CONTEMPORARY

PSYCHOLOGY
Week 2 – Class 1
 HOLIDAY HOMEWORK

• “Research Task” to be handed in at the end of class

• Contemporary Psychology notes
• If you have not finished these notes, you will be excused to the breakout space and
not participate in the note sharing
 NOTE SHARING

• Get into groups of 4 (each area to be represented: biological, behavioural,

cognitive and socio-cultural)
• Each group member is to explain their area of contemporary psychology that
they have studied over the holidays
• Each group member to copy down the notes of the other three into their class
notes
 OFFICIAL NOTES AND
EXPLANATION
• If you are missing anything in your notes, please add to them…..
• Each of the contemporary perspectives in psychology provides a different point of
view about behaviour and mental processes
• Each perspective has its own assumptions, questions, and explanations
• Each perspective will determine how research is conducted and the type of
evidence that is considered important
 BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
• Focuses on the biological influences on behaviour and mental processes by
looking at the brain, the nervous system, the endocrine system, the immune
system, and genetics
• All thoughts/feelings are connected to reactions in the body
• Eg) When you get nervous, your hands start sweating
• Feelings effect your nervous/endocrine/immune system
• Eg) Stress (feeling) causes the hormonal release (endocrine system)
of cortisol into the body which causes an increase in blood-sugar
levels, suppresses the immune system, and aids in fat, protein, and
carbohydrate metabolism
• Eg) Fear (feeling) causes the release of adrenalin which increases
your heart rate, breathing and tenses your muscles
• The brain works through the actions of chemicals, called
neurotransmitters, which send communication between
neurons both within the brain and in the nervous system
• Research has begun to understand how to manipulate
neurotransmitters to help patients with undesirable behaviour
(eg) depression)
• There are hundreds of different neurotransmitters that are
responsible for different behaviours/mental processes
 EXAMPLES OF NEUROTRANSMITTERS

• Dopamine
• The “feel good” neurotransmitter
• Plays a major role in reward-driven learning
• Linked with bodily movements; patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease display
a lower level of dopamine secreting neurons

• Seratonin
• Regulates sleep patterns
• Contributes to your feeling of well-being and happiness
• Thought to have a function in memory and learning
 DEVELOPMENTS IN BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY

• Gene mapping
• MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)
• PET (Positron Emission Tomography)
• Produces images of the brain that indicate different
levels of activity in the brain
• Allows psychologists to see how different areas of the
brain interact to perceive experiences, retrieve
memories, etc.
 BEHAVIOURAL PERSPECTIVE

• Behavioural Psychologists emphasise the importance of studying environmental

influences on behaviour
• They look at how behaviour is acquired or changed by consequences
(reward/punishment)
 BURRHUS SKINNER

• Explained how rewards or punishments shape, maintain, or change behaviour

through operant conditioning
• The “Skinner Box”
• Reinforcement – the consequence of a behaviour determine whether the behaviour will be
more or less like to be repeated
• Positive reinforcement – increases the likelihood of a behaviour provided it results in a
reward
• Negative reinforcement – increases the likelihood of a behaviour, but involves the removal
or avoidance of an unpleasant experience (eg) removal of a shock)
 SKINNER CON’T
Skinner was able to scientifically demonstrate how reinforcement
increased the likelihood of a behaviour being exhibited and that
punishment could decrease a behaviour

• Punishment
• A undesirable behaviour could be stopped if a punishment was given AFTER the behaviour occurred

• Shaping
• positive reinforcement given at intervals until a specified behaviour is achieved (training
animals)
 COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE
• How we acquire, process, remember and use information
• The processes that need to take place for our sensory organs to take in stimuli
(visual, auditory, touch, smell, taste), convert the stimuli into neural signals that
our brain can recognise, incorporate, and store into memory such that it can be
accessed at a later time when the stimuli is encountered again
 SOCIO-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
• How the role of society and culture influence behaviour and mental
processes
• Socio – study of the influences within society (sex, race, age, income)
• Cultural – similarities and differences in how people think, feel and behave
across cultures