Sway

Well, besides the final exam, my psychology class is officially over and I have this last blog to do but no chapter in psychology to write about... and I'm unoriginal so I'll just write this blog about the book I had to read for psychology.

The book was called Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior. To summarize it, it's a book that uses psychology, behavior, and some economics to answer and explain what exactly it is that causes people to make irrational or illogical decisions.

I thought it was interesting for a while, but probably somewhere around the halfway point, I started to lose interest in it, and the book started to become pretty repetitive.

Although, one example that really stood out to me was one that involved Harvard students and a Harvard professor. At the beginning of each semester, Professor Bazerman holds an auction for a $20 bill. It sounds pretty redundant but this auction is different than the average one. The bids start out at $1 and every next bid has to go up by $1, the reason this auction is different than most, is because both the winner of the auction and the runner up must pay however much their bid was for. The hands go up fast in the beginning but around the $12-$16 mark is where the story becomes interesting. At this point, the students have realized they aren't the only ones with the great idea and this is also where the top 2 bidders get into a heated gridlock. Realizing that if they win, their loss will be less, each person bids and bids and according to the book, Professor Bazerman once sold a $20 for exactly $204. The explanation for this is that "students are pulled by both the momentum of the auction and the looming loss if they back down-a loss that is growing greater by the bid. The two forces, in turn, feed off each other."

Chapter 15

This chapter is about psychological therapies, and although there are various topics in the chapter, this blog will be mainly about psychopharmacology, which is the use of drugs to control or relieve the symptoms of various psychological disorders, and although these drugs are sometimes used alone, they are usually combined with some sort of psychotherapy. The combination of both tends to be the most successful. 

So the question that I'm going to answer is: What are the various types of drugs used to treat psychological disorders? 

There are 2 kinds of antipsychotics and 3 kinds of antidepressants, along with antimanic and antianxiety drugs. 

The antipsychotics are broken up depending on if a typical neuroleptic or an atypical neuroleptic is being treated. For the typical one, drugs like chloropromazine, droperidol, and haloperidol are used. These treat symptoms like delusions and hallucinations. For atypical neuroleptics, drugs like clozapine, risperidone, and aripiprazole are prescribed. These treat the same previous symptoms along with symptoms of psychoses. 

Antidepressants are broken up into MAOIs, Tricyclics, and SSRIs. These are all just different categories for how the various drugs works once consumed. They all treat depression and have possible minor side effects that vary depending on which drug was consumed. 

Antimanics are drugs like lithium and a number of anticonvulsant drugs that are all used to treat manic behavior, such as excessive excitement, energy, elation, or irritability. The side effects include potential for toxic buildup. 

Antianxiety drugs are generally minor tranquilizers and include drugs like alprazolam, lorazepam, and diazepam. These drugs help treat all symptoms of anxiety along with any phobia-related reactions. The down side includes a possible dependence on the drug and a slight sedative effect. 

Chapter 13

This chapter is called "Theories of Personality" so.. there's a good chance that I'll be talking about the different theories of personality.

The questions I'm going to answer are: what is personality and how do the different branches of psychology view personality?

Personality is considered the unique and relatively stable ways that people think, feel, and behave. To understand personality, it is important to note the differences between personality, character, and temperament. Character refers to the value judgments of a person's moral and ethical behavior while temperament involves the enduring characteristics that every person is born with.

To clear up any misconceptions, temperament is based in a person's biology, through genetic influences, prenatal influences, or a combination of those. Also, temperament forms the base upon which someone's larger personality is built.  However, character (along with temperament) is also a vital part in personality.

Now for how the different branches view this subject.

The psychodynamic perspective started with Sigmund Freud's work and his ideas, which have probably been discussed in an earlier blog along with the rest of the different branches' views. Anyway, this focuses on the role of the unconscious mind in the development of personality. Also, this perspective heavily focuses on biology and the biological causes of different personalities.

The behaviorist approach focuses on the effect of the environment on behavior.

The humanistic perspective came about as a reaction to the perspectives mentioned above and emphasizes the role of each specific person's conscious life experiences and choices.

The last perspective is called the trait perspective and is different than the previous ones in the sense that the previous ones wonder about the process of personality while this one is focused on the end result.

Chapter 14

This chapter is overall about the different psychological disorders so instead of talking about everything covered in the chapter, I think I'll answer one question on the disorder known as schizophrenia.

