Valparaiso University

ValpoScholar
Psychology Curricular Materials Department of Psychology

2018

General Psychology (Fall 2018)

Andrew Butler
Valparaiso University

Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/psych_oer

Recommended Citation
Butler, Andrew, "General Psychology (Fall 2018)" (2018). Psychology Curricular Materials. 2.
https://scholar.valpo.edu/psych_oer/2

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General Psychology
FA18
Andrew Butler

NOBA
Copyright

R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba Textbook Series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF
Publishers. DOI: nobaproject.com

Copyright © 2018 by Diener Education Fund. This material is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy
of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US.

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and the Diener Education Fund does not guarantee the accuracy of the information presented
at these sites.

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Contents

About Noba & Acknowledgements 4

Introduction 5

1 Why Science? 6
Edward Diener

Research in Psychology 17

2 Research Designs 18
Christie Napa Scollon

Biology as the Basis of Behavior 34

3 The Brain and Nervous System 35

Robert Biswas-Diener

4 The Nature-Nurture Question 51

Eric Turkheimer

Sensation and Perception 64

5 Sensation and Perception 65

Adam John Privitera

Learning 90

6 Conditioning and Learning 91

Mark E. Bouton

Memory 117

7 Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 118

Kathleen B. McDermott & Henry L. Roediger

8 Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases 142

Cara Laney & Elizabeth F. Loftus

Psychological Disorders 155

9 Mood Disorders 156

Anda Gershon & Renee Thompson
10 Anxiety and Related Disorders 179
David H. Barlow & Kristen K. Ellard

11 Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 199

Deanna M. Barch

Social Psychology 220

12 Social Cognition and Attitudes 221

Yanine D. Hess & Cynthia L. Pickett

13 Conformity and Obedience 242

Jerry M. Burger

14 Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 256

Robert V. Levine

Developmental Psychology 277

15 Cognitive Development in Childhood 278

Robert Siegler

16 Social and Personality Development in Childhood 293

Ross Thompson

Index 308
About Noba

The Diener Education Fund (DEF) is a non-profit organization founded with the mission of re-
inventing higher education to serve the changing needs of students and professors. The initial
focus of the DEF is on making information, especially of the type found in textbooks, widely
available to people of all backgrounds. This mission is embodied in the Noba project.

Noba is an open and free online platform that provides high-quality, flexibly structured
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• To reduce financial burden on students by providing access to free educational content

• To provide instructors with a platform to customize educational content to better suit their
curriculum

• To present material written by a collection of experts and authorities in the field

The Diener Education Fund is co-founded by Drs. Ed and Carol Diener. Ed is the Joseph Smiley
Distinguished Professor of Psychology (Emeritus) at the University of Illinois. Carol Diener is
the former director of the Mental Health Worker and the Juvenile Justice Programs at the
University of Illinois. Both Ed and Carol are award- winning university teachers.

Acknowledgements

The Diener Education Fund would like to acknowledge the following individuals and companies
for their contribution to the Noba Project: The staff of Positive Acorn, including Robert Biswas-
Diener as managing editor and Peter Lindberg as Project Manager; The Other Firm for user
experience design and web development; Sockeye Creative for their work on brand and
identity development; Arthur Mount for illustrations; Chad Hurst for photography; EEI
Communications for manuscript proofreading; Marissa Diener, Shigehiro Oishi, Daniel
Simons, Robert Levine, Lorin Lachs and Thomas Sander for their feedback and suggestions
in the early stages of the project.
Introduction
1
Why Science?
Edward Diener

Scientific research has been one of the great drivers of progress in human history, and the
dramatic changes we have seen during the past century are due primarily to scientific findings
—modern medicine, electronics, automobiles and jets, birth control, and a host of other
helpful inventions. Psychologists believe that scientific methods can be used in the behavioral
domain to understand and improve the world. Although psychology trails the biological and
physical sciences in terms of progress, we are optimistic based on discoveries to date that
scientific psychology will make many important discoveries that can benefit humanity. This
module outlines the characteristics of the science, and the promises it holds for understanding
behavior. The ethics that guide psychological research are briefly described. It concludes with
the reasons you should learn about scientific psychology

Learning Objectives

• Describe how scientific research has changed the world.

• Describe the key characteristics of the scientific approach.

• Discuss a few of the benefits, as well as problems that have been created by science.

• Describe several ways that psychological science has improved the world.

• Describe a number of the ethical guidelines that psychologists follow.

Scientific Advances and World Progress

There are many people who have made positive contributions to humanity in modern times.
Why Science? 6

Take a careful look at the names on the following list. Which of these individuals do you think
has helped humanity the most?

1. Mother Teresa

2. Albert Schweitzer

3. Edward Jenner

4. Norman Borlaug

5. Fritz Haber

The usual response to this question is “Who on earth are Jenner, Borlaug, and Haber?” Many
people know that Mother Teresa helped thousands of people living in the slums of Kolkata
(Calcutta). Others recall that Albert Schweitzer opened his famous hospital in Africa and went
on to earn the Nobel Peace Prize. The other three historical figures, on the other hand, are
far less well known. Jenner, Borlaug, and Haber were scientists whose research discoveries
saved millions, and even billions, of lives. Dr. Edward Jenner is often considered the “father
of immunology” because he was among the first to conceive of and test vaccinations. His
pioneering work led directly to the eradication of smallpox. Many other diseases have been
greatly reduced because of vaccines
discovered using science—measles, pertussis,
diphtheria, tetanus, typhoid, cholera,
polio, hepatitis—and all are the legacy of
Jenner. Fritz Haber and Norman Borlaug
saved more than a billion human lives.
They created the “Green Revolution” by
producing hybrid agricultural crops and
synthetic fertilizer. Humanity can now
produce food for the seven billion people
on the planet, and the starvation that
does occur is related to political and
economic factors rather than our
collective ability to produce food.

If you examine major social and

Due to the breakthrough work of Dr. Edward Jenner, millions of
technological changes over the past
vaccinations are now administered around the world every year
preventing the spread of many treatable diseases while saving the century most of them can be directly
lives of people of all ages. [Image: CDC Global Health, https://goo. attributed to science. The world in 1914
gl/hokiWz, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/9uSnqN] was very different than the one we see
Why Science? 7

today (Easterbrook, 2003). There were few cars and most people traveled by foot, horseback,
or carriage. There were no radios, televisions, birth control pills, artificial hearts or antibiotics.
Only a small portion of the world had telephones, refrigeration or electricity. These days we
find that 80% of all households have television and 84% have electricity. It is estimated that
three quarters of the world’s population has access to a mobile phone! Life expectancy was
47 years in 1900 and 79 years in 2010. The percentage of hungry and malnourished people
in the world has dropped substantially across the globe. Even average levels of I.Q. have risen
dramatically over the past century due to better nutrition and schooling.

All of these medical advances and technological innovations are the direct result of scientific
research and understanding. In the modern age it is easy to grow complacent about the
advances of science but make no mistake about it—science has made fantastic discoveries,
and continues to do so. These discoveries have completely changed our world.

What Is Science?

What is this process we call “science,” which has so dramatically changed the world? Ancient
people were more likely to believe in magical and supernatural explanations for natural
phenomena such as solar eclipses or thunderstorms. By contrast, scientifically minded people
try to figure out the natural world through testing and observation. Specifically, science is the
use of systematic observation in order to acquire knowledge. For example, children in a
science class might combine vinegar and baking soda to observe the bubbly chemical reaction.
These empirical methods are wonderful ways to learn about the physical and biological world.
Science is not magic—it will not solve all human problems, and might not answer all our
questions about behavior. Nevertheless, it appears to be the most powerful method we have
for acquiring knowledge about the observable world. The essential elements of science are
as follows:

1. Systematic observation is the core of science. Scientists observe the world, in a very organized
way. We often measure the phenomenon we are observing. We record our observations
so that memory biases are less likely to enter in to our conclusions. We are systematic in
that we try to observe under controlled conditions, and also systematically vary the
conditions of our observations so that we can see variations in the phenomena and
understand when they occur and do not occur.

2. Observation leads to hypotheses we can test. When we develop hypothesesand theories, we

state them in a way that can be tested. For example, you might make the claim that candles
made of paraffin wax burn more slowly than do candles of the exact same size and shape
made from bee’s wax. This claim can be readily tested by timing the burning speed of
Why Science? 8

candles made from these materials.

3. Science is democratic. People in ancient

times may have been willing to accept the
views of their kings or pharaohs as
absolute truth. These days, however,
people are more likely to want to be able
to form their own opinions and debate
conclusions. Scientists are skeptical and
have open discussions about their
observations and theories. These debates
often occur as scientists publish competing
findings with the idea that the best data
will win the argument.

4. Science is cumulative. We can learn the Systematic observation is the core of science. [Image: Cvl
important truths discovered by earlier Neuro, https://goo.gl/Avbju7, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://goo.gl/

scientists and build on them. Any physics uhHola]

student today knows more about physics

than Sir Isaac Newton did even though Newton was possibly the most brilliant physicist of
all time. A crucial aspect of scientific progress is that after we learn of earlier advances,
we can build upon them and move farther along the path of knowledge.

Psychology as a Science

Even in modern times many people are skeptical that psychology is really a science. To some
degree this doubt stems from the fact that many psychological phenomena such as
depression, intelligence, and prejudice do not seem to be directly observable in the same way
that we can observe the changes in ocean tides or the speed of light. Because thoughts and
feelings are invisible many early psychological researchers chose to focus on behavior. You
might have noticed that some people act in a friendly and outgoing way while others appear
to be shy and withdrawn. If you have made these types of observations then you are acting
just like early psychologists who used behavior to draw inferences about various types of
personality. By using behavioral measures and rating scales it is possible to measure thoughts
and feelings. This is similar to how other researchers explore “invisible” phenomena such as
the way that educators measure academic performance or economists measure quality of life.

One important pioneering researcher was Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin who
lived in England during the late 1800s. Galton used patches of color to test people’s ability to
distinguish between them. He also invented the self-report questionnaire, in which people
Why Science? 9

offered their own expressed judgments or opinions on various matters. Galton was able to
use self-reports to examine—among other things—people’s differing ability to accurately
judge distances.

Although he lacked a modern understanding

of genetics Galton also had the idea that
scientists could look at the behaviors of
identical and fraternal twins to estimate
the degree to which genetic and social
factors contribute to personality; a
puzzling issue we currently refer to as the
“nature-nurture question.”

In modern times psychology has become

more sophisticated. Researchers now
use better measures, more sophisticated
study designs and better statistical
analyses to explore human nature.
Simply take the example of studying the
emotion of happiness. How would you go
In 1875 Francis Galton did pioneering studies of twins to determine
about studying happiness? One straight­
how much the similarities and differences in twins were affected
forward method is to simply ask people
by their life experiences. In the course of this work he coined the
phrase "Nature versus Nurture". [Image: XT Inc., https://goo.gl/ about their happiness and to have them
F1Wvu7, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF] use a numbered scale to indicate their
feelings. There are, of course, several
problems with this. People might lie about their happiness, might not be able to accurately
report on their own happiness, or might not use the numerical scale in the same way. With
these limitations in mind modern psychologists employ a wide range of methods to assess
happiness. They use, for instance, “peer report measures” in which they ask close friends and
family members about the happiness of a target individual. Researchers can then compare
these ratings to the self-report ratings and check for discrepancies. Researchers also use
memory measures, with the idea that dispositionally positive people have an easier time
recalling pleasant events and negative people have an easier time recalling unpleasant events.
Modern psychologists even use biological measures such as saliva cortisol samples (cortisol
is a stress related hormone) or fMRI images of brain activation (the left pre-frontal cortex is
one area of brain activity associated with good moods).

Despite our various methodological advances it is true that psychology is still a very young
science. While physics and chemistry are hundreds of years old psychology is barely a hundred
Why Science? 10

and fifty years old and most of our major findings have occurred only in the last 60 years.
There are legitimate limits to psychological science but it is a science nonetheless.

Psychological Science is Useful

Psychological science is useful for creating interventions that help people live better lives. A
growing body of research is concerned with determining which therapies are the most and
least effective for the treatment of psychological disorders.

For example, many studies have shown that

cognitive behavioral therapy can help many
people suffering from depression and
anxiety disorders (Butler, Chapman, Forman,
& Beck, 2006; Hoffman & Smits, 2008). In
contrast, research reveals that some types
of therapies actually might be harmful on
average (Lilienfeld, 2007).

In organizational psychology, a number of

psychological interventions have been
found by researchers to produce greater
productivity and satisfaction in the workplace
(e.g., Guzzo, Jette, & Katzell, 1985). Human
factor engineers have greatly increased the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has shown to be effective in
safety and utility of the products we use. For treating a variety of conditions, including depression. [Image:
example, the human factors psychologist SalFalco, https://goo.gl/3knLoJ, CC BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/

Alphonse Chapanis and other researchers HEXbAA]

redesigned the cockpit controls of aircraft to

make them less confusing and easier to respond to, and this led to a decrease in pilot errors
and crashes.

Forensic sciences have made courtroom decisions more valid. We all know of the famous
cases of imprisoned persons who have been exonerated because of DNA evidence. Equally
dramatic cases hinge on psychological findings. For instance, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus
has conducted research demonstrating the limits and unreliability of eyewitness testimony
and memory. Thus, psychological findings are having practical importance in the world outside
the laboratory. Psychological science has experienced enough success to demonstrate that
it works, but there remains a huge amount yet to be learned.
Why Science? 11

Ethics of Scientific Psychology

Psychology differs somewhat from the natural

sciences such as chemistry in that researchers
conduct studies with human research participants.
Because of this there is a natural tendency to want
to guard research participants against potential
psychological harm. For example, it might be
interesting to see how people handle ridicule but it
might not be advisable to ridicule research
participants.

Scientific psychologists follow a specific set of

guidelines for research known as a code of ethics.
There are extensive ethical guidelines for how
human participants should be treated in
psychological research (Diener & Crandall, 1978;
Sales & Folkman, 2000). Following are a few Diagram of the Milgram Experiment in which the
highlights: "teacher" (T) was asked to deliver a (supposedly)
painful electric shock to the "learner"(L). Would this

1. Informed consent. In general, people should know experiment be approved by a review board today?
[Image: Fred the Oyster, https://goo.gl/ZIbQz1, CC
when they are involved in research, and
BY-SA 4.0, https://goo.gl/X3i0tq]
understand what will happen to them during the
study. They should then be given a free choice as
to whether to participate.

2. Confidentiality. Information that researchers learn about individual participants should not
be made public without the consent of the individual.

3. Privacy. Researchers should not make observations of people in private places such as
their bedrooms without their knowledge and consent. Researchers should not seek
confidential information from others, such as school authorities, without consent of the
participant or his or her guardian.

4. Benefits. Researchers should consider the benefits of their proposed research and weigh
these against potential risks to the participants. People who participate in psychological
studies should be exposed to risk only if they fully understand these risks and only if the
likely benefits clearly outweigh the risks.

5. Deception. Some researchers need to deceive participants in order to hide the true nature
of the study. This is typically done to prevent participants from modifying their behavior
Why Science? 12

in unnatural ways. Researchers are required to “debrief” their participants after they have
completed the study. Debriefing is an opportunity to educate participants about the true
nature of the study.

Why Learn About Scientific Psychology?

I once had a psychology professor who asked my class why we were taking a psychology
course. Our responses give the range of reasons that people want to learn about psychology:

1. To understand ourselves

2. To understand other people and groups

3. To be better able to influence others, for example, in socializing children or motivating

employees

4. To learn how to better help others and improve the world, for example, by doing effective
psychotherapy

5. To learn a skill that will lead to a profession such as being a social worker or a professor

6. To learn how to evaluate the research claims you hear or read about

7. Because it is interesting, challenging, and fun! People want to learn about psychology
because this is exciting in itself, regardless of other positive outcomes it might have. Why
do we see movies? Because they are fun and exciting, and we need no other reason. Thus,
one good reason to study psychology is that it can be rewarding in itself.

Conclusions

The science of psychology is an exciting adventure. Whether you will become a scientific
psychologist, an applied psychologist, or an educated person who knows about psychological
research, this field can influence your life and provide fun, rewards, and understanding. My
hope is that you learn a lot from the modules in this e-text, and also that you enjoy the
experience! I love learning about psychology and neuroscience, and hope you will too!
Why Science? 13

Outside Resources

Web: Science Heroes- A celebration of people who have made lifesaving discoveries.
http://www.scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=258&Itemid=27

Discussion Questions

1. Some claim that science has done more harm than good. What do you think?

2. Humanity is faced with many challenges and problems. Which of these are due to human
behavior, and which are external to human actions?

3. If you were a research psychologist, what phenomena or behaviors would most interest
you?

4. Will psychological scientists be able to help with the current challenges humanity faces,
such as global warming, war, inequality, and mental illness?

5. What can science study and what is outside the realm of science? What questions are
impossible for scientists to study?

6. Some claim that science will replace religion by providing sound knowledge instead of
myths to explain the world. They claim that science is a much more reliable source of
solutions to problems such as disease than is religion. What do you think? Will science
replace religion, and should it?

7. Are there human behaviors that should not be studied? Are some things so sacred or
dangerous that we should not study them?
Why Science? 14

Vocabulary

Empirical methods
Approaches to inquiry that are tied to actual measurement and observation.

Ethics
Professional guidelines that offer researchers a template for making decisions that protect
research participants from potential harm and that help steer scientists away from conflicts
of interest or other situations that might compromise the integrity of their research.

Hypotheses
A logical idea that can be tested.

Systematic observation
The careful observation of the natural world with the aim of better understanding it.
Observations provide the basic data that allow scientists to track, tally, or otherwise organize
information about the natural world.

Theories
Groups of closely related phenomena or observations.
Why Science? 15

References

Butler, A. C., Chapman, J. E., Forman, E. M., & Beck, A. T. (2006). The empirical status of cognitive-
behavioral therapy: A review of meta-analyses. Clinical Psychology Review, 26, 17–31.

Diener, E., & Crandall, R. (1978). Ethics in social and behavioral research. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.

Easterbrook, G. (2003). The progress paradox. New York, NY: Random House.

Guzzo, R. A., Jette, R. D., & Katzell, R. A. (1985). The effects of psychologically based intervention
programs on worker productivity: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 38, 275.291.

Hoffman, S. G., & Smits, J. A. J. (2008). Cognitive-behavioral therapy for adult anxiety disorders.
Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 69, 621–32.

Lilienfeld, S. O. (2007). Psychological treatments that cause harm. Perspectives on Psychological

Science, 2, 53–70.

Moore, D. (2003). Public lukewarm on animal rights. Gallup News Service, May 21.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/8461/public-lukewarm-animal-rights.aspx

Sales, B. D., & Folkman, S. (Eds.). (2000). Ethics in research with human participants. Washington,
DC: American Psychological Association.
Research in Psychology
2
Research Designs
Christie Napa Scollon

Psychologists test research questions using a variety of methods. Most research relies on
either correlations or experiments. With correlations, researchers measure variables as they
naturally occur in people and compute the degree to which two variables go together. With
experiments, researchers actively make changes in one variable and watch for changes in
another variable. Experiments allow researchers to make causal inferences. Other types of
methods include longitudinal and quasi-experimental designs. Many factors, including
practical constraints, determine the type of methods researchers use. Often researchers
survey people even though it would be better, but more expensive and time consuming, to
track them longitudinally.

Learning Objectives

• Articulate the difference between correlational and experimental designs.

• Understand how to interpret correlations.

• Understand how experiments help us to infer causality.

• Understand how surveys relate to correlational and experimental research.

• Explain what a longitudinal study is.

• List a strength and weakness of different research designs.

Research Designs
Research Designs 18

In the early 1970’s, a man named Uri Geller tricked the world: he convinced hundreds of
thousands of people that he could bend spoons and slow watches using only the power of
his mind. In fact, if you were in the audience, you would have likely believed he had psychic
powers. Everything looked authentic—this man had to have paranormal abilities! So, why
have you probably never heard of him before? Because when Uri was asked to perform his
miracles in line with scientific experimentation, he was no longer able to do them. That is,
even though it seemed like he was doing the impossible, when he was tested by science, he
proved to be nothing more than a clever magician.

When we look at dinosaur bones to make educated guesses about extinct life, or systematically
chart the heavens to learn about the relationships between stars and planets, or study
magicians to figure out how they perform their tricks, we are forming observations—the
foundation of science. Although we are all familiar with the saying “seeing is believing,”
conducting science is more than just what your eyes perceive. Science is the result of
systematic and intentional study of the natural world. And psychology is no different. In the
movie Jerry Maguire, Cuba Gooding, Jr. became famous for using the phrase, “Show me the
money!” In psychology, as in all sciences, we might say, “Show me the data!”

One of the important steps in scientific inquiry is to test our research questions, otherwise
known as hypotheses. However, there are many ways to test hypotheses in psychological
research. Which method you choose will depend on the type of questions you are asking, as
well as what resources are available to you. All methods have limitations, which is why the
best research uses a variety of methods.

Most psychological research can be divided into two types: experimental and correlational
research.

Experimental Research

If somebody gave you $20 that absolutely had to be spent today, how would you choose to
spend it? Would you spend it on an item you’ve been eyeing for weeks, or would you donate
the money to charity? Which option do you think would bring you the most happiness? If
you’re like most people, you’d choose to spend the money on yourself (duh, right?). Our
intuition is that we’d be happier if we spent the money on ourselves.

Knowing that our intuition can sometimes be wrong, Professor Elizabeth Dunn (2008) at the
University of British Columbia set out to conduct an experiment on spending and happiness.
She gave each of the participants in her experiment $20 and then told them they had to spend
Research Designs 19

the money by the end of the day. Some

of the participants were told they must
spend the money on themselves, and
some were told they must spend the
money on others (either charity or a gift
for someone). At the end of the day she
measured participants’ levels of happiness
using a self-report questionnaire. (But
wait, how do you measure something
like happiness when you can’t really see
it? Psychologists measure many abstract
At the Corner Perk Cafe customers routinely pay for the drinks of concepts, such as happiness and
strangers. Is this the way to get the most happiness out of a cup of intelligence, by beginning with operational
coffee? Elizabeth Dunn's research shows that spending money on definitions of the concepts. See the
others may affect our happiness differently than spending money Noba modules on Intelligence [http://n­
on ourselves. [Image: The Island Packet, https://goo.gl/DMxA5n]
oba.to/ncb2h79v] and Happiness [http­
://noba.to/qnw7g32t], respectively, for
more information on specific measurement strategies.)

In an experiment, researchers manipulate, or cause changes, in the independent variable,

and observe or measure any impact of those changes in the dependent variable. The
independent variable is the one under the experimenter’s control, or the variable that is
intentionally altered between groups. In the case of Dunn’s experiment, the independent
variable was whether participants spent the money on themselves or on others. The
dependent variable is the variable that is not manipulated at all, or the one where the effect
happens. One way to help remember this is that the dependent variable “depends” on what
happens to the independent variable. In our example, the participants’ happiness (the
dependent variable in this experiment) depends on how the participants spend their money
(the independent variable). Thus, any observed changes or group differences in happiness
can be attributed to whom the money was spent on. What Dunn and her colleagues found
was that, after all the spending had been done, the people who had spent the money on
others were happier than those who had spent the money on themselves. In other words,
spending on others causes us to be happier than spending on ourselves. Do you find this
surprising?

But wait! Doesn’t happiness depend on a lot of different factors—for instance, a person’s
upbringing or life circumstances? What if some people had happy childhoods and that’s why
they’re happier? Or what if some people dropped their toast that morning and it fell jam-side
down and ruined their whole day? It is correct to recognize that these factors and many more
Research Designs 20

can easily affect a person’s level of happiness. So how can we accurately conclude that
spending money on others causes happiness, as in the case of Dunn’s experiment?

The most important thing about experiments is random assignment. Participants don’t get
to pick which condition they are in (e.g., participants didn’t choose whether they were
supposed to spend the money on themselves versus others). The experimenter assigns them
to a particular condition based on the flip of a coin or the roll of a die or any other random
method. Why do researchers do this? With Dunn’s study, there is the obvious reason: you can
imagine which condition most people would choose to be in, if given the choice. But another
equally important reason is that random assignment makes it so the groups, on average, are
similar on all characteristics except what the experimenter manipulates.

By randomly assigning people to conditions (self-spending versus other-spending), some

people with happy childhoods should end up in each condition. Likewise, some people who
had dropped their toast that morning (or experienced some other disappointment) should
end up in each condition. As a result, the distribution of all these factors will generally be
consistent across the two groups, and this means that on average the two groups will be
relatively equivalent on all these factors. Random assignment is critical to experimentation
because if the only difference between the two groups is the independent variable, we can
infer that the independent variable is the cause of any observable difference (e.g., in the
amount of happiness they feel at the end of the day).

Here’s another example of the importance of random assignment: Let’s say your class is going
to form two basketball teams, and you get to be the captain of one team. The class is to be
divided evenly between the two teams. If you get to pick the players for your team first, whom
will you pick? You’ll probably pick the tallest members of the class or the most athletic. You
probably won’t pick the short, uncoordinated people, unless there are no other options. As a
result, your team will be taller and more athletic than the other team. But what if we want the
teams to be fair? How can we do this when we have people of varying height and ability? All
we have to do is randomly assign players to the two teams. Most likely, some tall and some
short people will end up on your team, and some tall and some short people will end up on
the other team. The average height of the teams will be approximately the same. That is the
power of random assignment!

Other considerations

In addition to using random assignment, you should avoid introducing confounds into your
experiments. Confounds are things that could undermine your ability to draw causal
Research Designs 21

inferences. For example, if you wanted to test if a new happy pill will make people happier,
you could randomly assign participants to take the happy pill or not (the independent variable)
and compare these two groups on their self-reported happiness (the dependent variable).
However, if some participants know they are getting the happy pill, they might develop
expectations that influence their self-reported happiness. This is sometimes known as a
placebo effect. Sometimes a person just knowing that he or she is receiving special treatment
or something new is enough to actually cause changes in behavior or perception: In other
words, even if the participants in the happy pill condition were to report being happier, we
wouldn’t know if the pill was actually making them happier or if it was the placebo effect—an
example of a confound. A related idea is participant demand. This occurs when participants
try to behave in a way they think the experimenter wants them to behave. Placebo effects
and participant demand often occur unintentionally. Even experimenter expectations can
influence the outcome of a study. For example, if the experimenter knows who took the happy
pill and who did not, and the dependent variable is the experimenter’s observations of people’s
happiness, then the experimenter might perceive improvements in the happy pill group that
are not really there.

One way to prevent these confounds from affecting the results of a study is to use a double-
blind procedure. In a double-blind procedure, neither the participant nor the experimenter
knows which condition the participant is in. For example, when participants are given the
happy pill or the fake pill, they don’t know which one they are receiving. This way the
participants shouldn’t experience the placebo effect, and will be unable to behave as the
researcher expects (participant demand). Likewise, the researcher doesn’t know which pill
each participant is taking (at least in the beginning—later, the researcher will get the results
for data-analysis purposes), which means the researcher’s expectations can’t influence his or
her observations. Therefore, because both parties are “blind” to the condition, neither will be
able to behave in a way that introduces a confound. At the end of the day, the only difference
between groups will be which pills the participants received, allowing the researcher to
determine if the happy pill actually caused people to be happier.

Correlational Designs

When scientists passively observe and measure phenomena it is called correlational research.
Here, we do not intervene and change behavior, as we do in experiments. In correlational
research, we identify patterns of relationships, but we usually cannot infer what causes what.
Importantly, with correlational research, you can examine only two variables at a time, no
more and no less.
Research Designs 22

So, what if you wanted to test whether spending on others is related to happiness, but you
don’t have $20 to give to each participant? You could use a correlational design—which is
exactly what Professor Dunn did, too. She asked people how much of their income they spent
on others or donated to charity, and later she asked them how happy they were. Do you think
these two variables were related? Yes, they were! The more money people reported spending
on others, the happier they were.

More details about the correlation

To find out how well two variables correspond, we can plot the relation between the two
scores on what is known as a scatterplot (Figure 1). In the scatterplot, each dot represents a
data point. (In this case it’s individuals, but it could be some other unit.) Importantly, each dot
provides us with two pieces of information—in this case, information about how good the
person rated the past month (x-axis) and how happy the person felt in the past month (y-
axis). Which variable is plotted on which axis does not matter.

The association between two variables

can be summarized statistically using the
correlation coefficient (abbreviated as r).
A correlation coefficient provides information
about the direction and strength of the
association between two variables. For
the example above, the direction of the
association is positive. This means that
people who perceived the past month as
being good reported feeling more happy,
whereas people who perceived the
month as being bad reported feeling less
happy.

With a positive correlation, the two

Figure 1. Scatterplot of the association between happiness and variables go up or down together. In a
ratings of the past month, a positive correlation (r = .81). Each dot scatterplot, the dots form a pattern that
represents an individual. extends from the bottom left to the upper
right (just as they do in Figure 1). The r
value for a positive correlation is indicated by a positive number (although, the positive sign
is usually omitted). Here, the r value is .81.
Research Designs 23

A negative correlation is one in which the two variables move in opposite directions. That is,
as one variable goes up, the other goes down. Figure 2 shows the association between the
average height of males in a country (y-axis) and the pathogen prevalence (or commonness
of disease; x-axis) of that country. In this scatterplot, each dot represents a country. Notice
how the dots extend from the top left to the bottom right. What does this mean in real-world
terms? It means that people are shorter in parts of the world where there is more disease.
The r value for a negative correlation is indicated by a negative number—that is, it has a minus
(–) sign in front of it. Here, it is –.83.

The strength of a correlation has to do

with how well the two variables align.
Recall that in Professor Dunn’s
correlational study, spending on others
positively correlated with happiness:
The more money people reported
spending on others, the happier they
reported to be. At this point you may be
thinking to yourself, I know a very
generous person who gave away lots of
money to other people but is miserable!
Or maybe you know of a very stingy
person who is happy as can be. Yes,
there might be exceptions. If an
Figure 2. Scatterplot showing the association between average male
association has many exceptions, it is
height and pathogen prevalence, a negative correlation (r = –.83).
considered a weak correlation. If an
Each dot represents a country. (Chiao, 2009)
association has few or no exceptions, it
is considered a strong correlation. A strong correlation is one in which the two variables always,
or almost always, go together. In the example of happiness and how good the month has
been, the association is strong. The stronger a correlation is, the tighter the dots in the
scatterplot will be arranged along a sloped line.

The r value of a strong correlation will have a high absolute value. In other words, you disregard
whether there is a negative sign in front of the r value, and just consider the size of the
numerical value itself. If the absolute value is large, it is a strong correlation. A weak correlation
is one in which the two variables correspond some of the time, but not most of the time.
Figure 3 shows the relation between valuing happiness and grade point average (GPA). People
who valued happiness more tended to earn slightly lower grades, but there were lots of
exceptions to this. The r value for a weak correlation will have a low absolute value. If two
variables are so weakly related as to be unrelated, we say they are uncorrelated, and the r
Research Designs 24

value will be zero or very close to zero. In the previous example, is the correlation between
height and pathogen prevalence strong? Compared to Figure 3, the dots in Figure 2 are tighter
and less dispersed. The absolute value of –.83 is large. Therefore, it is a strong negative
correlation.

Can you guess the strength and

direction of the correlation between
age and year of birth? If you said this is
a strong negative correlation, you are
correct! Older people always have
lower years of birth than younger
people (e.g., 1950 vs. 1995), but at the
same time, the older people will have
a higher age (e.g., 65 vs. 20). In fact, this
is a perfect correlation because there
are no exceptions to this pattern. I
challenge you to find a 10-year-old
born before 2003! You can’t.

Figure 3. Scatterplot showing the association between valuing

happiness and GPA, a weak negative correlation (r = –.32). Each dot
Problems with the correlation
represents an individual.
If generosity and happiness are
positively correlated, should we conclude that being generous causes happiness? Similarly, if
height and pathogen prevalence are negatively correlated, should we conclude that disease
causes shortness? From a correlation alone, we can’t be certain. For example, in the first case
it may be that happiness causes generosity, or that generosity causes happiness. Or, a third
variable might cause both happiness and generosity, creating the illusion of a direct link
between the two. For example, wealth could be the third variable that causes both greater
happiness and greater generosity. This is why correlation does not mean causation—an often
repeated phrase among psychologists.

Qualitative Designs

Just as correlational research allows us to study topics we can’t experimentally manipulate (e.
g., whether you have a large or small income), there are other types of research designs that
allow us to investigate these harder-to-study topics. Qualitative designs, including participant
observation, case studies, and narrative analysis are examples of such methodologies.
Although something as simple as “observation” may seem like it would be a part of all research
Research Designs 25

methods, participant observation is a distinct methodology that involves the researcher

embedding him- or herself into a group in order to study its dynamics. For example, Festinger,
Riecken, and Shacter (1956) were very interested in the psychology of a particular cult.
However, this cult was very secretive and wouldn’t grant interviews to outside members. So,
in order to study these people, Festinger and his colleagues pretended to be cult members,
allowing them access to the behavior and psychology of the cult. Despite this example, it
should be noted that the people being observed in a participant observation study usually
know that the researcher is there to study them.

Another qualitative method for research is the case study, which involves an intensive
examination of specific individuals or specific contexts. Sigmund Freud, the father of
psychoanalysis, was famous for using this type of methodology; however, more current
examples of case studies usually involve brain injuries. For instance, imagine that researchers
want to know how a very specific brain injury affects people’s experience of happiness.
Obviously, the researchers can’t conduct experimental research that involves inflicting this
type of injury on people. At the same time, there are too few people who have this type of
injury to conduct correlational research. In such an instance, the researcher may examine
only one person with this brain injury, but in doing so, the researcher will put the participant
through a very extensive round of tests. Hopefully what is learned from this one person can
be applied to others; however, even with thorough tests, there is the chance that something
unique about this individual (other than the brain injury) will affect his or her happiness. But
with such a limited number of possible participants, a case study is really the only type of
methodology suitable for researching this brain injury.

The final qualitative method to be discussed in this section is narrative analysis. Narrative
analysis centers around the study of stories and personal accounts of people, groups, or
cultures. In this methodology, rather than engaging with participants directly, or quantifying
their responses or behaviors, researchers will analyze the themes, structure, and dialogue of
each person’s narrative. That is, a researcher will examine people’s personal testimonies in
order to learn more about the psychology of those individuals or groups. These stories may
be written, audio-recorded, or video-recorded, and allow the researcher not only to study
what the participant says but how he or she says it. Every person has a unique perspective on
the world, and studying the way he or she conveys a story can provide insight into that
perspective.

Quasi-Experimental Designs

What if you want to study the effects of marriage on a variable? For example, does marriage
Research Designs 26

make people happier? Can you randomly assign some people to get married and others to
remain single? Of course not. So how can you study these important variables? You can use
a quasi-experimental design.

A quasi-experimental design is similar to

experimental research, except that random
assignment to conditions is not used.
Instead, we rely on existing group
memberships (e.g., married vs. single). We
treat these as the independent variables,
even though we don’t assign people to the
conditions and don’t manipulate the
variables. As a result, with quasi-
experimental designs causal inference is
more difficult. For example, married people
might differ on a variety of characteristics
from unmarried people. If we find that
married participants are happier than
single participants, it will be hard to say that
marriage causes happiness, because the What is a reasonable way to study the effects of marriage on
people who got married might have already happiness? [Image: Nina Matthews Photography, https://goo.

been happier than the people who have gl/IcmLqg, CC BY-NC-SA, https://goo.gl/HSisdg]

remained single.

