HISTORY, SCIENCE AND PROFESSION

Psychology degree
Year 2018-2019
Yolanda Higueras

Introduction to Psychology – CHAPTER 1

1. What is psychology and how we study it

Psychology is a science,
There are different methods to study it:
 Laboratory studies
 Field experiments
 Correlational models
 Behavioral observations
 Self-reports and questionnaires

2. What’s on our mind? Perception.

Perception depends on our brain.
Perception = stimuli + sensorial interpretation. Perception is about what your brain
does with the information it receives.
- Sensorial interpretation
o Limited by our senses
o Vision: limited wavelength perception
o Audition: limited acustic perception
- Signal detection theory
o The activation of our receptors must be distinguishable from nouse to
start processing
o Perception results not only from sense activation but from the
combination of sense and decision processes
o Response bias: to find targets and avoid false alarms
o Response Bias: to find targets and avoid false alarms.
o Habituation: ability to ignore irrelevant orrepetitive stimuli.
o • Sensitization: heightened awareness/responsiveness to a stimulus or
class of stimuli for a period of time

Perceptive grouping

Allow us to perceive patterns in what we perceive:

- Gestalt principles
Attention

• It´s a limited process suffering from many interferences.

• Perception is influenced by
• Internal processes: motivation, cognition and emotion
• External processes: social context
• 2 types of attentional processing:
• Bottom-up (stimuli guided) (hypnosis?)
• Top-down (conceptually guided)

Allow us to perceive something as long as we attend or focus on that. If we don’t focus,

it is gone.

3. WHAT STAYS IN OUR MIND? LEARNING AND

MEMORY

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does” William James.

Learning
Learning depends on
- Intelligence, attention, persistence
Contingency learning: smth leads to smth
Discrepancy learning: smth differs in smth
Transactional learning: from interaction with others
o
- Involuntary learning
o Associative/conditioned learning: • Operant conditioning (Skinner)
o Classic conditioning (Pavlov)

Observational learning: just watching others doing it. No need of reinforcements

Latent learning: it takes place before the person knows it and is not immediately
reflected in behavior until reinforcement

Memory
Memory refers to the processes that are used to acquire, store, retain, and later
retrieve information.

Memory is not a passive concept, it is a constructive process. It means that memory is

not only reconstructive (retrieve the original trace) but also constructive (experience
influence what and how we recall it).
Memory refers to the processes that are used to acquire, store, retain, and later retrieve
information.
Atkinson and Shiffrin separate 3 stages of memory
1- Sensory memory
2- Short-term memory
3- Long-term memory

4. HOW DO WE USE WHAT´S IN OUR MINDS?

REASONING, THOUGHTS AND COMMUNICATION

We perceive to make sense of the world and to have material to learn and storage. When
we need it, we recall it to think about them, to argue and/or communicate them. After
that, we can create ideas, solve problems and imagine future possibilities.
Principal components of thinking:
- concepts
- reasoning
- communication

5. Why do we do what we do? Motivation and emotion

- Emotions
Emotions are difficult and complex to study. They’re related to psychological factors
like motivation, attention, memory, cognition or action. Emotions organize our
behavior. They can be basic or secondary.

Basic emotions:
- Anger
- Contempt (‘fine’)
- Disgust
- Surprise
- Sadness
- Happiness
- Fear

Secondary emotions:
- they depend on my personal history, my perception, memories…

the responsible mechanism of emotions is the limbic system.

Motivation

Impulses or stimuli that beats procrastination and move us to action (Miller)

Biological motives: they’re innate
hunger
thirst
sex
sleep
excretory

Social motives: they may change in different cultures but they’re not considered innate
achievement
orders
play
autonomy
affiliation

Motivation can be intrinsic or extrinsic. They both depend on where they come from.

Motivation helps is to gain reinforcement when it’s gone.

6. Do we all develop the same way? Developmental

psychology
Developmental psychology is based on investigating changes age and why they occur.
But does it happen in stages or continuously?

There are critical stages of child development. They focus in children and their
activities like crawling, playing, language, logic, etc.

- attachment theory
This theory is based on the relation between the baby and its environment (parents
normally) . It is influenced by the baby’s temperament and the parents’
responsiveness.
There are 4 different types of attachment
- secure
- ambivalent
- avoidant
- disorganized

7. can we influence each other? Social psychology

human behavior is explained by both: individual and social factors together.
Also, other’s behavior influences our own:
- social facilitation: the presence of others influences
our responses (i. e Competition)
- audience effect: presence of others enhance emotional sensations (i.e
watching a football game with more people)

Social influence:
1. Leadership: somebody trying to influence a group. (example: Hitler, Gandhi, the
Pope)
2. Acceptance: how the pressure of a person or group influence your own
behavior. (example: smoking or drinking alcohol because your friends group do
it)
3. Obedience: accept a change on your behavior due to authority demand
(Milgram experiment)
4. Prejudice: extension of one opinion to the rest of the group (stereotype)
(example: teachers are boring, politicians are liars or robbers, etc.)

8. What if it goes wrong? Abnormal psychology

What is normal/abnormal?

1. PSYCHOLOGICAL ABNORMALITY: when a behaviour causes discomfort or

maladaptation. (ex: remove hair by yourself (trichotillomania))
2. MEDICAL ABNORMALITY: when behavior is caused by a medical condition that
requires treatment. (ex: epilepsy)
3. STATISTIC ABNORMALITY: when a behaviour scores below a normative standard
from the same population. (ex: language learning average in children)
4. EXISTENTIALIST ABNORMALITY: abnormal behaviour is caused by abnormal
environmental responses.
5. HEALTH-BASED ABNORMALITY: describes first what is normal. From there, they
define abnormality. (ex: being vegetarian or no)

Classification of abnormal (internationally accepted)

DSM-5: Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders.

ICD-10: The international statistical classification of diseases and health related
problems.