, and spiritually”
 “The principal claim of positive psychology is that the study of health, fulfillment and
well-being is as deserving of study as illness, dysfunction, and distress”
 Character strength: “A positive trait or quality deemed to be morally good and is valued
for itself as well as for promoting individual and collective well-being”
 Key three strengths:
 Gratitude: “A feeling of appreciation or thankfulness in response to receiving a
benefit.”
 Forgiveness: “The letting go of negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward
an offender”
 “Forgiveness is not excusing, condoning, tolerating, or forgetting that one
has been hurt because of the actions of another. Forgiveness is letting go
 of negative thoughts (e.g. wishing the offender harm), negative behaviors
(e.g. a desire to retaliate), and negative feelings (e.g. resentment) toward
the offender”
 Humility: “Having an accurate view of self—not too high or low—and a realistic
appraisal of one’s strengths and weaknesses, especially in relation to other
people.”
 Pro-social: “Thoughts, actions, and feelings that are directed towards others and which
are positive in nature”

Chapter 12 – The Healthy Life

 Chronic disease: “A health condition that persists over time, typically for periods longer
than three months (e. g., HIV, asthma, diabetes).”
 “Health psychology is a relatively new, interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on…
the role of psychology in maintaining health, as well as preventing and treating illness.”
 “Health psychology considers how the choices we make, the behaviors we engage in, and
even the emotions that we feel, can play an important role in our overall health”
 Biopsychosocial Model of Health: “An approach to studying health and human function
that posits the importance of biological, psychological, and social (or environmental)
processes.” “This model posits that biology, psychology, and social factors are just as
important in the development of disease as biological causes”
 Health: “According to the World Health Organization, it is a complete state of physical,
mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
 Biomedical Model of Health: “A reductionist model that posits that ill health is a result of
a deviation from normal function, which is explained by the presence of pathogens,
injury, or genetic abnormality” – older, replaced by the above
 Mind–body connection: “The idea that our emotions and thoughts can affect how our
body functions.”
 Psychosomatic medicine: “An interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on how
biological, psychological, and social processes contribute to physiological changes in the
body and health over time.”
 Psychoneuroimmunology: “A field of study examining the relationship among
psychology, brain function, and immune function.”
 Both big stressors and little daily hassles can “raise your blood pressure, alter your stress
hormones, and even suppress your immune system function”
 Stressor: “An event or stimulus that induces feelings of stress.”
 Daily Hassles: “Irritations in daily life that are not necessarily traumatic, but that
cause difficulties and repeated stress.”
 Stress: “A pattern of physical and psychological responses in an organism after it
perceives a threatening event that disturbs its homeostasis and taxes its abilities to cope
with the event.”
 General Adaptation Syndrome: “A three-phase model of stress, which includes a
mobilization of physiological resources phase, a coping phase, and an exhaustion phase
(i.e., when an organism fails to cope with the stress adequately and depletes its
resources)”
 Resilience: “The ability to “bounce back” from negative situations (e.g., illness, stress) to
normal functioning or to simply not show poor outcomes in the face of adversity. In some
cases, resilience may lead to better functioning following the negative experience (e.g.,
post-traumatic growth).”
 Coping Strategies
 Problem-focused coping: “A set of coping strategies aimed at improving or
changing stressful situation”
 Emotion-focused coping: “Coping strategy aimed at reducing the negative
emotions associated with a stressful event.”
 Control: “Feeling like you have the power to change your environment or behavior if you
need or want to.”
 Self-efficacy: “The belief that one can perform adequately in a specific situation.”
 Health behavior: “Any behavior that is related to health—either good or bad”
 Social integration: “The size of your social network, or number of social roles (e.g., son,
sister, student, employee, team member).”
 Social support: “The perception or actuality that we have a social network that can help
us in times of need and provide us with a variety of useful resources (e.g., advice, love,
money).”
 Type A Behavior: “characterized by impatience, competitiveness, neuroticism, hostility,
and anger.”
 Type B behavior: “the absence of Type A characteristics and is represented by less
competitive, aggressive, and hostile behavior patterns”
 Hostility: “An experience or trait with cognitive, behavioral, and emotional components.