Because experimental and quasi-experimental designs can seem pretty similar, let’s take
another example to distinguish them. Imagine you want to know who is a better professor:
Dr. Smith or Dr. Khan. To judge their ability, you’re going to look at their students’ final grades.
Here, the independent variable is the professor (Dr. Smith vs. Dr. Khan) and the dependent
variable is the students’ grades. In an experimental design, you would randomly assign
students to one of the two professors and then compare the students’ final grades. However,
in real life, researchers can’t randomly force students to take one professor over the other;
instead, the researchers would just have to use the preexisting classes and study them as-is
(quasi-experimental design). Again, the key difference is random assignment to the conditions
of the independent variable. Although the quasi-experimental design (where the students
choose which professor they want) may seem random, it’s most likely not. For example, maybe
students heard Dr. Smith sets low expectations, so slackers prefer this class, whereas Dr. Khan
sets higher expectations, so smarter students prefer that one. This now introduces a
confounding variable (student intelligence) that will almost certainly have an effect on
students’ final grades, regardless of how skilled the professor is. So, even though a quasi-
Research Designs 27

experimental design is similar to an experimental design (i.e., it has a manipulated

independent variable), because there’s no random assignment, you can’t reasonably draw the
same conclusions that you would with an experimental design.

Longitudinal Studies

Another powerful research design is the longitudinal study. Longitudinal studies track the
same people over time. Some longitudinal studies last a few weeks, some a few months, some
a year or more. Some studies that have contributed a lot to psychology followed the same
people over decades. For example, one study followed more than 20,000 Germans for two
decades. From these longitudinal data, psychologist Rich Lucas (2003) was able to determine
that people who end up getting married indeed start off a bit happier than their peers who
never marry. Longitudinal studies like this provide valuable evidence for testing many theories
in psychology, but they can be quite costly to conduct, especially if they follow many people
for many years.

Surveys

A survey is a way of gathering information,

using old-fashioned questionnaires or the
Internet. Compared to a study conducted in
a psychology laboratory, surveys can reach a
larger number of participants at a much lower
cost. Although surveys are typically used for
correlational research, this is not always the
case. An experiment can be carried out using
surveys as well. For example, King and Napa
(1998) presented participants with different
types of stimuli on paper: either a survey
completed by a happy person or a survey
completed by an unhappy person. They
wanted to see whether happy people were
judged as more likely to get into heaven
Surveys provide researchers with some significant
compared to unhappy people. Can you figure advantages in gathering data. They make it possible to reach
out the independent and dependent large numbers of people while keeping costs to the

variables in this study? Can you guess what researchers and the time commitments of participants

the results were? Happy people (vs. unhappy relatively low.

people; the independent variable) were

Research Designs 28

judged as more likely to go to heaven (the dependent variable) compared to unhappy people!

Likewise, correlational research can be conducted without the use of surveys. For instance,
psychologists LeeAnn Harker and Dacher Keltner (2001) examined the smile intensity of
women’s college yearbook photos. Smiling in the photos was correlated with being married
10 years later!

Tradeoffs in Research

Even though there are serious limitations to correlational and quasi-experimental research,
they are not poor cousins to experiments and longitudinal designs. In addition to selecting a
method that is appropriate to the question, many practical concerns may influence the
decision to use one method over another. One of these factors is simply resource availability
—how much time and money do you have to invest in the research? (Tip: If you’re doing a
senior honor’s thesis, do not embark on a lengthy longitudinal study unless you are prepared
to delay graduation!) Often, we survey people even though it would be more precise—but
much more difficult—to track them longitudinally. Especially in the case of exploratory
research, it may make sense to opt for a cheaper and faster method first. Then, if results from
the initial study are promising, the researcher can follow up with a more intensive method.

Beyond these practical concerns, another consideration in selecting a research design is the
ethics of the study. For example, in cases of brain injury or other neurological abnormalities,
it would be unethical for researchers to inflict these impairments on healthy participants.
Nonetheless, studying people with these injuries can provide great insight into human
psychology (e.g., if we learn that damage to a particular region of the brain interferes with
emotions, we may be able to develop treatments for emotional irregularities). In addition to
brain injuries, there are numerous other areas of research that could be useful in
understanding the human mind but which pose challenges to a true experimental design—
such as the experiences of war, long-term isolation, abusive parenting, or prolonged drug
use. However, none of these are conditions we could ethically experimentally manipulate and
randomly assign people to. Therefore, ethical considerations are another crucial factor in
determining an appropriate research design.

Research Methods: Why You Need Them

Just look at any major news outlet and you’ll find research routinely being reported. Sometimes
the journalist understands the research methodology, sometimes not (e.g., correlational
evidence is often incorrectly represented as causal evidence). Often, the media are quick to
Research Designs 29

draw a conclusion for you. After reading this module, you should recognize that the strength
of a scientific finding lies in the strength of its methodology. Therefore, in order to be a savvy
consumer of research, you need to understand the pros and cons of different methods and
the distinctions among them. Plus, understanding how psychologists systematically go about
answering research questions will help you to solve problems in other domains, both personal
and professional, not just in psychology.
Research Designs 30

Outside Resources

Article: Harker and Keltner study of yearbook photographs and marriage

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/80/1/112/

Article: Rich Lucas’s longitudinal study on the effects of marriage on happiness

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/84/3/527/

Article: Spending money on others promotes happiness. Elizabeth Dunn’s research

https://www.sciencemag.org/content/319/5870/1687.abstract

Article: What makes a life good?

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/75/1/156/

Discussion Questions

1. What are some key differences between experimental and correlational research?

2. Why might researchers sometimes use methods other than experiments?

3. How do surveys relate to correlational and experimental designs?

Research Designs 31

Vocabulary

Confounds
Factors that undermine the ability to draw causal inferences from an experiment.

Correlation
Measures the association between two variables, or how they go together.

Dependent variable
The variable the researcher measures but does not manipulate in an experiment.

Experimenter expectations
When the experimenter’s expectations influence the outcome of a study.

Independent variable
The variable the researcher manipulates and controls in an experiment.

Longitudinal study
A study that follows the same group of individuals over time.

Operational definitions
How researchers specifically measure a concept.

Participant demand
When participants behave in a way that they think the experimenter wants them to behave.

Placebo effect
When receiving special treatment or something new affects human behavior.

Quasi-experimental design
An experiment that does not require random assignment to conditions.

Random assignment
Assigning participants to receive different conditions of an experiment by chance.
Research Designs 32

References

Chiao, J. (2009). Culture–gene coevolution of individualism – collectivism and the serotonin

transporter gene. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 277, 529-537. doi: 10.1098/
rspb.2009.1650

Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M. I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes happiness.
Science, 319(5870), 1687–1688. doi:10.1126/science.1150952

Festinger, L., Riecken, H.W., & Schachter, S. (1956). When prophecy fails. Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press.

Harker, L. A., & Keltner, D. (2001). Expressions of positive emotion in women\'s college
yearbook pictures and their relationship to personality and life outcomes across adulthood.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 112–124.

King, L. A., & Napa, C. K. (1998). What makes a life good? Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 75, 156–165.

Lucas, R. E., Clark, A. E., Georgellis, Y., & Diener, E. (2003). Re-examining adaptation and the
setpoint model of happiness: Reactions to changes in marital status. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 84, 527–539.
Biology as the Basis of Behavior
3
The Brain and Nervous System
Robert Biswas-Diener

The brain is the most complex part of the human body. It is the center of consciousness and
also controls all voluntary and involuntary movement and bodily functions. It communicates
with each part of the body through the nervous system, a network of channels that carry
electrochemical signals.

Learning Objectives

• Name the various parts of the nervous system and their respective functions

• Explain how neurons communicate with each other

• Identify the location and function of the limbic system

• Articulate how the primary motor cortex is an example of brain region specialization

• Name at least three neuroimaging techniques and describe how they work

In the 1800s a German scientist by the name of Ernst Weber conducted several experiments
meant to investigate how people perceive the world via their own bodies (Hernstein & Boring,
1966). It is obvious that we use our sensory organs—our eyes, and ears, and nose—to take
in and understand the world around us. Weber was particularly interested in the sense of
touch. Using a drafting compass he placed the two points far apart and set them on the skin
of a volunteer. When the points were far apart the research participants could easily
distinguish between them. As Weber repeated the process with ever closer points, however,
most people lost the ability to tell the difference between them. Weber discovered that the
ability to recognize these “just noticeable differences” depended on where on the body the
The Brain and Nervous System 35

compass was positioned. Your back, for example, is far less sensitive to touch than is the skin
on your face. Similarly, the tip of your tongue is extremely sensitive! In this way, Weber began
to shed light on the way that nerves, the nervous system, and the brain form the biological
foundation of psychological processes.

In this module we will explore the

biological side of psychology by paying
particular attention to the brain and to
the nervous system. Understanding the
nervous system is vital to understanding
psychology in general. It is through the
nervous system that we experience
pleasure and pain, feel emotions, learn
and use language, and plan goals, just to
name a few examples. In the pages that
follow we will begin by examining how
the human nervous system develops
and then we will learn about the parts of
the brain and how they function. We will
Measuring “just noticeable differences.”
conclude with a section on how modern
psychologists study the brain.

It is worth mentioning here, at the start, that an introduction to the biological aspects of
psychology can be both the most interesting and most frustrating of all topics for new students
of psychology. This is, in large part, due to the fact that there is so much new information to
learn and new vocabulary associated with all the various parts of the brain and nervous system.
In fact, there are 30 key vocabulary words presented in this module! We encourage you not
to get bogged down in difficult words. Instead, pay attention to the broader concepts, perhaps
even skipping over the vocabulary on your first reading. It is helpful to pass back through with
a second reading, once you are already familiar with the topic, with attention to learning the
vocabulary.

Nervous System development across the human lifespan

As a species, humans have evolved a complex nervous system and brain over millions of years.
Comparisons of our nervous systems with those of other animals, such as chimpanzees, show
some similarities (Darwin, 1859). Researchers can also use fossils to study the relationship
between brain volume and human behavior over the course of evolutionary history. Homo
The Brain and Nervous System 36

habilis, for instance, a human ancestor living about 2 million years ago shows a larger brain
volume than its own ancestors but far less than modern homo sapiens. The main difference
between humans and other animals-- in terms of brain development-- is that humans have
a much more developed frontal cortex (the front part of the brain associated with planning).

Interestingly, a person’s unique nervous system develops over the course of their lifespan in
a way that resembles the evolution of nervous systems in animals across vast stretches of
time. For example, the human nervous system begins developing even before a person is
born. It begins as a simple bundle of tissue that forms into a tube and extends along the head-
to-tail plane becoming the spinal cord and brain. 25 days into its development, the embryo
has a distinct spinal cord, as well as hindbrain, midbrain and forebrain (Stiles & Jernigan,
2010). What, exactly, is this nervous system that is developing and what does it do?

The nervous system can be thought of as the body’s communication network that consists
of all nerve cells. There are many ways in which we can divide the nervous system to
understand it more clearly. One common way to do so is by parsing it into the central nervous
system and the peripheral nervous system. Each of these can be sub-divided, in turn. Let’s
take a closer, more in-depth look at each. And, don’t worry, the nervous system is complicated
with many parts and many new vocabulary words. It might seem overwhelming at first but
through the figures and a little study you can get it.

The Central Nervous System (CNS): The

Neurons inside the Brain

The Central Nervous System, or CNS for short, is made

up of the brain and spinal cord (see Figure 1). The CNS is
the portion of the nervous system that is encased in bone
(the brain is protected by the skull and the spinal cord is
protected by the spinal column). It is referred to as
“central” because it is the brain and spinal cord that are
primarily responsible for processing sensory information
—touching a hot stove or seeing a rainbow, for example
—and sending signals to the peripheral nervous system
for action. It communicates largely by sending electrical
signals through individual nerve cells that make up the
fundamental building blocks of the nervous system,
called neurons. There are approximately 100 billion Figure 1: The central nervous system
The Brain and Nervous System 37

neurons in the human brain and each has many contacts with other neurons, called synapses
(Brodal, 1992).

If we were able to magnify a view of individual neurons we would see that they are cells made
from distinct parts (see Figure 2). The three main components of a neuron are the dendrites,
the soma, and the axon. Neurons communicate with one another by receiving information
through the dendrites, which act as an antenna. When the dendrites channel this information
to the soma, or cell body, it builds up as an electro-chemical signal. This electrical part of the
signal, called an action potential shoots down the axon, a long tail that leads away from the
soma and toward the next neuron. When people talk about “nerves” in the nervous system,
it typically refers to bundles of axons that form long neural wires along which electrical signals
can travel. Cell-to-cell communication is helped by the fact that the axon is covered by a myelin
sheath—a layer of fatty cells that allow the signal to travel very rapidly from neuron to neuron
(Kandel, Schwartz & Jessell, 2000)

Figure 2: The parts of a neuron

If we were to zoom in still further we could take a closer look at the synapse, the space between
neurons (see Figure 3). Here, we would see that there is a space between neurons, called the
synaptic gap. To give you a sense of scale we can compare the synaptic gap to the thickness
of a dime, the thinnest of all American coins (about 1.35 mm). You could stack approximately
70,000 synaptic gaps in the thickness of a single coin!

As the action potential, the electrical signal reaches the end of the axon, tiny packets of
chemicals, called neurotransmitters, are released. This is the chemical part of the electro-
chemical signal. These neurotransmitters are the chemical signals that travel from one neuron
The Brain and Nervous System 38

to another, enabling them to communicate with one another. There are many different types
of neurotransmitters and each has a specialized function. For example, serotonin affects sleep,
hunger and mood. Dopamine is associated with attention, learning and pleasure (Kandel &
Schwartz, 1982)

It is amazing to realize that when you think—

when you reach out to grab a glass of water,
when you realize that your best friend is
happy, when you try to remember the name
of the parts of a neuron—what you are
experiencing is actually electro-chemical
impulses shooting between nerves!

The Central Nervous System:

Looking at the Brain as a Whole
Figure 3: A view of the synapse between neurons

If we were to zoom back out and look at the central nervous system again we would see that
the brain is the largest single part of the central nervous system. The brain is the headquarters
of the entire nervous system and it is here that most of your sensing, perception, thinking,
awareness, emotions, and planning take place. For many people the brain is so important
that there is a sense that it is there—inside the brain—that a person’s sense of self is located
(as opposed to being primarily in your toes, by contrast). The brain is so important, in fact,
that it consumes 20% of the total oxygen and calories we consume even though it is only, on
average, about 2% of our overall weight.

It is helpful to examine the various parts of the brain and to understand their unique functions
to get a better sense of the role the brain plays. We will start by looking at very general areas
of the brain and then we will zoom in and look at more specific parts. Anatomists and
neuroscientists often divide the brain into portions based on the location and function of
various brain parts. Among the simplest ways to organize the brain is to describe it as having
three basic portions: the hindbrain, midbrain and forebrain. Another way to look at the brain
is to consider the brain stem, the Cerebellum, and the Cerebrum. There is another part, called
the Limbic System that is less well defined. It is made up of a number of structures that are
“sub-cortical” (existing in the hindbrain) as well as cortical regions of the brain (see Figure 4).

The brain stem is the most basic structure of the brain and is located at the top of the spine
and bottom of the brain. It is sometimes considered the “oldest” part of the brain because we
can see similar structures in other, less evolved animals such as crocodiles. It is in charge of
The Brain and Nervous System 39

a wide range of very basic “life support” functions for the human body including breathing,
digestion, and the beating of the heart. Amazingly, the brain stem sends the signals to keep
these processes running smoothly without any conscious effort on our behalf.

The limbic system is a collection of highly specialized neural structures that sit at the top of
the brain stem, which are involved in regulating our emotions. Collectively, the limbic system
is a term that doesn’t have clearly defined areas as it includes forebrain regions as well as
hindbrain regions. These include the amygdala, the thalamus, the hippocampus, the insula
cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the prefrontal cortex. These structures influence
hunger, the sleep-wake cycle, sexual desire, fear and aggression, and even memory.

The cerebellum is a structure at the very back of the brain. Aristotle referred to it as the “small
brain” based on its appearance and it is principally involved with movement and posture
although it is also associated with a variety of other thinking processes. The cerebellum, like
the brain stem, coordinates actions without the need for any conscious awareness.

The cerebrum (also called the

“cerebral cortex”) is the “newest,”
most advanced portion of the
brain. The cerebral hemispheres
(the left and right hemispheres
that make up each side of the top
of the brain) are in charge of the
types of processes that are
associated with more awareness
and voluntary control such as
speaking and planning as well as
contain our primary sensory areas
(such as seeing, hearing, feeling, Figure 4: General areas of the brain [Image: Biology Corner, https://goo.gl/
and moving). These two hemispheres wKxUgg, CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF, labels added]
are connected to one another by a
thick bundle of axons called the corpus callosum. There are instances in which people—either
because of a genetic abnormality or as the result of surgery—have had their corpus callosum
severed so that the two halves of the brain cannot easily communicate with one another. The
rare split-brain patients offer helpful insights into how the brain works. For example, we now
understand that the brain is contralateral, or opposite-sided. This means that the left side of
the brain is responsible for controlling a number of sensory and motor functions of the right
side of the body, and vice versa.
The Brain and Nervous System 40

Consider this striking example: A split brain patient is seated at a table and an object such as
a car key can be placed where a split-brain patient can only see it through the right visual field.
Right visual field images will be processed on the left side of the brain and left visual field
images will be processed on the right side of the brain. Because language is largely associated
with the left side of the brain the patient who sees car key in the right visual field when asked
“What do you see?” would answer, “I see a car key.” In contrast, a split-brain patient who only
saw the car key in the left visual field, thus the information went to the non-language right
side of the brain, might have a difficult time speaking the word “car key.” In fact in this case,
the patient is likely to respond “I didn’t see anything at all.” However, if asked to draw the item
with their left hand—a process associated with the right side of the brain—the patient will be
able to do so! See the outside resources below for a video demonstration of this striking
phenomenon.

Besides looking at the brain as an organ that is made up of two halves we can also examine
it by looking at its four various lobes of the cerebral cortex, the outer part of the brain (see
Figure 5). Each of these is associated with a specific function. The occipital lobe, located at
the back of the cerebral cortex, is the house of the visual area of the brain. You can see the
road in front of you when you are driving, track the motion of a ball in the air thanks to the
occipital lobe. The temporal lobe, located on the underside of the cerebral cortex, is where
sounds and smells are processed. The parietal lobe, at the upper back of the cerebral cortex,
is where touch and taste are processed. Finally, the frontal lobe, located at the forward part
of the cerebral cortex is where behavioral motor plans are processed as well as a number of
highly complicated processes occur including speech and language use, creative problem
solving, and planning and organization.

One particularly fascinating area in

the frontal lobe is called the “primary
motor cortex”. This strip running
along the side of the brain is in charge
of voluntary movements like waving
goodbye, wiggling your eyebrows,
and kissing. It is an excellent example
of the way that the various regions of
the brain are highly specialized.
Interestingly, each of our various
body parts has a unique portion of
the primary motor cortex devoted to
Figure 5: The 4 lobes of the cerebral cortex
it (see Figure 6). Each individual finger
has about as much dedicated brain space as your entire leg. Your lips, in turn, require about
The Brain and Nervous System 41

as much dedicated brain processing as all of your fingers and your hand combined!

Figure 6: Specific body parts like the tongue or fingers are mapped onto certain areas of the brain including

the primary motor cortex.

Because the cerebral cortex in general, and the frontal lobe in particular, are associated with
such sophisticated functions as planning and being self-aware they are often thought of as a
higher, less primal portion of the brain. Indeed, other animals such as rats and kangaroos
while they do have frontal regions of their brain do not have the same level of development
in the cerebral cortices. The closer an animal is to humans on the evolutionary tree—think
chimpanzees and gorillas, the more developed is this portion of their brain.

The Peripheral Nervous System

In addition to the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) there is also a complex
network of nerves that travel to every part of the body. This is called the peripheral nervous
system (PNS) and it carries the signals necessary for the body to survive (see Figure 7). Some
of the signals carried by the PNS are related to voluntary actions. If you want to type a message
to a friend, for instance, you make conscious choices about which letters go in what order
and your brain sends the appropriate signals to your fingers to do the work. Other processes,
by contrast, are not voluntary. Without your awareness your brain is also sending signals to
your organs, your digestive system, and the muscles that are holding you up right now with
instructions about what they should be doing. All of this occurs through the pathways of your
peripheral nervous system.
The Brain and Nervous System 42

Figure 7: The peripheral nervous system

How we study the brain

The brain is difficult to study because it is housed inside the thick bone of the skull. What’s
more, it is difficult to access the brain without hurting or killing the owner of the brain. As a
result, many of the earliest studies of the brain (and indeed this is still true today) focused on
unfortunate people who happened to have damage to some particular area of their brain.
For instance, in the 1880s a surgeon named Paul Broca conducted an autopsy on a former
patient who had lost his powers of speech. Examining his patient’s brain, Broca identified a
damaged area—now called the “Broca’s Area”—on the left side of the brain (see Figure 8)
(AAAS, 1880). Over the years a number of researchers have been able to gain insights into the
function of specific regions of the brain from these types of patients.

An alternative to examining the brains or

behaviors of humans with brain damage
or surgical lesions can be found in the
instance of animals. Some researchers
examine the brains of other animals such
as rats, dogs and monkeys. Although
animals brains differ from human brains
in both size and structure there are many
similarities as well. The use of animals for
study can yield important insights into
human brain function.
Figure 8: Broca's Area [Image: Charlyzon, https://goo.gl/1frq7d,

CC BY-SA 3.0, https://goo.gl/uhHola] In modern times, however, we do not have

to exclusively rely on the study of people
The Brain and Nervous System 43

with brain lesions. Advances in technology have led to ever more sophisticated imaging
techniques. Just as X-ray technology allows us to peer inside the body, neuroimaging
techniques allow us glimpses of the working brain (Raichle,1994). Each type of imaging uses
a different technique and each has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) records

metabolic activity in the brain by detecting the amount
of radioactive substances, which are injected into a
person’s bloodstream, the brain is consuming. This
technique allows us to see how much an individual uses
a particular part of the brain while at rest, or not
performing a task. Another technique, known as
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) relies
on blood flow. This method measures changes in the
levels of naturally occurring oxygen in the blood. As a
brain region becomes active, it requires more oxygen.
This technique measures brain activity based on this
increase oxygen level. This means fMRI does not
require a foreign substance to be injected into the body.
Both PET and fMRI scans have poor temporal
resolution , meaning that they cannot tell us exactly
when brain activity occurred. This is because it takes
several seconds for blood to arrive at a portion of the
brain working on a task.

One imaging technique that has better temporal

resolution is Electroencephalography (EEG), which
measures electrical brain activity instead of blood flow. Above: A PET scan - Below: An fMRI scan [Image:
Electrodes are place on the scalp of participants and Erik1980, https://goo.gl/YWZLji, CC BY-SA 3.0,

they are nearly instantaneous in picking up electrical https://goo.gl/X3i0tq)

activity. Because this activity could be coming from any

portion of the brain, however, EEG is known to have poor spatial resolution, meaning that it
is not accurate with regards to specific location.

Another technique, known as Diffuse Optical Imaging (DOI) can offer high temporal and
spatial resolution. DOI works by shining infrared light into the brain. It might seem strange
that light can pass through the head and brain. Light properties change as they pass through
oxygenated blood and through active neurons. As a result, researchers can make inferences
regarding where and when brain activity is happening.
The Brain and Nervous System 44

Conclusion

It has often been said that the brain studies itself. This means that humans are uniquely
capable of using our most sophisticated organ to understand our most sophisticated organ.
Breakthroughs in the study of the brain and nervous system are among the most exciting
discoveries in all of psychology. In the future, research linking neural activity to complex, real
world attitudes and behavior will help us to understand human psychology and better
intervene in it to help people.
The Brain and Nervous System 45

Outside Resources

Video: Animation of Neurons

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SHBnExxub8

Video: Split Brain Patient

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMLzP1VCANo

Web: Animation of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

http://sites.sinauer.com/neuroscience5e/animations01.01.html

Web: Animation of the Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

http://sites.sinauer.com/neuroscience5e/animations01.02.html

Web: Teaching resources and videos for teaching about the brain, from Colorado State
University:
http://www.learner.org/resources/series142.html

Web: The Brain Museum

http://brainmuseum.org/

Discussion Questions

1. In your opinion is learning about the functions of various parts of the brain by studying
the abilities of brain damaged patients ethical. What, in your opinion, are the potential
benefits and considerations?

2. Are research results on the brain more compelling to you than are research results from
survey studies on attitudes? Why or why not? How does biological research such as studies
of the brain influence public opinion regarding the science of psychology?

3. If humans continue to evolve what changes might you predict in our brains and cognitive
abilities?

4. Which brain scanning techniques, or combination of techniques, do you find to be the

best? Why? Why do you think scientists may or may not employ exactly your recommended
techniques?
The Brain and Nervous System 46

Vocabulary

Action Potential
A transient all-or-nothing electrical current that is conducted down the axon when the
membrane potential reaches the threshold of excitation.

Axon
Part of the neuron that extends off the soma, splitting several times to connect with other
neurons; main output of the neuron.

Brain Stem
The “trunk” of the brain comprised of the medulla, pons, midbrain, and diencephalon.

Broca’s Area
An area in the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere. Implicated in language production.

Central Nervous System

The portion of the nervous system that includes the brain and spinal cord.

Cerebellum
The distinctive structure at the back of the brain, Latin for “small brain.”

Cerebrum
Usually refers to the cerebral cortex and associated white matter, but in some texts includes
the subcortical structures.

Contralateral
Literally “opposite side”; used to refer to the fact that the two hemispheres of the brain process
sensory information and motor commands for the opposite side of the body (e.g., the left
hemisphere controls the right side of the body).

Corpus Callosum
The thick bundle of nerve cells that connect the two hemispheres of the brain and allow them
to communicate.

Dendrites
Part of a neuron that extends away from the cell body and is the main input to the neuron.
The Brain and Nervous System 47

Diffuse Optical Imaging​ (DOI)

A neuroimaging technique that infers brain activity by measuring changes in light as it is
passed through the skull and surface of the brain.

Electroencephalography (EEG)
A neuroimaging technique that measures electrical brain activity via multiple electrodes on
the scalp.

Frontal Lobe
The front most (anterior) part of the cerebrum; anterior to the central sulcus and responsible
for motor output and planning, language, judgment, and decision-making.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): A neuroimaging technique that infers brain
activity by measuring changes in oxygen levels in the blood.

Limbic System
Includes the subcortical structures of the amygdala and hippocampal formation as well as
some cortical structures; responsible for aversion and gratification.

Myelin Sheath
Fatty tissue, that insulates the axons of the neurons; myelin is necessary for normal conduction
of electrical impulses among neurons.

Nervous System
The body’s network for electrochemical communication. This system includes all the nerves
cells in the body.

Neurons
Individual brain cells

Neurotransmitters
Chemical substance released by the presynaptic terminal button that acts on the postsynaptic
cell.

Occipital Lobe
The back most (posterior) part of the cerebrum; involved in vision.

Parietal Lobe
The Brain and Nervous System 48

The part of the cerebrum between the frontal and occipital lobes; involved in bodily sensations,
visual attention, and integrating the senses.

Peripheral Nervous System

All of the nerve cells that connect the central nervous system to all the other parts of the body.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

A neuroimaging technique that measures brain activity by detecting the presence of a
radioactive substance in the brain that is initially injected into the bloodstream and then pulled
in by active brain tissue.

Soma
Cell body of a neuron that contains the nucleus and genetic information, and directs protein
synthesis.

Spatial Resolution
A term that refers to how small the elements of an image are; high spatial resolution means
the device or technique can resolve very small elements; in neuroscience it describes how
small of a structure in the brain can be imaged.

Split-brain Patient
A patient who has had most or all of his or her corpus callosum severed.

Synapses
Junction between the presynaptic terminal button of one neuron and the dendrite, axon, or
soma of another postsynaptic neuron.

Synaptic Gap
Also known as the synaptic cleft; the small space between the presynaptic terminal button
and the postsynaptic dendritic spine, axon, or soma.

Temporal Lobe
The part of the cerebrum in front of (anterior to) the occipital lobe and below the lateral fissure;
involved in vision, auditory processing, memory, and integrating vision and audition.

Temporal Resolution
A term that refers to how small a unit of time can be measured; high temporal resolution
means capable of resolving very small units of time; in neuroscience it describes how precisely
in time a process can be measured in the brain.
The Brain and Nervous System 49

References

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (1880). Dr. Paul Broca. Science,
1, 93.

Brodal, P. (1992). The central nervous system: Structure and function. New York: Oxford University
Press.

Darwin, C. (1859). On the origins of species by means of natural selection, or, The preservation
of favoured races in the struggle for life. London, UK: J. Murray.

Hernstein, R. & Boring, E. (1966). A source book in the history of psychology. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.

Kandel, E. R., & Schwartz, J. H. (1982). Molecular biology of learning: Modulation of transmitter
release. Science, 218(4571), 433–443.

Kandel, E. R., Schwartz, J. H., & Jessell, T. M. (Eds.) (2000). Principles of neural science (4th ed.).
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Raichle, M. E. (1994). Images of the mind: Studies with modern imaging techniques. Annual
Review of Psychology, 45(1), 333-356.

Stiles, J., & Jernigan, T. L. (2010). The basics of brain development. Neuropsychology Review, 20
(4), 327-348.
4
The Nature-Nurture Question
Eric Turkheimer

People have a deep intuition about what has been called the “nature–nurture question.” Some
aspects of our behavior feel as though they originate in our genetic makeup, while others feel
like the result of our upbringing or our own hard work. The scientific field of behavior genetics
attempts to study these differences empirically, either by examining similarities among family
members with different degrees of genetic relatedness, or, more recently, by studying
differences in the DNA of people with different behavioral traits. The scientific methods that
have been developed are ingenious, but often inconclusive. Many of the difficulties
encountered in the empirical science of behavior genetics turn out to be conceptual, and our
intuitions about nature and nurture get more complicated the harder we think about them.
In the end, it is an oversimplification to ask how “genetic” some particular behavior is. Genes
and environments always combine to produce behavior, and the real science is in the discovery
of how they combine for a given behavior.

Learning Objectives

• Understand what the nature–nurture debate is and why the problem fascinates us.

• Understand why nature–nurture questions are difficult to study empirically.

• Know the major research designs that can be used to study nature–nurture questions.

• Appreciate the complexities of nature–nurture and why questions that seem simple turn
out not to have simple answers.

Introduction
The Nature-Nurture Question 51

There are three related problems at the intersection of philosophy and science that are
fundamental to our understanding of our relationship to the natural world: the mind–body
problem, the free will problem, and the nature–nurture problem. These great questions have
a lot in common. Everyone, even those without much knowledge of science or philosophy,
has opinions about the answers to these questions that come simply from observing the
world we live in. Our feelings about our relationship with the physical and biological world
often seem incomplete. We are in control of our actions in some ways, but at the mercy of
our bodies in others; it feels obvious that our consciousness is some kind of creation of our
physical brains, at the same time we sense that our awareness must go beyond just the
physical. This incomplete knowledge of our relationship with nature leaves us fascinated and
a little obsessed, like a cat that climbs into a paper bag and then out again, over and over,
mystified every time by a relationship between inner and outer that it can see but can’t quite
understand.

It may seem obvious that we are born with certain characteristics while others are acquired,
and yet of the three great questions about humans’ relationship with the natural world, only
nature–nurture gets referred to as a “debate.” In the history of psychology, no other question
has caused so much controversy and offense: We are so concerned with nature–nurture
because our very sense of moral character seems to depend on it. While we may admire the
athletic skills of a great basketball player, we think of his height as simply a gift, a payoff in
the “genetic lottery.” For the same reason, no one blames a short person for his height or
someone’s congenital disability on poor decisions: To state the obvious, it’s “not their fault.”
But we do praise the concert violinist (and perhaps her parents and teachers as well) for her
dedication, just as we condemn cheaters, slackers, and bullies for their bad behavior.

The problem is, most human characteristics aren’t usually as clear-cut as height or instrument-
mastery, affirming our nature–nurture expectations strongly one way or the other. In fact,
even the great violinist might have some inborn qualities—perfect pitch, or long, nimble fingers
—that support and reward her hard work. And the basketball player might have eaten a diet
while growing up that promoted his genetic tendency for being tall. When we think about our
own qualities, they seem under our control in some respects, yet beyond our control in others.
And often the traits that don’t seem to have an obvious cause are the ones that concern us
the most and are far more personally significant. What about how much we drink or worry?
What about our honesty, or religiosity, or sexual orientation? They all come from that uncertain
zone, neither fixed by nature nor totally under our own control.

One major problem with answering nature-nurture questions about people is, how do you
set up an experiment? In nonhuman animals, there are relatively straightforward experiments
for tackling nature–nurture questions. Say, for example, you are interested in aggressiveness
The Nature-Nurture Question 52

in dogs. You want to test for the more

important determinant of aggression:
being born to aggressive dogs or being
raised by them. You could mate two
aggressive dogs—angry Chihuahuas—
together, and mate two nonaggressive
dogs—happy beagles—together, then
switch half the puppies from each litter
between the different sets of parents to
raise. You would then have puppies born
to aggressive parents (the Chihuahuas)
but being raised by nonaggressive
parents (the Beagles), and vice versa, in
litters that mirror each other in puppy
distribution. The big questions are:
Researchers have learned a great deal about the nature-nurture Would the Chihuahua parents raise
dynamic by working with animals. But of course many of the
aggressive beagle puppies? Would the
techniques used to study animals cannot be applied to people.
beagle parents raise nonaggressive
Separating these two influences in human subjects is a greater
research challenge. [Image: Sebastián Dario, https://goo.gl/OPiIWd, Chihuahua puppies? Would the puppies’
CC BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/FIlc2e] nature win out, regardless of who raised
them? Or... would the result be a
combination of nature and nurture? Much of the most significant nature–nurture research
has been done in this way (Scott & Fuller, 1998), and animal breeders have been doing it
successfully for thousands of years. In fact, it is fairly easy to breed animals for behavioral traits.

With people, however, we can’t assign babies to parents at random, or select parents with
certain behavioral characteristics to mate, merely in the interest of science (though history
does include horrific examples of such practices, in misguided attempts at “eugenics,” the
shaping of human characteristics through intentional breeding). In typical human families,
children’s biological parents raise them, so it is very difficult to know whether children act like
their parents due to genetic (nature) or environmental (nurture) reasons. Nevertheless,
despite our restrictions on setting up human-based experiments, we do see real-world
examples of nature-nurture at work in the human sphere—though they only provide partial
answers to our many questions.

The science of how genes and environments work together to influence behavior is called
behavioral genetics. The easiest opportunity we have to observe this is the adoption study.
When children are put up for adoption, the parents who give birth to them are no longer the
parents who raise them. This setup isn’t quite the same as the experiments with dogs (children
The Nature-Nurture Question 53

aren’t assigned to random adoptive parents in order to suit the particular interests of a
scientist) but adoption still tells us some interesting things, or at least confirms some basic
expectations. For instance, if the biological child of tall parents were adopted into a family of
short people, do you suppose the child’s growth would be affected? What about the biological
child of a Spanish-speaking family adopted at birth into an English-speaking family? What
language would you expect the child to speak? And what might these outcomes tell you about
the difference between height and language in terms of nature-nurture?

Another option for observing nature-

nurture in humans involves twin studies.
There are two types of twins: monozygotic
(MZ) and dizygotic (DZ). Monozygotic twins,
also called “identical” twins, result from a
single zygote (fertilized egg) and have the
same DNA. They are essentially clones.
Dizygotic twins, also known as “fraternal”
twins, develop from two zygotes and share
50% of their DNA. Fraternal twins are
ordinary siblings who happen to have been
born at the same time. To analyze nature–
nurture using twins, we compare the
similarity of MZ and DZ pairs. Sticking with
the features of height and spoken language,
let’s take a look at how nature and nurture
apply: Identical twins, unsurprisingly, are
almost perfectly similar for height. The
Studies focused on twins have led to important insights about
heights of fraternal twins, however, are like
the biological origins of many personality characteristics.
any other sibling pairs: more similar to each
other than to people from other families, but hardly identical. This contrast between twin
types gives us a clue about the role genetics plays in determining height. Now consider spoken
language. If one identical twin speaks Spanish at home, the co-twin with whom she is raised
almost certainly does too. But the same would be true for a pair of fraternal twins raised
together. In terms of spoken language, fraternal twins are just as similar as identical twins,
so it appears that the genetic match of identical twins doesn’t make much difference.