So the question that I'm going to answer is.. What are the main symptoms of schizophrenia?

One common symptom is called a delusion, or a false/untrue belief held by someone that won't accept any proof that they are wrong. Although delusions aren't apparent in every type of schizophrenia, it is the symptom most associated with the disorder. There are four main types of disorders that do associate with schizophrenia and they are: delusions of persecution, delusions of reference, delusions of influence, and delusions of grandeur. The persecution delusions involve a schizophrenic thinking that other people are trying to hurt them in some way. Reference involves a schizophrenic thinking that other people, television characters, books, movies, or anything like that, are specifically talking to them. Influence involves a schizophrenic thinking that they are being controlled by external forces such as the devil or aliens. Grandeur involves them thinking that they are powerful people who are destined to save the world or are on some kind of important mission.

Another symptom is disturbance of speech such as made up words, repeated words/sentences, and sentences that don't make any sense but consist of only rhyming words. Overall speech and thought also seem to be interrupted often, and thoughts generally aren't relatively logical.

People with schizophrenia may also have hallucinations or false sensory perceptions, such as seeing people or hearing voices that aren't actually there. Although, hallucinations don't necessarily have to be related to sight or hearing, but those 2 senses are the most common to be affected.

There is also something called the flat effect that happens, this is a condition in which the person shows little/no emotion or experience certain emotions at the wrong time.

Lack of attention and organization are symptoms as well.

Chapter 12

This chapter is called "Social Psychology" which is defined as "the scientific study of a how a person's thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by the real, imagined, or implied presence of others.

So the question that I'm going to answer is, What is compliance and what are the 4 common ways to gain compliance?

Compliance is when someone changes their behavior resulting from other people directing or asking for the change. Also, there is a difference between compliance and obedience in the sense that obedience includes a figure of authority (asking for the change) while compliance doesn't involve anyone with real authority.

There are 4 common techniques for gaining compliance. The first is called the foot-in-the-door technique and this is when someone asks for a small commitment and then asking for a bigger commitment once the first one was achieved. For example, your neighbor could ask you to watch their house for the weekend and you agree thinking that it isn't a large task. If your neighbor wanted to take advantage of this technique, they would then ask for something larger such as the watering of their plants.


The second technique is called the door-in-the-face technique and this is just the opposite of the foot-in-the-door technique except that the first (and larger) request gets denied. Back to the example, if your neighbor wanted to use this technique, they would ask for something that might be considered too much, such as watching their kids for the weekend. Once denied, your neighbor would ask for something considered smaller such as watering plants.

The third technique is called the lowball technique. This is when a commitment is gained, the the cost of committing is raised. For your neighbor to use this, they could ask you to water their plants. You agree thinking it is an easy task but you come to figure out that they have 300 plants throughout their house.

The last technique is called the that's-not-all technique, the best example of this is any of the one million infomercials on TV; they claim to give you more than they originally "planned" to.

Chapter 11

Well, Chapter 11 is called "Stress and Health."

The question is: What are some ways in which people cope with stress?

Everyone deals with stress differently but there are some common methods. One type of coping is to work on eliminating or changing the stressor (whatever is causing the stress) itself. This is known as problem-focused coping. For example, a student might have a problem understanding what a certain professor is teaching. To solve this through problem-focused coping, that student could talk to the professor after class, ask fellow students, get a tutor, etc.


Problem-focused coping is just one method, another is called emotion-focused coping. This can be used simultaneously with problem-focused coping to better deal with controllable stress events. Emotion-focused coping involves changing the way someone feels toward a certain stressor. This is effective because it reduces the emotional impact of something, thus making it easier to deal with. Relating back to that professor example, someone could solve it through emotion-focused coping by talking about it with a friend, become more calm/confident/etc., and then handle it in a more direct manner.  One advantage to emotion-focused coping is that in can be utilized during uncontrollable stressor as well. For example, someone using this method could view a stressor as challenge rather than a threat. This changes their emotional view on the stressor and makes dealing with it easier.