It often includes cynical thoughts, feelings of emotion, and aggressive behavior”
 Biofeedback: “The process by which physiological signals, not normally available to
human perception, are transformed into easy-to-understand graphs or numbers.
Individuals can then use this information to try to change bodily functioning (e.g., lower
blood pressure, reduce muscle tension)”
 Adherence: “In health, it is the ability of a patient to maintain a health behavior
prescribed by a physician. This might include taking medication as prescribed, exercising
more, or eating less high-fat food.”
 Behavioral medicine: “A field similar to health psychology that integrates psychological
factors (e.g., emotion, behavior, cognition, and social factors) in the treatment of disease.
This applied field includes clinical areas of study, such as occupational therapy, hypnosis,
rehabilitation or medicine, and preventative medicine”
Chapter 14 – Anxiety and Related Disorders
 “Anxiety is a natural part of life and, at normal levels, helps us to function at our best.
However, for people with anxiety disorders, anxiety is overwhelming and hard to control.
Anxiety disorders develop out of a blend of biological (genetic) and psychological factors
that, when combined with stress, may lead to the development of ailments.”
 Anxiety: “A mood state characterized by negative affect, muscle tension, and physical
arousal in which a person apprehensively anticipates future danger or misfortune”
 “triple vulnerabilities” are a combination variables that increase our risk for developing a
disorder
 Biological vulnerability: “A specific genetic and neurobiological factor that might
predispose someone to develop anxiety disorders.”
 Psychological vulnerabilities: “Influences that our early experiences have on how
we view the world.”
 Specific vulnerabilities: “How our experiences lead us to focus and channel our
anxiety.”
 “None of these vulnerabilities directly causes anxiety disorders on its own—
instead, when all of these vulnerabilities are present, and we experience some
triggering life stress, an anxiety disorder may be the result”
 Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD): “Excessive worry about everyday things that is at a
level that is out of proportion to the specific causes of worry.”
 Reinforced response: “Following the process of operant conditioning, the strengthening
of a response following either the delivery of a desired consequence (positive
reinforcement) or escape from an aversive consequence”
 “For example, if a mother spends all night worrying about whether her teenage
daughter will get home safe from a night out and the daughter returns home
without incident, the mother could easily attribute her daughter’s safe return to
her successful “vigil.” What the mother hasn’t learned is that her daughter would
have returned home just as safe if she had been focusing on the movie she was
watching with her husband, rather than being preoccupied with worries.”
 Fight or flight response: “A biological reaction to alarming stressors that prepares the
body to resist or escape a threat”
 Panic disorder (PD): “A condition marked by regular strong panic attacks, and which
may include significant levels of worry about future attacks.”
 Internal bodily or somatic cues: “Physical sensations that serve as triggers for anxiety or
as reminders of past traumatic events.”
 Interoceptive avoidance: “Avoidance of situations or activities that produce sensations of
physical arousal similar to those occurring during a panic attack or intense fear response”
 External cues: “Stimuli in the outside world that serve as triggers for anxiety or as
reminders of past traumatic events”
 Agoraphobia: “A sort of anxiety disorder distinguished by feelings that a place is
uncomfortable or may be unsafe because it is significantly open or crowded.”
  “In some cases, agoraphobia develops in the absence of panic attacks and therefor
is a separate disorder in DSM-5. But agoraphobia often accompanies panic
disorder.”
 Social anxiety disorder (SAD): “A condition marked by acute fear of social situations
which lead to worry and diminished day to day functioning.”
 SAD performance only: “Social anxiety disorder which is limited to certain
situations that the sufferer perceives as requiring some type of performance.”
 Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): “A sense of intense fear, triggered by memories of
a past traumatic event, that another traumatic event might occur. PTSD may include
feelings of isolation and emotional numbing.”
 Flashback: “Sudden, intense re-experiencing of a previous event, usually trauma-
related”
 Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): “A disorder characterized by the desire to engage
in certain behaviors excessively or compulsively in hopes of reducing anxiety. Behaviors
include things such as cleaning, repeatedly opening and closing doors, hoarding, and
obsessing over certain thoughts.”
 Thought-action fusion: “The tendency to overestimate the relationship between a thought
and an action, such that one mistakenly believes a “bad” thought is the equivalent of a
“bad” action”