Twin and adoption studies are two instances of a much broader class of methods for observing
nature-nurture called quantitative genetics, the scientific discipline in which similarities
among individuals are analyzed based on how biologically related they are. We can do these
studies with siblings and half-siblings, cousins, twins who have been separated at birth and
The Nature-Nurture Question 54

raised separately (Bouchard, Lykken, McGue, & Segal, 1990; such twins are very rare and play
a smaller role than is commonly believed in the science of nature–nurture), or with entire
extended families (see Plomin, DeFries, Knopik, & Neiderhiser, 2012, for a complete
introduction to research methods relevant to nature–nurture).

For better or for worse, contentions about nature–nurture have intensified because
quantitative genetics produces a number called a heritability coefficient, varying from 0 to
1, that is meant to provide a single measure of genetics’ influence of a trait. In a general way,
a heritability coefficient measures how strongly differences among individuals are related to
differences among their genes. But beware: Heritability coefficients, although simple to
compute, are deceptively difficult to interpret. Nevertheless, numbers that provide simple
answers to complicated questions tend to have a strong influence on the human imagination,
and a great deal of time has been spent discussing whether the heritability of intelligence or
personality or depression is equal to one number or another.

One reason nature–nurture continues to

fascinate us so much is that we live in an era
of great scientific discovery in genetics,
comparable to the times of Copernicus,
Galileo, and Newton, with regard to
astronomy and physics. Every day, it seems,
new discoveries are made, new possibilities
proposed. When Francis Galton first started
thinking about nature–nurture in the
late-19th century he was very influenced by
his cousin, Charles Darwin, but genetics per
se was unknown. Mendel’s famous work with
peas, conducted at about the same time, went
undiscovered for 20 years; quantitative
genetics was developed in the 1920s; DNA Quantitative genetics uses statistical methods to study the
was discovered by Watson and Crick in the effects that both heredity and environment have on test
1950s; the human genome was completely subjects. These methods have provided us with the

sequenced at the turn of the 21st century; and heritability coefficient which measures how strongly
differences among individuals for a trait are related to
we are now on the verge of being able to
differences among their genes. [Image: EMSL, https://goo.gl/
obtain the specific DNA sequence of anyone
IRfn9g, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/fbv27n]
at a relatively low cost. No one knows what
this new genetic knowledge will mean for the study of nature–nurture, but as we will see in
the next section, answers to nature–nurture questions have turned out to be far more difficult
and mysterious than anyone imagined.
The Nature-Nurture Question 55

What Have We Learned About Nature–Nurture?

It would be satisfying to be able to say that nature–nurture studies have given us conclusive
and complete evidence about where traits come from, with some traits clearly resulting from
genetics and others almost entirely from environmental factors, such as childrearing practices
and personal will; but that is not the case. Instead, everything has turned out to have some
footing in genetics. The more genetically-related people are, the more similar they are—for
everything: height, weight, intelligence, personality, mental illness, etc. Sure, it seems like
common sense that some traits have a genetic bias. For example, adopted children resemble
their biological parents even if they have never met them, and identical twins are more similar
to each other than are fraternal twins. And while certain psychological traits, such as
personality or mental illness (e.g., schizophrenia), seem reasonably influenced by genetics, it
turns out that the same is true for political attitudes, how much television people watch
(Plomin, Corley, DeFries, & Fulker, 1990), and whether or not they get divorced (McGue &
Lykken, 1992).

It may seem surprising, but genetic

influence on behavior is a relatively
recent discovery. In the middle of the
20th century, psychology was dominated
by the doctrine of behaviorism, which
held that behavior could only be
explained in terms of environmental
factors. Psychiatry concentrated on
psychoanalysis, which probed for roots
of behavior in individuals’ early life-
histories. The truth is, neither behaviorism
nor psychoanalysis is incompatible with
genetic influences on behavior, and
neither Freud nor Skinner was naive
about the importance of organic
Research over the last half century has revealed how central
processes in behavior. Nevertheless, in
genetics are to behavior. The more genetically related people are their day it was widely thought that
the more similar they are not just physically but also in terms of children’s personalities were shaped
personality and behavior. [Image: Paul Altobelli, https://goo.gl/
entirely by imitating their parents’
SWLwm2, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/9uSnqN]
behavior, and that schizophrenia was
caused by certain kinds of “pathological
mothering.” Whatever the outcome of our broader discussion of nature–nurture, the basic
The Nature-Nurture Question 56

fact that the best predictors of an adopted child’s personality or mental health are found in
the biological parents he or she has never met, rather than in the adoptive parents who raised
him or her, presents a significant challenge to purely environmental explanations of
personality or psychopathology. The message is clear: You can’t leave genes out of the
equation. But keep in mind, no behavioral traits are completely inherited, so you can’t leave
the environment out altogether, either.

Trying to untangle the various ways nature-nurture influences human behavior can be messy,
and often common-sense notions can get in the way of good science. One very significant
contribution of behavioral genetics that has changed psychology for good can be very helpful
to keep in mind: When your subjects are biologically-related, no matter how clearly a situation
may seem to point to environmental influence, it is never safe to interpret a behavior as wholly
the result of nurture without further evidence. For example, when presented with data
showing that children whose mothers read to them often are likely to have better reading
scores in third grade, it is tempting to conclude that reading to your kids out loud is important
to success in school; this may well be true, but the study as described is inconclusive, because
there are genetic as well as environmental pathways between the parenting practices of
mothers and the abilities of their children. This is a case where “correlation does not imply
causation,” as they say. To establish that reading aloud causes success, a scientist can either
study the problem in adoptive families (in which the genetic pathway is absent) or by finding
a way to randomly assign children to oral reading conditions.

The outcomes of nature–nurture studies have fallen short of our expectations (of establishing
clear-cut bases for traits) in many ways. The most disappointing outcome has been the inability
to organize traits from more- to less-genetic. As noted earlier, everything has turned out to be
at least somewhat heritable (passed down), yet nothing has turned out to be absolutely
heritable, and there hasn’t been much consistency as to which traits are more heritable and
which are less heritable once other considerations (such as how accurately the trait can be
measured) are taken into account (Turkheimer, 2000). The problem is conceptual: The
heritability coefficient, and, in fact, the whole quantitative structure that underlies it, does not
match up with our nature–nurture intuitions. We want to know how “important” the roles of
genes and environment are to the development of a trait, but in focusing on “important”
maybe we’re emphasizing the wrong thing. First of all, genes and environment are both crucial
to every trait; without genes the environment would have nothing to work on, and too, genes
cannot develop in a vacuum. Even more important, because nature–nurture questions look
at the differences among people, the cause of a given trait depends not only on the trait itself,
but also on the differences in that trait between members of the group being studied.

The classic example of the heritability coefficient defying intuition is the trait of having two
The Nature-Nurture Question 57

arms. No one would argue against the development of arms being a biological, genetic process.
But fraternal twins are just as similar for “two-armedness” as identical twins, resulting in a
heritability coefficient of zero for the trait of having two arms. Normally, according to the
heritability model, this result (coefficient of zero) would suggest all nurture, no nature, but we
know that’s not the case. The reason this result is not a tip-off that arm development is less
genetic than we imagine is because people do not vary in the genes related to arm development
—which essentially upends the heritability formula. In fact, in this instance, the opposite is
likely true: the extent that people differ in arm number is likely the result of accidents and,
therefore, environmental. For reasons like these, we always have to be very careful when
asking nature–nurture questions, especially when we try to express the answer in terms of a
single number. The heritability of a trait is not simply a property of that trait, but a property
of the trait in a particular context of relevant genes and environmental factors.

Another issue with the heritability coefficient is that it divides traits’ determinants into two
portions—genes and environment—which are then calculated together for the total
variability. This is a little like asking how much of the experience of a symphony comes from
the horns and how much from the strings; the ways instruments or genes integrate is more
complex than that. It turns out to be the case that, for many traits, genetic differences affect
behavior under some environmental
circumstances but not others—a phenomenon
called gene-environment interaction, or G x
E. In one well-known example, Caspi et al.
(2002) showed that among maltreated
children, those who carried a particular
allele of the MAOA gene showed a
predisposition to violence and antisocial
behavior, while those with other alleles did
not. Whereas, in children who had not been
maltreated, the gene had no effect. Making
matters even more complicated are very
recent studies of what is known as
epigenetics (see module, “Epigenetics”
http://noba.to/37p5cb8v), a process in
which the DNA itself is modified by The answer to the nature –nurture question has not turned
out to be as straightforward as we would like. The many
environmental events, and those genetic
questions we can ask about the relationships among genes,
changes transmitted to children. environments, and human traits may have many different
answers, and the answer to one tells us little about the answers
Some common questions about nature– to the others. [Image: Sundaram Ramaswamy, https://goo.gl/

nurture are, how susceptible is a trait to Bv8lp6, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/9uSnqN]

The Nature-Nurture Question 58

change, how malleable is it, and do we “have a choice” about it? These questions are much
more complex than they may seem at first glance. For example, phenylketonuria is an inborn
error of metabolism caused by a single gene; it prevents the body from metabolizing
phenylalanine. Untreated, it causes mental retardation and death. But it can be treated
effectively by a straightforward environmental intervention: avoiding foods containing
phenylalanine. Height seems like a trait firmly rooted in our nature and unchangeable, but
the average height of many populations in Asia and Europe has increased significantly in the
past 100 years, due to changes in diet and the alleviation of poverty. Even the most modern
genetics has not provided definitive answers to nature–nurture questions. When it was first
becoming possible to measure the DNA sequences of individual people, it was widely thought
that we would quickly progress to finding the specific genes that account for behavioral
characteristics, but that hasn’t happened. There are a few rare genes that have been found
to have significant (almost always negative) effects, such as the single gene that causes
Huntington’s disease, or the Apolipoprotein gene that causes early onset dementia in a small
percentage of Alzheimer’s cases. Aside from these rare genes of great effect, however, the
genetic impact on behavior is broken up over many genes, each with very small effects. For
most behavioral traits, the effects are so small and distributed across so many genes that we
have not been able to catalog them in a meaningful way. In fact, the same is true of
environmental effects. We know that extreme environmental hardship causes catastrophic
effects for many behavioral outcomes, but fortunately extreme environmental hardship is
very rare. Within the normal range of environmental events, those responsible for differences
(e.g., why some children in a suburban third-grade classroom perform better than others) are
much more difficult to grasp.

The difficulties with finding clear-cut solutions to nature–nurture problems bring us back to
the other great questions about our relationship with the natural world: the mind-body
problem and free will. Investigations into what we mean when we say we are aware of
something reveal that consciousness is not simply the product of a particular area of the brain,
nor does choice turn out to be an orderly activity that we can apply to some behaviors but
not others. So it is with nature and nurture: What at first may seem to be a straightforward
matter, able to be indexed with a single number, becomes more and more complicated the
closer we look. The many questions we can ask about the intersection among genes,
environments, and human traits—how sensitive are traits to environmental change, and how
common are those influential environments; are parents or culture more relevant; how
sensitive are traits to differences in genes, and how much do the relevant genes vary in a
particular population; does the trait involve a single gene or a great many genes; is the trait
more easily described in genetic or more-complex behavioral terms?—may have different
answers, and the answer to one tells us little about the answers to the others.
The Nature-Nurture Question 59

It is tempting to predict that the more we understand the wide-ranging effects of genetic
differences on all human characteristics—especially behavioral ones—our cultural, ethical,
legal, and personal ways of thinking about ourselves will have to undergo profound changes
in response. Perhaps criminal proceedings will consider genetic background. Parents,
presented with the genetic sequence of their children, will be faced with difficult decisions
about reproduction. These hopes or fears are often exaggerated. In some ways, our thinking
may need to change—for example, when we consider the meaning behind the fundamental
American principle that all men are created equal. Human beings differ, and like all evolved
organisms they differ genetically. The Declaration of Independence predates Darwin and
Mendel, but it is hard to imagine that Jefferson—whose genius encompassed botany as well
as moral philosophy—would have been alarmed to learn about the genetic diversity of
organisms. One of the most important things modern genetics has taught us is that almost
all human behavior is too complex to be nailed down, even from the most complete genetic
information, unless we’re looking at identical twins. The science of nature and nurture has
demonstrated that genetic differences among people are vital to human moral equality,
freedom, and self-determination, not opposed to them. As Mordecai Kaplan said about the
role of the past in Jewish theology, genetics gets a vote, not a veto, in the determination of
human behavior. We should indulge our fascination with nature–nurture while resisting the
temptation to oversimplify it.
The Nature-Nurture Question 60

Outside Resources

Web: Institute for Behavioral Genetics

http://www.colorado.edu/ibg/

Discussion Questions

1. Is your personality more like one of your parents than the other? If you have a sibling, is
his or her personality like yours? In your family, how did these similarities and differences
develop? What do you think caused them?

2. Can you think of a human characteristic for which genetic differences would play almost
no role? Defend your choice.

3. Do you think the time will come when we will be able to predict almost everything about
someone by examining their DNA on the day they are born?

4. Identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins for the trait of aggressiveness, as well
as for criminal behavior. Do these facts have implications for the courtroom? If it can be
shown that a violent criminal had violent parents, should it make a difference in culpability
or sentencing?
The Nature-Nurture Question 61

Vocabulary

Adoption study
A behavior genetic research method that involves comparison of adopted children to their
adoptive and biological parents.

Behavioral genetics
The empirical science of how genes and environments combine to generate behavior.

Heritability coefficient
An easily misinterpreted statistical construct that purports to measure the role of genetics in
the explanation of differences among individuals.

Quantitative genetics
Scientific and mathematical methods for inferring genetic and environmental processes based
on the degree of genetic and environmental similarity among organisms.

Twin studies
A behavior genetic research method that involves comparison of the similarity of identical
(monozygotic; MZ) and fraternal (dizygotic; DZ) twins.
The Nature-Nurture Question 62

References

Bouchard, T. J., Lykken, D. T., McGue, M., & Segal, N. L. (1990). Sources of human psychological
differences: The Minnesota study of twins reared apart. Science, 250(4978), 223–228.

Caspi, A., McClay, J., Moffitt, T. E., Mill, J., Martin, J., Craig, I. W., Taylor, A. & Poulton, R. (2002).
Role of genotype in the cycle of violence in maltreated children. Science, 297(5582), 851–
854.

McGue, M., & Lykken, D. T. (1992). Genetic influence on risk of divorce. Psychological Science,
3(6), 368–373.

Plomin, R., Corley, R., DeFries, J. C., & Fulker, D. W. (1990). Individual differences in television
viewing in early childhood: Nature as well as nurture. Psychological Science, 1(6), 371–377.

Plomin, R., DeFries, J. C., Knopik, V. S., & Neiderhiser, J. M. (2012). Behavioral genetics. New
York, NY: Worth Publishers.

Scott, J. P., & Fuller, J. L. (1998). Genetics and the social behavior of the dog. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.

Turkheimer, E. (2000). Three laws of behavior genetics and what they mean. Current Directions
in Psychological Science, 9(5), 160–164.
Sensation and Perception
5
Sensation and Perception
Adam John Privitera

The topics of sensation and perception are among the oldest and most important in all of
psychology. People are equipped with senses such as sight, hearing and taste that help us to
take in the world around us. Amazingly, our senses have the ability to convert real-world
information into electrical information that can be processed by the brain. The way we
interpret this information-- our perceptions-- is what leads to our experiences of the world.
In this module, you will learn about the biological processes of sensation and how these can
be combined to create perceptions.

Learning Objectives

• Differentiate the processes of sensation and perception.

• Explain the basic principles of sensation and perception.

• Describe the function of each of our senses.

• Outline the anatomy of the sense organs and their projections to the nervous system.

• Apply knowledge of sensation and perception to real world examples.

• Explain the consequences of multimodal perception.

Introduction

"Once I was hiking at Cape Lookout State Park in Tillamook, Oregon. After passing through a vibrantly
colored, pleasantly scented, temperate rainforest, I arrived at a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Sensation and Perception 65

I grabbed the cold metal railing near the edge and looked out at the sea. Below me, I could see a
pod of sea lions swimming in the deep blue water. All around me I could smell the salt from the
sea and the scent of wet, fallen leaves."

This description of a single memory highlights the way a person’s senses are so important to
our experience of the world around us.

Before discussing each of our extraordinary

senses individually, it is necessary to cover
some basic concepts that apply to all of them.
It is probably best to start with one very
important distinction that can often be
confusing: the difference between sensation
and perception. The physical process during
which our sensory organs—those involved
with hearing and taste, for example—
respond to external stimuli is called
sensation. Sensation happens when you eat
noodles or feel the wind on your face or hear
a car horn honking in the distance. During
sensation, our sense organs are engaging in
transduction, the conversion of one form of
Our senses combine to create our perceptions of the world.
energy into another. Physical energy such as
[Image: Adam John Privitera, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, https://goo.gl/
light or a sound wave is converted into a form
H2QaA8]
of energy the brain can understand: electrical
stimulation. After our brain receives the electrical signals, we make sense of all this stimulation
and begin to appreciate the complex world around us. This psychological process—making
sense of the stimuli—is called perception. It is during this process that you are able to identify
a gas leak in your home or a song that reminds you of a specific afternoon spent with friends.

Regardless of whether we are talking about sight or taste or any of the individual senses, there
are a number of basic principles that influence the way our sense organs work. The first of
these influences is our ability to detect an external stimulus. Each sense organ—our eyes or
tongue, for instance—requires a minimal amount of stimulation in order to detect a stimulus.
This absolute threshold explains why you don’t smell the perfume someone is wearing in a
classroom unless they are somewhat close to you.

The way we measure absolute thresholds is by using a method called signal detection. This
process involves presenting stimuli of varying intensities to a research participant in order to
Sensation and Perception 66

determine the level at which he or she can reliably detect stimulation in a given sense. During
one type of hearing test, for example, a person listens to increasingly louder tones (starting
from silence) in an effort to determine the threshold at which he or she begins to hear (see
Additional Resources for a video demonstration of a high-frequency ringtone that can only
be heard by young people). Correctly indicating that a sound was heard is called a hit; failing
to do so is called a miss. Additionally, indicating that a sound was heard when one wasn’t
played is called a false alarm, and correctly identifying when a sound wasn’t played is a correct
rejection.

Through these and other studies, we have been able to gain an understanding of just how
remarkable our senses are. For example, the human eye is capable of detecting candlelight
from 30 miles away in the dark. We are also capable of hearing the ticking of a watch in a quiet
environment from 20 feet away. If you think that’s amazing, I encourage you to read more
about the extreme sensory capabilities of nonhuman animals; many animals possess what
we would consider super-human abilities.

A similar principle to the absolute threshold discussed above underlies our ability to detect
the difference between two stimuli of different intensities. The differential threshold, or just
noticeable difference (JND), for each sense has been studied using similar methods to signal
detection. To illustrate, find a friend and a few objects of known weight (you’ll need objects
that weigh 1, 2, 10 and 11 lbs.—or in metric terms: 1, 2, 5 and 5.5 kg). Have your friend hold
the lightest object (1 lb. or 1 kg). Then, replace this object with the next heaviest and ask him
or her to tell you which one weighs more. Reliably, your friend will say the second object every
single time. It’s extremely easy to tell the difference when something weighs double what
another weighs! However, it is not so easy when the difference is a smaller percentage of the
overall weight. It will be much harder for your friend to reliably tell the difference between 10
and 11 lbs. (or 5 versus 5.5 kg) than it is for 1 and 2 lbs. This is phenomenon is called Weber’s
Law, and it is the idea that bigger stimuli require larger differences to be noticed.

Crossing into the world of perception, it is clear that our experience influences how our brain
processes things. You have tasted food that you like and food that you don’t like. There are
some bands you enjoy and others you can’t stand. However, during the time you first eat
something or hear a band, you process those stimuli using bottom-up processing. This is
when we build up to perception from the individual pieces. Sometimes, though, stimuli we’ve
experienced in our past will influence how we process new ones. This is called top-down
processing. The best way to illustrate these two concepts is with our ability to read. Read the
following quote out loud:

Notice anything odd while you were reading the text in the triangle? Did you notice the second
Sensation and Perception 67

Figure 1. An example of stimuli processing.

“the”? If not, it’s likely because you were reading this from a top-down approach. Having a
second “the” doesn’t make sense. We know this. Our brain knows this and doesn’t expect there
to be a second one, so we have a tendency to skip right over it. In other words, your past
experience has changed the way you perceive the writing in the triangle! A beginning reader
—one who is using a bottom-up approach by carefully attending to each piece—would be
less likely to make this error.

Finally, it should be noted that when we experience a sensory stimulus that doesn’t change,
we stop paying attention to it. This is why we don’t feel the weight of our clothing, hear the
hum of a projector in a lecture hall, or see all the tiny scratches on the lenses of our glasses.
When a stimulus is constant and unchanging, we experience sensory adaptation. During this
process we become less sensitive to that stimulus. A great example of this occurs when we
leave the radio on in our car after we park it at home for the night. When we listen to the radio
on the way home from work the volume seems reasonable. However, the next morning when
we start the car, we might be startled by how loud the radio is. We don’t remember it being
that loud last night. What happened? What happened is that we adapted to the constant
stimulus of the radio volume over the course of the previous day. This required us to continue
to turn up the volume of the radio to combat the constantly decreasing sensitivity. However,
after a number of hours away from that constant stimulus, the volume that was once
reasonable is entirely too loud. We are no longer adapted to that stimulus!

Now that we have introduced some basic sensory principles, let us take on each one of our
fascinating senses individually.

Vision
Sensation and Perception 68

How vision works

Vision is a tricky matter. When we see a pizza, a feather, or a hammer, we are actually seeing
light bounce off that object and into our eye. Light enters the eye through the pupil, a tiny
opening behind the cornea. The pupil regulates the amount of light entering the eye by
contracting (getting smaller) in bright light and dilating (getting larger) in dimmer light. Once
past the pupil, light passes through the lens, which focuses an image on a thin layer of cells
in the back of the eye, called the retina.

Because we have two eyes in different locations, the image focused on each retina is from a
slightly different angle (binocular disparity), providing us with our perception of 3D space
(binocular vision). You can appreciate this by holding a pen in your hand, extending your arm
in front of your face, and looking at the pen while closing each eye in turn. Pay attention to
the apparent position of the pen relative to objects in the background. Depending on which
eye is open, the pen appears to jump back and forth! This is how video game manufacturers
create the perception of 3D without special glasses; two slightly different images are presented
on top of one another.

Figure 2. Diagram of the human eye. Notice the Retina,

labeled here: this is the location of the Cones and Rods in
the eye. [Image: Holly Fischer, https://goo.gl/ozuG0Q, CC

BY 3.0, https://goo.gl/TSIsIq]

It is in the retina that light is transduced, or converted into electrical signals, by specialized
Sensation and Perception 69

cells called photoreceptors. The retina contains two main kinds of photoreceptors: rods and
cones. Rods are primarily responsible for our ability to see in dim light conditions, such as
during the night. Cones, on the other hand, provide us with the ability to see color and fine
detail when the light is brighter. Rods and cones differ in their distribution across the retina,
with the highest concentration of cones found in the fovea (the central region of focus), and
rods dominating the periphery (see Figure 2). The difference in distribution can explain why
looking directly at a dim star in the sky makes it seem to disappear; there aren’t enough rods
to process the dim light!

Next, the electrical signal is sent through a layer of cells in the retina, eventually traveling down
the optic nerve. After passing through the thalamus, this signal makes it to the primary visual
cortex, where information about light orientation and movement begin to come together
(Hubel & Wiesel, 1962). Information is then sent to a variety of different areas of the cortex
for more complex processing. Some of these cortical regions are fairly specialized—for
example, for processing faces (fusiform face area) and body parts (extrastriate body area).
Damage to these areas of the cortex can potentially result in a specific kind of agnosia, whereby
a person loses the ability to perceive visual stimuli. A great example of this is illustrated in the
writing of famous neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks; he experienced prosopagnosia, the inability to
recognize faces. These specialized regions for visual recognition comprise the ventral
pathway (also called the “what” pathway). Other areas involved in processing location and
movement make up the dorsal pathway (also called the “where” pathway). Together, these
pathways process a large amount of information about visual stimuli (Goodale & Milner, 1992).
Phenomena we often refer to as optical illusions provide misleading information to these
“higher” areas of visual processing (see Additional Resources for websites containing amazing
optical illusions).

Dark and light adaptation

Humans have the ability to adapt to changes in light conditions. As mentioned before, rods
are primarily involved in our ability to see in dim light. They are the photoreceptors responsible
for allowing us to see in a dark room. You might notice that this night vision ability takes
around 10 minutes to turn on, a process called dark adaptation. This is because our rods
become bleached in normal light conditions and require time to recover. We experience the
opposite effect when we leave a dark movie theatre and head out into the afternoon sun.
During light adaptation, a large number of rods and cones are bleached at once, causing us
to be blinded for a few seconds. Light adaptation happens almost instantly compared with
dark adaptation. Interestingly, some people think pirates wore a patch over one eye in order
to keep it adapted to the dark while the other was adapted to the light. If you want to turn on
Sensation and Perception 70

a light without losing your night vision, don’t worry about wearing an eye patch, just use a red
light; this wavelength doesn’t bleach your rods.

Color vision

Our cones allow us to see details in

normal light conditions, as well as color.
We have cones that respond preferentially,
not exclusively, for red, green and blue
(Svaetichin, 1955). This trichromatic
theory is not new; it dates back to the
early 19th century (Young, 1802; Von
Helmholtz, 1867). This theory, however,
does not explain the odd effect that
Figure 3. Stare at the center of the Canadian flag for fifteen seconds.
Then, shift your eyes away to a white wall or blank piece of paper.
occurs when we look at a white wall after
You should see an "after image" in a different color scheme.
staring at a picture for around 30
seconds. Try this: stare at the image of
the flag in Figure 3 for 30 seconds and then immediately look at a sheet of white paper or a
wall. According to the trichromatic theory of color vision, you should see white when you do
that. Is that what you experienced? As you can see, the trichromatic theory doesn’t explain
the afterimage you just witnessed. This is where the opponent-process theory comes in
(Hering, 1920). This theory states that our cones send information to retinal ganglion cells that
respond to pairs of colors (red-green, blue-yellow, black-white). These specialized cells take
information from the cones and compute the difference between the two colors—a process
that explains why we cannot see reddish-green or bluish-yellow, as well as why we see
afterimages. Color blindness can result from issues with the cones or retinal ganglion cells
involved in color vision.

Hearing (Audition)

Some of the most well-known celebrities and top earners in the world are musicians. Our
worship of musicians may seem silly when you consider that all they are doing is vibrating
the air a certain way to create sound waves, the physical stimulus for audition.

People are capable of getting a large amount of information from the basic qualities of sound
waves. The amplitude (or intensity) of a sound wave codes for the loudness of a stimulus;
higher amplitude sound waves result in louder sounds. The pitch of a stimulus is coded in the
frequency of a sound wave; higher frequency sounds are higher pitched. We can also gauge
Sensation and Perception 71

the quality, or timbre, of a sound by the complexity of the sound wave. This allows us to tell
the difference between bright and dull sounds as well as natural and synthesized instruments
(Välimäki & Takala, 1996).

Figure 4. Diagram of the human ear. Notice the Cochlea labeled here: it is the location of the auditory

Hair Cells that are tonotopically organized.

In order for us to sense sound waves from our environment they must reach our inner ear.
Lucky for us, we have evolved tools that allow those waves to be funneled and amplified
during this journey. Initially, sound waves are funneled by your pinna (the external part of
your ear that you can actually see) into your auditory canal (the hole you stick Q-tips into
despite the box advising against it). During their journey, sound waves eventually reach a thin,
stretched membrane called the tympanic membrane (eardrum), which vibrates against the
three smallest bones in the body—the malleus (hammer), the incus (anvil), and the stapes
(stirrup)—collectively called the ossicles. Both the tympanic membrane and the ossicles
amplify the sound waves before they enter the fluid-filled cochlea, a snail-shell-like bone
structure containing auditory hair cells arranged on the basilar membrane (see Figure 4)
according to the frequency they respond to (called tonotopic organization). Depending on
age, humans can normally detect sounds between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. It is inside the cochlea
that sound waves are converted into an electrical message.

Because we have an ear on each side of our head, we are capable of localizing sound in 3D
space pretty well (in the same way that having two eyes produces 3D vision). Have you ever
Sensation and Perception 72

dropped something on the floor without seeing where it went? Did you notice that you were
somewhat capable of locating this object based on the sound it made when it hit the ground?
We can reliably locate something based on which ear receives the sound first. What about
the height of a sound? If both ears receive a sound at the same time, how are we capable of
localizing sound vertically? Research in cats (Populin & Yin, 1998) and humans (Middlebrooks
& Green, 1991) has pointed to differences in the quality of sound waves depending on vertical
positioning.

After being processed by auditory hair cells, electrical signals are sent through the cochlear
nerve (a division of the vestibulocochlear nerve) to the thalamus, and then the primary
auditory cortex of the temporal lobe. Interestingly, the tonotopic organization of the cochlea
is maintained in this area of the cortex (Merzenich, Knight, & Roth, 1975; Romani, Williamson,
& Kaufman, 1982). However, the role of the primary auditory cortex in processing the wide
range of features of sound is still being explored (Walker, Bizley, & Schnupp, 2011).

Balance and the vestibular system

The inner ear isn’t only involved in hearing; it’s also associated with our ability to balance and
detect where we are in space. The vestibular system is comprised of three semicircular canals
—fluid-filled bone structures containing cells that respond to changes in the head’s orientation
in space. Information from the vestibular system is sent through the vestibular nerve (the
other division of the vestibulocochlear nerve) to muscles involved in the movement of our
eyes, neck, and other parts of our body. This information allows us to maintain our gaze on
an object while we are in motion. Disturbances in the vestibular system can result in issues
with balance, including vertigo.

Touch

Who doesn’t love the softness of an old t-shirt or the smoothness of a clean shave? Who
actually enjoys having sand in their swimsuit? Our skin, the body’s largest organ, provides us
with all sorts of information, such as whether something is smooth or bumpy, hot or cold, or
even if it’s painful. Somatosensation—which includes our ability to sense touch, temperature
and pain—transduces physical stimuli, such as fuzzy velvet or scalding water, into electrical
potentials that can be processed by the brain.

Tactile sensation
Sensation and Perception 73

Tactile stimuli—those that are associated with texture—are transduced by special receptors
in the skin called mechanoreceptors. Just like photoreceptors in the eye and auditory hair
cells in the ear, these allow for the conversion of one kind of energy into a form the brain can
understand.

Figure 5. A drawing of the somatosensory cortex in the brain and the

areas in the human body that correspond to it - they are drawn in
proportion to the most sensitive or the most innervated parts of the

body.

After tactile stimuli are converted by mechanoreceptors, information is sent through the
thalamus to the primary somatosensory cortex for further processing. This region of the
cortex is organized in a somatotopic map where different regions are sized based on the
sensitivity of specific parts on the opposite side of the body (Penfield & Rasmussen, 1950).
Put simply, various areas of the skin, such as lips and fingertips, are more sensitive than others,
such as shoulders or ankles. This sensitivity can be represented with the distorted proportions
of the human body shown in Figure 5.

Pain
Sensation and Perception 74

Most people, if asked, would love to get rid of pain (nociception), because the sensation is
very unpleasant and doesn’t appear to have obvious value. But the perception of pain is our
body’s way of sending us a signal that something is wrong and needs our attention. Without
pain, how would we know when we are accidentally touching a hot stove, or that we should
rest a strained arm after a hard workout?

Phantom limbs

Records of people experiencing phantom limbs after amputations have been around for
centuries (Mitchell, 1871). As the name suggests, people with a phantom limb have the
sensations such as itching seemingly coming from their missing limb. A phantom limb can
also involve phantom limb pain, sometimes described as the muscles of the missing limb
uncomfortably clenching. While the mechanisms underlying these phenomena are not fully
understood, there is evidence to support that the damaged nerves from the amputation site
are still sending information to the brain (Weinstein, 1998) and that the brain is reacting to
this information (Ramachandran & Rogers-Ramachandran, 2000). There is an interesting
treatment for the alleviation of phantom limb pain that works by tricking the brain, using a
special mirror box to create a visual representation of the missing limb. The technique allows
the patient to manipulate this representation into a more comfortable position
(Ramachandran & Rogers-Ramachandran, 1996).

Smell and Taste: The Chemical Senses

The two most underappreciated senses can be lumped into the broad category of chemical
senses. Both olfaction (smell) and gustation (taste) require the transduction of chemical
stimuli into electrical potentials. I say these senses are underappreciated because most people
would give up either one of these if they were forced to give up a sense. While this may not
shock a lot of readers, take into consideration how much money people spend on the perfume
industry annually ($29 billion US Dollars). Many of us pay a lot more for a favorite brand of
food because we prefer the taste. Clearly, we humans care about our chemical senses.

Olfaction (smell)

Unlike any of the other senses discussed so far, the receptors involved in our perception of
both smell and taste bind directly with the stimuli they transduce. Odorants in our
environment, very often mixtures of them, bind with olfactory receptors found in the olfactory
epithelium. The binding of odorants to receptors is thought to be similar to how a lock and
Sensation and Perception 75

key operates, with different odorants binding to different specialized receptors based on their
shape. However, the shape theory of olfaction isn’t universally accepted and alternative
theories exist, including one that argues that the vibrations of odorant molecules correspond
to their subjective smells (Turin, 1996). Regardless of how odorants bind with receptors, the
result is a pattern of neural activity. It is thought that our memories of these patterns of activity
underlie our subjective experience of smell (Shepherd, 2005). Interestingly, because olfactory
receptors send projections to the brain through the cribriform plate of the skull, head trauma
has the potential to cause anosmia, due to the severing of these connections. If you are in a
line of work where you constantly experience head trauma (e.g. professional boxer) and you
develop anosmia, don’t worry—your sense of smell will probably come back (Sumner, 1964).

Gustation (taste)

Taste works in a similar fashion to smell, only

with receptors found in the taste buds of the
tongue, called taste receptor cells. To clarify
a common misconception, taste buds are not
the bumps on your tongue (papillae), but are
located in small divots around these bumps.
These receptors also respond to chemicals
from the outside environment, except these
chemicals, called tastants, are contained in
the foods we eat. The binding of these
chemicals with taste receptor cells results in
our perception of the five basic tastes: sweet,
sour, bitter, salty and umami (savory)—
although some scientists argue that there are
more (Stewart et al., 2010). Researchers used Ghost Pepper, also known as Bhut Jolokia is one of the hottest

to think these tastes formed the basis for a peppers in the world, it’s 10 times hotter than a habanero,
and 400 times hotter than tabasco sauce. What do you think
map-like organization of the tongue; there
would happen to your taste receptor cells if you took a bite
was even a clever rationale for the concept,
out of this little guy? [Image: Richard Elzey, https://goo.gl/
about how the back of the tongue sensed suJHNg, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/9uSnqN]
bitter so we would know to spit out poisons,
and the front of the tongue sensed sweet so we could identify high-energy foods. However,
we now know that all areas of the tongue with taste receptor cells are capable of responding
to every taste (Chandrashekar, Hoon, Ryba, & Zuker, 2006).

During the process of eating we are not limited to our sense of taste alone. While we are
Sensation and Perception 76

chewing, food odorants are forced back up to areas that contain olfactory receptors. This
combination of taste and smell gives us the perception of flavor. If you have doubts about
the interaction between these two senses, I encourage you to think back to consider how the
flavors of your favorite foods are impacted when you have a cold; everything is pretty bland
and boring, right?

Putting it all Together: Multimodal Perception

Though we have spent the majority of this module covering the senses individually, our real-
world experience is most often multimodal, involving combinations of our senses into one
perceptual experience. This should be clear after reading the description of walking through
the forest at the beginning of the module; it was the combination of senses that allowed for
that experience. It shouldn’t shock you to find out that at some point information from each
of our senses becomes integrated. Information from one sense has the potential to influence
how we perceive information from another, a process called multimodal perception.

Interestingly, we actually respond more strongly to multimodal stimuli compared to the sum
of each single modality together, an effect called the superadditive effect of multisensory
integration. This can explain how you’re still able to understand what friends are saying to
you at a loud concert, as long as you are able to get visual cues from watching them speak. If
you were having a quiet conversation at a café, you likely wouldn’t need these additional cues.
In fact, the principle of inverse effectiveness states that you are less likely to benefit from
additional cues from other modalities if the initial unimodal stimulus is strong enough (Stein
& Meredith, 1993).