Along with the focused coping methods, people also use mediation, or a series of mental exercises that result in  refocused attention along with a "trance-like state of consciousness." There are two types of mediation. One is called concentration mediation. This is the most widely known of the two. The goal of this type is to focus the mind on something unchanging, like a heart beat, so that the mind can forget daily hassles and so the body can relax. The second type, receptive mediation, involves "becoming aware of everything in immediate conscious experience." In other words, it's the experience people have when they are overawed at an ocean's edge, a starry night, etc. It doesn't specifically have to be in a natural setting such as those but those moments are examples of attention being focused outward, which is what receptive mediation tries to achieve.

Chapter 10

The title of our next chapter is "Sexuality and Gender."

So the question is "How do men and women differ in thinking, behavior, and personality?"

Research has shown that women score higher on tests that involve verbal abilities, and men score higher on tests about mathematical and spatial skills. A different study also showed that, when listening, women use both hemisphere of the brain while men only use the left hemisphere. This suggests that women pay attention to the tone and emotion of statements as well as the general content. Early explanations of these differences involved physical reasoning that basically said the different sexes have different brains, but more recent research strongly suggests that psychological and social issues are more responsible for these differences. To be more specific, the supposed differences in mathematical abilities are believed to be caused by a lack of effort or a lack of confidence on the women's part. Fortunately, now that society views the two genders as equal, these various differences are starting to diminish.


The differences that are normally thought of between men/women interacting with others are the result of stereotyped thinking. So this makes it difficult to show differences that aren't stressed in the social environments that all men/women grow up in. Generally, men are taught to hold in their emotions, be strong, be manly, don't cry, etc, while women are encouraged to be open with feelings, and whatever other stereotypes you can think of. Anyway, the point is, society makes it hard to point out real differences.

According to research, men tend to talk to each other about current events, sports, and other events. This has been called a "report" style of communication that involves switching topics frequently with attempts to dominate the conversation by certain members of a group. Women tend to use a "relate" style of communication, which involves revealing information about themselves and showing concern/sympathy. Women also tend to interrupt each other less and allow everyone to participate in conversation.

Chapter 9

This chapter is called "Motivation and Emotion."

The question is: What are Maslow's Hierarchy of needs?

Maslow was one of the early humanistic psychologists and he rejected the dominant theories of psychoanalysis and behaviorism (branches in psychology) because he was looking for a more positive view of human behavior. He proposed that there are several levels of needs that a person tries to meet before they can achieve the highest level of personality fulfillment, which is self-actualization, the point where people have satisfied lower needs and "achieved their full human potential." These needs vary and range from fundamental deficiency needs (such as food/water) to growth needs (such as the desire to have friends). In order for people to achieve the highest level (self actualization), the other fundamental levels must be accomplished first.

The lowest level consists of physiological needs such as food, water, and rest. Once those needs are met, safety and its associates are the next level. The level above safety consists of belongingness and love needs. Above that are esteem needs; feelings that involve feeling accomplished or earning the esteem of others. Above esteem needs are cognitive needs. This consists of learning only for the sake of gathering knowledge and the natural curiosity that all people (to some extent) have. Above those needs are the aesthetic needs, which include the need for order and beauty, so basically the artistic aspect of people. Above those are the self-actualization needs which are considered the highest for self accomplishment. And once all of those needs are met, and someone has accomplished as much as possible for themselves, the transcendence needs come in. These consist of helping other people reach self-actualization.
When it comes to the levels of needs, according to Maslow, people can move up and down all the time. Also, peak experiences are defined as moments in which self-actualization is reached, even if it is only temporarily.
Here is a more visual demonstration of the hierarchy:

Chapter 8

This chapter is called "Development Across the Life Span" so basically, human development. And after looking at most of the chapter, it mainly focuses on the creation of life, which at this point in our schooling, has been taught multiple times so instead of focusing on that, I'll talk about something else in the chapter that seemed interesting.

The question is: What are the stages of language development?

There are multiple theories on language development but the more modern theory focuses on environmental influences on language such as "child-directed speech." Child-directed speech is defined as the way adults and older children talk to infants and younger children with a higher pitch, sing-song like speech; basically, the way you generally expect an adult to "talk" to a month old baby. Also, when it comes to understanding and producing language, infants have a receptive-productive lag which means they are much better at understanding compared to producing.  