Chapter 15 – Mood Disorders

 To be considered a mood disorder, “symptoms need to cause significant distress or
impairment and cannot be due to the effects of a substance or a general medical
condition.”
 Anhedonia: “Loss of interest or pleasure in activities one previously found enjoyable or
rewarding.”
 Major Depressive Episode (MDE) – needs to meet at least 5 of the following criteria,
including at least one of the first two symptoms, for most of the day, nearly every day:
 depressed mood
 diminished interest or pleasure in almost all activities
 significant weight loss or gain or an increase or decrease in appetite
 insomnia or hypersomnia
 Hypersomnia: “Excessive daytime sleepiness, including difficulty staying
awake or napping, or prolonged sleep episodes.”
 psychomotor agitation or retardation
 Psychomotor agitation: “Increased motor activity associated with
restlessness, including physical actions (e.g., fidgeting, pacing, feet
tapping, handwringing)”
 Psychomotor retardation: “A slowing of physical activities in which
routine activities (e.g., eating, brushing teeth) are performed in an
unusually slow manner.”
  fatigue or loss of energy
 feeling worthless or excessive/inappropriate guilt
 diminished ability to concentrate or indecisiveness
 recurrent thoughts of death, suicidal ideation, or a suicide attempt
 Suicidal ideation: “Recurring thoughts about suicide, including
considering or planning for suicide, or preoccupation with suicide”
 Manic or Hypomanic Episode – mood disturbance must be present for one week or
longer in mania (unless hospitalization is required) or four days or longer in hypomania,
and at least three of the following symptoms must be present in the context of euphoric
mood (or at least four in the context of irritable mood):
 inflated self-esteem or grandiosity
 Grandiosity: “Inflated self-esteem or an exaggerated sense of self-
importance and self-worth (e.g., believing one has special powers or
superior abilities)”
 increased goal-directed activity or psychomotor agitation
 reduced need for sleep
 racing thoughts or flight of ideas
 distractibility
 increased talkativeness
 excessive involvement in risky behaviors
 (“whereas manic episodes must last one week and are defined by a significant
impairment in functioning, hypomanic episodes are shorter and not necessarily
accompanied by impairment in functioning”)
 Unipolar Mood Disorders
 Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Defined by one or more MDEs, but no
history of manic or hypomanic episodes.
 Persistent Depressive Disorder (PDD). Criteria for PDD are feeling depressed
most of the day for more days than not, for at least two years. At least two of the
following symptoms are also required to meet criteria for PDD:
 poor appetite or overeating
 insomnia or hypersomnia
 low energy or fatigue
 low self-esteem
 poor concentration or difficulty making decisions
 feelings of hopelessness
 (To meet criteria for PDD, a person cannot be without symptoms for more
than two months at a time.)
 Bipolar I Disorder (BD I) – characterized by a single (or recurrent) manic episode (a
depressive episode is not necessary but often present)
 Bipolar II Disorder – characterized by single (or recurrent) hypomanic episodes and
depressive episodes
  Cyclothymic Disorder – characterized by numerous and alternating periods of hypomania
and depression, lasting at least two years
 Socioeconomic status (SES): “A person’s economic and social position based on income,
education, and occupation.”
 “Women experience two to three times higher rates of MDD than do men”
 “Higher prevalence rates of MDD are associated with lower SES”
 Genetic factors influence MDD
 “Stressful life events are more likely to predict the first MDE than subsequent episodes”
and “minor events may play a larger role in subsequent episodes than the initial episodes”
 Early adversity: “Single or multiple acute or chronic stressful events, which may be
biological or psychological in nature (e.g., poverty, abuse, childhood illness or injury),
occurring during childhood and resulting in a biological and/or psychological stress
response.”
 Chronic stress: “Discrete or related problematic events and conditions which persist over
time and result in prolonged activation of the biological and/or psychological stress
response (e.g., unemployment, ongoing health difficulties, marital discord)”
 Attributional style: “The tendency by which a person infers the cause or meaning of
behaviors or events.”
 Bipolar disorder is highly genetic
 Social zeitgeber: “Zeitgeber is German for “time giver.” Social zeitgebers are
environmental cues, such as meal times and interactions with other people, that entrain
biological rhythms and thus sleep-wake cycle regularity”