Because we are able to process multimodal sensory stimuli, and the results of those processes
are qualitatively different from those of unimodal stimuli, it’s a fair assumption that the brain
is doing something qualitatively different when they’re being processed. There has been a
growing body of evidence since the mid-90’s on the neural correlates of multimodal
perception. For example, neurons that respond to both visual and auditory stimuli have been
identified in the superior temporal sulcus (Calvert, Hansen, Iversen, & Brammer, 2001).
Additionally, multimodal “what” and “where” pathways have been proposed for auditory and
tactile stimuli (Renier et al., 2009). We aren’t limited to reading about these regions of the
brain and what they do; we can experience them with a few interesting examples (see
Additional Resources for the “McGurk Effect,” the “Double Flash Illusion,” and the “Rubber
Hand Illusion”).

Conclusion
Sensation and Perception 77

Our impressive sensory abilities allow us to experience the most enjoyable and most miserable
experiences, as well as everything in between. Our eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin provide
an interface for the brain to interact with the world around us. While there is simplicity in
covering each sensory modality independently, we are organisms that have evolved the ability
to process multiple modalities as a unified experience.
Sensation and Perception 78

Outside Resources

Audio: Auditory Demonstrations from Richard Warren’s lab at the University of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee
http://www4.uwm.edu/APL/demonstrations.html

Audio: Auditory Demonstrations. CD published by the Acoustical Society of America (ASA).

You can listen to the demonstrations here
http://www.feilding.net/sfuad/musi3012-01/demos/audio/

Book: Ackerman, D. (1990). A natural history of the senses. Vintage.

http://www.dianeackerman.com/a-natural-history-of-the-senses-by-diane-ackerman

Book: Sacks, O. (1998). The man who mistook his wife for a hat: And other clinical tales.
Simon and Schuster.
http://www.oliversacks.com/books-by-oliver-sacks/man-mistook-wife-hat/

Video: Acquired knowledge and its impact on our three-dimensional interpretation of the
world - 3D Street Art
https://youtu.be/GwNeukAmxJw

Video: Acquired knowledge and its impact on our three-dimensional interpretation of the
world - Anamorphic Illusions
https://youtu.be/tBNHPk-Lnkk

Video: Cybersenses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8rPD6xLB4A

Video: Seeing Sound, Tasting Color

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTr1VnXKr4A

Video: The Phantom Limb Phenomenon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHIv5ToMTM

Web: A regularly updated website covering some of the amazing sensory capabilities of
non-human animals.
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/category/animal-senses/
Sensation and Perception 79

Web: A special ringtone that is only audible to younger people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrewnzQYrPI

Web: Amazing library with visual phenomena and optical illusions, explained
http://michaelbach.de/ot/index.html

Web: An article on the discoveries in echolocation: the use of sound in locating people and
things
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2015/december-15/u­
sing-sound-to-get-around.html

Web: An optical illusion demonstration the opponent-process theory of color vision.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA2brNUo7WA

Web: Anatomy of the eye

http://www.eyecareamerica.org/eyecare/anatomy/

Web: Animation showing tonotopic organization of the basilar membrane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyenMluFaUw

Web: Best Illusion of the Year Contest website

http://illusionoftheyear.com/

Web: Demonstration of contrast gain adaptation

http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/lum_contrast-adapt/

Web: Demonstration of illusory contours and lateral inhibition. Mach bands

http://michaelbach.de/ot/lum-MachBands/index.html

Web: Demonstration of illusory contrast and lateral inhibition. The Hermann grid
http://michaelbach.de/ot/lum_herGrid/

Web: Demonstrations and illustrations of cochlear mechanics can be found here

http://lab.rockefeller.edu/hudspeth/graphicalSimulations

Web: Double Flash Illusion

https://vimeo.com/39138252

Web: Further information regarding what and where/how pathways

Sensation and Perception 80

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/What_and_where_pathways

Web: Great website with a large collection of optical illusions

http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/

Web: McGurk Effect Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0

Web: More demonstrations and illustrations of cochlear mechanics

http://www.neurophys.wisc.edu/animations/

Web: Scientific American Frontiers: Cybersenses

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1509/

Web: The Genetics of Taste

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-genetics-of-taste-88797110/?no-ist

Web: The Monell Chemical Sense Center website

http://www.monell.org/

Web: The Rubber Hand Illusion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxwn1w7MJvk

Web: The Tongue Map: Tasteless Myth Debunked

http://www.livescience.com/7113-tongue-map-tasteless-myth-debunked.html

Discussion Questions

1. What physical features would an organism need in order to be really good at localizing
sound in 3D space? Are there any organisms that currently excel in localizing sound? What
features allow them to do this?

2. What issues would exist with visual recognition of an object if a research participant had
his/her corpus callosum severed? What would you need to do in order to observe these
deficits?

3. There are a number of myths that exist about the sensory capabilities of infants. How would
you design a study to determine what the true sensory capabilities of infants are?
Sensation and Perception 81

4. A well-documented phenomenon experienced by millennials is the phantom vibration of

a cell phone when no actual text message has been received. How can we use signal
detection theory to explain this?
Sensation and Perception 82

Vocabulary

Absolute threshold
The smallest amount of stimulation needed for detection by a sense.

Agnosia
Loss of the ability to perceive stimuli.

Anosmia
Loss of the ability to smell.

Audition
Ability to process auditory stimuli. Also called hearing.

Auditory canal
Tube running from the outer ear to the middle ear.

Auditory hair cells

Receptors in the cochlea that transduce sound into electrical potentials.

Binocular disparity
Difference is images processed by the left and right eyes.

Binocular vision
Our ability to perceive 3D and depth because of the difference between the images on each
of our retinas.

Bottom-up processing
Building up to perceptual experience from individual pieces.

Chemical senses
Our ability to process the environmental stimuli of smell and taste.

Cochlea
Spiral bone structure in the inner ear containing auditory hair cells.

Cones
Photoreceptors of the retina sensitive to color. Located primarily in the fovea.
Sensation and Perception 83

Dark adaptation
Adjustment of eye to low levels of light.

Differential threshold
The smallest difference needed in order to differentiate two stimuli. (See Just Noticeable
Difference (JND))

Dorsal pathway
Pathway of visual processing. The “where” pathway.

Flavor
The combination of smell and taste.

Gustation
Ability to process gustatory stimuli. Also called taste.

Just noticeable difference (JND)

The smallest difference needed in order to differentiate two stimuli. (see Differential
Threshold)

Light adaptation
Adjustment of eye to high levels of light.

Mechanoreceptors
Mechanical sensory receptors in the skin that response to tactile stimulation.

Multimodal perception
The effects that concurrent stimulation in more than one sensory modality has on the
perception of events and objects in the world.

Nociception
Our ability to sense pain.

Odorants
Chemicals transduced by olfactory receptors.

Olfaction
Ability to process olfactory stimuli. Also called smell.
Sensation and Perception 84

Olfactory epithelium
Organ containing olfactory receptors.

Opponent-process theory
Theory proposing color vision as influenced by cells responsive to pairs of colors.

Ossicles
A collection of three small bones in the middle ear that vibrate against the tympanic
membrane.

Perception
The psychological process of interpreting sensory information.

Phantom limb
The perception that a missing limb still exists.

Phantom limb pain

Pain in a limb that no longer exists.

Pinna
Outermost portion of the ear.

Primary auditory cortex

Area of the cortex involved in processing auditory stimuli.

Primary somatosensory cortex

Area of the cortex involved in processing somatosensory stimuli.

Primary visual cortex

Area of the cortex involved in processing visual stimuli.

Principle of inverse effectiveness

The finding that, in general, for a multimodal stimulus, if the response to each unimodal
component (on its own) is weak, then the opportunity for multisensory enhancement is very
large. However, if one component—by itself—is sufficient to evoke a strong response, then
the effect on the response gained by simultaneously processing the other components of the
stimulus will be relatively small.

Retina
Sensation and Perception 85

Cell layer in the back of the eye containing photoreceptors.

Rods
Photoreceptors of the retina sensitive to low levels of light. Located around the fovea.

Sensation
The physical processing of environmental stimuli by the sense organs.

Sensory adaptation
Decrease in sensitivity of a receptor to a stimulus after constant stimulation.

Shape theory of olfaction

Theory proposing that odorants of different size and shape correspond to different smells.

Signal detection
Method for studying the ability to correctly identify sensory stimuli.

Somatosensation
Ability to sense touch, pain and temperature.

Somatotopic map
Organization of the primary somatosensory cortex maintaining a representation of the
arrangement of the body.

Sound waves
Changes in air pressure. The physical stimulus for audition.

Superadditive effect of multisensory integration

The finding that responses to multimodal stimuli are typically greater than the sum of the
independent responses to each unimodal component if it were presented on its own.

Tastants
Chemicals transduced by taste receptor cells.

Taste receptor cells

Receptors that transduce gustatory information.

Top-down processing
Experience influencing the perception of stimuli.
Sensation and Perception 86

Transduction
The conversion of one form of energy into another.

Trichromatic theory
Theory proposing color vision as influenced by three different cones responding preferentially
to red, green and blue.

Tympanic membrane
Thin, stretched membrane in the middle ear that vibrates in response to sound. Also called
the eardrum.

Ventral pathway
Pathway of visual processing. The “what” pathway.

Vestibular system
Parts of the inner ear involved in balance.

Weber’s law
States that just noticeable difference is proportional to the magnitude of the initial stimulus.
Sensation and Perception 87

References

Calvert, G. A., Hansen, P. C., Iversen, S. D., & Brammer, M. J. (2001). Detection of audio-visual
integration sites in humans by application of electrophysiological criteria to the BOLD effect.
Neuroimage, 14(2), 427-438.

Chandrashekar, J., Hoon, M. A., Ryba, N. J., & Zuker, C. S. (2006). The receptors and cells for
mammalian taste. Nature, 444(7117), 288-294.

Goodale, M. A., & Milner, A. D. (1992). Separate visual pathways for perception and action.
Trends in Neurosciences, 15(1), 20-25.

Hering, E. (1920). Grundzüge der Lehre vom Lichtsinn. J.Springer.

Hubel, D. H., & Wiesel, T. N. (1962). Receptive fields, binocular interaction and functional
architecture in the cat's visual cortex. The Journal of Physiology,160(1), 106.

Merzenich, M. M., Knight, P. L., & Roth, G. L. (1975). Representation of cochlea within primary
auditory cortex in the cat. Journal of Neurophysiology, 38(2), 231-249.

Middlebrooks, J. C., & Green, D. M. (1991). Sound localization by human listeners. Annual Review
of Psychology, 42(1), 135-159.

Mitchell, S. W. (1871). Phantom limbs. Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science,
8, 563-569.

Penfield, W., & Rasmussen, T. (1950). The cerebral cortex of man; a clinical study of localization
of function. Oxford: England

Populin, L. C., & Yin, T. C. (1998). Behavioral studies of sound localization in the cat. The Journal
of Neuroscience, 18(6), 2147-2160.

Ramachandran, V. S., & Rogers-Ramachandran, D. (2000). Phantom limbs and neural plasticity.
Archives of Neurology, 57(3), 317-320.

Ramachandran, V. S., & Rogers-Ramachandran, D. (1996). Synaesthesia in phantom limbs

induced with mirrors. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 263
(1369), 377-386.

Renier, L. A., Anurova, I., De Volder, A. G., Carlson, S., VanMeter, J., & Rauschecker, J. P. (2009).
Multisensory integration of sounds and vibrotactile stimuli in processing streams for “what”
and “where”. The Journal of Neuroscience, 29(35), 10950-10960.

Romani, G. L., Williamson, S. J., & Kaufman, L. (1982). Tonotopic organization of the human
auditory cortex. Science, 216(4552), 1339-1340.

Shepherd, G. M. (2005). Outline of a theory of olfactory processing and its relevance to humans.
Chemical Senses, 30(suppl 1), i3-i5.
Sensation and Perception 88

Stein, B. E., & Meredith, M. A. (1993). The merging of the senses. The MIT Press.

Stewart, J. E., Feinle-Bisset, C., Golding, M., Delahunty, C., Clifton, P. M., & Keast, R. S. (2010).
Oral sensitivity to fatty acids, food consumption and BMI in human subjects. British Journal
of Nutrition, 104(01), 145-152.

Sumner, D. (1964). Post Traumatic Anosmia. Brain, 87(1), 107-120.

Svaetichin, G. (1955). Spectral response curves from single cones. Acta physiologica
Scandinavica. Supplementum, 39(134), 17-46.

Turin, L. (1996). A spectroscopic mechanism for primary olfactory reception. Chemical Senses,
21(6), 773-791.

Von Helmholtz, H. (1867). Handbuch der physiologischen Optik (Vol. 9). Voss.

Välimäki, V., & Takala, T. (1996). Virtual musical instruments—natural sound using physical
models. Organised Sound, 1(02), 75-86.

Walker, K. M., Bizley, J. K., King, A. J., & Schnupp, J. W. (2011). Multiplexed and robust
representations of sound features in auditory cortex. The Journal of Neuroscience, 31(41),
14565-14576.

Weinstein, S. M. (1998). Phantom limb pain and related disorders. Neurologic Clinics, 16(4),
919-935.

Young, T. (1802). The Bakerian lecture: On the theory of light and colours. Philosophical
transactions of the Royal Society of London, 12-48.
Learning
6
Conditioning and Learning
Mark E. Bouton

Basic principles of learning are always operating and always influencing human behavior. This
module discusses the two most fundamental forms of learning -- classical (Pavlovian) and
instrumental (operant) conditioning. Through them, we respectively learn to associate 1)
stimuli in the environment, or 2) our own behaviors, with significant events, such as rewards
and punishments. The two types of learning have been intensively studied because they have
powerful effects on behavior, and because they provide methods that allow scientists to
analyze learning processes rigorously. This module describes some of the most important
things you need to know about classical and instrumental conditioning, and it illustrates some
of the many ways they help us understand normal and disordered behavior in humans. The
module concludes by introducing the concept of observational learning, which is a form of
learning that is largely distinct from classical and operant conditioning.

Learning Objectives

• Distinguish between classical (Pavlovian) conditioning and instrumental (operant)

conditioning.

• Understand some important facts about each that tell us how they work.

• Understand how they work separately and together to influence human behavior in the
world outside the laboratory.

• Students will be able to list the four aspects of observational learning according to Social
Learning Theory.
Conditioning and Learning 91

Two Types of Conditioning

Although Ivan Pavlov won a Nobel Prize for studying digestion, he is much more famous for
something else: working with a dog, a bell, and a bowl of saliva. Many people are familiar with
the classic study of “Pavlov’s dog,” but rarely do they understand the significance of its
discovery. In fact, Pavlov’s work helps explain why some people get anxious just looking at a
crowded bus, why the sound of a morning alarm is so hated, and even why we swear off
certain foods we’ve only tried once. Classical (or Pavlovian) conditioning is one of the
fundamental ways we learn about the world around us. But it is far more than just a theory
of learning; it is also arguably a theory of identity. For, once you understand classical
conditioning, you’ll recognize that your favorite music, clothes, even political candidate, might
all be a result of the same process that makes a dog drool at the sound of bell.

Around the turn of the 20th century,

scientists who were interested in
understanding the behavior of animals
and humans began to appreciate the
importance of two very basic forms of
learning. One, which was first studied by
the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, is
known as classical, or Pavlovian
conditioning. In his famous experiment,
Pavlov rang a bell and then gave a dog
some food. After repeating this pairing
multiple times, the dog eventually treated
the bell as a signal for food, and began
salivating in anticipation of the treat. This
kind of result has been reproduced in the
The Pavlov in All of Us: Does your dog learn to beg for food because lab using a wide range of signals (e.g.,
you reinforce her by feeding her from the table? [Image: David tones, light, tastes, settings) paired with
Mease, https://goo.gl/R9cQV7, CC BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/FIlc2e] many different events besides food (e.g.,
drugs, shocks, illness; see below).

We now believe that this same learning process is engaged, for example, when humans
associate a drug they’ve taken with the environment in which they’ve taken it; when they
associate a stimulus (e.g., a symbol for vacation, like a big beach towel) with an emotional
event (like a burst of happiness); and when they associate the flavor of a food with getting
food poisoning. Although classical conditioning may seem “old” or “too simple” a theory, it is
Conditioning and Learning 92

still widely studied today for at least two reasons: First, it is a straightforward test of associative
learning that can be used to study other, more complex behaviors. Second, because classical
conditioning is always occurring in our lives, its effects on behavior have important
implications for understanding normal and disordered behavior in humans.

In a general way, classical conditioning occurs whenever neutral stimuli are associated with
psychologically significant events. With food poisoning, for example, although having fish for
dinner may not normally be something to be concerned about (i.e., a “neutral stimuli”), if it
causes you to get sick, you will now likely associate that neutral stimuli (the fish) with the
psychologically significant event of getting sick. These paired events are often described using
terms that can be applied to any situation.

The dog food in Pavlov’s experiment is called the unconditioned stimulus (US) because it
elicits an unconditioned response (UR). That is, without any kind of “training” or “teaching,”
the stimulus produces a natural or instinctual reaction. In Pavlov’s case, the food (US)
automatically makes the dog drool (UR). Other examples of unconditioned stimuli include
loud noises (US) that startle us (UR), or a hot shower (US) that produces pleasure (UR).

On the other hand, a conditioned stimulus produces a conditioned response. A conditioned

stimulus (CS) is a signal that has no importance to the organism until it is paired with something
that does have importance. For example, in Pavlov’s experiment, the bell is the conditioned
stimulus. Before the dog has learned to associate the bell (CS) with the presence of food (US),
hearing the bell means nothing to the dog. However, after multiple pairings of the bell with
the presentation of food, the dog starts to drool at the sound of the bell. This drooling in
response to the bell is the conditioned response (CR). Although it can be confusing, the
conditioned response is almost always the same as the unconditioned response. However, it
is called the conditioned response because it is conditional on (or, depends on) being paired
with the conditioned stimulus (e.g., the bell). To help make this clearer, consider becoming
really hungry when you see the logo for a fast food restaurant. There’s a good chance you’ll
start salivating. Although it is the actual eating of the food (US) that normally produces the
salivation (UR), simply seeing the restaurant’s logo (CS) can trigger the same reaction (CR).

Another example you are probably very familiar with involves your alarm clock. If you’re like
most people, waking up early usually makes you unhappy. In this case, waking up early (US)
produces a natural sensation of grumpiness (UR). Rather than waking up early on your own,
though, you likely have an alarm clock that plays a tone to wake you. Before setting your alarm
to that particular tone, let’s imagine you had neutral feelings about it (i.e., the tone had no
prior meaning for you). However, now that you use it to wake up every morning, you
psychologically “pair” that tone (CS) with your feelings of grumpiness in the morning (UR).
Conditioning and Learning 93

After enough pairings, this tone (CS) will automatically produce your natural response of
grumpiness (CR). Thus, this linkage between the unconditioned stimulus (US; waking up early)
and the conditioned stimulus (CS; the tone) is so strong that the unconditioned response (UR;
being grumpy) will become a conditioned response (CR; e.g., hearing the tone at any point in
the day—whether waking up or walking down the street—will make you grumpy). Modern
studies of classical conditioning use a very wide range of CSs and USs and measure a wide
range of conditioned responses.

Although classical conditioning is a powerful

explanation for how we learn many different
things, there is a second form of conditioning
that also helps explain how we learn. First
studied by Edward Thorndike, and later
extended by B. F. Skinner, this second type
of conditioning is known as instrumental or
operant conditioning. Operant conditioning
occurs when a behavior (as opposed to a
stimulus) is associated with the occurrence
of a significant event. In the best-known
example, a rat in a laboratory learns to press
a lever in a cage (called a “Skinner box”) to
receive food. Because the rat has no
“natural” association between pressing a
Receiving a reward can condition you toward certain
lever and getting food, the rat has to learn
behaviors. For example, when you were a child, your mother
this connection. At first, the rat may simply
may have offered you this deal: "Don't make a fuss when we're
explore its cage, climbing on top of things, in the supermarket and you'll get a treat on the way out."
burrowing under things, in search of food. [Image: Oliver Hammond, https://goo.gl/xFKiZL, CC BY-NC-SA

Eventually while poking around its cage, the 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]

rat accidentally presses the lever, and a food

pellet drops in. This voluntary behavior is called an operant behavior, because it “operates”
on the environment (i.e., it is an action that the animal itself makes).

Now, once the rat recognizes that it receives a piece of food every time it presses the lever,
the behavior of lever-pressing becomes reinforced. That is, the food pellets serve as
reinforcers because they strengthen the rat’s desire to engage with the environment in this
particular manner. In a parallel example, imagine that you’re playing a street-racing video
game. As you drive through one city course multiple times, you try a number of different
streets to get to the finish line. On one of these trials, you discover a shortcut that dramatically
improves your overall time. You have learned this new path through operant conditioning.
Conditioning and Learning 94

That is, by engaging with your environment (operant responses), you performed a sequence
of behaviors that that was positively reinforced (i.e., you found the shortest distance to the
finish line). And now that you’ve learned how to drive this course, you will perform that same
sequence of driving behaviors (just as the rat presses on the lever) to receive your reward of
a faster finish.

Operant conditioning research studies how the effects of a behavior influence the probability
that it will occur again. For example, the effects of the rat’s lever-pressing behavior (i.e.,
receiving a food pellet) influences the probability that it will keep pressing the lever. For,
according to Thorndike’s law of effect, when a behavior has a positive (satisfying) effect or
consequence, it is likely to be repeated in the future. However, when a behavior has a negative
(painful/annoying) consequence, it is less likely to be repeated in the future. Effects that
increase behaviors are referred to as reinforcers, and effects that decrease them are referred
to as punishers.

An everyday example that helps to illustrate operant conditioning is striving for a good grade
in class—which could be considered a reward for students (i.e., it produces a positive emotional
response). In order to get that reward (similar to the rat learning to press the lever), the student
needs to modify his/her behavior. For example, the student may learn that speaking up in
class gets him/her participation points (a reinforcer), so the student speaks up repeatedly.
However, the student also learns that s/he shouldn’t speak up about just anything; talking
about topics unrelated to school actually costs points. Therefore, through the student’s freely
chosen behaviors, s/he learns which behaviors are reinforced and which are punished.

An important distinction of operant conditioning is that it provides a method for studying how
consequences influence “voluntary” behavior. The rat’s decision to press the lever is voluntary,
in the sense that the rat is free to make and repeat that response whenever it wants. Classical

[Image courtesy of Bernard W. Balleine]

Conditioning and Learning 95

conditioning, on the other hand, is just the opposite—depending instead on “involuntary”

behavior (e.g., the dog doesn’t choose to drool; it just does). So, whereas the rat must actively
participate and perform some kind of behavior to attain its reward, the dog in Pavlov’s
experiment is a passive participant. One of the lessons of operant conditioning research, then,
is that voluntary behavior is strongly influenced by its consequences.

The illustration on the left summarizes the basic elements of classical and instrumental
conditioning. The two types of learning differ in many ways. However, modern thinkers often
emphasize the fact that they differ—as illustrated here—in what is learned. In classical
conditioning, the animal behaves as if it has learned to associate a stimulus with a significant
event. In operant conditioning, the animal behaves as if it has learned to associate a behavior
with a significant event. Another difference is that the response in the classical situation (e.
g., salivation) is elicited by a stimulus that comes before it, whereas the response in the operant
case is not elicited by any particular stimulus. Instead, operant responses are said to be emitted.
The word “emitted” further conveys the idea that operant behaviors are essentially voluntary
in nature.

Understanding classical and operant conditioning provides psychologists with many tools for
understanding learning and behavior in the world outside the lab. This is in part because the
two types of learning occur continuously throughout our lives. It has been said that “much
like the laws of gravity, the laws of learning are always in effect” (Spreat & Spreat, 1982).

Useful Things to Know about Classical Conditioning

Classical Conditioning Has Many Effects on Behavior

A classical CS (e.g., the bell) does not merely elicit a simple, unitary reflex. Pavlov emphasized
salivation because that was the only response he measured. But his bell almost certainly
elicited a whole system of responses that functioned to get the organism ready for the
upcoming US (food) (see Timberlake, 2001). For example, in addition to salivation, CSs (such
as the bell) that signal that food is near also elicit the secretion of gastric acid, pancreatic
enzymes, and insulin (which gets blood glucose into cells). All of these responses prepare the
body for digestion. Additionally, the CS elicits approach behavior and a state of excitement.
And presenting a CS for food can also cause animals whose stomachs are full to eat more
food if it is available. In fact, food CSs are so prevalent in modern society, humans are likewise
inclined to eat or feel hungry in response to cues associated with food, such as the sound of
a bag of potato chips opening, the sight of a well-known logo (e.g., Coca-Cola), or the feel of
the couch in front of the television.
Conditioning and Learning 96

Classical conditioning is also involved in other aspects of eating. Flavors associated with certain
nutrients (such as sugar or fat) can become preferred without arousing any awareness of the
pairing. For example, protein is a US that your body automatically craves more of once you
start to consume it (UR): since proteins are highly concentrated in meat, the flavor of meat
becomes a CS (or cue, that proteins are on the way), which perpetuates the cycle of craving
for yet more meat (this automatic bodily reaction now a CR).

In a similar way, flavors associated with stomach pain or illness become avoided and disliked.
For example, a person who gets sick after drinking too much tequila may acquire a profound
dislike of the taste and odor of tequila—a phenomenon called taste aversion conditioning.
The fact that flavors are often associated with so many consequences of eating is important
for animals (including rats and humans) that are frequently exposed to new foods. And it is
clinically relevant. For example, drugs used in chemotherapy often make cancer patients sick.
As a consequence, patients often acquire aversions to foods eaten just before treatment, or
even aversions to such things as the waiting room of the chemotherapy clinic itself (see
Bernstein, 1991; Scalera & Bavieri, 2009).

Classical conditioning occurs with a variety of significant events. If an experimenter sounds a

tone just before applying a mild shock to a rat’s feet, the tone will elicit fear or anxiety after
one or two pairings. Similar fear conditioning plays a role in creating many anxiety disorders
in humans, such as phobias and panic disorders, where people associate cues (such as closed
spaces, or a shopping mall) with panic or other emotional trauma (see Mineka & Zinbarg,
2006). Here, rather than a physical response (like drooling), the CS triggers an emotion.

Another interesting effect of classical conditioning can occur when we ingest drugs. That is,
when a drug is taken, it can be associated with the cues that are present at the same time (e.
g., rooms, odors, drug paraphernalia). In this regard, if someone associates a particular smell
with the sensation induced by the drug, whenever that person smells the same odor afterward,
it may cue responses (physical and/or emotional) related to taking the drug itself. But drug
cues have an even more interesting property: They elicit responses that often “compensate”
for the upcoming effect of the drug (see Siegel, 1989). For example, morphine itself suppresses
pain; however, if someone is used to taking morphine, a cue that signals the “drug is coming
soon” can actually make the person more sensitive to pain. Because the person knows a pain
suppressant will soon be administered, the body becomes more sensitive, anticipating that
“the drug will soon take care of it.” Remarkably, such conditioned compensatory responses
in turn decrease the impact of the drug on the body—because the body has become more
sensitive to pain.

This conditioned compensatory response has many implications. For instance, a drug user
Conditioning and Learning 97

will be most “tolerant” to the drug in the presence of cues that have been associated with it
(because such cues elicit compensatory responses). As a result, overdose is usually not due
to an increase in dosage, but to taking the drug in a new place without the familiar cues—
which would have otherwise allowed the user to tolerate the drug (see Siegel, Hinson, Krank,
& McCully, 1982). Conditioned compensatory responses (which include heightened pain
sensitivity and decreased body temperature, among others) might also cause discomfort, thus
motivating the drug user to continue usage of the drug to reduce them. This is one of several
ways classical conditioning might be a factor in drug addiction and dependence.

A final effect of classical cues is that they motivate ongoing operant behavior (see Balleine,
2005). For example, if a rat has learned via operant conditioning that pressing a lever will give
it a drug, in the presence of cues that signal the “drug is coming soon” (like the sound of the
lever squeaking), the rat will work harder to press the lever than if those cues weren’t present
(i.e., there is no squeaking lever sound). Similarly, in the presence of food-associated cues (e.
g., smells), a rat (or an overeater) will work harder for food. And finally, even in the presence
of negative cues (like something that signals fear), a rat, a human, or any other organism will
work harder to avoid those situations that might lead to trauma. Classical CSs thus have many
effects that can contribute to significant behavioral phenomena.

[Image courtesy of Bernard W. Balleine]

The Learning Process

As mentioned earlier, classical conditioning provides a method for studying basic learning
processes. Somewhat counterintuitively, though, studies show that pairing a CS and a US
together is not sufficient for an association to be learned between them. Consider an effect
called blocking (see Kamin, 1969). In this effect, an animal first learns to associate one CS—
call it stimulus A—with a US. In the illustration above, the sound of a bell (stimulus A) is paired
Conditioning and Learning 98

with the presentation of food. Once this association is learned, in a second phase, a second
stimulus—stimulus B—is presented alongside stimulus A, such that the two stimuli are paired
with the US together. In the illustration, a light is added and turned on at the same time the
bell is rung. However, because the animal has already learned the association between
stimulus A (the bell) and the food, the animal doesn’t learn an association between stimulus
B (the light) and the food. That is, the conditioned response only occurs during the presentation
of stimulus A, because the earlier conditioning of A “blocks” the conditioning of B when B is
added to A. The reason? Stimulus A already predicts the US, so the US is not surprising when
it occurs with Stimulus B.

Learning depends on such a surprise, or a discrepancy between what occurs on a conditioning

trial and what is already predicted by cues that are present on the trial. To learn something
through classical conditioning, there must first be some prediction error, or the chance that
a conditioned stimulus won’t lead to the expected outcome. With the example of the bell and
the light, because the bell always leads to the reward of food, there’s no “prediction error”
that the addition of the light helps to correct. However, if the researcher suddenly requires
that the bell and the light both occur in order to receive the food, the bell alone will produce
a prediction error that the animal has to learn.

Blocking and other related effects indicate that the learning process tends to take in the most
valid predictors of significant events and ignore the less useful ones. This is common in the
real world. For example, imagine that your supermarket puts big star-shaped stickers on
products that are on sale. Quickly, you learn that items with the big star-shaped stickers are
cheaper. However, imagine you go into a similar supermarket that not only uses these stickers,
but also uses bright orange price tags to denote a discount. Because of blocking (i.e., you
already know that the star-shaped stickers indicate a discount), you don’t have to learn the
color system, too. The star-shaped stickers tell you everything you need to know (i.e. there’s
no prediction error for the discount), and thus the color system is irrelevant.

Classical conditioning is strongest if the CS and US are intense or salient. It is also best if the
CS and US are relatively new and the organism hasn’t been frequently exposed to them before.
And it is especially strong if the organism’s biology has prepared it to associate a particular
CS and US. For example, rats and humans are naturally inclined to associate an illness with a
flavor, rather than with a light or tone. Because foods are most commonly experienced by
taste, if there is a particular food that makes us ill, associating the flavor (rather than the
appearance—which may be similar to other foods) with the illness will more greatly ensure
we avoid that food in the future, and thus avoid getting sick. This sorting tendency, which is
set up by evolution, is called preparedness.
Conditioning and Learning 99

There are many factors that affect the strength of classical conditioning, and these have been
the subject of much research and theory (see Rescorla & Wagner, 1972; Pearce & Bouton,
2001). Behavioral neuroscientists have also used classical conditioning to investigate many
of the basic brain processes that are involved in learning (see Fanselow & Poulos, 2005;
Thompson & Steinmetz, 2009).

Erasing Classical Learning

After conditioning, the response to the CS can be eliminated if the CS is presented repeatedly
without the US. This effect is called extinction, and the response is said to become
“extinguished.” For example, if Pavlov kept ringing the bell but never gave the dog any food
afterward, eventually the dog’s CR (drooling) would no longer happen when it heard the CS
(the bell), because the bell would no longer be a predictor of food. Extinction is important for
many reasons. For one thing, it is the basis for many therapies that clinical psychologists use
to eliminate maladaptive and unwanted behaviors. Take the example of a person who has a
debilitating fear of spiders: one approach might include systematic exposure to spiders.
Whereas, initially the person has a CR (e.g., extreme fear) every time s/he sees the CS (e.g.,
the spider), after repeatedly being shown pictures of spiders in neutral conditions, pretty soon
the CS no longer predicts the CR (i.e., the person doesn’t have the fear reaction when seeing
spiders, having learned that spiders no longer serve as a “cue” for that fear). Here, repeated
exposure to spiders without an aversive consequence causes extinction.

Psychologists must accept one important fact about extinction, however: it does not
necessarily destroy the original learning (see Bouton, 2004). For example, imagine you strongly
associate the smell of chalkboards with the agony of middle school detention. Now imagine
that, after years of encountering chalkboards, the smell of them no longer recalls the agony
of detention (an example of extinction). However, one day, after entering a new building for
the first time, you suddenly catch a whiff of a chalkboard and WHAM!, the agony of detention
returns. This is called spontaneous recovery: following a lapse in exposure to the CS after
extinction has occurred, sometimes re-exposure to the CS (e.g., the smell of chalkboards) can
evoke the CR again (e.g., the agony of detention).

Another related phenomenon is the renewal effect: After extinction, if the CS is tested in a
new context, such as a different room or location, the CR can also return. In the chalkboard
example, the action of entering a new building—where you don’t expect to smell chalkboards
—suddenly renews the sensations associated with detention. These effects have been
interpreted to suggest that extinction inhibits rather than erases the learned behavior, and
this inhibition is mainly expressed in the context in which it is learned (see “context” in the
Conditioning and Learning 100

Key Vocabulary section below).

This does not mean that extinction is a bad treatment for behavior disorders. Instead, clinicians
can increase its effectiveness by using basic research on learning to help defeat these relapse
effects (see Craske et al., 2008). For example, conducting extinction therapies in contexts
where patients might be most vulnerable to relapsing (e.g., at work), might be a good strategy
for enhancing the therapy’s success.

Useful Things to Know about Instrumental Conditioning

Most of the things that affect the strength of classical conditioning also affect the strength of
instrumental learning—whereby we learn to associate our actions with their outcomes. As
noted earlier, the “bigger” the reinforcer (or punisher), the stronger the learning. And, if an
instrumental behavior is no longer reinforced, it will also be extinguished. Most of the rules
of associative learning that apply to classical conditioning also apply to instrumental learning,
but other facts about instrumental learning are also worth knowing.

Instrumental Responses Come Under Stimulus Control

As you know, the classic operant response in the laboratory is lever-pressing in rats, reinforced
by food. However, things can be arranged so that lever-pressing only produces pellets when
a particular stimulus is present. For example, lever-pressing can be reinforced only when a
light in the Skinner box is turned on; when the light is off, no food is released from lever-
pressing. The rat soon learns to discriminate between the light-on and light-off conditions,
and presses the lever only in the presence of the light (responses in light-off are extinguished).
In everyday life, think about waiting in the turn lane at a traffic light. Although you know that
green means go, only when you have the green arrow do you turn. In this regard, the operant
behavior is now said to be under stimulus control. And, as is the case with the traffic light, in
the real world, stimulus control is probably the rule.

The stimulus controlling the operant response is called a discriminative stimulus. It can be
associated directly with the response, or the reinforcer (see below). However, it usually does
not elicit the response the way a classical CS does. Instead, it is said to “set the occasion for”
the operant response. For example, a canvas put in front of an artist does not elicit painting
behavior or compel her to paint. It allows, or sets the occasion for, painting to occur.

Stimulus-control techniques are widely used in the laboratory to study perception and other
psychological processes in animals. For example, the rat would not be able to respond
Conditioning and Learning 101

appropriately to light-on and light-off conditions if it could not see the light. Following this
logic, experiments using stimulus-control methods have tested how well animals see colors,
hear ultrasounds, and detect magnetic fields. That is, researchers pair these discriminative
stimuli with those they know the animals already understand (such as pressing the lever). In
this way, the researchers can test if the animals can learn to press the lever only when an
ultrasound is played, for example.