There are 5 stages of language development that every child (regardless of language or geographic location) experiences. The first is called "Cooing" and occurs after 2 months of being born, and is summarized by vowel-like sounds. After 6 months, "Babbling" occurs and this is when consonant sounds are added to the already used vowel sounds. Also, this is around when deaf children start to increase hand signs/gestures and decrease babbling. Then, just before the age of 1 or around 1, children acquire one word speech but generally, children mean more than just the one word that the say. For example "Juice!" could mean "I want juice!" or "I drank my juice!" After about a year and a half,children develop telegraphic speech or very simple sentences such as "Daddy go bye-bye." After this period, children slowly learn more words and proper grammar, and by the age of 6, they become nearly as fluent as an adult, although the vocabulary levels obviously aren't the same.
 

Chapter 6

So the next chapter we're reading revolves around memory, which means this blog will probably have a bunch of boring factual information on memory. The question is:

What are the main steps or processes involved with memory and how does memory work?

There are 3 steps in memory.
The first process in memory is to get sensory information into another form that the brain can use. This is also known as encoding. An example of encoding could be any sound someone hears. When someone hears a sound, the ears turn the vibrations in the air to neural messages (from the auditory nerve) and from that, the brain can interpret the sound and classify it as a sound that is known or a sound that has been heard before.
The second step is to hold on to the given information for some period of time in a process that is known as storage. The period of time always varies and depends on the system of memory being used. Some information is held just long enough so it can be worked with, generally somewhere around 20 seconds. In a different system of memory, people hold onto it longer, such as knowledge in Psychology or Chemistry that needs to be known for the next test.
The third and final step is generally the most problematic phase in terms of memory, which is getting useful information out of storage for use, also known as retrieval.


There are 3 theories, or models, that suggest a basic explanation for how memory works.
One is called the information-processing model and this model is generally the most comprehensive according to researchers. It assumes that the processing of information for memory is similar to the way a computer processes (encodes, stores, and retrieves) memory and information.
The parallel distributed processing model suggests memory processes take place at the same time over a large network of neural connections.
The last model is called the levels-of-processing model. This suggests information is more "deeply processed"  or basically processed by its importance.

Chapter 5 in Psychology

Okay, I think from now on each of my blogs are going to have a question (pertaining to psychology) and an answer to that question. This week, the Chapter is devoted to learning.


Question: What is "operant conditioning" and what are the more significant concepts?

Operant conditioning is defined as "the kind of learning that applies to voluntary behavior" (White 180). One of the more important concepts is called reinforcement, or any event that when following a response, increases the probability that the response will occur again. The concept of reinforcement can be basically represented by the question "What's in it for me?" Generally, reinforcement is a consequence that is somehow pleasurable to the person, animal, organism, etc. There are two main types of reinforcers, primary and secondary. A primary reinforcer is something that fulfills any basic need such as hunger, pleasure, thirst, etc. A secondary reinforcer is something that receives its importance from being associated with other primary reinforcers. Here is an example that illustrates both concepts; someone hires you to move furniture and you are allowed to pick from 2 rewards: $25 or an ice cream cone. Anyone that understands the concept of money would choose $25 without having to think about it for long. Money is an example of a secondary reinforcer because the paper itself is next to useless, but that money can be exchanged for more valuable primary reinforcers such as more ice cream or anything else. To someone that doesn't understand money, for example, a three year old, the more probable choice would be the ice cream cone. Since the ice cream cone satisfies a basic need (hunger) it is considered a primary reinforcer.  The reinforcing properties of an ice cream cone do not need to be learned unlike the properties of money (ice cream/food/ basic needs are learned about much earlier). Also, there are two main types of reinforcement, negative and positive. Positive reinforcement is the addition of something pleasurable or wanted, therefore negative reinforcement is the opposite or removal of something pleasurable/wanted.  