Chapter 16 – ADHD and Behavior Disorders in Children

 Pathologizes: “To define a trait or collection of traits as medically or psychologically
unhealthy or abnormal”
 “On the one hand, diagnosing a child with ADHD can help him or her get beneficial
treatment; however, the diagnosis can also have potentially negative effects on peer
relationships and how children perceive themselves.”
 Two symptom clusters: Hyperactive/impulsive and inattentive. “Two children diagnosed
with ADHD can have very different symptom presentations. In fact, children can be
diagnosed with different subtypes of the disorder (i.e., Combined Type, Predominantly
Inattentive Type, or Predominantly Hyperactive-Impulsive Type) according to the
number of symptoms they have in each cluster.”
 Early diagnoses predicts more positive outcomes in adulthood
 criteria to distinguish between normal and disordered behavior:
 symptoms must significantly impair the child’s functioning in important life
domains (e.g., school, home).
 The symptoms must be inappropriate for the child’s developmental level
 “genetics appear to be a main cause of ADHD”
  ADHD is not caused by poor parenting, but the stress and challenges of raising a child
with ADHD can make a person’s parenting less consistent, which can worsen the child’s
ADHD symptoms.
 Contingency management: “A reward or punishment that systematically follows a
behavior. Parents can use contingencies to modify their children’s behavior.”
 ADHD is often treated with stimulant medication, which is generally low risk and
effective. However, “it is not entirely clear how long-term stimulant treatment can affect
the brain, particularly in adults who have been medicated for ADHD since childhood”
 Parent management training: “A treatment for childhood behavior problems that teaches
parents how to use contingencies to more effectively manage their children’s behavior.”
 A combination of behavioural treatment and medication is often the most effective, and
can allow for easier to tolerate, lower doses of stimulants .
 Drug diversion: “When a drug that is prescribed to treat a medical condition is given to
another individual who seeks to use the drug illicitly”
 Malingering: “Fabrication or exaggeration of medical symptoms to achieve secondary
gain (e.g., receive medication, avoid school)”