These methods can also be used to study “higher” cognitive processes. For example, pigeons
can learn to peck at different buttons in a Skinner box when pictures of flowers, cars, chairs,
or people are shown on a miniature TV screen (see Wasserman, 1995). Pecking button 1 (and
no other) is reinforced in the presence of a flower image, button 2 in the presence of a chair
image, and so on. Pigeons can learn the discrimination readily, and, under the right conditions,
will even peck the correct buttons associated with pictures of new flowers, cars, chairs, and
people they have never seen before. The birds have learned to categorize the sets of stimuli.
Stimulus-control methods can be used to study how such categorization is learned.

Operant Conditioning Involves Choice

Another thing to know about operant

conditioning is that the response always
requires choosing one behavior over others.
The student who goes to the bar on
Thursday night chooses to drink instead of
staying at home and studying. The rat
chooses to press the lever instead of
sleeping or scratching its ear in the back of
the box. The alternative behaviors are each
associated with their own reinforcers. And
the tendency to perform a particular action
depends on both the reinforcers earned for
it and the reinforcers earned for its
alternatives.

To investigate this idea, choice has been

studied in the Skinner box by making two levers available for the rat (or two buttons available
for the pigeon), each of which has its own reinforcement or payoff rate. A thorough study of
choice in situations like this has led to a rule called the quantitative law of effect (see
Herrnstein, 1970), which can be understood without going into quantitative detail: The law
Conditioning and Learning 102

acknowledges the fact that the effects of reinforcing one behavior depend crucially on how
much reinforcement is earned for the behavior’s alternatives. For example, if a pigeon learns
that pecking one light will reward two food pellets, whereas the other light only rewards one,
the pigeon will only peck the first light. However, what happens if the first light is more
strenuous to reach than the second one? Will the cost of energy outweigh the bonus of food?
Or will the extra food be worth the work? In general, a given reinforcer will be less reinforcing
if there are many alternative reinforcers in the environment. For this reason, alcohol, sex, or
drugs may be less powerful reinforcers if the person’s environment is full of other sources of
reinforcement, such as achievement at work or love from family members.

Cognition in Instrumental Learning

Modern research also indicates that reinforcers do more than merely strengthen or “stamp
in” the behaviors they are a consequence of, as was Thorndike’s original view. Instead, animals
learn about the specific consequences of each behavior, and will perform a behavior
depending on how much they currently want—or “value”—its consequence.

[Image courtesy of Bernard W. Balleine]

This idea is best illustrated by a phenomenon called the reinforcer devaluation effect (see
Colwill & Rescorla, 1986). A rat is first trained to perform two instrumental actions (e.g.,
pressing a lever on the left, and on the right), each paired with a different reinforcer (e.g., a
sweet sucrose solution, and a food pellet). At the end of this training, the rat tends to press
both levers, alternating between the sucrose solution and the food pellet. In a second phase,
one of the reinforcers (e.g., the sucrose) is then separately paired with illness. This conditions
a taste aversion to the sucrose. In a final test, the rat is returned to the Skinner box and allowed
to press either lever freely. No reinforcers are presented during this test (i.e., no sucrose or
Conditioning and Learning 103

food comes from pressing the levers), so behavior during testing can only result from the rat’s
memory of what it has learned earlier. Importantly here, the rat chooses not to perform the
response that once produced the reinforcer that it now has an aversion to (e.g., it won’t press
the sucrose lever). This means that the rat has learned and remembered the reinforcer
associated with each response, and can combine that knowledge with the knowledge that the
reinforcer is now “bad.” Reinforcers do not merely stamp in responses; the animal learns
much more than that. The behavior is said to be “goal-directed” (see Dickinson & Balleine,
1994), because it is influenced by the current value of its associated goal (i.e., how much the
rat wants/doesn’t want the reinforcer).

Things can get more complicated, however, if the rat performs the instrumental actions
frequently and repeatedly. That is, if the rat has spent many months learning the value of
pressing each of the levers, the act of pressing them becomes automatic and routine. And
here, this once goal-directed action (i.e., the rat pressing the lever for the goal of getting
sucrose/food) can become a habit. Thus, if a rat spends many months performing the lever-
pressing behavior (turning such behavior into a habit), even when sucrose is again paired with
illness, the rat will continue to press that lever (see Holland, 2004). After all the practice, the
instrumental response (pressing the lever) is no longer sensitive to reinforcer devaluation.
The rat continues to respond automatically, regardless of the fact that the sucrose from this
lever makes it sick.

Habits are very common in human experience, and can be useful. You do not need to relearn
each day how to make your coffee in the morning or how to brush your teeth. Instrumental
behaviors can eventually become habitual, letting us get the job done while being free to think
about other things.

Putting Classical and Instrumental Conditioning Together

Classical and operant conditioning are usually studied separately. But outside of the laboratory
they almost always occur at the same time. For example, a person who is reinforced for
drinking alcohol or eating excessively learns these behaviors in the presence of certain stimuli
—a pub, a set of friends, a restaurant, or possibly the couch in front of the TV. These stimuli
are also available for association with the reinforcer. In this way, classical and operant
conditioning are always intertwined.

The figure below summarizes this idea, and helps review what we have discussed in this
module. Generally speaking, any reinforced or punished operant response (R) is paired with
an outcome (O) in the presence of some stimulus or set of stimuli (S).
Conditioning and Learning 104

The figure illustrates the types of associations that can be learned in this very general scenario.
For one thing, the organism will learn to associate the response and the outcome (R – O). This
is instrumental conditioning. The learning process here is probably similar to classical
conditioning, with all its emphasis on surprise and prediction error. And, as we discussed
while considering the reinforcer devaluation effect, once R – O is learned, the organism will
be ready to perform the response if the outcome is desired or valued. The value of the
reinforcer can also be influenced by other reinforcers earned for other behaviors in the
situation. These factors are at the heart of instrumental learning.

Second, the organism can also learn to associate the stimulus with the reinforcing outcome
(S – O). This is the classical conditioning component, and as we have seen, it can have many
consequences on behavior. For one thing, the stimulus will come to evoke a system of
responses that help the organism prepare for the reinforcer (not shown in the figure): The
drinker may undergo changes in body temperature; the eater may salivate and have an
increase in insulin secretion. In addition, the stimulus will evoke approach (if the outcome is
positive) or retreat (if the outcome is
negative). Presenting the stimulus will
also prompt the instrumental response.

The third association in the diagram is

the one between the stimulus and the
response (S – R). As discussed earlier,
after a lot of practice, the stimulus may
begin to elicit the response directly. This
is habit learning, whereby the response
occurs relatively automatically, without
much mental processing of the relation between the action and the outcome and the
outcome’s current value.

The final link in the figure is between the stimulus and the response-outcome association [S –
(R – O)]. More than just entering into a simple association with the R or the O, the stimulus
can signal that the R – O relationship is now in effect. This is what we mean when we say that
the stimulus can “set the occasion” for the operant response: It sets the occasion for the
Conditioning and Learning 105

response-reinforcer relationship. Through this mechanism, the painter might begin to paint
when given the right tools and the opportunity enabled by the canvas. The canvas theoretically
signals that the behavior of painting will now be reinforced by positive consequences.

The figure provides a framework that you can use to understand almost any learned behavior
you observe in yourself, your family, or your friends. If you would like to understand it more
deeply, consider taking a course on learning in the future, which will give you a fuller
appreciation of how classical learning, instrumental learning, habit learning, and occasion
setting actually work and interact.

Observational Learning

Not all forms of learning are accounted for entirely by classical and operant conditioning.
Imagine a child walking up to a group of children playing a game on the playground. The game
looks fun, but it is new and unfamiliar. Rather than joining the game immediately, the child
opts to sit back and watch the other children play a round or two. Observing the others, the
child takes note of the ways in which they behave while playing the game. By watching the
behavior of the other kids, the child can figure out the rules of the game and even some
strategies for doing well at the game.
This is called observational learning.

Observational learning is a component

of Albert Bandura’s Social Learning
Theory (Bandura, 1977), which posits
that individuals can learn novel
responses via observation of key others’
behaviors. Observational learning does
not necessarily require reinforcement,
but instead hinges on the presence of
others, referred to as social models.
Social models are typically of higher
status or authority compared to the
observer, examples of which include
parents, teachers, and police officers. In
the example above, the children who
Children observing a social model (an experienced chess player) to
learn the rules and strategies of the game of chess. [Image: David already know how to play the game could
R. Tribble, https://goo.gl/nWsgxI, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://goo.gl/ be thought of as being authorities—and
uhHola] are therefore social models—even
Conditioning and Learning 106

though they are the same age as the observer. By observing how the social models behave,
an individual is able to learn how to act in a certain situation. Other examples of observational
learning might include a child learning to place her napkin in her lap by watching her parents
at the dinner table, or a customer learning where to find the ketchup and mustard after
observing other customers at a hot dog stand.

Bandura theorizes that the observational learning process consists of four parts. The first is
attention—as, quite simply, one must pay attention to what s/he is observing in order to learn.
The second part is retention: to learn one must be able to retain the behavior s/he is observing
in memory.The third part of observational learning, initiation, acknowledges that the learner
must be able to execute (or initiate) the learned behavior. Lastly, the observer must possess
the motivation to engage in observational learning. In our vignette, the child must want to
learn how to play the game in order to properly engage in observational learning.

Researchers have conducted countless experiments designed to explore observational

learning, the most famous of which is Albert Bandura’s “Bobo doll experiment.”

In this experiment (Bandura, Ross & Ross 1961), Bandura

had children individually observe an adult social model
interact with a clown doll (“Bobo”). For one group of children,
the adult interacted aggressively with Bobo: punching it,
kicking it, throwing it, and even hitting it in the face with a
toy mallet. Another group of children watched the adult
interact with other toys, displaying no aggression toward
Bobo. In both instances the adult left and the children were
allowed to interact with Bobo on their own. Bandura found
that children exposed to the aggressive social model were
significantly more likely to behave aggressively toward
Bobo, hitting and kicking him, compared to those exposed
to the non-aggressive model. The researchers concluded
that the children in the aggressive group used their
observations of the adult social model’s behavior to
determine that aggressive behavior toward Bobo was
acceptable.
Bobo [Image: © Sémhur / Wikimedia
Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0 (or Free Art
While reinforcement was not required to elicit the children’s
License), https://goo.gl/uhHola]
behavior in Bandura’s first experiment, it is important to
acknowledge that consequences do play a role within observational learning. A future
adaptation of this study (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963) demonstrated that children in the
Conditioning and Learning 107

aggression group showed less aggressive behavior if they witnessed the adult model receive
punishment for aggressing against Bobo. Bandura referred to this process as vicarious
reinforcement, as the children did not experience the reinforcement or punishment directly,
yet were still influenced by observing it.

Conclusion

We have covered three primary explanations for how we learn to behave and interact with
the world around us. Considering your own experiences, how well do these theories apply to
you? Maybe when reflecting on your personal sense of fashion, you realize that you tend to
select clothes others have complimented you on (operant conditioning). Or maybe, thinking
back on a new restaurant you tried recently, you realize you chose it because its commercials
play happy music (classical conditioning). Or maybe you are now always on time with your
assignments, because you saw how others were punished when they were late (observational
learning). Regardless of the activity, behavior, or response, there’s a good chance your
“decision” to do it can be explained based on one of the theories presented in this module.
Conditioning and Learning 108

Outside Resources

Article: Rescorla, R. A. (1988). Pavlovian conditioning: It’s not what you think it is. American
Psychologist, 43, 151–160.

Book: Bouton, M. E. (2007). Learning and behavior: A contemporary synthesis. Sunderland,

MA: Sinauer Associates.

Book: Bouton, M. E. (2009). Learning theory. In B. J. Sadock, V. A. Sadock, & P. Ruiz (Eds.), Kaplan
& Sadock’s comprehensive textbook of psychiatry (9th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 647–658). New York, NY:
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Book: Domjan, M. (2010). The principles of learning and behavior (6th ed.). Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth.

Video: Albert Bandura discusses the Bobo Doll Experiment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqNaLerMNOE

Discussion Questions

1. Describe three examples of Pavlovian (classical) conditioning that you have seen in your
own behavior, or that of your friends or family, in the past few days.

2. Describe three examples of instrumental (operant) conditioning that you have seen in your
own behavior, or that of your friends or family, in the past few days.

3. Drugs can be potent reinforcers. Discuss how Pavlovian conditioning and instrumental
conditioning can work together to influence drug taking.

4. In the modern world, processed foods are highly available and have been engineered to
be highly palatable and reinforcing. Discuss how Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning
can work together to explain why people often eat too much.

5. How does blocking challenge the idea that pairings of a CS and US are sufficient to cause
Pavlovian conditioning? What is important in creating Pavlovian learning?

6. How does the reinforcer devaluation effect challenge the idea that reinforcers merely
“stamp in” the operant response? What does the effect tell us that animals actually learn
in operant conditioning?

7. With regards to social learning do you think people learn violence from observing violence
Conditioning and Learning 109

in movies? Why or why not?

8. What do you think you have learned through social learning? Who are your social models?
Conditioning and Learning 110

Vocabulary

Blocking
In classical conditioning, the finding that no conditioning occurs to a stimulus if it is combined
with a previously conditioned stimulus during conditioning trials. Suggests that information,
surprise value, or prediction error is important in conditioning.

Categorize
To sort or arrange different items into classes or categories.

Classical conditioning
The procedure in which an initially neutral stimulus (the conditioned stimulus, or CS) is paired
with an unconditioned stimulus (or US). The result is that the conditioned stimulus begins to
elicit a conditioned response (CR). Classical conditioning is nowadays considered important
as both a behavioral phenomenon and as a method to study simple associative learning.
Same as Pavlovian conditioning.

Conditioned compensatory response

In classical conditioning, a conditioned response that opposes, rather than is the same as, the
unconditioned response. It functions to reduce the strength of the unconditioned response.
Often seen in conditioning when drugs are used as unconditioned stimuli.

Conditioned response (CR)

The response that is elicited by the conditioned stimulus after classical conditioning has taken
place.

Conditioned stimulus (CS)

An initially neutral stimulus (like a bell, light, or tone) that elicits a conditioned response after
it has been associated with an unconditioned stimulus.

Context
Stimuli that are in the background whenever learning occurs. For instance, the Skinner box
or room in which learning takes place is the classic example of a context. However, “context”
can also be provided by internal stimuli, such as the sensory effects of drugs (e.g., being under
the influence of alcohol has stimulus properties that provide a context) and mood states (e.
g., being happy or sad). It can also be provided by a specific period in time—the passage of
time is sometimes said to change the “temporal context.”
Conditioning and Learning 111

Discriminative stimulus
In operant conditioning, a stimulus that signals whether the response will be reinforced. It is
said to “set the occasion” for the operant response.

Extinction
Decrease in the strength of a learned behavior that occurs when the conditioned stimulus is
presented without the unconditioned stimulus (in classical conditioning) or when the behavior
is no longer reinforced (in instrumental conditioning). The term describes both the procedure
(the US or reinforcer is no longer presented) as well as the result of the procedure (the learned
response declines). Behaviors that have been reduced in strength through extinction are said
to be “extinguished.”

Fear conditioning
A type of classical or Pavlovian conditioning in which the conditioned stimulus (CS) is associated
with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US), such as a foot shock. As a consequence of
learning, the CS comes to evoke fear. The phenomenon is thought to be involved in the
development of anxiety disorders in humans.

Goal-directed behavior
Instrumental behavior that is influenced by the animal’s knowledge of the association between
the behavior and its consequence and the current value of the consequence. Sensitive to the
reinforcer devaluation effect.

Habit
Instrumental behavior that occurs automatically in the presence of a stimulus and is no longer
influenced by the animal’s knowledge of the value of the reinforcer. Insensitive to the reinforcer
devaluation effect.

Instrumental conditioning
Process in which animals learn about the relationship between their behaviors and their
consequences. Also known as operant conditioning.

Law of effect
The idea that instrumental or operant responses are influenced by their effects. Responses
that are followed by a pleasant state of affairs will be strengthened and those that are followed
by discomfort will be weakened. Nowadays, the term refers to the idea that operant or
instrumental behaviors are lawfully controlled by their consequences.

Observational learning
Conditioning and Learning 112

Learning by observing the behavior of others.

Operant
A behavior that is controlled by its consequences. The simplest example is the rat’s lever-
pressing, which is controlled by the presentation of the reinforcer.

Operant conditioning
See instrumental conditioning.

Pavlovian conditioning
See classical conditioning.

Prediction error
When the outcome of a conditioning trial is different from that which is predicted by the
conditioned stimuli that are present on the trial (i.e., when the US is surprising). Prediction
error is necessary to create Pavlovian conditioning (and associative learning generally). As
learning occurs over repeated conditioning trials, the conditioned stimulus increasingly
predicts the unconditioned stimulus, and prediction error declines. Conditioning works to
correct or reduce prediction error.

Preparedness
The idea that an organism’s evolutionary history can make it easy to learn a particular
association. Because of preparedness, you are more likely to associate the taste of tequila,
and not the circumstances surrounding drinking it, with getting sick. Similarly, humans are
more likely to associate images of spiders and snakes than flowers and mushrooms with
aversive outcomes like shocks.

Punisher
A stimulus that decreases the strength of an operant behavior when it is made a consequence
of the behavior.

Quantitative law of effect

A mathematical rule that states that the effectiveness of a reinforcer at strengthening an
operant response depends on the amount of reinforcement earned for all alternative
behaviors. A reinforcer is less effective if there is a lot of reinforcement in the environment
for other behaviors.

Reinforcer
Any consequence of a behavior that strengthens the behavior or increases the likelihood that
Conditioning and Learning 113

it will be performed it again.

Reinforcer devaluation effect

The finding that an animal will stop performing an instrumental response that once led to a
reinforcer if the reinforcer is separately made aversive or undesirable.

Renewal effect
Recovery of an extinguished response that occurs when the context is changed after
extinction. Especially strong when the change of context involves return to the context in
which conditioning originally occurred. Can occur after extinction in either classical or
instrumental conditioning.

Social Learning Theory

The theory that people can learn new responses and behaviors by observing the behavior of
others.

Social models
Authorities that are the targets for observation and who model behaviors.

Spontaneous recovery
Recovery of an extinguished response that occurs with the passage of time after extinction.
Can occur after extinction in either classical or instrumental conditioning.

Stimulus control
When an operant behavior is controlled by a stimulus that precedes it.

Taste aversion learning

The phenomenon in which a taste is paired with sickness, and this causes the organism to
reject—and dislike—that taste in the future.

Unconditioned response (UR)

In classical conditioning, an innate response that is elicited by a stimulus before (or in the
absence of) conditioning.

Unconditioned stimulus (US)

In classical conditioning, the stimulus that elicits the response before conditioning occurs.

Vicarious reinforcement
Learning that occurs by observing the reinforcement or punishment of another person.
Conditioning and Learning 114

References

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corticostratolimbic circuits. Physiology & Behavior, 86, 717–730.

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall

Bandura, A., Ross, D., Ross, S (1963). Imitation of film-mediated aggressive models. Journal of
Abnormal and Social Psychology 66(1), 3 - 11.

Bandura, A.; Ross, D.; Ross, S. A. (1961). "Transmission of aggression through the imitation of
aggressive models". Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 63(3), 575–582.

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485–494.

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Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation, (Vol. 20, pp. 55–104). New York, NY:
Academic Press.

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46, 5–27.

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Learning & Behavior, 22, 1–18.

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Annual Review of Psychology, 56, 207–234.

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devaluation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 30, 104–117.

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M. Church (Eds.), Punishment and aversive behavior (pp. 279–296). New York, NY: Appleton-
Century-Crofts.

Mineka, S., & Zinbarg, R. (2006). A contemporary learning theory perspective on the etiology
of anxiety disorders: It’s not what you thought it was. American Psychologist, 61, 10–26.

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of Psychology, 52, 111–139.
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Rescorla, R. A., & Wagner, A. R. (1972). A theory of Pavlovian conditioning: Variations in the
effectiveness of reinforcement and nonreinforcement. In A. H. Black & W. F. Prokasy (Eds.),
Classical conditioning II: Current research and theory (pp. 64–99). New York, NY: Appleton-
Century-Crofts.

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Memory
7
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval)
Kathleen B. McDermott & Henry L. Roediger

“Memory” is a single term that reflects a number of different abilities: holding information
briefly while working with it (working memory), remembering episodes of one’s life (episodic
memory), and our general knowledge of facts of the world (semantic memory), among other
types. Remembering episodes involves three processes: encoding information (learning it, by
perceiving it and relating it to past knowledge), storing it (maintaining it over time), and then
retrieving it (accessing the information when needed). Failures can occur at any stage, leading
to forgetting or to having false memories. The key to improving one’s memory is to improve
processes of encoding and to use techniques that guarantee effective retrieval. Good encoding
techniques include relating new information to what one already knows, forming mental
images, and creating associations among information that needs to be remembered. The key
to good retrieval is developing effective cues that will lead the rememberer back to the encoded
information. Classic mnemonic systems, known since the time of the ancient Greeks and still
used by some today, can greatly improve one’s memory abilities.

Learning Objectives

• Define and note differences between the following forms of memory: working memory,
episodic memory, semantic memory, collective memory.

• Describe the three stages in the process of learning and remembering.

• Describe strategies that can be used to enhance the original learning or encoding of
information.

• Describe strategies that can improve the process of retrieval.

• Describe why the classic mnemonic device, the method of loci, works so well.
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 118

Introduction

In 2013, Simon Reinhard sat in front of 60 people in a room at Washington University, where
he memorized an increasingly long series of digits. On the first round, a computer generated
10 random digits—6 1 9 4 8 5 6 3 7 1—on a screen for 10 seconds. After the series disappeared,
Simon typed them into his computer. His recollection was perfect. In the next phase, 20 digits
appeared on the screen for 20 seconds. Again, Simon got them all correct. No one in the
audience (mostly professors, graduate students, and undergraduate students) could recall
the 20 digits perfectly. Then came 30 digits, studied for 30 seconds; once again, Simon didn’t
misplace even a single digit. For a final trial, 50 digits appeared on the screen for 50 seconds,
and again, Simon got them all right. In fact, Simon would have been happy to keep going. His
record in this task—called “forward digit span”—is 240 digits!

When most of us witness a performance

like that of Simon Reinhard, we think one
of two things: First, maybe he’s cheating
somehow. (No, he is not.) Second, Simon
must have abilities more advanced than
the rest of humankind. After all,
psychologists established many years
ago that the normal memory span for
adults is about 7 digits, with some of us
able to recall a few more and others a few
less (Miller, 1956). That is why the first
phone numbers were limited to 7 digits
—psychologists determined that many
errors occurred (costing the phone
company money) when the number was
In some ways memory is like file drawers where you store mental
increased to even 8 digits. But in normal
information. Memory is also a series of processes: how does that testing, no one gets 50 digits correct in a
information get filed to begin with and how does it get retrieved row, much less 240. So, does Simon
when needed? [Image: M Cruz, https://goo.gl/DhOMgp, CC BY-SA
Reinhard simply have a photographic
4.0, https://goo.gl/SWjq94]
memory? He does not. Instead, Simon
has taught himself simple strategies for
remembering that have greatly increased his capacity for remembering virtually any type of
material—digits, words, faces and names, poetry, historical dates, and so on. Twelve years
earlier, before he started training his memory abilities, he had a digit span of 7, just like most
of us. Simon has been training his abilities for about 10 years as of this writing, and has risen
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 119

to be in the top two of “memory athletes.” In 2012, he came in second place in the World
Memory Championships (composed of 11 tasks), held in London. He currently ranks second
in the world, behind another German competitor, Johannes Mallow. In this module, we reveal
what psychologists and others have learned about memory, and we also explain the general
principles by which you can improve your own memory for factual material.

Varieties of Memory

For most of us, remembering digits relies on

short-term memory, or working memory—the
ability to hold information in our minds for
a brief time and work with it (e.g., multiplying
24 x 17 without using paper would rely on
working memory). Another type of memory
is episodic memory—the ability to
remember the episodes of our lives. If you
were given the task of recalling everything
you did 2 days ago, that would be a test of
episodic memory; you would be required to
mentally travel through the day in your mind
and note the main events. Semantic
memory is our storehouse of more-or-less
permanent knowledge, such as the
To be a good chess player you have to learn to increase working
meanings of words in a language (e.g., the memory so you can plan ahead for several offensive moves
meaning of “parasol”) and the huge while simultaneously anticipating - through use of memory -

collection of facts about the world (e.g., there how the other player could counter each of your planned
moves. [Image: karpidis, https://goo.gl/EhzMKM, CC BY-SA 2.0,
are 196 countries in the world, and 206
https://goo.gl/jSSrcO]
bones in your body). Collective memory refers
to the kind of memory that people in a group
share (whether family, community, schoolmates, or citizens of a state or a country). For
example, residents of small towns often strongly identify with those towns, remembering the
local customs and historical events in a unique way. That is, the community’s collective memory
passes stories and recollections between neighbors and to future generations, forming a
memory system unto itself.

Psychologists continue to debate the classification of types of memory, as well as which types
rely on others (Tulving, 2007), but for this module we will focus on episodic memory. Episodic
memory is usually what people think of when they hear the word “memory.” For example,
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 120

when people say that an older relative is “losing her memory” due to Alzheimer’s disease, the
type of memory-loss they are referring to is the inability to recall events, or episodic memory.
(Semantic memory is actually preserved in early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.) Although
remembering specific events that have happened over the course of one’s entire life (e.g.,
your experiences in sixth grade) can be referred to as autobiographical memory, we will focus
primarily on the episodic memories of more recent events.

Three Stages of the Learning/Memory Process

Psychologists distinguish between three necessary stages in the learning and memory
process: encoding, storage, and retrieval (Melton, 1963). Encoding is defined as the initial
learning of information; storage refers to maintaining information over time; retrieval is the
ability to access information when you need it. If you meet someone for the first time at a
party, you need to encode her name (Lyn Goff) while you associate her name with her face.
Then you need to maintain the information over time. If you see her a week later, you need
to recognize her face and have it serve as a cue to retrieve her name. Any successful act of
remembering requires that all three stages be intact. However, two types of errors can also
occur. Forgetting is one type: you see the person you met at the party and you cannot recall
her name. The other error is misremembering (false recall or false recognition): you see
someone who looks like Lyn Goff and call the person by that name (false recognition of the
face). Or, you might see the real Lyn Goff, recognize her face, but then call her by the name
of another woman you met at the party (misrecall of her name).

Whenever forgetting or misremembering occurs, we can ask, at which stage in the learning/
memory process was there a failure?—though it is often difficult to answer this question with
precision. One reason for this inaccuracy is that the three stages are not as discrete as our
description implies. Rather, all three stages depend on one another. How we encode
information determines how it will be stored and what cues will be effective when we try to
retrieve it. And too, the act of retrieval itself also changes the way information is subsequently
remembered, usually aiding later recall of the retrieved information. The central point for now
is that the three stages—encoding, storage, and retrieval—affect one another, and are
inextricably bound together.

Encoding

Encoding refers to the initial experience of perceiving and learning information. Psychologists
often study recall by having participants study a list of pictures or words. Encoding in these
situations is fairly straightforward. However, “real life” encoding is much more challenging.
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 121

When you walk across campus, for example, you encounter countless sights and sounds—
friends passing by, people playing Frisbee, music in the air. The physical and mental
environments are much too rich for you to encode all the happenings around you or the
internal thoughts you have in response to them. So, an important first principle of encoding
is that it is selective: we attend to some events in our environment and we ignore others. A
second point about encoding is that it is prolific; we are always encoding the events of our
lives—attending to the world, trying to understand it. Normally this presents no problem, as
our days are filled with routine occurrences, so we don’t need to pay attention to everything.
But if something does happen that seems strange—during your daily walk across campus,
you see a giraffe—then we pay close attention and try to understand why we are seeing what
we are seeing.

Right after your typical walk across campus

(one without the appearance of a giraffe),
you would be able to remember the events
reasonably well if you were asked. You could
say whom you bumped into, what song was
playing from a radio, and so on. However,
suppose someone asked you to recall the
same walk a month later. You wouldn’t stand
a chance. You would likely be able to recount
the basics of a typical walk across campus,
but not the precise details of that particular
walk. Yet, if you had seen a giraffe during that
walk, the event would have been fixed in your
mind for a long time, probably for the rest of
your life. You would tell your friends about
A giraffe in the context of a zoo or its natural habitat may
it, and, on later occasions when you saw a
register as nothing more than ordinary, but put it in another
giraffe, you might be reminded of the day setting - in the middle of a campus or a busy city - and its level
you saw one on campus. Psychologists have of distinctiveness increases dramatically. Distinctiveness is a
long pinpointed distinctiveness—having an key attribute to remembering events. [Image: Colin J Babb,

event stand out as quite different from a https://goo.gl/Cci2yl, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/jSSrcO]

background of similar events—as a key to

remembering events (Hunt, 2003).

In addition, when vivid memories are tinged with strong emotional content, they often seem
to leave a permanent mark on us. Public tragedies, such as terrorist attacks, often create vivid
memories in those who witnessed them. But even those of us not directly involved in such
events may have vivid memories of them, including memories of first hearing about them.
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 122

For example, many people are able to recall their exact physical location when they first
learned about the assassination or accidental death of a national figure. The term flashbulb
memory was originally coined by Brown and Kulik (1977) to describe this sort of vivid memory
of finding out an important piece of news. The name refers to how some memories seem to
be captured in the mind like a flash photograph; because of the distinctiveness and
emotionality of the news, they seem to become permanently etched in the mind with
exceptional clarity compared to other memories.

Take a moment and think back on your own life. Is there a particular memory that seems
sharper than others? A memory where you can recall unusual details, like the colors of
mundane things around you, or the exact positions of surrounding objects? Although people
have great confidence in flashbulb memories like these, the truth is, our objective accuracy
with them is far from perfect (Talarico & Rubin, 2003). That is, even though people may have
great confidence in what they recall, their memories are not as accurate (e.g., what the actual
colors were; where objects were truly placed) as they tend to imagine. Nonetheless, all other
things being equal, distinctive and emotional events are well-remembered.

Details do not leap perfectly from the world into a person’s mind. We might say that we went
to a party and remember it, but what we remember is (at best) what we encoded. As noted
above, the process of encoding is selective, and in complex situations, relatively few of many
possible details are noticed and
encoded. The process of encoding
always involves recoding—that is, taking
the information from the form it is
delivered to us and then converting it in
a way that we can make sense of it. For
example, you might try to remember the
colors of a rainbow by using the acronym
ROY G BIV (red, orange, yellow, green,
blue, indigo, violet). The process of
recoding the colors into a name can help
us to remember. However, recoding can
also introduce errors—when we accidentally
add information during encoding, then
remember that new material as if it had
been part of the actual experience (as
Although it requires more effort, using images and associations can discussed below).
improve the process of recoding. [Image: psd, https://goo.gl/9xjcDe,

CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/9uSnqN] Psychologists have studied many

Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 123

recoding strategies that can be used during study to improve retention. First, research advises
that, as we study, we should think of the meaning of the events (Craik & Lockhart, 1972), and
we should try to relate new events to information we already know. This helps us form
associations that we can use to retrieve information later. Second, imagining events also
makes them more memorable; creating vivid images out of information (even verbal
information) can greatly improve later recall (Bower & Reitman, 1972). Creating imagery is
part of the technique Simon Reinhard uses to remember huge numbers of digits, but we can
all use images to encode information more effectively. The basic concept behind good
encoding strategies is to form distinctive memories (ones that stand out), and to form links
or associations among memories to help later retrieval (Hunt & McDaniel, 1993). Using study
strategies such as the ones described here is challenging, but the effort is well worth the
benefits of enhanced learning and retention.

We emphasized earlier that encoding is selective: people cannot encode all information they
are exposed to. However, recoding can add information that was not even seen or heard
during the initial encoding phase. Several of the recoding processes, like forming associations
between memories, can happen without our awareness. This is one reason people can
sometimes remember events that did not actually happen—because during the process of
recoding, details got added. One common way of inducing false memories in the laboratory
employs a word-list technique (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Participants hear
lists of 15 words, like door, glass, pane, shade, ledge, sill, house, open, curtain, frame, view, breeze,
sash, screen, and shutter. Later, participants are given a test in which they are shown a list of
words and asked to pick out the ones they’d heard earlier. This second list contains some
words from the first list (e.g., door, pane, frame) and some words not from the list (e.g., arm,
phone, bottle). In this example, one of the words on the test is window, which—importantly—
does not appear in the first list, but which is related to other words in that list. When subjects
were tested, they were reasonably accurate with the studied words (door, etc.), recognizing
them 72% of the time. However, when window was on the test, they falsely recognized it as
having been on the list 84% of the time (Stadler, Roediger, & McDermott, 1999). The same
thing happened with many other lists the authors used. This phenomenon is referred to as
the DRM (for Deese-Roediger-McDermott) effect. One explanation for such results is that,
while students listened to items in the list, the words triggered the students to think about
window, even though window was never presented. In this way, people seem to encode events
that are not actually part of their experience.

Because humans are creative, we are always going beyond the information we are given: we
automatically make associations and infer from them what is happening. But, as with the
word association mix-up above, sometimes we make false memories from our inferences—
remembering the inferences themselves as if they were actual experiences. To illustrate this,
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 124

Brewer (1977) gave people sentences to remember that were designed to elicit pragmatic
inferences. Inferences, in general, refer to instances when something is not explicitly stated,
but we are still able to guess the undisclosed intention. For example, if your friend told you
that she didn’t want to go out to eat, you may infer that she doesn’t have the money to go
out, or that she’s too tired. With pragmatic inferences, there is usually one particular inference
you’re likely to make. Consider the statement Brewer (1977) gave her participants: “The karate
champion hit the cinder block.” After hearing or seeing this sentence, participants who were
given a memory test tended to remember the statement as having been, “The karate champion
broke the cinder block.” This remembered statement is not necessarily a logical inference (i.
e., it is perfectly reasonable that a karate champion could hit a cinder block without breaking
it). Nevertheless, the pragmatic conclusion from hearing such a sentence is that the block was
likely broken. The participants remembered this inference they made while hearing the
sentence in place of the actual words that were in the sentence (see also McDermott & Chan,
2006).

Encoding—the initial registration of information—is essential in the learning and memory

process. Unless an event is encoded in some fashion, it will not be successfully remembered
later. However, just because an event is encoded (even if it is encoded well), there’s no
guarantee that it will be remembered later.

Storage

Every experience we have changes our

brains. That may seem like a bold, even
strange, claim at first, but it’s true. We
encode each of our experiences within the
structures of the nervous system, making
new impressions in the process—and each
of those impressions involves changes in the
brain. Psychologists (and neurobiologists)
say that experiences leave memory traces,
or engrams (the two terms are synonyms).
Memories have to be stored somewhere in
the brain, so in order to do so, the brain
Memory traces, or engrams, are NOT perfectly preserved
biochemically alters itself and its neural recordings of past experiences. The traces are combined with
tissue. Just like you might write yourself a current knowledge to reconstruct what we think happened in

note to remind you of something, the brain the past. [Simon Bierdwald, https://goo.gl/JDhdCE, CC BY-NC-

“writes” a memory trace, changing its own SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/jSSrcO]

Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 125

physical composition to do so. The basic idea is that events (occurrences in our environment)
create engrams through a process of consolidation: the neural changes that occur after
learning to create the memory trace of an experience. Although neurobiologists are concerned
with exactly what neural processes change when memories are created, for psychologists,
the term memory trace simply refers to the physical change in the nervous system (whatever
that may be, exactly) that represents our experience.