Hypnosis

Maybe I'm just going to do all of these blogs about psychology topics.. I mean I am "studying" and doing this blog at the same time so why not. Alright, anyways, this week one of the concepts in Chapter 4 was hypnosis. Hypnosis is defined as "a state of consciousness in which a person is especially susceptible to suggestion" (White 147). There are 4 steps that every hypnotists follows in some way. These steps are to  tell the person being hypnotized: to focus on what's being said, to relax, to "let go"/accept suggestions easily, and finally, to use vivid imagination. The main component is the "accept suggestions" part. People can be hypnotized only when they are active and alert, also if they are willing to be hypnotized. Overall, 80% of people can be hypnotized, but only 40% are good subjects for hypnosis. The most susceptible people are usually those who fantasize/daydream a lot, have vivid imaginations, and people who are able to get "really into" whatever they're doing.
There's a table in our textbook that has some interesting information regarding what hypnosis can do. According to the book, hypnosis can: help people relax in situations that would normally cause stress, remove pain, alter sensory perceptions, and actually create amnesia during the session (for a brief time). There are also some myths that aren’t true, hypnosis can’t give extra strength, enhance memory, or regress people to some time in the past.
There are 2 main theories on why hypnosis works, one deals with dissociation and the other deals with a sort of social “role-playing.” The dissociation theory is somewhat self explanatory; it suggests that people are able to dissociate with a certain part of their brain/thoughts and sometimes their body. The social “role-playing” or cognitive theory suggests that people who are hypnotized aren’t really in a different state of mind, they are “merely playing a role” and that role is… a person being hypnotized.

I'm not sure if I believe it, but anyways, here's a random guy using hypnosis to get out of a speeding ticket: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gcQDuv_Kb0

Chapter 2 in Psychology

Alright, now it's the second blog and of course I still can't decide what I'm going to blog about, so I'll just do what I did last week and be boring/talk about what I'm learning this week in Psychology. This week the chapter we're reading is titled "The Biological Perspective" which basically means you're going to be forcing yourself to read all of this unless you genuinely like Biology. Anyways, the chapter starts off by talking about the Nervous System and its components. The Nervous System can be summarized as a large network of specialized cells that carry information to everywhere in the body. This system is made up of two smaller systems called the Central and Peripheral Nervous Systems. The Central Nervous System's main components are the brain and the spinal cord. The brain deals with information and sending orders to the body and the spinal cord is a pathway for the brain. The Peripheral System, overall, is also a pathway but it is a pathway to and from the Central Nervous System. Overall, The Peripheral System does everything that the brain and spinal cord don't do. Such as: regulating the body, helping with skeletal muscle movement, maintaining body functions, saving energy, dealing with stress, and others. Here is a simple diagram that more simply describes both systems.  
The second concept in this chapter is the structure of a neuron. A neuron is the specialized cell in the nervous system that deals with messaging. Since neurons are messengers, their structure, like any specialized cell, is unique and designed for what neurons do. The part of a neuron that receives messages is called a dendrite. Numerous dendrites are attached to the soma (or cell body) which contains the nucleus and can be considered the center of a neuron because the soma is what keeps the cell alive and functioning. The axon is another fiber attached to the soma and instead of receiving messages like dendrites, axons send messages away. The axon is well covered by fatty substances called myelin. The purpose of myelin is to increase the speed of electrical impulses (messages) by having them jump from node to node (gaps in the myelin). The myelin also protects the axon as well as its electrical impulses (messages) the same way a plastic coating stops wires (such as a copper computer or telephone wire) from interfering from each other; it is an insulator. Below is a diagram that shows the structure of a neuron. 

Chapter 1 in Psychology

Well I really can't decide on what to blog about for this first one, so I'll be unoriginal and talk about someone I recently read about for Psychology. He was known as the "Father of Modern Psychology" and was arguably the most famous psychologist throughout; his name was Wilhelm Wundt. The overall idea of psychology started in Leipzig, Germany in 1879 when Wundt, in his laboratory, attempted to apply the scientific method and other scientific principles to the human mind. In his lab, students from various parts of the world came to study the structure of the mind.  Before psychology, Wundt focused on physiology and was a physiologist, he studied various topics that related to the brain such as reaction times, relfelxes, etc. He wanted to add reasoning to the different structures so he came up with an overall idea that is still talked about today. This idea, which focuses on mind structure and other (more basic) elements is known as structuralism. Structuralism, therefore was said to be created by Wundt. After Wundt, William James expanded his theory of structuralism and other psychologists came up with different theories that argued with what Wundt and James thought. Another important contribution Wundt had for psychology is called objective introspection. This is where someone is trying to understand the reasoning behind their own thoughts or basically asking “Why?” to anything that crosses the mind. An example of this would be placing a pencil or any object in someone’s hand and having them tell you everything and anything that crossed their mind. This experiment was considered the first attempt to “bring objectivity and measurement to the concept of psychology” (White 7).  Although Wundt didn’t provide many of the newer ideas in psychology, he was the first to attempt to think of psychology as a science. Below are some pictures of Wundt himself.