Chapter 17 - Autism: Insights from the Study of the Social Brain

 Social brain: “The set of neuroanatomical structures that allows us to understand the
actions and intentions of other people”
 Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): “Entails the use of powerful magnets to
measure the levels of oxygen within the brain that vary with changes in neural activity.
That is, as the neurons in specific brain regions “work harder” when performing a
specific task, they require more oxygen. By having people listen to or view social
percepts in an MRI scanner, fMRI specifies the brain regions that evidence a relative
increase in blood flow. In this way, fMRI provides excellent spatial information,
pinpointing with millimeter accuracy, the brain regions most critical for different social
processes.”
 Event-related potentials (ERP): “Measures the firing of groups of neurons in the cortex.
As a person views or listens to specific types of information, neuronal activity creates
small electrical currents that can be recorded from non-invasive sensors placed on the
scalp. ERP provides excellent information about the timing of processing, clarifying
brain activity at the millisecond pace at which it unfolds.”
 Endophenotypes: “A characteristic that reflects a genetic liability for disease and a more
basic component of a complex clinical presentation. Endophenotypes are less
developmentally malleable than overt behavior”
Chapter 18 – Personality Disorders
 Personality disorders: “When personality traits result in significant distress, social
impairment, and/or occupational impairment”
 Antisocial: “A pervasive pattern of disregard and violation of the rights of others.
These behaviors may be aggressive or destructive and may involve breaking laws
or rules, deceit or theft”
 Avoidant: “A pervasive pattern of social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, and
hypersensitivity to negative evaluation.”
 Borderline: “A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-
image, and affects, and marked impulsivity”
 Dependent: “A pervasive and excessive need to be taken care of that leads to
submissive and clinging behavior and fears of separation”
 Histrionic: “A pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking.”
 Narcissistic: “A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for
admiration, and lack of empathy”
 Obsessive-compulsive: “A pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness,
perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control, at the expense of flexibility,
openness, and efficiency”
 Paranoid: “A pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their
motives are interpreted as malevolent”
 Schizoid: “A pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationships and a
restricted range of expression of emotions in interpersonal settings.”
 Schizotypal: “A pervasive pattern of social and interpersonal deficits marked by
acute discomfort with, and reduced capacity for, close relationships as well as
perceptual distortions and eccentricities of behavior”

Chapter 19 – Therapy
 “Today, nearly half of all Americans will experience mental illness at some point in their
lives, and mental health problems affect more than one-quarter of the population in any
given year”
 Psychoanalytic therapy: “Sigmund Freud’s therapeutic approach focusing on resolving
unconscious conflicts”
 Psychodynamic therapy: “Treatment applying psychoanalytic principles in a
briefer, more individualized format” – “focuses more on relieving psychological
distress than on changing the person”
 Free association: “In psychodynamic therapy, a process in which the patient
reports all thoughts that come to mind without censorship, and these thoughts are
interpreted by the therapist”
 Person-centered therapy: “A therapeutic approach focused on creating a supportive
environment for self-discovery.”
  Unconditional positive regard: “In person-centered therapy, an attitude of warmth,
empathy and acceptance adopted by the therapist in order to foster feelings of
inherent worth in the patient.”
 Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT): “A family of approaches with the goal of changing
the thoughts and behaviors that influence psychopathology”
 Automatic thoughts: “Thoughts that occur spontaneously; often used to describe
problematic thoughts that maintain mental disorders”
 Schema: “A mental representation or set of beliefs about something.”
 Reappraisal/Cognitive restructuring: “The process of identifying, evaluating, and
changing maladaptive thoughts in psychotherapy”
 Exposure therapy: “A form of intervention in which the patient engages with a
problematic (usually feared) situation without avoidance or escape”
 Mindfulness: “A process that reflects a nonjudgmental, yet attentive, mental state”
 Mindfulness-based therapy: “A form of psychotherapy grounded in mindfulness
theory and practice, often involving meditation, yoga, body scan, and other
features of mindfulness exercises”
 Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT): “A treatment often used for borderline personality
disorder that incorporates both cognitive-behavioral and mindfulness element”
 Dialectical worldview: “A perspective in DBT that emphasizes the joint
importance of change and acceptance.”
 Acceptance and commitment therapy: “A therapeutic approach designed to foster
nonjudgmental observation of one’s own mental processes”
 Cognitive bias modification: “Using exercises (e.g., computer games) to change
problematic thinking habits.”
 Comorbidity: “Describes a state of having more than one psychological or physical
disorder at a given time”
 Integrative or eclectic psychotherapy: “Also called integrative psychotherapy, this term
refers to approaches combining multiple orientations (e.g., CBT with psychoanalytic
elements).”