Although the concept of engram or memory trace is extremely useful, we shouldn’t take the
term too literally. It is important to understand that memory traces are not perfect little packets
of information that lie dormant in the brain, waiting to be called forward to give an accurate
report of past experience. Memory traces are not like video or audio recordings, capturing
experience with great accuracy; as discussed earlier, we often have errors in our memory,
which would not exist if memory traces were perfect packets of information. Thus, it is wrong
to think that remembering involves simply “reading out” a faithful record of past experience.
Rather, when we remember past events, we reconstruct them with the aid of our memory
traces—but also with our current belief of what happened. For example, if you were trying to
recall for the police who started a fight at a bar, you may not have a memory trace of who
pushed whom first. However, let’s say you remember that one of the guys held the door open
for you. When thinking back to the start of the fight, this knowledge (of how one guy was
friendly to you) may unconsciously influence your memory of what happened in favor of the
nice guy. Thus, memory is a construction of what you actually recall and what you believe
happened. In a phrase, remembering is reconstructive (we reconstruct our past with the aid
of memory traces) not reproductive (a perfect reproduction or recreation of the past).

Psychologists refer to the time between learning and testing as the retention interval.
Memories can consolidate during that time, aiding retention. However, experiences can also
occur that undermine the memory. For example, think of what you had for lunch yesterday
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 126

—a pretty easy task. However, if you had to recall what you had for lunch 17 days ago, you
may well fail (assuming you don’t eat the same thing every day). The 16 lunches you’ve had
since that one have created retroactive interference. Retroactive interference refers to new
activities (i.e., the subsequent lunches) during the retention interval (i.e., the time between
the lunch 17 days ago and now) that interfere with retrieving the specific, older memory (i.e.,
the lunch details from 17 days ago). But just as newer things can interfere with remembering
older things, so can the opposite happen. Proactive interference is when past memories
interfere with the encoding of new ones. For example, if you have ever studied a second
language, often times the grammar and vocabulary of your native language will pop into your
head, impairing your fluency in the foreign language.

Retroactive interference is one of the main causes of forgetting (McGeoch, 1932). In the module
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases (http://noba.to/uy49tm37), Elizabeth Loftus
describes her fascinating work on eyewitness memory, in which she shows how memory for
an event can be changed via misinformation supplied during the retention interval. For
example, if you witnessed a car crash but subsequently heard people describing it from their
own perspective, this new information may interfere with or disrupt your own personal
recollection of the crash. In fact, you may even come to remember the event happening exactly
as the others described it! This misinformation effect in eyewitness memory represents a
type of retroactive interference that can occur during the retention interval (see Loftus [2005]
for a review). Of course, if correct information is given during the retention interval, the
witness’s memory will usually be improved.

Although interference may arise between the occurrence of an event and the attempt to recall
it, the effect itself is always expressed when we retrieve memories, the topic to which we turn next.

Retrieval

Endel Tulving argued that “the key process in memory is retrieval” (1991, p. 91). Why should
retrieval be given more prominence than encoding or storage? For one thing, if information
were encoded and stored but could not be retrieved, it would be useless. As discussed
previously in this module, we encode and store thousands of events—conversations, sights
and sounds—every day, creating memory traces. However, we later access only a tiny portion
of what we’ve taken in. Most of our memories will never be used—in the sense of being brought
back to mind, consciously. This fact seems so obvious that we rarely reflect on it. All those
events that happened to you in the fourth grade that seemed so important then? Now, many
years later, you would struggle to remember even a few. You may wonder if the traces of
those memories still exist in some latent form. Unfortunately, with currently available
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 127

methods, it is impossible to know.

Psychologists distinguish information that is available in memory from that which is accessible
(Tulving & Pearlstone, 1966). Available information is the information that is stored in memory
—but precisely how much and what types are stored cannot be known. That is, all we can
know is what information we can retrieve—accessible information. The assumption is that
accessible information represents only a tiny slice of the information available in our brains.
Most of us have had the experience of trying to remember some fact or event, giving up, and
then—all of a sudden!—it comes to us at a later time, even after we’ve stopped trying to
remember it. Similarly, we all know the experience of failing to recall a fact, but then, if we are
given several choices (as in a multiple-choice test), we are easily able to recognize it.

What factors determine what information

can be retrieved from memory? One
critical factor is the type of hints, or cues,
in the environment. You may hear a song
on the radio that suddenly evokes
memories of an earlier time in your life,
even if you were not trying to remember
it when the song came on. Nevertheless,
the song is closely associated with that
time, so it brings the experience to mind.

The general principle that underlies the

effectiveness of retrieval cues is the
encoding specificity principle (Tulving &
We can't know the entirety of what is in our memory, but only that Thomson, 1973): when people encode
portion we can actually retrieve. Something that cannot be information, they do so in specific ways.
retrieved now and which is seemingly gone from memory may, For example, take the song on the radio:
with different cues applied, reemerge. [Image: Ores2k, https://goo.
perhaps you heard it while you were at a
gl/1du8Qe, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/jSSrcO]
terrific party, having a great, philosophical
conversation with a friend. Thus, the song
became part of that whole complex experience. Years later, even though you haven’t thought
about that party in ages, when you hear the song on the radio, the whole experience rushes
back to you. In general, the encoding specificity principle states that, to the extent a retrieval
cue (the song) matches or overlaps the memory trace of an experience (the party, the
conversation), it will be effective in evoking the memory. A classic experiment on the encoding
specificity principle had participants memorize a set of words in a unique setting. Later, the
participants were tested on the word sets, either in the same location they learned the words
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 128

or a different one. As a result of encoding specificity, the students who took the test in the
same place they learned the words were actually able to recall more words (Godden &
Baddeley, 1975) than the students who took the test in a new setting. In this instance, the
physical context itself provided cues for retrieval. This is why it’s good to study for midterms
and finals in the same room you’ll be taking them in.

One caution with this principle, though, is that, for the cue to work, it can’t match too many
other experiences (Nairne, 2002; Watkins, 1975). Consider a lab experiment. Suppose you
study 100 items; 99 are words, and one is a picture—of a penguin, item 50 in the list. Afterwards,
the cue “recall the picture” would evoke “penguin” perfectly. No one would miss it. However,
if the word “penguin” were placed in the same spot among the other 99 words, its memorability
would be exceptionally worse. This outcome shows the power of distinctiveness that we
discussed in the section on encoding: one picture is perfectly recalled from among 99 words
because it stands out. Now consider what would happen if the experiment were repeated,
but there were 25 pictures distributed within the 100-item list. Although the picture of the
penguin would still be there, the probability that the cue “recall the picture” (at item 50) would
be useful for the penguin would drop correspondingly. Watkins (1975) referred to this outcome
as demonstrating the cue overload principle. That is, to be effective, a retrieval cue cannot
be overloaded with too many memories. For the cue “recall the picture” to be effective, it
should only match one item in the target set (as in the one-picture, 99-word case).

To sum up how memory cues function: for a retrieval cue to be effective, a match must exist
between the cue and the desired target memory; furthermore, to produce the best retrieval,
the cue-target relationship should be distinctive. Next, we will see how the encoding specificity
principle can work in practice.

Psychologists measure memory performance by using production tests (involving recall) or

recognition tests (involving the selection of correct from incorrect information, e.g., a multiple-
choice test). For example, with our list of 100 words, one group of people might be asked to
recall the list in any order (a free recall test), while a different group might be asked to circle
the 100 studied words out of a mix with another 100, unstudied words (a recognition test). In
this situation, the recognition test would likely produce better performance from participants
than the recall test.

We usually think of recognition tests as being quite easy, because the cue for retrieval is a
copy of the actual event that was presented for study. After all, what could be a better cue
than the exact target (memory) the person is trying to access? In most cases, this line of
reasoning is true; nevertheless, recognition tests do not provide perfect indexes of what is
stored in memory. That is, you can fail to recognize a target staring you right in the face, yet
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 129

be able to recall it later with a different set of cues (Watkins & Tulving, 1975). For example,
suppose you had the task of recognizing the surnames of famous authors. At first, you might
think that being given the actual last name would always be the best cue. However, research
has shown this not necessarily to be true (Muter, 1984). When given names such as Tolstoy,
Shaw, Shakespeare, and Lee, subjects might well say that Tolstoy and Shakespeare are famous
authors, whereas Shaw and Lee are not. But, when given a cued recall test using first names,
people often recall items (produce them) that they had failed to recognize before. For example,
in this instance, a cue like George Bernard ________ often leads to a recall of “Shaw,” even though
people initially failed to recognize Shaw as a famous author’s name. Yet, when given the cue
“William,” people may not come up with Shakespeare, because William is a common name
that matches many people (the cue overload principle at work). This strange fact—that recall
can sometimes lead to better performance than recognition—can be explained by the
encoding specificity principle. As a cue, George Bernard _________ matches the way the famous
writer is stored in memory better than does his surname, Shaw, does (even though it is the
target). Further, the match is quite distinctive with George Bernard ___________, but the cue
William _________________ is much more overloaded (Prince William, William Yeats, William
Faulkner, will.i.am).

The phenomenon we have been describing is called the recognition failure of recallable words,
which highlights the point that a cue will be most effective depending on how the information
has been encoded (Tulving & Thomson, 1973). The point is, the cues that work best to evoke
retrieval are those that recreate the event or name to be remembered, whereas sometimes
even the target itself, such as Shaw in the above example, is not the best cue. Which cue will
be most effective depends on how the information has been encoded.

Whenever we think about our past, we engage in the act of retrieval. We usually think that
retrieval is an objective act because we tend to imagine that retrieving a memory is like pulling
a book from a shelf, and after we are done with it, we return the book to the shelf just as it
was. However, research shows this assumption to be false; far from being a static repository
of data, the memory is constantly changing. In fact, every time we retrieve a memory, it is
altered. For example, the act of retrieval itself (of a fact, concept, or event) makes the retrieved
memory much more likely to be retrieved again, a phenomenon called the testing effect or the
retrieval practice effect (Pyc & Rawson, 2009; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). However, retrieving
some information can actually cause us to forget other information related to it, a
phenomenon called retrieval-induced forgetting (Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994). Thus the act
of retrieval can be a double-edged sword—strengthening the memory just retrieved (usually
by a large amount) but harming related information (though this effect is often relatively small).

As discussed earlier, retrieval of distant memories is reconstructive. We weave the concrete

Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 130

bits and pieces of events in with assumptions and preferences to form a coherent story
(Bartlett, 1932). For example, if during your 10th birthday, your dog got to your cake before
you did, you would likely tell that story for years afterward. Say, then, in later years you
misremember where the dog actually found the cake, but repeat that error over and over
during subsequent retellings of the story. Over time, that inaccuracy would become a basic
fact of the event in your mind. Just as retrieval practice (repetition) enhances accurate
memories, so will it strengthen errors or false memories (McDermott, 2006). Sometimes
memories can even be manufactured just from hearing a vivid story. Consider the following
episode, recounted by Jean Piaget, the famous developmental psychologist, from his
childhood:

One of my first memories would date, if it were true, from my second year. I can still see,
most clearly, the following scene, in which I believed until I was about 15. I was sitting in
my pram . . . when a man tried to kidnap me. I was held in by the strap fastened round
me while my nurse bravely tried to stand between me and the thief. She received various
scratches, and I can still vaguely see those on her face. . . . When I was about 15, my parents
received a letter from my former nurse saying that she had been converted to the Salvation
Army. She wanted to confess her past faults, and in particular to return the watch she
had been given as a reward on this occasion. She had made up the whole story, faking
the scratches. I therefore must have heard, as a child, this story, which my parents believed,
and projected it into the past in the form of a visual memory. . . . Many real memories are
doubtless of the same order. (Norman & Schacter, 1997, pp. 187–188)

Piaget’s vivid account represents a case of a pure reconstructive memory. He heard the tale
told repeatedly, and doubtless told it (and thought about it) himself. The repeated telling
cemented the events as though they had really happened, just as we are all open to the
possibility of having “many real memories ... of the same order.” The fact that one can
remember precise details (the location, the scratches) does not necessarily indicate that the
memory is true, a point that has been confirmed in laboratory studies, too (e.g., Norman &
Schacter, 1997).

Putting It All Together: Improving Your Memory

A central theme of this module has been the importance of the encoding and retrieval
processes, and their interaction. To recap: to improve learning and memory, we need to encode
information in conjunction with excellent cues that will bring back the remembered events
when we need them. But how do we do this? Keep in mind the two critical principles we have
discussed: to maximize retrieval, we should construct meaningful cues that remind us of the
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 131

original experience, and those cues should be distinctive and not associated with other
memories. These two conditions are critical in maximizing cue effectiveness (Nairne, 2002).

So, how can these principles be adapted for use in many situations? Let’s go back to how we
started the module, with Simon Reinhard’s ability to memorize huge numbers of digits.
Although it was not obvious, he applied these same general memory principles, but in a more
deliberate way. In fact, all mnemonic devices, or memory aids/tricks, rely on these
fundamental principles. In a typical case, the person learns a set of cues and then applies
these cues to learn and remember information. Consider the set of 20 items below that are
easy to learn and remember (Bower & Reitman, 1972).

1. is a gun. 11 is penny-one, hot dog bun.

2. is a shoe. 12 is penny-two, airplane glue.

3. is a tree. 13 is penny-three, bumble bee.

4. is a door. 14 is penny-four, grocery store.

5. is knives. 15 is penny-five, big beehive.

6. is sticks. 16 is penny-six, magic tricks.

7. is oven. 17 is penny-seven, go to heaven.

8. is plate. 18 is penny-eight, golden gate.

9. is wine. 19 is penny-nine, ball of twine.

10. is hen. 20 is penny-ten, ballpoint pen.

It would probably take you less than 10 minutes to learn this list and practice recalling it several
times (remember to use retrieval practice!). If you were to do so, you would have a set of peg
words on which you could “hang” memories. In fact, this mnemonic device is called the peg
word technique. If you then needed to remember some discrete items—say a grocery list, or
points you wanted to make in a speech—this method would let you do so in a very precise
yet flexible way. Suppose you had to remember bread, peanut butter, bananas, lettuce, and
so on. The way to use the method is to form a vivid image of what you want to remember
and imagine it interacting with your peg words (as many as you need). For example, for these
items, you might imagine a large gun (the first peg word) shooting a loaf of bread, then a jar
of peanut butter inside a shoe, then large bunches of bananas hanging from a tree, then a
door slamming on a head of lettuce with leaves flying everywhere. The idea is to provide good,
distinctive cues (the weirder the better!) for the information you need to remember while you
are learning it. If you do this, then retrieving it later is relatively easy. You know your cues
perfectly (one is gun, etc.), so you simply go through your cue word list and “look” in your
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 132

mind’s eye at the image stored there (bread, in this case).

This peg word method may sound strange

at first, but it works quite well, even with
little training (Roediger, 1980). One word
of warning, though, is that the items to be
remembered need to be presented
relatively slowly at first, until you have
practice associating each with its cue
word. People get faster with time. Another
interesting aspect of this technique is that
it’s just as easy to recall the items in
backwards order as forwards. This is
because the peg words provide direct
access to the memorized items, regardless
of order.

How did Simon Reinhard remember those

digits? Essentially he has a much more
complex system based on these same
Example of a mneumonic system created by a student to study
principles. In his case, he uses “memory
cranial nerves. [Image: Kelidimari, https://goo.gl/kiA1kP, CC BY-SA palaces” (elaborate scenes with discrete
3.0, https://goo.gl/SCkRfm] places) combined with huge sets of
images for digits. For example, imagine
mentally walking through the home where you grew up and identifying as many distinct areas
and objects as possible. Simon has hundreds of such memory palaces that he uses. Next, for
remembering digits, he has memorized a set of 10,000 images. Every four-digit number for
him immediately brings forth a mental image. So, for example, 6187 might recall Michael
Jackson. When Simon hears all the numbers coming at him, he places an image for every four
digits into locations in his memory palace. He can do this at an incredibly rapid rate, faster
than 4 digits per 4 seconds when they are flashed visually, as in the demonstration at the
beginning of the module. As noted, his record is 240 digits, recalled in exact order. Simon also
holds the world record in an event called “speed cards,” which involves memorizing the precise
order of a shuffled deck of cards. Simon was able to do this in 21.19 seconds! Again, he uses
his memory palaces, and he encodes groups of cards as single images.

Many books exist on how to improve memory using mnemonic devices, but all involve forming
distinctive encoding operations and then having an infallible set of memory cues. We should
add that to develop and use these memory systems beyond the basic peg system outlined
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 133

above takes a great amount of time and concentration. The World Memory Championships
are held every year and the records keep improving. However, for most common purposes,
just keep in mind that to remember well you need to encode information in a distinctive way
and to have good cues for retrieval. You can adapt a system that will meet most any purpose.
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 134

Outside Resources

Book: Brown, P.C., Roediger, H. L. & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of
successful learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful-Learning/dp/0674729013

Student Video 1: Eureka Foong\\\\\\\'s - The Misinformation Effect. This is a student-made

video illustrating this phenomenon of altered memory. It was one of the winning entries
in the 2014 Noba Student Video Award.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMPIWkFtd88

Student Video 2: Kara McCord\\\\\\\'s - Flashbulb Memories. This is a student-made video

illustrating this phenomenon of autobiographical memory. It was one of the winning
entries in the 2014 Noba Student Video Award.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPhW9bUI4F0

Student Video 3: Ang Rui Xia & Ong Jun Hao\\\\\\\'s - The Misinformation Effect. Another
student-made video exploring the misinformation effect. Also an award winner from 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsn9iKmOJLQ

Video: Simon Reinhard breaking the world record in speedcards.

http://vimeo.com/12516465

Web: Retrieval Practice, a website with research, resources, and tips for both educators
and learners around the memory-strengthening skill of retrieval practice.
http://www.retrievalpractice.org/

Discussion Questions

1. Mnemonists like Simon Reinhard develop mental “journeys,” which enable them to use the
method of loci. Develop your own journey, which contains 20 places, in order, that you
know well. One example might be: the front walkway to your parents’ apartment; their
doorbell; the couch in their living room; etc. Be sure to use a set of places that you know
well and that have a natural order to them (e.g., the walkway comes before the doorbell).
Now you are more than halfway toward being able to memorize a set of 20 nouns, in order,
rather quickly. As an optional second step, have a friend make a list of 20 such nouns and
read them to you, slowly (e.g., one every 5 seconds). Use the method to attempt to
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 135

remember the 20 items.

2. Recall a recent argument or misunderstanding you have had about memory (e.g., a debate
over whether your girlfriend/boyfriend had agreed to something). In light of what you have
just learned about memory, how do you think about it? Is it possible that the disagreement
can be understood by one of you making a pragmatic inference?

3. Think about what you’ve learned in this module and about how you study for tests. On the
basis of what you have learned, is there something you want to try that might help your
study habits?
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 136

Vocabulary

Autobiographical memory
Memory for the events of one’s life.

Consolidation
The process occurring after encoding that is believed to stabilize memory traces.

Cue overload principle

The principle stating that the more memories that are associated to a particular retrieval cue,
the less effective the cue will be in prompting retrieval of any one memory.

Distinctiveness
The principle that unusual events (in a context of similar events) will be recalled and recognized
better than uniform (nondistinctive) events.

Encoding
The initial experience of perceiving and learning events.

Encoding specificity principle

The hypothesis that a retrieval cue will be effective to the extent that information encoded
from the cue overlaps or matches information in the engram or memory trace.

Engrams
A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event; also, memory trace.

Episodic memory
Memory for events in a particular time and place.

Flashbulb memory
Vivid personal memories of receiving the news of some momentous (and usually emotional)
event.

Memory traces
A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event.

Misinformation effect
When erroneous information occurring after an event is remembered as having been part of
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 137

the original event.

Mnemonic devices
A strategy for remembering large amounts of information, usually involving imaging events
occurring on a journey or with some other set of memorized cues.

Recoding
The ubiquitous process during learning of taking information in one form and converting it
to another form, usually one more easily remembered.

Retrieval
The process of accessing stored information.

Retroactive interference
The phenomenon whereby events that occur after some particular event of interest will usually
cause forgetting of the original event.

Semantic memory
The more or less permanent store of knowledge that people have.

Storage
The stage in the learning/memory process that bridges encoding and retrieval; the persistence
of memory over time.
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 138

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Watkins, M. J. (1975). Inhibition in recall with extralist “cues.” Journal of Verbal Learning and
Verbal Behavior, 14, 294–303.
Memory (Encoding, Storage, Retrieval) 140

Watkins, M. J., & Tulving, E. (1975). Episodic memory: When recognition fails. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, 104, 5–29.
8
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory
Biases
Cara Laney & Elizabeth F. Loftus

Eyewitnesses can provide very compelling legal testimony, but rather than recording
experiences flawlessly, their memories are susceptible to a variety of errors and biases. They
(like the rest of us) can make errors in remembering specific details and can even remember
whole events that did not actually happen. In this module, we discuss several of the common
types of errors, and what they can tell us about human memory and its interactions with the
legal system.

Learning Objectives

• Describe the kinds of mistakes that eyewitnesses commonly make and some of the ways
that this can impede justice.

• Explain some of the errors that are common in human memory.

• Describe some of the important research that has demonstrated human memory errors
and their consequences.

What Is Eyewitness Testimony?

Eyewitness testimony is what happens when a person witnesses a crime (or accident, or other
legally important event) and later gets up on the stand and recalls for the court all the details
of the witnessed event. It involves a more complicated process than might initially be
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases 142

presumed. It includes what happens during the actual crime to facilitate or hamper witnessing,
as well as everything that happens from the time the event is over to the later courtroom
appearance. The eyewitness may be interviewed by the police and numerous lawyers, describe
the perpetrator to several different people, and make an identification of the perpetrator,
among other things.

What can happen to our memory from the time we witness an event to the retelling
of that event later? What can influence how we remember, or misremember, highly
significant events like a crime or accident? [Image: Robert Couse-Baker, https://goo.

gl/OiPUmz, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/BRvSA7]

Why Is Eyewitness Testimony an Important Area of Psychological

Research?

When an eyewitness stands up in front of the court and describes what happened from her
own perspective, this testimony can be extremely compelling—it is hard for those hearing
this testimony to take it “with a grain of salt,” or otherwise adjust its power. But to what extent
is this necessary?

There is now a wealth of evidence, from research conducted over several decades, suggesting
that eyewitness testimony is probably the most persuasive form of evidence presented in
court, but in many cases, its accuracy is dubious. There is also evidence that mistaken
eyewitness evidence can lead to wrongful conviction—sending people to prison for years or
decades, even to death row, for crimes they did not commit. Faulty eyewitness testimony has
been implicated in at least 75% of DNA exoneration cases—more than any other cause
(Garrett, 2011). In a particularly famous case, a man named Ronald Cotton was identified by
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases 143

a rape victim, Jennifer Thompson, as her rapist, and was found guilty and sentenced to life in
prison. After more than 10 years, he was exonerated (and the real rapist identified) based on
DNA evidence. For details on this case and other (relatively) lucky individuals whose false
convictions were subsequently overturned with DNA evidence, see the Innocence Project
website (http://www.innocenceproject.org/).

There is also hope, though, that many of the errors may be avoidable if proper precautions
are taken during the investigative and judicial processes. Psychological science has taught us
what some of those precautions might involve, and we discuss some of that science now.

Misinformation

In an early study of eyewitness memory, undergraduate

subjects first watched a slideshow depicting a small red car
driving and then hitting a pedestrian (Loftus, Miller, & Burns,
1978). Some subjects were then asked leading questions
about what had happened in the slides. For example,
subjects were asked, “How fast was the car traveling when
it passed the yield sign?” But this question was actually
designed to be misleading, because the original slide
included a stop sign rather than a yield sign.

Later, subjects were shown pairs of slides. One of the pair

was the original slide containing the stop sign; the other
was a replacement slide containing a yield sign. Subjects
were asked which of the pair they had previously seen.
Subjects who had been asked about the yield sign were
likely to pick the slide showing the yield sign, even though
they had originally seen the slide with the stop sign. In other
Misinformation can be introduced into words, the misinformation in the leading question led to
the memory of a witness between the inaccurate memory.
time of seeing an event and reporting it
later. Something as straightforward as
This phenomenon is called the misinformation effect,
which sort of traffic sign was in place at
an intersection can be confused if because the misinformation that subjects were exposed to
subjects are exposed to erroneous after the event (here in the form of a misleading question)
information after the initial incident. apparently contaminates subjects’ memories of what they
witnessed. Hundreds of subsequent studies have
demonstrated that memory can be contaminated by erroneous information that people are
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases 144

exposed to after they witness an event (see Frenda, Nichols, & Loftus, 2011; Loftus, 2005). The
misinformation in these studies has led people to incorrectly remember everything from small
but crucial details of a perpetrator’s appearance to objects as large as a barn that wasn’t there
at all.

These studies have demonstrated that young adults (the typical research subjects in
psychology) are often susceptible to misinformation, but that children and older adults can
be even more susceptible (Bartlett & Memon, 2007; Ceci & Bruck, 1995). In addition,
misinformation effects can occur easily, and without any intention to deceive (Allan & Gabbert,
2008). Even slight differences in the wording of a question can lead to misinformation effects.
Subjects in one study were more likely to say yes when asked “Did you see the broken
headlight?” than when asked “Did you see a broken headlight?” (Loftus, 1975).

Other studies have shown that misinformation can corrupt memory even more easily when
it is encountered in social situations (Gabbert, Memon, Allan, & Wright, 2004). This is a problem
particularly in cases where more than one person witnesses a crime. In these cases, witnesses
tend to talk to one another in the immediate aftermath of the crime, including as they wait
for police to arrive. But because different witnesses are different people with different
perspectives, they are likely to see or notice different things, and thus remember different
things, even when they witness the same event. So when they communicate about the crime
later, they not only reinforce common memories for the event, they also contaminate each
other’s memories for the event (Gabbert, Memon, & Allan, 2003; Paterson & Kemp, 2006;
Takarangi, Parker, & Garry, 2006).

The misinformation effect has been modeled in the laboratory. Researchers had subjects
watch a video in pairs. Both subjects sat in front of the same screen, but because they wore
differently polarized glasses, they saw two different versions of a video, projected onto a
screen. So, although they were both watching the same screen, and believed (quite reasonably)
that they were watching the same video, they were actually watching two different versions
of the video (Garry, French, Kinzett, & Mori, 2008).

In the video, Eric the electrician is seen wandering through an unoccupied house and helping
himself to the contents thereof. A total of eight details were different between the two videos.
After watching the videos, the “co-witnesses” worked together on 12 memory test questions.
Four of these questions dealt with details that were different in the two versions of the video,
so subjects had the chance to influence one another. Then subjects worked individually on
20 additional memory test questions. Eight of these were for details that were different in the
two videos. Subjects’ accuracy was highly dependent on whether they had discussed the
details previously. Their accuracy for items they had not previously discussed with their co-
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases 145

witness was 79%. But for items that they had discussed, their accuracy dropped markedly, to
34%. That is, subjects allowed their co-witnesses to corrupt their memories for what they had
seen.

Identifying Perpetrators

In addition to correctly remembering many details of the crimes they witness, eyewitnesses
often need to remember the faces and other identifying features of the perpetrators of those
crimes. Eyewitnesses are often asked to describe that perpetrator to law enforcement and
later to make identifications from books of mug shots or lineups. Here, too, there is a
substantial body of research demonstrating that eyewitnesses can make serious, but often
understandable and even predictable, errors (Caputo & Dunning, 2007; Cutler & Penrod, 1995).

In most jurisdictions in the United States, lineups are typically conducted with pictures, called
photo spreads, rather than with actual people standing behind one-way glass (Wells, Memon,
& Penrod, 2006). The eyewitness is given a set of small pictures of perhaps six or eight
individuals who are dressed similarly and photographed in similar circumstances. One of
these individuals is the police suspect, and the remainder are “foils” or “fillers” (people known
to be innocent of the particular crime under investigation). If the eyewitness identifies the
suspect, then the investigation of that
suspect is likely to progress. If a witness
identifies a foil or no one, then the police
may choose to move their investigation in
another direction.

This process is modeled in laboratory

studies of eyewitness identifications. In
these studies, research subjects witness a
mock crime (often as a short video) and
then are asked to make an identification
from a photo or a live lineup. Sometimes
the lineups are target present, meaning
that the perpetrator from the mock crime
is actually in the lineup, and sometimes
they are target absent, meaning that the
Mistakes in identifying perpetrators can be influenced by a
number of factors including poor viewing conditions, too little lineup is made up entirely of foils. The
time to view the perpetrator, or too much delay from time of subjects, or mock witnesses, are given
witnessing to identification. some instructions and asked to pick the
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases 146

perpetrator out of the lineup. The particular details of the witnessing experience, the
instructions, and the lineup members can all influence the extent to which the mock witness
is likely to pick the perpetrator out of the lineup, or indeed to make any selection at all. Mock
witnesses (and indeed real witnesses) can make errors in two different ways. They can fail to
pick the perpetrator out of a target present lineup (by picking a foil or by neglecting to make
a selection), or they can pick a foil in a target absent lineup (wherein the only correct choice
is to not make a selection).

Some factors have been shown to make eyewitness identification errors particularly likely.
These include poor vision or viewing conditions during the crime, particularly stressful
witnessing experiences, too little time to view the perpetrator or perpetrators, too much delay
between witnessing and identifying, and being asked to identify a perpetrator from a race
other than one’s own (Bornstein, Deffenbacher, Penrod, & McGorty, 2012; Brigham, Bennett,
Meissner, & Mitchell, 2007; Burton, Wilson, Cowan, & Bruce, 1999; Deffenbacher, Bornstein,
Penrod, & McGorty, 2004).

It is hard for the legal system to do much about most of these problems. But there are some
things that the justice system can do to help lineup identifications “go right.” For example,
investigators can put together high-quality, fair lineups. A fair lineup is one in which the suspect
and each of the foils is equally likely to be chosen by someone who has read an eyewitness
description of the perpetrator but who did not actually witness the crime (Brigham, Ready, &
Spier, 1990). This means that no one in the lineup should “stick out,” and that everyone should
match the description given by the eyewitness. Other important recommendations that have
come out of this research include better ways to conduct lineups, “double blind” lineups,
unbiased instructions for witnesses, and conducting lineups in a sequential fashion (see
Technical Working Group for Eyewitness Evidence, 1999; Wells et al., 1998; Wells & Olson,
2003).

Kinds of Memory Biases

Memory is also susceptible to a wide variety of other biases and errors. People can forget
events that happened to them and people they once knew. They can mix up details across
time and place. They can even remember whole complex events that never happened at all.
Importantly, these errors, once made, can be very hard to unmake. A memory is no less
“memorable” just because it is wrong.

Some small memory errors are commonplace, and you have no doubt experienced many of
them. You set down your keys without paying attention, and then cannot find them later when
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases 147

you go to look for them. You try to come up

with a person’s name but cannot find it,
even though you have the sense that it is
right at the tip of your tongue
(psychologists actually call this the tip-of-
the-tongue effect, or TOT) (Brown, 1991).

Other sorts of memory biases are more

complicated and longer lasting. For
example, it turns out that our expectations
and beliefs about how the world works can
have huge influences on our memories.
Because many aspects of our everyday lives
are full of redundancies, our memory
systems take advantage of the recurring For most of our experiences schematas are a benefit and help

patterns by forming and using schemata, with information overload. However, they may make it difficult
or impossible to recall certain details of a situation later. Do you
or memory templates (Alba & Hasher,
recall the library as it actually was or the library as approximated
1983; Brewer & Treyens, 1981). Thus, we by your library schemata? [Dan Kleinman, https://goo.
know to expect that a library will have gl/07xyDD, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/BRvSA7]
shelves and tables and librarians, and so
we don’t have to spend energy noticing these at the time. The result of this lack of attention,
however, is that one is likely to remember schema-consistent information (such as tables),
and to remember them in a rather generic way, whether or not they were actually present.

False Memory

Some memory errors are so “large” that they almost belong in a class of their own: false
memories. Back in the early 1990s a pattern emerged whereby people would go into therapy
for depression and other everyday problems, but over the course of the therapy develop
memories for violent and horrible victimhood (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994). These patients’
therapists claimed that the patients were recovering genuine memories of real childhood
abuse, buried deep in their minds for years or even decades. But some experimental
psychologists believed that the memories were instead likely to be false—created in therapy.
These researchers then set out to see whether it would indeed be possible for wholly false
memories to be created by procedures similar to those used in these patients’ therapy.

In early false memory studies, undergraduate subjects’ family members were recruited to
provide events from the students’ lives. The student subjects were told that the researchers
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases 148

had talked to their family members and learned about four different events from their
childhoods. The researchers asked if the now undergraduate students remembered each of
these four events—introduced via short hints. The subjects were asked to write about each
of the four events in a booklet and then were interviewed two separate times. The trick was
that one of the events came from the researchers rather than the family (and the family had
actually assured the researchers that this event had not happened to the subject). In the first
such study, this researcher-introduced event was a story about being lost in a shopping mall
and rescued by an older adult. In this study, after just being asked whether they remembered
these events occurring on three separate occasions, a quarter of subjects came to believe
that they had indeed been lost in the mall (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995). In subsequent studies,
similar procedures were used to get subjects to believe that they nearly drowned and had
been rescued by a lifeguard, or that they had spilled punch on the bride’s parents at a family
wedding, or that they had been attacked by a vicious animal as a child, among other events
(Heaps & Nash, 1999; Hyman, Husband, & Billings, 1995; Porter, Yuille, & Lehman, 1999).

More recent false memory studies have used a variety of different manipulations to produce
false memories in substantial minorities and even occasional majorities of manipulated
subjects (Braun, Ellis, & Loftus, 2002; Lindsay, Hagen, Read, Wade, & Garry, 2004; Mazzoni,
Loftus, Seitz, & Lynn, 1999; Seamon, Philbin, & Harrison, 2006; Wade, Garry, Read, & Lindsay,
2002). For example, one group of researchers used a mock-advertising study, wherein subjects
were asked to review (fake) advertisements for Disney vacations, to convince subjects that
they had once met the character Bugs Bunny at Disneyland—an impossible false memory
because Bugs is a Warner Brothers character (Braun et al., 2002). Another group of researchers
photoshopped childhood photographs of their subjects into a hot air balloon picture and then
asked the subjects to try to remember and describe their hot air balloon experience (Wade
et al., 2002). Other researchers gave subjects unmanipulated class photographs from their
childhoods along with a fake story about a class prank, and thus enhanced the likelihood that
subjects would falsely remember the prank (Lindsay et al., 2004).

Using a false feedback manipulation, we have been able to persuade subjects to falsely
remember having a variety of childhood experiences. In these studies, subjects are told
(falsely) that a powerful computer system has analyzed questionnaires that they completed
previously and has concluded that they had a particular experience years earlier. Subjects
apparently believe what the computer says about them and adjust their memories to match
this new information. A variety of different false memories have been implanted in this way.
In some studies, subjects are told they once got sick on a particular food (Bernstein, Laney,
Morris, & Loftus, 2005). These memories can then spill out into other aspects of subjects’ lives,
such that they often become less interested in eating that food in the future (Bernstein &
Loftus, 2009b). Other false memories implanted with this methodology include having an
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases 149

unpleasant experience with the character Pluto at Disneyland and witnessing physical violence
between one’s parents (Berkowitz, Laney, Morris, Garry, & Loftus, 2008; Laney & Loftus, 2008).

Importantly, once these false memories are implanted—whether through complex methods
or simple ones—it is extremely difficult to tell them apart from true memories (Bernstein &
Loftus, 2009a; Laney & Loftus, 2008).

Conclusion

To conclude, eyewitness testimony is very powerful and convincing to jurors, even though it
is not particularly reliable. Identification errors occur, and these errors can lead to people
being falsely accused and even convicted. Likewise, eyewitness memory can be corrupted by
leading questions, misinterpretations of events, conversations with co-witnesses, and their
own expectations for what should have happened. People can even come to remember whole
events that never occurred.

The problems with memory in the legal system are real. But what can we do to start to fix
them? A number of specific recommendations have already been made, and many of these
are in the process of being implemented (e.g., Steblay & Loftus, 2012; Technical Working Group
for Eyewitness Evidence, 1999; Wells et al., 1998). Some of these recommendations are aimed
at specific legal procedures, including when and how witnesses should be interviewed, and
how lineups should be constructed and conducted. Other recommendations call for
appropriate education (often in the form of expert witness testimony) to be provided to jury
members and others tasked with assessing eyewitness memory. Eyewitness testimony can
be of great value to the legal system, but decades of research now argues that this testimony
is often given far more weight than its accuracy justifies.
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases 150

Outside Resources

Video 1: Eureka Foong's - The Misinformation Effect. This is a student-made video

illustrating this phenomenon of altered memory. It was one of the winning entries in the
2014 Noba Student Video Award.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMPIWkFtd88

Video 2: Ang Rui Xia & Ong Jun Hao's - The Misinformation Effect. Another student-made
video exploring the misinformation effect. Also an award winner from 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsn9iKmOJLQ

Discussion Questions

1. Imagine that you are a juror in a murder case where an eyewitness testifies. In what ways
might your knowledge of memory errors affect your use of this testimony?

2. How true to life do you think television shows such as CSI or Law & Order are in their
portrayals of eyewitnesses?

3. Many jurisdictions in the United States use “show-ups,” where an eyewitness is brought to
a suspect (who may be standing on the street or in handcuffs in the back of a police car)
and asked, “Is this the perpetrator?” Is this a good or bad idea, from a psychological
perspective? Why?
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases 151

Vocabulary

False memories
Memory for an event that never actually occurred, implanted by experimental manipulation
or other means.

Foils
Any member of a lineup (whether live or photograph) other than the suspect.

Misinformation effect
A memory error caused by exposure to incorrect information between the original event (e.
g., a crime) and later memory test (e.g., an interview, lineup, or day in court).

Mock witnesses
A research subject who plays the part of a witness in a study.

Photo spreads
A selection of normally small photographs of faces given to a witness for the purpose of
identifying a perpetrator.

Schema (plural: schemata)

A memory template, created through repeated exposure to a particular class of objects or
events.
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases 152

References

Alba, J. W., & Hasher, L. (1983). Is memory schematic? Psychological Bulletin, 93, 203–231.

Berkowitz, S. R., Laney, C., Morris, E. K., Garry, M., & Loftus, E. F. (2008). Pluto behaving badly:
False beliefs and their consequences. American Journal of Psychology, 121, 643–660

Bernstein, D. M., & Loftus, E. F. (2009b). The consequences of false memories for food
preferences and choices. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4, 135–139.

Bernstein, D. M., & Loftus, E. F., (2009a). How to tell if a particular memory is true or false.
Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4, 370–374.

Bernstein, D. M., Laney, C., Morris, E. K., & Loftus, E. F. (2005). False memories about food can
lead to food avoidance. Social Cognition, 23, 11–34.

Bornstein, B. H., Deffenbacher, K. A., Penrod, S. D., & McGorty, E. K. (2012). Effects of exposure
time and cognitive operations on facial identification accuracy: A meta-analysis of two
variables associated with initial memory strength. Psychology, Crime, & Law, 18, 473–490.

Braun, K. A., Ellis, R., & Loftus, E. F. (2002). Make my memory: How advertising can change our
memories of the past. Psychology and Marketing, 19, 1–23.

Brewer, W. F., & Treyens, J. C. (1981). Role of schemata in memory for places. Cognitive
Psychology, 13, 207–230.

Brigham, J. C., Bennett, L. B., Meissner, C. A., & Mitchell, T. L. (2007). The influence of race on
eyewitness memory. In R. C. L. Lindsay, D. F. Ross, J. D. Read, & M. P. Toglia (Eds.), Handbook
of eyewitness psychology, Vol. 2: Memory for people (pp. 257–281). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.

Brown, A. S. (1991). A review of tip of the tongue experience. Psychological Bulletin, 109, 79–91.

Deffenbacher, K. A., Bornstein, B. H., Penrod, S. D., & McGorty, E. K. (2004). A meta-analytic
review of the effects of high stress on eyewitness memory. Law and Human Behavior, 28,
687–706.

Garrett, B. L. (2011). Convicting the innocent. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Heaps, C., & Nash, M. (1999). Individual differences in imagination inflation. Psychonomic
Bulletin and Review, 6, 313–138.

Hyman, I. E., Jr., Husband, T. H., & Billings, F. J. (1995). False memories of childhood experiences.
Applied Cognitive Psychology, 9, 181–197.

Laney, C., & Loftus, E. F. (2008). Emotional content of true and false memories. Memory, 16,
500–516.
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases 153

Lindsay, D. S., Hagen, L., Read, J. D., Wade, K. A., & Garry, M. (2004). True photographs and
false memories. Psychological Science, 15, 149–154.

Loftus, E. F., & Pickrell, J. E. (1995). The formation of false memories. Psychiatric Annals, 25,
720–725.

Loftus, E. F., Ketcham, K. (1994). The myth of repressed memory. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.

Mazzoni, G. A. L., Loftus, E. F., Seitz, A., & Lynn, S.J. (1999). Changing beliefs and memories
through dream interpretation. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 13, 125–144.

Porter, S., Yuille, J. C., & Lehman, D. R. (1999). The nature of real, implanted, and fabricated
memories for emotional childhood events: Implications for the recovered memory debate.
Law and Human Behavior, 23, 517–537.

Seamon, J. G., Philbin, M. M., & Harrison, L. G. (2006). Do you remember proposing marriage
to the Pepsi machine? False recollections from a campus walk. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,
13, 752–7596.

Steblay, N. M., & Loftus, E. F. (2012). Eyewitness memory and the legal system. In E. Shafir
(Ed.), The behavioural foundations of public policy (pp. 145–162). Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.

Technical Working Group for Eyewitness Evidence. (1999). Eyewitness evidence: A trainer\'s
manual for law enforcement. Research Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

Wade, K. A., Garry, M., Read, J. D., & Lindsay, S. A. (2002). A picture is worth a thousand lies.
Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 9, 597–603.

Wells, G. L., & Olson, E. A. (2003). Eyewitness testimony. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 277–
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Eyewitness identification procedures: Recommendations for lineups and photospreads.
Law and Human Behavior, 22, 603–647.
Psychological Disorders
9
Mood Disorders
Anda Gershon & Renee Thompson

Everyone feels down or euphoric from time to time, but this is different from having a mood
disorder such as major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder. Mood disorders are extended
periods of depressed, euphoric, or irritable moods that in combination with other symptoms
cause the person significant distress and interfere with his or her daily life, often resulting in
social and occupational difficulties. In this module, we describe major mood disorders,
including their symptom presentations, general prevalence rates, and how and why the rates
of these disorders tend to vary by age, gender, and race. In addition, biological and
environmental risk factors that have been implicated in the development and course of mood
disorders, such as heritability and stressful life events, are reviewed. Finally, we provide an
overview of treatments for mood disorders, covering treatments with demonstrated
effectiveness, as well as new treatment options showing promise.

Learning Objectives

• Describe the diagnostic criteria for mood disorders.

• Understand age, gender, and ethnic differences in prevalence rates of mood disorders.

• Identify common risk factors for mood disorders.

• Know effective treatments of mood disorders.

The actress Brooke Shields published a memoir titled Down Came the Rain: My Journey
through Postpartum Depression in which she described her struggles with depression
following the birth of her daughter. Despite the fact that about one in 20 women experience
Mood Disorders 156

depression after the birth of a baby

(American Psychiatric Association [APA],
2013), postpartum depression—recently
renamed “perinatal depression”—continues
to be veiled by stigma, owing in part to a
widely held expectation that motherhood
should be a time of great joy. In an opinion
piece in the New York Times, Shields
revealed that entering motherhood was a
profoundly overwhelming experience for
her. She vividly describes experiencing a
sense of “doom” and “dread” in response
to her newborn baby. Because
motherhood is conventionally thought of
as a joyous event and not associated with
Perinatal depression following child birth afflicts about 5% of all
mothers. An unfortunate social stigma regarding this form of sadness and hopelessness, responding to
depression compounds the problem for the women who suffer a newborn baby in this way can be
its effects. [Image: CC0 Public Domain] shocking to the new mother as well as
those close to her. It may also involve a
great deal of shame for the mother, making her reluctant to divulge her experience to others,
including her doctors and family.

Feelings of shame are not unique to perinatal depression. Stigma applies to other types of
depressive and bipolar disorders and contributes to people not always receiving the necessary
support and treatment for these disorders. In fact, the World Health Organization ranks both
major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD) among the top 10 leading causes
of disability worldwide. Further, MDD and BD carry a high risk of suicide. It is estimated that
25%–50% of people diagnosed with BD will attempt suicide at least once in their lifetimes
(Goodwin & Jamison, 2007).

What Are Mood Disorders?

Mood Episodes

Everyone experiences brief periods of sadness, irritability, or euphoria. This is different than
having a mood disorder, such as MDD or BD, which are characterized by a constellation of
symptoms that causes people significant distress or impairs their everyday functioning.
Mood Disorders 157

Major Depressive Episode

A major depressive episode (MDE) refers to symptoms that co-occur for at least two weeks
and cause significant distress or impairment in functioning, such as interfering with work,
school, or relationships. Core symptoms include feeling down or depressed or experiencing
anhedonia—loss of interest or pleasure in things that one typically enjoys. According to the
fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5; APA, 2013), the criteria for an MDE
require five or more of the following nine symptoms, including one or both of the first two
symptoms, for most of the day, nearly every day:

1. depressed mood

2. diminished interest or pleasure in almost all activities

3. significant weight loss or gain or an increase or decrease in appetite

4. insomnia or hypersomnia

5. psychomotor agitation or retardation

6. fatigue or loss of energy

7. feeling worthless or excessive or inappropriate guilt

8. diminished ability to concentrate or indecisiveness

9. recurrent thoughts of death, suicidal ideation, or a suicide attempt

These symptoms cannot be caused by physiological effects of a substance or a general medical

condition (e.g., hypothyroidism).

Manic or Hypomanic Episode

The core criterion for a manic or hypomanic episode is a distinct period of abnormally and
persistently euphoric, expansive, or irritable mood and persistently increased goal-directed
activity or energy. The mood disturbance must be present for one week or longer in mania
(unless hospitalization is required) or four days or longer in hypomania. Concurrently, 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):

1. inflated self-esteem or grandiosity

2. increased goal-directed activity or psychomotor agitation

Mood Disorders 158

3. reduced need for sleep

4. racing thoughts or flight of ideas

5. distractibility

6. increased talkativeness

7. excessive involvement in risky behaviors

Manic episodes are distinguished from hypomanic episodes by their duration and associated
impairment; 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.

Mood Disorders

Unipolar Mood Disorders

Two major types of unipolar disorders described by the DSM-5 (APA, 2013) are major depressive
disorder and persistent depressive disorder (PDD; dysthymia). MDD is defined by one or more
MDEs, but no history of manic or hypomanic episodes. 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:

1. poor appetite or overeating

2. insomnia or hypersomnia

3. low energy or fatigue

4. low self-esteem

5. poor concentration or difficulty making decisions

6. feelings of hopelessness

Like MDD, these symptoms need to cause significant distress or impairment and cannot be
due to the effects of a substance or a general medical condition. To meet criteria for PDD, a
person cannot be without symptoms for more than two months at a time. PDD has overlapping
symptoms with MDD. If someone meets criteria for an MDE during a PDD episode, the person
will receive diagnoses of PDD and MDD.
Mood Disorders 159

Bipolar Mood Disorders

Three major types of BDs are described by

the DSM-5 (APA, 2013). Bipolar I Disorder
(BD I), which was previously known as
manic-depression, is characterized by a
single (or recurrent) manic episode. A
depressive episode is not necessary but
commonly present for the diagnosis of BD
I. Bipolar II Disorder is characterized by
single (or recurrent) hypomanic episodes
and depressive episodes. Another type of
BD is cyclothymic disorder, characterized
by numerous and alternating periods of
hypomania and depression, lasting at
least two years. To qualify for cyclothymic
disorder, the periods of depression
cannot meet full diagnostic criteria for an Bipolar disorders are characterized by cycles of high energy and
MDE; the person must experience depression. [Image: Brett Whaley, https://goo.gl/k4HTR7, CC BY-
symptoms at least half the time with no NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/VnKlK8]
more than two consecutive symptom-free
months; and the symptoms must cause significant distress or impairment.

It is important to note that the DSM-5 was published in 2013, and findings based on the updated
manual will be forthcoming. Consequently, the research presented below was largely based
on a similar, but not identical, conceptualization of mood disorders drawn from the DSM-IV
(APA, 2000).

How Common Are Mood Disorders? Who Develops Mood Disorders?

Depressive Disorders

In a nationally representative sample, lifetime prevalence rate for MDD is 16.6% (Kessler,
Berglund, Demler, Jin, Merikangas, & Walters, 2005). This means that nearly one in five
Americans will meet the criteria for MDD during their lifetime. The 12-month prevalence—
the proportion of people who meet criteria for a disorder during a 12-month period—for PDD
is approximately 0.5% (APA, 2013).
Mood Disorders 160

Although the onset of MDD can occur at

any time throughout the lifespan, the
average age of onset is mid-20s, with the
age of onset decreasing with people
born more recently (APA, 2000).
Prevalence of MDD among older adults
is much lower than it is for younger
cohorts (Kessler, Birnbaum, Bromet,
Hwang, Sampson, & Shahly, 2010). The
duration of MDEs varies widely.
Recovery begins within three months
for 40% of people with MDD and within
12 months for 80% (APA, 2013). MDD
tends to be a recurrent disorder with
about 40%–50% of those who experience
one MDE experiencing a second MDE
(Monroe & Harkness, 2011). An earlier
age of onset predicts a worse course.
About 5%–10% of people who experience
an MDE will later experience a manic episode (APA, 2000), thus no longer meeting criteria for
MDD but instead meeting them for BD I. Diagnoses of other disorders across the lifetime are
common for people with MDD: 59% experience an anxiety disorder; 32% experience an
impulse control disorder, and 24% experience a substance use disorder (Kessler, Merikangas,
& Wang, 2007).

Women experience two to three times higher rates of MDD than do men (Nolen-Hoeksema
& Hilt, 2009). This gender difference emerges during puberty (Conley & Rudolph, 2009). Before
puberty, boys exhibit similar or higher prevalence rates of MDD than do girls (Twenge & Nolen-
Hoeksema, 2002). MDD is inversely correlated with socioeconomic status (SES), a person’s
economic and social position based on income, education, and occupation. Higher prevalence
rates of MDD are associated with lower SES (Lorant, Deliege, Eaton, Robert, Philippot, &
Ansseau, 2003), particularly for adults over 65 years old (Kessler et al., 2010). Independent
of SES, results from a nationally representative sample found that European Americans had
a higher prevalence rate of MDD than did African Americans and Hispanic Americans, whose
rates were similar (Breslau, Aguilar-Gaxiola, Kendler, Su, Williams, & Kessler, 2006). The course
of MDD for African Americans is often more severe and less often treated than it is for European
Americans, however (Williams et al., 2007). Native Americans have a higher prevalence rate
than do European Americans, African Americans, or Hispanic Americans (Hasin, Goodwin,
Stinson & Grant, 2005). Depression is not limited to industrialized or western cultures; it is
Mood Disorders 161

found in all countries that have been examined, although the symptom presentation as well
as prevalence rates vary across cultures (Chentsova-Dutton & Tsai, 2009).

Bipolar Disorders

The lifetime prevalence rate of bipolar

spectrum disorders in the general U.S.
population is estimated at approximately
4.4%, with BD I constituting about 1% of
this rate (Merikangas et al., 2007).
Prevalence estimates, however, are highly
dependent on the diagnostic procedures
used (e.g., interviews vs. self-report) and
whether or not sub-threshold forms of the
disorder are included in the estimate. BD
often co-occurs with other psychiatric
disorders. Approximately 65% of people
with BD meet diagnostic criteria for at least
one additional psychiatric disorder, most
commonly anxiety disorders and substance
Adolescents experience a higher incidence of bipolar spectrum use disorders (McElroy et al., 2001). The co-
disorders than do adults. Making matters worse, those who are
occurrence of BD with other psychiatric
diagnosed with BD at a younger age seem to suffer symptoms
disorders is associated with poorer illness
more intensely than those with adult onset. [Image: CC0 Public
course, including higher rates of suicidality
Domain]
(Leverich et al., 2003). A recent cross-
national study sample of more than 60,000 adults from 11 countries, estimated the worldwide
prevalence of BD at 2.4%, with BD I constituting 0.6% of this rate (Merikangas et al., 2011). In
this study, the prevalence of BD varied somewhat by country. Whereas the United States had
the highest lifetime prevalence (4.4%), India had the lowest (0.1%). Variation in prevalence
rates was not necessarily related to SES, as in the case of Japan, a high-income country with
a very low prevalence rate of BD (0.7%).

With regard to ethnicity, data from studies not confounded by SES or inaccuracies in diagnosis
are limited, but available reports suggest rates of BD among European Americans are similar
to those found among African Americans (Blazer et al., 1985) and Hispanic Americans (Breslau,
Kendler, Su, Gaxiola-Aguilar, & Kessler, 2005). Another large community-based study found
that although prevalence rates of mood disorders were similar across ethnic groups, Hispanic
Americans and African Americans with a mood disorder were more likely to remain
Mood Disorders 162

persistently ill than European Americans (Breslau et al., 2005). Compared with European
Americans with BD, African Americans tend to be underdiagnosed for BD (and over-diagnosed
for schizophrenia) (Kilbourne, Haas, Mulsant, Bauer, & Pincus, 2004; Minsky, Vega, Miskimen,
Gara, & Escobar, 2003), and Hispanic Americans with BD have been shown to receive fewer
psychiatric medication prescriptions and specialty treatment visits (Gonzalez et al., 2007).
Misdiagnosis of BD can result in the underutilization of treatment or the utilization of
inappropriate treatment, and thus profoundly impact the course of illness.

As with MDD, adolescence is known to be a significant risk period for BD; mood symptoms
start by adolescence in roughly half of BD cases (Leverich et al., 2007; Perlis et al., 2004).
Longitudinal studies show that those diagnosed with BD prior to adulthood experience a more
pernicious course of illness relative to those with adult onset, including more episode
recurrence, higher rates of suicidality, and profound social, occupational, and economic
repercussions (e.g., Lewinsohn, Seeley, Buckley, & Klein, 2002). The prevalence of BD is
substantially lower in older adults compared with younger adults (1% vs. 4%) (Merikangas et
al., 2007).

What Are Some of the Factors Implicated in the Development and

Course of Mood Disorders?

Mood disorders are complex disorders

resulting from multiple factors. Causal
explanations can be attempted at various
levels, including biological and psychosocial
levels. Below are several of the key factors
that contribute to onset and course of
mood disorders are highlighted.

Depressive Disorders

Research across family and twin studies

has provided support that genetic factors
are implicated in the development of MDD.
Twin studies suggest that familial influence
on MDD is mostly due to genetic effects
and that individual-specific environmental Romantic relationships can affect mood as in the case of divorce

effects (e.g., romantic relationships) play or the death of a spouse. [Image: CC0 Public Domain]
Mood Disorders 163

an important role, too. By contrast, the contribution of shared environmental effect by siblings
is negligible (Sullivan, Neale & Kendler, 2000). The mode of inheritance is not fully understood
although no single genetic variation has been found to increase the risk of MDD significantly.
Instead, several genetic variants and environmental factors most likely contribute to the risk
for MDD (Lohoff, 2010).

One environmental stressor that has received much support in relation to MDD is stressful
life events. In particular, severe stressful life events—those that have long-term consequences
and involve loss of a significant relationship (e.g., divorce) or economic stability (e.g.,
unemployment) are strongly related to depression (Brown & Harris, 1989; Monroe et al., 2009).
Stressful life events are more likely to predict the first MDE than subsequent episodes
(Lewinsohn, Allen, Seeley, & Gotlib, 1999). In contrast, minor events may play a larger role in
subsequent episodes than the initial episodes (Monroe & Harkness, 2005).

Depression research has not been limited to examining reactivity to stressful life events. Much
research, particularly brain imagining research using functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI), has centered on examining neural circuitry—the interconnections that allow multiple
brain regions to perceive, generate, and encode information in concert. A meta-analysis of
neuroimaging studies showed that when viewing negative stimuli (e.g., picture of an angry
face, picture of a car accident), compared with healthy control participants, participants with
MDD have greater activation in brain regions involved in stress response and reduced
activation of brain regions involved in positively motivated behaviors (Hamilton, Etkin, Furman,
Lemus, Johnson, & Gotlib, 2012).

Other environmental factors related to increased risk for MDD include experiencing early
adversity (e.g., childhood abuse or neglect; Widom, DuMont, & Czaja, 2007), chronic stress
(e.g., poverty) and interpersonal factors. For example, marital dissatisfaction predicts
increases in depressive symptoms in both men and women. On the other hand, depressive
symptoms also predict increases in marital dissatisfaction (Whisman & Uebelacker, 2009).
Research has found that people with MDD generate some of their interpersonal stress
(Hammen, 2005). People with MDD whose relatives or spouses can be described as critical
and emotionally overinvolved have higher relapse rates than do those living with people who
are less critical and emotionally overinvolved (Butzlaff & Hooley, 1998).

People’s attributional styles or their general ways of thinking, interpreting, and recalling
information have also been examined in the etiology of MDD (Gotlib & Joormann, 2010).
People with a pessimistic attributional style tend to make internal (versus external), global
(versus specific), and stable (versus unstable) attributions to negative events, serving as a
vulnerability to developing MDD. For example, someone who when he fails an exam thinks
Mood Disorders 164

that it was his fault (internal), that he is stupid (global), and that he will always do poorly (stable)
has a pessimistic attribution style. Several influential theories of depression incorporate
attributional styles (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989; Abramson Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978).

Bipolar Disorders

Although there have been important advances in research on the etiology, course, and
treatment of BD, there remains a need to understand the mechanisms that contribute to
episode onset and relapse. There is compelling evidence for biological causes of BD, which is
known to be highly heritable (McGuffin, Rijsdijk, Andrew, Sham, Katz, & Cardno, 2003). It may
be argued that a high rate of heritability demonstrates that BD is fundamentally a biological
phenomenon. However, there is much variability in the course of BD both within a person
across time and across people (Johnson, 2005). The triggers that determine how and when
this genetic vulnerability is expressed are not yet understood; however, there is evidence to
suggest that psychosocial triggers may play an important role in BD risk (e.g., Johnson et al.,
2008; Malkoff-Schwartz et al., 1998).

In addition to the genetic contribution, biological explanations of BD have also focused on

brain function. Many of the studies using fMRI techniques to characterize BD have focused
on the processing of emotional stimuli based on the idea that BD is fundamentally a disorder
of emotion (APA, 2000). Findings show that regions of the brain thought to be involved in
emotional processing and regulation are activated differently in people with BD relative to
healthy controls (e.g., Altshuler et al., 2008; Hassel et al., 2008; Lennox, Jacob, Calder, Lupson,
& Bullmore, 2004).

However, there is little consensus as to whether a particular brain region becomes more or
less active in response to an emotional stimulus among people with BD compared with healthy
controls. Mixed findings are in part due to samples consisting of participants who are at various
phases of illness at the time of testing (manic, depressed, inter-episode). Sample sizes tend
to be relatively small, making comparisons between subgroups difficult. Additionally, the use
of a standardized stimulus (e.g., facial expression of anger) may not elicit a sufficiently strong
response. Personally engaging stimuli, such as recalling a memory, may be more effective in
inducing strong emotions (Isacowitz, Gershon, Allard, & Johnson, 2013).

Within the psychosocial level, research has focused on the environmental contributors to BD.
A series of studies show that environmental stressors, particularly severe stressors (e.g., loss
of a significant relationship), can adversely impact the course of BD. People with BD have
substantially increased risk of relapse (Ellicott, Hammen, Gitlin, Brown, & Jamison, 1990) and
Mood Disorders 165

suffer more depressive symptoms (Johnson, Winett, Meyer, Greenhouse, & Miller, 1999)
following a severe life stressor. Interestingly, positive life events can also adversely impact the
course of BD. People with BD suffer more manic symptoms after life events involving
attainment of a desired goal (Johnson et al., 2008). Such findings suggest that people with BD
may have a hypersensitivity to rewards.

Evidence from the life stress literature has also suggested that people with mood disorders
may have a circadian vulnerability that renders them sensitive to stressors that disrupt their
sleep or rhythms. According to social zeitgeber theory (Ehlers, Frank, & Kupfer, 1988; Frank
et al., 1994), stressors that disrupt sleep, or that disrupt the daily routines that entrain the
biological clock (e.g., meal times) can trigger episode relapse. Consistent with this theory,
studies have shown that life events that involve a disruption in sleep and daily routines, such
as overnight travel, can increase bipolar symptoms in people with BD (Malkoff-Schwartz et
al., 1998).

What Are Some of the Well-Supported Treatments for Mood Disorders?

Depressive Disorders

There are many treatment options

available for people with MDD. First, a
number of antidepressant medications are
available, all of which target one or more
of the neurotransmitters implicated in
depression.The earliest antidepressant
medications were monoamine oxidase
inhibitors (MAOIs). MAOIs inhibit monoamine
oxidase, an enzyme involved in deactivating
dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin.
Although effective in treating depression,
MAOIs can have serious side effects.
Patients taking MAOIs may develop
dangerously high blood pressure if they
take certain drugs (e.g., antihistamines) or
A number of medications are effective in treating mood eat foods containing tyramine, an amino
disorders. Meditation, exercise, counseling and other therapies acid commonly found in foods such as
also show effectiveness for some disorders. [Image: CC0 Public aged cheeses, wine, and soy sauce.
Domain] Tricyclics, the second-oldest class of
Mood Disorders 166

antidepressant medications, block the reabsorption of norepinephrine, serotonin, or

dopamine at synapses, resulting in their increased availability. Tricyclics are most effective for
treating vegetative and somatic symptoms of depression. Like MAOIs, they have serious side
effects, the most concerning of which is being cardiotoxic. Selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors (SSRIs; e.g., Fluoxetine) and serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors
(SNRIs; e.g., Duloxetine) are the most recently introduced antidepressant medications. SSRIs,
the most commonly prescribed antidepressant medication, block the reabsorption of
serotonin, whereas SNRIs block the reabsorption of serotonin and norepinephrine. SSRIs and
SNRIs have fewer serious side effects than do MAOIs and tricyclics. In particular, they are less
cardiotoxic, less lethal in overdose, and produce fewer cognitive impairments. They are not,
however, without their own side effects, which include but are not limited to difficulty having
orgasms, gastrointestinal issues, and insomnia.

Other biological treatments for people with depression include electroconvulsive therapy
(ECT), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and deep brain stimulation. ECT involves
inducing a seizure after a patient takes muscle relaxants and is under general anesthesia. ECT
is viable treatment for patients with severe depression or who show resistance to
antidepressants although the mechanisms through which it works remain unknown. A
common side effect is confusion and memory loss, usually short-term (Schulze-
Rauschenbach, Harms, Schlaepfer, Maier, Falkai, & Wagner, 2005). Repetitive TMS is a
noninvasive technique administered while a patient is awake. Brief pulsating magnetic fields
are delivered to the cortex, inducing electrical activity. TMS has fewer side effects than ECT
(Schulze-Rauschenbach et al., 2005), and while outcome studies are mixed, there is evidence
that TMS is a promising treatment for patients with MDD who have shown resistance to other
treatments (Rosa et al., 2006). Most recently, deep brain stimulation is being examined as a
treatment option for patients who did not respond to more traditional treatments like those
already described. Deep brain stimulation involves implanting an electrode in the brain. The
electrode is connected to an implanted neurostimulator, which electrically stimulates that
particular brain region. Although there is some evidence of its effectiveness (Mayberg et al.,
2005), additional research is needed.

Several psychosocial treatments have received strong empirical support, meaning that
independent investigations have achieved similarly positive results—a high threshold for
examining treatment outcomes. These treatments include but are not limited to behavior
therapy, cognitive therapy, and interpersonal therapy. Behavior therapies focus on increasing
the frequency and quality of experiences that are pleasant or help the patient achieve mastery.
Cognitive therapies primarily focus on helping patients identify and change distorted
automatic thoughts and assumptions (e.g., Beck, 1967). Cognitive-behavioral therapies are
based on the rationale that thoughts, behaviors, and emotions affect and are affected by each
Mood Disorders 167

other. Interpersonal Therapy for Depression focuses largely on improving interpersonal

relationships by targeting problem areas, specifically unresolved grief, interpersonal role
disputes, role transitions, and interpersonal deficits. Finally, there is also some support for
the effectiveness of Short-Term Psychodynamic Therapy for Depression (Leichsenring, 2001).
The short-term treatment focuses on a limited number of important issues, and the therapist
tends to be more actively involved than in more traditional psychodynamic therapy.

Bipolar Disorders

Patients with BD are typically treated with pharmacotherapy. Antidepressants such as SSRIs
and SNRIs are the primary choice of treatment for depression, whereas for BD, lithium is the
first line treatment choice. This is because SSRIs and SNRIs have the potential to induce mania
or hypomania in patients with BD. Lithium acts on several neurotransmitter systems in the
brain through complex mechanisms, including reduction of excitatory (dopamine and
glutamate) neurotransmission, and increasing of inhibitory (GABA) neurotransmission (Lenox
& Hahn, 2000). Lithium has strong efficacy for the treatment of BD (Geddes, Burgess, Hawton,
Jamison, & Goodwin, 2004). However, a number of side effects can make lithium treatment
difficult for patients to tolerate. Side effects include impaired cognitive function (Wingo, Wingo,
Harvey, & Baldessarini, 2009), as well as physical symptoms such as nausea, tremor, weight
gain, and fatigue (Dunner, 2000). Some of these side effects can improve with continued use;
however, medication noncompliance remains an ongoing concern in the treatment of patients
with BD. Anticonvulsant medications (e.g., carbamazepine, valproate) are also commonly used
to treat patients with BD, either alone or in conjunction with lithium.

There are several adjunctive treatment options for people with BD. Interpersonal and social
rhythm therapy (IPSRT; Frank et al., 1994) is a psychosocial intervention focused on addressing
the mechanism of action posited in social zeitgeber theory to predispose patients who have
BD to relapse, namely sleep disruption. A growing body of literature provides support for the
central role of sleep dysregulation in BD (Harvey, 2008). Consistent with this literature, IPSRT
aims to increase rhythmicity of patients’ lives and encourage vigilance in maintaining a stable
rhythm. The therapist and patient work to develop and maintain a healthy balance of activity
and stimulation such that the patient does not become overly active (e.g., by taking on too
many projects) or inactive (e.g., by avoiding social contact). The efficacy of IPSRT has been
demonstrated in that patients who received this treatment show reduced risk of episode
recurrence and are more likely to remain well (Frank et al., 2005).

Conclusion
Mood Disorders 168

Everyone feels down or euphoric from time to time. For some people, these feelings can last
for long periods of time and can also co-occur with other symptoms that, in combination,
interfere with their everyday lives. When people experience an MDE or a manic episode, they
see the world differently. During an MDE, people often feel hopeless about the future, and
may even experience suicidal thoughts. During a manic episode, people often behave in ways
that are risky or place them in danger. They may spend money excessively or have unprotected
sex, often expressing deep shame over these decisions after the episode. MDD and BD cause
significant problems for people at school, at work, and in their relationships and affect people
regardless of gender, age, nationality, race, religion, or sexual orientation. If you or someone
you know is suffering from a mood disorder, it is important to seek help. Effective treatments
are available and continually improving. If you have an interest in mood disorders, there are
many ways to contribute to their understanding, prevention, and treatment, whether by
engaging in research or clinical work.
Mood Disorders 169

Outside Resources

Books: Recommended memoirs include A Memoir of Madness by William Styron (MDD);

Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon (MDD); and An Unquiet Mind:
A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield (BD).

Web: Visit the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies to find a list of the
recommended therapists and evidence-based treatments.
http://www.abct.org

Web: Visit the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance for educational information and
social support options.
http://www.dbsalliance.org/

Discussion Questions

1. What factors might explain the large gender difference in the prevalence rates of MDD?

2. Why might American ethnic minority groups experience more persistent BD than European
Americans?

3. Why might the age of onset for MDD be decreasing over time?

4. Why might overnight travel constitute a potential risk for a person with BD?

5. What are some reasons positive life events may precede the occurrence of manic episode?
Mood Disorders 170

Vocabulary

Anhedonia
Loss of interest or pleasure in activities one previously found enjoyable or rewarding.

Attributional style
The tendency by which a person infers the cause or meaning of behaviors or events.

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).

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.

Grandiosity
Inflated self-esteem or an exaggerated sense of self-importance and self-worth (e.g., believing
one has special powers or superior abilities).

Hypersomnia
Excessive daytime sleepiness, including difficulty staying awake or napping, or prolonged
sleep episodes.

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.

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.
Mood Disorders 171

Socioeconomic status (SES)

A person’s economic and social position based on income, education, and occupation.

Suicidal ideation
Recurring thoughts about suicide, including considering or planning for suicide, or
preoccupation with suicide.
Mood Disorders 172

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JCP.08r04972
10
Anxiety and Related Disorders
David H. Barlow & Kristen K. Ellard

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. Primary anxiety-related
diagnoses include generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, specific phobia, social anxiety
disorder (social phobia), post traumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
In this module, we summarize the main clinical features of each of these disorders and discuss
their similarities and differences with everyday experiences of anxiety.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the relationship between anxiety and anxiety disorders.

• Identify key vulnerabilities for developing anxiety and related disorders.

• Identify main diagnostic features of specific anxiety-related disorders.

• Differentiate between disordered and non-disordered functioning.

Introduction

What is anxiety? Most of us feel some anxiety almost every day of our lives. Maybe you have
an important test coming up for school. Or maybe there’s that big game next Saturday, or
that first date with someone new you are hoping to impress. Anxiety can be defined as a
negative mood state that is accompanied by bodily symptoms such as increased heart rate,
Anxiety and Related Disorders 179

muscle tension, a sense of unease, and apprehension about the future (APA, 2013; Barlow,
2002).

Anxiety is what motivates us to plan for the

future, and in this sense, anxiety is actually
a good thing. It’s that nagging feeling that
motivates us to study for that test, practice
harder for that game, or be at our very best
on that date. But some people experience
anxiety so intensely that it is no longer
helpful or useful. They may become so
overwhelmed and distracted by anxiety
that they actually fail their test, fumble the
ball, or spend the whole date fidgeting and
avoiding eye contact. If anxiety begins to
interfere in the person’s life in a significant
way, it is considered a disorder.

Anxiety and closely related disorders While everyone may experience some level of anxiety at one
emerge from “triple vulnerabilities,”a time or another, those with anxiety disorders experience it

combination of biological, psychological, consistently and so intensely that it has a significantly negative
impact on their quality of life. [Image: Bada Bing, https://goo.gl/
and specific factors that increase our risk
aawyLi, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]
for developing a disorder (Barlow, 2002;
Suárez, Bennett, Goldstein, & Barlow,
2009). Biological vulnerabilities refer to specific genetic and neurobiological factors that
might predispose someone to develop anxiety disorders. No single gene directly causes
anxiety or panic, but our genes may make us more susceptible to anxiety and influence how
our brains react to stress (Drabant et al., 2012; Gelernter & Stein, 2009; Smoller, Block, &
Young, 2009). Psychological vulnerabilities refer to the influences that our early experiences
have on how we view the world. If we were confronted with unpredictable stressors or
traumatic experiences at younger ages, we may come to view the world as unpredictable and
uncontrollable, even dangerous (Chorpita & Barlow, 1998; Gunnar & Fisher, 2006). Specific
vulnerabilities refer to how our experiences lead us to focus and channel our anxiety (Suárez
et al., 2009). If we learned that physical illness is dangerous, maybe through witnessing our
family’s reaction whenever anyone got sick, we may focus our anxiety on physical sensations.
If we learned that disapproval from others has negative, even dangerous consequences, such
as being yelled at or severely punished for even the slightest offense, we might focus our
anxiety on social evaluation. If we learn that the “other shoe might drop” at any moment, we
may focus our anxiety on worries about the future. None of these vulnerabilities directly
Anxiety and Related Disorders 180

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 (Barlow,
2002; Suárez et al., 2009). In the next sections, we will briefly explore each of the major anxiety
based disorders, found in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM-5) (APA, 2013).

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Most of us worry some of the time, and this worry can actually be useful in helping us to plan
for the future or make sure we remember to do something important. Most of us can set
aside our worries when we need to focus on other things or stop worrying altogether whenever
a problem has passed. However, for someone with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), these
worries become difficult, or even impossible, to turn off. They may find themselves worrying
excessively about a number of different things, both minor and catastrophic. Their worries
also come with a host of other symptoms such as muscle tension, fatigue, agitation or
restlessness, irritability, difficulties with sleep (either falling asleep, staying asleep, or both),
or difficulty concentrating.The DSM-5 criteria specify that at least six months of excessive
anxiety and worry of this type must be ongoing, happening more days than not for a good
proportion of the day, to receive a diagnosis of GAD. About 5.7% of the population has met
criteria for GAD at some point during their lifetime (Kessler, Berglund, et al., 2005), making it
one of the most common anxiety disorders (see Table 1).

Table 1: Prevalence rates for major anxiety disorders. [1] Kessler et al. (2005), [2]Kessler, Chiu, Demler, Merikangas, & Walters

(2005), [3]Kessler, Sonnega, Bromet, Hughes, & Nelson (1995), [4]Craske et al. (1996).
Anxiety and Related Disorders 181

What makes a person with GAD worry more than the average person? Research shows that
individuals with GAD are more sensitive and vigilant toward possible threats than people who
are not anxious (Aikins & Craske, 2001; Barlow, 2002; Bradley, Mogg, White, Groom, & de Bono,
1999). This may be related to early stressful experiences, which can lead to a view of the world
as an unpredictable, uncontrollable, and even dangerous place. Some have suggested that
people with GAD worry as a way to gain some control over these otherwise uncontrollable or
unpredictable experiences and against uncertain outcomes (Dugas, Gagnon, Ladouceur, &
Freeston, 1998). By repeatedly going through all of the possible “What if?” scenarios in their
mind, the person might feel like they are less vulnerable to an unexpected outcome, giving
them the sense that they have some control over the situation (Wells, 2002). Others have
suggested people with GAD worry as a way to avoid feeling distressed (Borkovec, Alcaine, &
Behar, 2004). For example, Borkovec and Hu (1990) found that those who worried when
confronted with a stressful situation had less physiological arousal than those who didn’t
worry, maybe because the worry “distracted” them in some way.

The problem is, all of this “what if?”-ing doesn’t get the person any closer to a solution or an
answer and, in fact, might take them away from important things they should be paying
attention to in the moment, such as finishing an important project. Many of the catastrophic
outcomes people with GAD worry about are very unlikely to happen, so when the catastrophic
event doesn’t materialize, the act of worrying gets reinforced (Borkovec, Hazlett-Stevens, &
Diaz, 1999). 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. In this way, the cycle of worry is perpetuated, and, subsequently,
people with GAD often miss out on many otherwise enjoyable events in their lives.

Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia

Have you ever gotten into a near-accident or been taken by surprise in some way? You may
have felt a flood of physical sensations, such as a racing heart, shortness of breath, or tingling
sensations. This alarm reaction is called the “fight or flight” response (Cannon, 1929) and is
your body’s natural reaction to fear, preparing you to either fight or escape in response to
threat or danger. It’s likely you weren’t too concerned with these sensations, because you
knew what was causing them. But imagine if this alarm reaction came “out of the blue,” for
no apparent reason, or in a situation in which you didn’t expect to be anxious or fearful. This
is called an “unexpected” panic attack or a false alarm. Because there is no apparent reason
Anxiety and Related Disorders 182

or cue for the alarm reaction, you might react to the sensations with intense fear, maybe
thinking you are having a heart attack, or going crazy, or even dying. You might begin to
associate the physical sensations you felt during this attack with this fear and may start to go
out of your way to avoid having those sensations again.

Unexpected panic attacks such as these are

at the heart of panic disorder (PD).
However, to receive a diagnosis of PD, the
person must not only have unexpected
panic attacks but also must experience
continued intense anxiety and avoidance
related to the attack for at least one month,
causing significant distress or interference
in their lives. People with panic disorder
tend to interpret even normal physical
sensations in a catastrophic way, which
triggers more anxiety and, ironically, more
physical sensations, creating a vicious cycle
of panic (Clark, 1986, 1996). The person
may begin to avoid a number of situations
or activities that produce the same Panic disorder is a debilitating condition that leaves sufferers
physiological arousal that was present with acute anxiety that persists long after a specific panic attack

during the beginnings of a panic attack. For has subsided. When this anxiety leads to deliberate avoidance
of particular places and situations a person may be given a
example, someone who experienced a
diagnosis of agoraphobia. [Image: Nate Steiner, https://goo.gl/
racing heart during a panic attack might
dUYWDf, Public Domain]
avoid exercise or caffeine. Someone who
experienced choking sensations might avoid wearing high-necked sweaters or necklaces.
Avoidance of these internal bodily or somatic cues for panic has been termed interoceptive
avoidance (Barlow & Craske, 2007; Brown, White, & Barlow, 2005; Craske & Barlow, 2008;
Shear et al., 1997).

The individual may also have experienced an overwhelming urge to escape during the
unexpected panic attack. This can lead to a sense that certain places or situations—particularly
situations where escape might not be possible—are not “safe.” These situations become
external cues for panic. If the person begins to avoid several places or situations, or still
endures these situations but does so with a significant amount of apprehension and anxiety,
then the person also has agoraphobia (Barlow, 2002; Craske & Barlow, 1988; Craske & Barlow,
2008). Agoraphobia can cause significant disruption to a person’s life, causing them to go out
of their way to avoid situations, such as adding hours to a commute to avoid taking the train
Anxiety and Related Disorders 183

or only ordering take-out to avoid having to enter a grocery store. In one tragic case seen by
our clinic, a woman suffering from agoraphobia had not left her apartment for 20 years and
had spent the past 10 years confined to one small area of her apartment, away from the view
of the outside. 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.

About 4.7% of the population has met criteria for PD or agoraphobia over their lifetime (Kessler,
Chiu, Demler, Merikangas, & Walters, 2005; Kessler et al., 2006) (see Table 1). In all of these
cases of panic disorder, what was once an adaptive natural alarm reaction now becomes a
learned, and much feared, false alarm.

Specific Phobia

The majority of us might have certain things we fear, such as bees, or needles, or heights
(Myers et al., 1984). But what if this fear is so consuming that you can’t go out on a summer’s
day, or get vaccines needed to go on a special trip, or visit your doctor in her new office on
the 26th floor? To meet criteria for a diagnosis of specific phobia, there must be an irrational
fear of a specific object or situation that substantially interferes with the person’s ability to
function. For example, a patient at our clinic turned down a prestigious and coveted artist
residency because it required spending time near a wooded area, bound to have insects.
Another patient purposely left her house two hours early each morning so she could walk
past her neighbor’s fenced yard before they let their dog out in the morning.

The list of possible phobias is staggering,

but four major subtypes of specific phobia
are recognized: blood-injury-injection (BII)
type, situational type (such as planes,
elevators, or enclosed places), natural
environment type for events one may
encounter in nature (for example, heights,
storms, and water), and animal type.

A fifth category “other” includes phobias

that do not fit any of the four major
subtypes (for example, fears of choking,
Elevators can be a trigger for sufferers of claustrophobia or vomiting, or contracting an illness). Most
agoraphobia. [Image: srgpicker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo. phobic reactions cause a surge of activity in
gl/Toc0ZF] the sympathetic nervous system and
Anxiety and Related Disorders 184

increased heart rate and blood pressure, maybe even a panic attack. However, people with
BII type phobias usually experience a marked drop in heart rate and blood pressure and may
even faint. In this way, those with BII phobias almost always differ in their physiological reaction
from people with other types of phobia (Barlow & Liebowitz, 1995; Craske, Antony, & Barlow,
2006; Hofmann, Alpers, & Pauli, 2009; Ost, 1992). BII phobia also runs in families more strongly
than any phobic disorder we know (Antony & Barlow, 2002; Page & Martin, 1998). Specific
phobia is one of the most common psychological disorders in the United States, with 12.5%
of the population reporting a lifetime history of fears significant enough to be considered a
“phobia” (Arrindell et al., 2003; Kessler, Berglund, et al., 2005) (see Table 1). Most people who
suffer from specific phobia tend to have multiple phobias of several types (Hofmann, Lehman,
& Barlow, 1997).

Social Anxiety Disorder (Social Phobia)

Many people consider themselves shy, and most people find social evaluation uncomfortable
at best, or giving a speech somewhat mortifying. Yet, only a small proportion of the population
fear these types of situations significantly enough to merit a diagnosis of social anxiety
disorder (SAD) (APA, 2013). SAD is more than exaggerated shyness (Bogels et al., 2010;
Schneier et al., 1996). To receive a diagnosis of SAD, the fear and anxiety associated with social
situations must be so strong that the person avoids them entirely, or if avoidance is not
possible, the person endures them with a great deal of distress. Further, the fear and avoidance
of social situations must get in the way of the person’s daily life, or seriously limit their academic
or occupational functioning. For example, a patient at our clinic compromised her perfect 4.0
grade point average because she could not complete a required oral presentation in one of
her classes, causing her to fail the course. Fears of negative evaluation might make someone
repeatedly turn down invitations to social events or avoid having conversations with people,
leading to greater and greater isolation.

The specific social situations that trigger anxiety and fear range from one-on-one interactions,
such as starting or maintaining a conversation; to performance-based situations, such as
giving a speech or performing on stage; to assertiveness, such as asking someone to change
disruptive or undesirable behaviors. Fear of social evaluation might even extend to such things
as using public restrooms, eating in a restaurant, filling out forms in a public place, or even
reading on a train. Any type of situation that could potentially draw attention to the person
can become a feared social situation. For example, one patient of ours went out of her way
to avoid any situation in which she might have to use a public restroom for fear that someone
would hear her in the bathroom stall and think she was disgusting. If the fear is limited to
performance-based situations, such as public speaking, a diagnosis of SAD performance only
Anxiety and Related Disorders 185

is assigned.

What causes someone to fear social situations to such a large extent? The person may have
learned growing up that social evaluation in particular can be dangerous, creating a specific
psychological vulnerability to develop social anxiety (Bruch & Heimberg, 1994; Lieb et al., 2000;
Rapee & Melville, 1997). For example, the person’s caregivers may have harshly criticized and
punished them for even the smallest mistake, maybe even punishing them physically.

Or, someone might have experienced a

social trauma that had lasting effects, such
as being bullied or humiliated. Interestingly,
one group of researchers found that 92%
of adults in their study sample with social
phobia experienced severe teasing and
bullying in childhood, compared with only
35% to 50% among people with other
anxiety disorders (McCabe, Antony,
Summerfeldt, Liss, & Swinson, 2003).
Someone else might react so strongly to
the anxiety provoked by a social situation
that they have an unexpected panic attack.
This panic attack then becomes associated
(conditioned response) with the social
situation, causing the person to fear they Social trauma in childhood may have long-lasting effects. [Image:

will panic the next time they are in that ihtatho, https://goo.gl/dTzrdj, CC BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/

situation. This is not considered PD, VnKlK8]

however, because the person’s fear is

more focused on social evaluation than having unexpected panic attacks, and the fear of
having an attack is limited to social situations. As many as 12.1% of the general population
suffer from social phobia at some point in their lives (Kessler, Berglund, et al., 2005), making
it one of the most common anxiety disorders, second only to specific phobia (see Table 1).

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

With stories of war, natural disasters, and physical and sexual assault dominating the news,
it is clear that trauma is a reality for many people. Many individual traumas that occur every
day never even make the headlines, such as a car accident, domestic abuse, or the death of
a loved one. Yet, while many people face traumatic events, not everyone who faces a trauma
Anxiety and Related Disorders 186

develops a disorder. Some, with the help of family and friends, are able to recover and continue
on with their lives (Friedman, 2009). For some, however, the months and years following a
trauma are filled with intrusive reminders of the event, a sense of intense fear that another
traumatic event might occur, or a sense of isolation and emotional numbing. They may engage
in a host of behaviors intended to protect themselves from being vulnerable or unsafe, such
as constantly scanning their surroundings to look for signs of potential danger, never sitting
with their back to the door, or never allowing themselves to be anywhere alone. This lasting
reaction to trauma is what characterizes posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

A diagnosis of PTSD begins with the traumatic event itself. An individual must have been
exposed to an event that involves actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence.
To receive a diagnosis of PTSD, exposure to the event must include either directly experiencing
the event, witnessing the event happening to someone else, learning that the event occurred
to a close relative or friend, or having repeated or extreme exposure to details of the event
(such as in the case of first responders). The person subsequently re-experiences the event
through both intrusive memories and nightmares. Some memories may come back so vividly
that the person feels like they are experiencing the event all over again, what is known as
having a flashback. The individual may avoid anything that reminds them of the trauma,
including conversations, places, or even specific types of people. They may feel emotionally
numb or restricted in their ability to feel, which may interfere in their interpersonal
relationships. The person may not be able to remember certain aspects of what happened
during the event. They may feel a sense of a foreshortened future, that they will never marry,
have a family, or live a long, full life. They may be jumpy or easily startled, hypervigilant to
their surroundings, and quick to anger. The prevalence of PTSD among the population as a
whole is relatively low, with 6.8% having experienced PTSD at some point in their life (Kessler,
Berglund, et al., 2005) (see Table 1). Combat and sexual assault are the most common
precipitating traumas (Kessler, Sonnega, Bromet, Hughes, & Nelson, 1995). Whereas PTSD
was previously categorized as an Anxiety Disorder, in the most recent version of the DSM
(DSM-5; APA, 2013) it has been reclassified under the more specific category of Trauma- and
Stressor-Related Disorders.

A person with PTSD is particularly sensitive to both internal and external cues that serve as
reminders of their traumatic experience. For example, as we saw in PD, the physical sensations
of arousal present during the initial trauma can become threatening in and of themselves,
becoming a powerful reminder of the event. Someone might avoid watching intense or
emotional movies in order to prevent the experience of emotional arousal. Avoidance of
conversations, reminders, or even of the experience of emotion itself may also be an attempt
to avoid triggering internal cues. External stimuli that were present during the trauma can
also become strong triggers. For example, if a woman is raped by a man wearing a red t-shirt,
Anxiety and Related Disorders 187

she may develop a strong alarm reaction to the sight of red shirts, or perhaps even more
indiscriminately to anything with a similar color red. A combat veteran who experienced a
strong smell of gasoline during a roadside bomb attack may have an intense alarm reaction
when pumping gas back at home. Individuals with a psychological vulnerability toward viewing
the world as uncontrollable and unpredictable may particularly struggle with the possibility
of additional future, unpredictable traumatic events, fueling their need for hypervigilance and
avoidance, and perpetuating the symptoms of PTSD.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Have you ever had a strange thought pop into your mind, such as picturing the stranger next
to you naked? Or maybe you walked past a crooked picture on the wall and couldn’t resist
straightening it. Most people have occasional strange thoughts and may even engage in some
“compulsive” behaviors, especially when they are stressed (Boyer & Liénard, 2008; Fullana et
al., 2009). But for most people, these thoughts are nothing more than a passing oddity, and
the behaviors are done (or not done) without a second thought. For someone with obsessive-
compulsive disorder (OCD), however, these thoughts and compulsive behaviors don’t just
come and go. Instead, strange or unusual thoughts are taken to mean something much more
important and real, maybe even something dangerous or frightening. The urge to engage in
some behavior, such as straightening a picture, can become so intense that it is nearly
impossible not to carry it out, or causes
significant anxiety if it can’t be carried out.
Further, someone with OCD might become
preoccupied with the possibility that the
behavior wasn’t carried out to completion
and feel compelled to repeat the behavior
again and again, maybe several times
before they are “satisfied.”

To receive a diagnosis of OCD, a person

must experience obsessive thoughts and/
or compulsions that seem irrational or
nonsensical, but that keep coming into
their mind. Some examples of obsessions
include doubting thoughts (such as
doubting a door is locked or an appliance People suffering from OCD may have an irrational fear of germs
is turned off), thoughts of contamination and "becoming contaminated". [Image: benchilada, https://goo.

(such as thinking that touching almost gl/qemgDm, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]

Anxiety and Related Disorders 188

anything might give you cancer), or aggressive thoughts or images that are unprovoked or
nonsensical. Compulsions may be carried out in an attempt to neutralize some of these
thoughts, providing temporary relief from the anxiety the obsessions cause, or they may be
nonsensical in and of themselves. Either way, compulsions are distinct in that they must be
repetitive or excessive, the person feels “driven” to carry out the behavior, and the person
feels a great deal of distress if they can’t engage in the behavior. Some examples of compulsive
behaviors are repetitive washing (often in response to contamination obsessions), repetitive
checking (locks, door handles, appliances often in response to doubting obsessions), ordering
and arranging things to ensure symmetry, or doing things according to a specific ritual or
sequence (such as getting dressed or ready for bed in a specific order). To meet diagnostic
criteria for OCD, engaging in obsessions and/or compulsions must take up a significant amount
of the person’s time, at least an hour per day, and must cause significant distress or impairment
in functioning. About 1.6% of the population has met criteria for OCD over the course of a
lifetime (Kessler, Berglund, et al., 2005) (see Table 1). Whereas OCD was previously categorized
as an Anxiety Disorder, in the most recent version of the DSM (DSM-5; APA, 2013) it has been
reclassified under the more specific category of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders.

People with OCD often confuse having an intrusive thought with their potential for carrying
out the thought. Whereas most people when they have a strange or frightening thought are
able to let it go, a person with OCD may become “stuck” on the thought and be intensely afraid
that they might somehow lose control and act on it. Or worse, they believe that having the
thought is just as bad as doing it. This is called thought-action fusion. For example, one patient
of ours was plagued by thoughts that she would cause harm to her young daughter. She
experienced intrusive images of throwing hot coffee in her daughter’s face or pushing her
face underwater when she was giving her a bath. These images were so terrifying to the
patient that she would no longer allow herself any physical contact with her daughter and
would leave her daughter in the care of a babysitter if her husband or another family was not
available to “supervise” her. In reality, the last thing she wanted to do was harm her daughter,
and she had no intention or desire to act on the aggressive thoughts and images, nor does
anybody with OCD act on these thoughts, but these thoughts were so horrifying to her that
she made every attempt to prevent herself from the potential of carrying them out, even if it
meant not being able to hold, cradle, or cuddle her daughter. These are the types of struggles
people with OCD face every day.

Treatments for Anxiety and Related Disorders

Many successful treatments for anxiety and related disorders have been developed over the
years. Medications (anti-anxiety drugs and antidepressants) have been found to be beneficial
Anxiety and Related Disorders 189

for disorders other than specific phobia, but relapse rates are high once medications are
stopped (Heimberg et al., 1998; Hollon et al., 2005), and some classes of medications (minor
tranquilizers or benzodiazepines) can be habit forming.

Exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapies

(CBT) are effective psychosocial treatments
for anxiety disorders, and many show
greater treatment effects than medication
in the long term (Barlow, Allen, & Basden,
2007; Barlow, Gorman, Shear, & Woods,
2000). In CBT, patients are taught skills to
help identify and change problematic
thought processes, beliefs, and behaviors
that tend to worsen symptoms of anxiety,
and practice applying these skills to real-
life situations through exposure exercises.
Patients learn how the automatic
“appraisals” or thoughts they have about a
situation affect both how they feel and how
Exposure-based CBT aims to help patients recognize and change
they behave. Similarly, patients learn how
problematic thoughts and behaviors in real-life situations. A engaging in certain behaviors, such as
person with a fear of elevators would be encouraged to practice avoiding situations, tends to strengthen
exposure exercises that might involve approaching or riding the belief that the situation is something
elevators to attempt to overcome their anxiety. [Image: Mag3737,
to be feared. A key aspect of CBT is
https://goo.gl/j9L5AQ, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]
exposure exercises, in which the patient
learns to gradually approach situations
they find fearful or distressing, in order to challenge their beliefs and learn new, less fearful
associations about these situations.

Typically 50% to 80% of patients receiving drugs or CBT will show a good initial response, with
the effect of CBT more durable. Newer developments in the treatment of anxiety disorders
are focusing on novel interventions, such as the use of certain medications to enhance learning
during CBT (Otto et al., 2010), and transdiagnostic treatments targeting core, underlying
vulnerabilities (Barlow et al., 2011). As we advance our understanding of anxiety and related
disorders, so too will our treatments advance, with the hopes that for the many people
suffering from these disorders, anxiety can once again become something useful and
adaptive, rather than something debilitating.
Anxiety and Related Disorders 190

Outside Resources

American Psychological Association (APA)

http://www.apa.org/topics/anxiety/index.aspx

National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH)

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders/index.shtml

Web: Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA)

http://www.adaa.org/

Web: Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CARD)

http://www.bu.edu/card/

Discussion Questions

1. Name and describe the three main vulnerabilities contributing to the development of
anxiety and related disorders. Do you think these disorders could develop out of biological
factors alone? Could these disorders develop out of learning experiences alone?

2. Many of the symptoms in anxiety and related disorders overlap with experiences most
people have. What features differentiate someone with a disorder versus someone
without?

3. What is an “alarm reaction?” If someone experiences an alarm reaction when they are about
to give a speech in front of a room full of people, would you consider this a “true alarm”
or a “false alarm?”

4. Many people are shy. What differentiates someone who is shy from someone with social
anxiety disorder? Do you think shyness should be considered an anxiety disorder?

5. Is anxiety ever helpful? What about worry?

Anxiety and Related Disorders 191

Vocabulary

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.

Anxiety
A mood state characterized by negative affect, muscle tension, and physical arousal in which
a person apprehensively anticipates future danger or misfortune.

Biological vulnerability
A specific genetic and neurobiological factor that might predispose someone to develop
anxiety disorders.

Conditioned response
A learned reaction following classical conditioning, or the process by which an event that
automatically elicits a response is repeatedly paired with another neutral stimulus
(conditioned stimulus), resulting in the ability of the neutral stimulus to elicit the same
response on its own.

External cues
Stimuli in the outside world that serve as triggers for anxiety or as reminders of past traumatic
events.

Fight or flight response

A biological reaction to alarming stressors that prepares the body to resist or escape a threat.

Flashback
Sudden, intense re-experiencing of a previous event, usually trauma-related.

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.

Internal bodily or somatic cues

Physical sensations that serve as triggers for anxiety or as reminders of past traumatic events.

Interoceptive avoidance
Anxiety and Related Disorders 192

Avoidance of situations or activities that produce sensations of physical arousal similar to

those occurring during a panic attack or intense fear response.

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.

Panic disorder (PD)

A condition marked by regular strong panic attacks, and which may include significant levels
of worry about future attacks.

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.

Psychological vulnerabilities
Influences that our early experiences have on how we view the world.

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.

SAD performance only

Social anxiety disorder which is limited to certain situations that the sufferer perceives as
requiring some type of performance.

Social anxiety disorder (SAD)

A condition marked by acute fear of social situations which lead to worry and diminished day
to day functioning.

Specific vulnerabilities
How our experiences lead us to focus and channel our anxiety.

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.
Anxiety and Related Disorders 193

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Clinical Psychology Science and Practice, 9, 95-100.

11
Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders
Deanna M. Barch

Schizophrenia and the other psychotic disorders are some of the most impairing forms of
psychopathology, frequently associated with a profound negative effect on the individual’s
educational, occupational, and social function. Sadly, these disorders often manifest right at
time of the transition from adolescence to adulthood, just as young people should be evolving
into independent young adults. The spectrum of psychotic disorders includes schizophrenia,
schizoaffective disorder, delusional disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, schizophreniform
disorder, brief psychotic disorder, as well as psychosis associated with substance use or
medical conditions. In this module, we summarize the primary clinical features of these
disorders, describe the known cognitive and neurobiological changes associated with
schizophrenia, describe potential risk factors and/or causes for the development of
schizophrenia, and describe currently available treatments for schizophrenia.

Learning Objectives

• Describe the signs and symptoms of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders.

• Describe the most well-replicated cognitive and neurobiological changes associated with
schizophrenia.

• Describe the potential risk factors for the development of schizophrenia.

• Describe the controversies associated with “clinical high risk” approaches to identifying
individuals at risk for the development of schizophrenia.

• Describe the treatments that work for some of the symptoms of schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 199

The phenomenology of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders

Most of you have probably had the experience of walking down the street in a city and seeing
a person you thought was acting oddly. They may have been dressed in an unusual way,
perhaps disheveled or wearing an unusual collection of clothes, makeup, or jewelry that did
not seem to fit any particular group or subculture. They may have been talking to themselves
or yelling at someone you could not see. If you tried to speak to them, they may have been
difficult to follow or understand, or they may have acted paranoid or started telling a bizarre
story about the people who were plotting against them. If so, chances are that you have
encountered an individual with schizophrenia or another type of psychotic disorder. If you
have watched the movie A Beautiful Mind or The Fisher King, you have also seen a portrayal of
someone thought to have schizophrenia. Sadly, a few of the individuals who have committed
some of the recently highly publicized mass murders may have had schizophrenia, though
most people who commit such crimes do not have schizophrenia. It is also likely that you have
met people with schizophrenia without ever knowing it, as they may suffer in silence or stay
isolated to protect themselves from the horrors they see, hear, or believe are operating in the
outside world. As these examples begin to illustrate, psychotic disorders involve many
different types of symptoms, including delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and
behavior, abnormal motor behavior (including catatonia), and negative symptoms such
anhedonia/amotivation and blunted affect/
reduced speech.

Delusions are false beliefs that are often

fixed, hard to change even when the person
is presented with conflicting information,
and are often culturally influenced in their
content (e.g., delusions involving Jesus in
Judeo-Christian cultures, delusions involving
Allah in Muslim cultures). They can be
terrifying for the person, who may remain
convinced that they are true even when
loved ones and friends present them with
clear information that they cannot be true.
There are many different types or themes
to delusions.
Under Surveillance: Abstract groups like the police or the
government are commonly the focus of a schizophrenic's
persecutory delusions. [Image: Thomas Hawk, https://goo.gl/ The most common delusions are persecutory
qsrqiR, CC BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/VnKlK8] and involve the belief that individuals or
Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 200

groups are trying to hurt, harm, or plot against the person in some way. These can be people
that the person knows (people at work, the neighbors, family members), or more abstract
groups (the FBI, the CIA, aliens, etc.). Other types of delusions include grandiose delusions,
where the person believes that they have some special power or ability (e.g., I am the new
Buddha, I am a rock star); referential delusions, where the person believes that events or
objects in the environment have special meaning for them (e.g., that song on the radio is
being played specifically for me); or other types of delusions where the person may believe
that others are controlling their thoughts and actions, their thoughts are being broadcast
aloud, or that others can read their mind (or they can read other people’s minds).

When you see a person on the street talking to themselves or shouting at other people, they
are experiencing hallucinations. These are perceptual experiences that occur even when
there is no stimulus in the outside world generating the experiences. They can be auditory,
visual, olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), or somatic (touch). The most common hallucinations
in psychosis (at least in adults) are auditory, and can involve one or more voices talking about
the person, commenting on the person’s behavior, or giving them orders. The content of the
hallucinations is frequently negative (“you are a loser,” “that drawing is stupid,” “you should
go kill yourself”) and can be the voice of someone the person knows or a complete stranger.
Sometimes the voices sound as if they are coming from outside the person’s head. Other
times the voices seem to be coming from inside the person’s head, but are not experienced
the same as the person’s inner thoughts or
inner speech.

Talking to someone with schizophrenia is

sometimes difficult, as their speech may be
difficult to follow, either because their
answers do not clearly flow from your
questions, or because one sentence does
not logically follow from another. This is
referred to as disorganized speech, and it
can be present even when the person is
writing. Disorganized behavior can include
odd dress, odd makeup (e.g., lipstick
outlining a mouth for 1 inch), or unusual
rituals (e.g., repetitive hand gestures).
Abnormal motor behavior can include A painting by Craig Finn, who suffers from schizophrenia,
catatonia, which refers to a variety of depicting hallucinations. The painting is titled "Artistic view of
behaviors that seem to reflect a reduction how the world feels like with schizophrenia". [Image: Craig Finn,

in responsiveness to the external environment. https://goo.gl/A3fyva, CC0 1.0, https://goo.gl/iRMeK3]

Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 201

This can include holding unusual postures for long periods of time, failing to respond to verbal
or motor prompts from another person, or excessive and seemingly purposeless motor
activity.

Some of the most debilitating symptoms of schizophrenia are difficult for others to see. These
include what people refer to as “negative symptoms” or the absence of certain things we
typically expect most people to have. For example, anhedonia or amotivation reflect a lack of
apparent interest in or drive to engage in social or recreational activities. These symptoms
can manifest as a great amount of time spent in physical immobility. Importantly, anhedonia
and amotivation do not seem to reflect a lack of enjoyment in pleasurable activities or events
(Cohen & Minor, 2010; Kring & Moran, 2008; Llerena, Strauss, & Cohen, 2012) but rather a
reduced drive or ability to take the steps necessary to obtain the potentially positive outcomes
(Barch & Dowd, 2010). Flat affect and reduced speech (alogia) reflect a lack of showing
emotions through facial expressions, gestures, and speech intonation, as well as a reduced
amount of speech and increased pause frequency and duration.

In many ways, the types of symptoms associated with psychosis are the most difficult for us
to understand, as they may seem far outside the range of our normal experiences. Unlike
depression or anxiety, many of us may not have had experiences that we think of as on the
same continuum as psychosis. However, just like many of the other forms of psychopathology
described in this book, the types of psychotic symptoms that characterize disorders like
schizophrenia are on a continuum with “normal” mental experiences. For example, work by
Jim van Os in the Netherlands has shown that a surprisingly large percentage of the general
population (10%+) experience psychotic-like symptoms, though many fewer have multiple
experiences and most will not continue to experience these symptoms in the long run (Verdoux
& van Os, 2002). Similarly, work in a general population of adolescents and young adults in
Kenya has also shown that a relatively high percentage of individuals experience one or more
psychotic-like experiences (~19%) at some point in their lives (Mamah et al., 2012; Ndetei et
al., 2012), though again most will not go on to develop a full-blown psychotic disorder.

Schizophrenia is the primary disorder that comes to mind when we discuss “psychotic”
disorders (see Table 1 for diagnostic criteria), though there are a number of other disorders
that share one or more features with schizophrenia. In the remainder of this module, we will
use the terms “psychosis” and “schizophrenia” somewhat interchangeably, given that most of
the research has focused on schizophrenia. In addition to schizophrenia (see Table 1), other
psychotic disorders include schizophreniform disorder (a briefer version of schizophrenia),
schizoaffective disorder (a mixture of psychosis and depression/mania symptoms), delusional
disorder (the experience of only delusions), and brief psychotic disorder (psychotic symptoms
that last only a few days or weeks).
Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 202

Table 1: Types of Psychotic Disorders (Simplified from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual - 5th Edition (DSM-5) (APA, 2013)

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Schizophrenia

As described above, when we think of the core symptoms of psychotic disorders such as
schizophrenia, we think of people who hear voices, see visions, and have false beliefs about
reality (i.e., delusions). However, problems in cognitive function are also a critical aspect of
psychotic disorders and of schizophrenia in particular. This emphasis on cognition in
schizophrenia is in part due to the growing body of research suggesting that cognitive
problems in schizophrenia are a major source of disability and loss of functional capacity
Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 203

(Green, 2006; Nuechterlein et al., 2011). The cognitive deficits that are present in schizophrenia
are widespread and can include problems with episodic memory (the ability to learn and
retrieve new information or episodes in one’s life), working memory (the ability to maintain
information over a short period of time, such as 30 seconds), and other tasks that require one
to “control” or regulate one’s behavior (Barch & Ceaser, 2012; Bora, Yucel, & Pantelis, 2009a;
Fioravanti, Carlone, Vitale, Cinti, & Clare, 2005; Forbes, Carrick, McIntosh, & Lawrie, 2009;
Mesholam-Gately, Giuliano, Goff, Faraone, & Seidman, 2009). Individuals with schizophrenia
also have difficulty with what is referred to as “processing speed” and are frequently slower
than healthy individuals on almost all tasks. Importantly, these cognitive deficits are present
prior to the onset of the illness (Fusar-Poli et al., 2007) and are also present, albeit in a milder
form, in the first-degree relatives of people with schizophrenia (Snitz, Macdonald, & Carter,
2006). This suggests that cognitive impairments in schizophrenia reflect part of the risk for
the development of psychosis, rather than being an outcome of developing psychosis. Further,
people with schizophrenia who have more severe cognitive problems also tend to have more
severe negative symptoms and more disorganized speech and behavior (Barch, Carter, &
Cohen, 2003; Barch et al., 1999; Dominguez Mde, Viechtbauer, Simons, van Os, & Krabbendam,
2009; Ventura, Hellemann, Thames, Koellner, & Nuechterlein, 2009; Ventura, Thames, Wood,
Guzik, & Hellemann, 2010). In addition, people with more cognitive problems have worse
function in everyday life (Bowie et al., 2008; Bowie, Reichenberg, Patterson, Heaton, & Harvey,
2006; Fett et al., 2011).

Some people with schizophrenia also show

deficits in what is referred to as social
cognition, though it is not clear whether
such problems are separate from the
cognitive problems described above or the
result of them (Hoe, Nakagami, Green, &
Brekke, 2012; Kerr & Neale, 1993; van
Hooren et al., 2008). This includes
problems with the recognition of emotional
expressions on the faces of other
individuals (Kohler, Walker, Martin, Healey,
& Moberg, 2010) and problems inferring
the intentions of other people (theory of
mind) (Bora, Yucel, & Pantelis, 2009b).
Some with schizophrenia suffer from difficulty with social
cognition. They may not be able to detect the meaning of facial
Individuals with schizophrenia who have
expressions or other subtle cues that most other people rely on more problems with social cognition also
to navigate the social world. [Image: Ralph Buckley, https://goo. tend to have more negative and
gl/KuBzsD, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/i4GXf5] disorganized symptoms (Ventura, Wood, &
Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 204

Hellemann, 2011), as well as worse community function (Fett et al., 2011).

The advent of neuroimaging techniques such as structural and functional magnetic resonance
imaging and positron emission tomography opened up the ability to try to understand the
brain mechanisms of the symptoms of schizophrenia as well as the cognitive impairments
found in psychosis. For example, a number of studies have suggested that delusions in
psychosis may be associated with problems in “salience” detection mechanisms supported
by the ventral striatum (Jensen & Kapur, 2009; Jensen et al., 2008; Kapur, 2003; Kapur, Mizrahi,
& Li, 2005; Murray et al., 2008) and the anterior prefrontal cortex (Corlett et al., 2006; Corlett,
Honey, & Fletcher, 2007; Corlett, Murray, et al., 2007a, 2007b). These are regions of the brain
that normally increase their activity when something important (aka “salient”) happens in the
environment. If these brain regions misfire, it may lead individuals with psychosis to mistakenly
attribute importance to irrelevant or unconnected events. Further, there is good evidence
that problems in working memory and cognitive control in schizophrenia are related to
problems in the function of a region of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
(DLPFC) (Minzenberg, Laird, Thelen, Carter, & Glahn, 2009; Ragland et al., 2009). These
problems include changes in how the DLPFC works when people are doing working-memory
or cognitive-control tasks, and problems with how this brain region is connected to other brain
regions important for working memory and cognitive control, including the posterior parietal
cortex (e.g., Karlsgodt et al., 2008; J. J. Kim et al., 2003; Schlosser et al., 2003), the anterior
cingulate (Repovs & Barch, 2012), and temporal cortex (e.g., Fletcher et al., 1995; Meyer-
Lindenberg et al., 2001). In terms of understanding episodic memory problems in
schizophrenia, many researchers have focused on medial temporal lobe deficits, with a specific
focus on the hippocampus (e.g., Heckers & Konradi, 2010). This is because there is much data
from humans and animals showing that the hippocampus is important for the creation of
new memories (Squire, 1992). However, it has become increasingly clear that problems with
the DLPFC also make important contributions to episodic memory deficits in schizophrenia
(Ragland et al., 2009), probably because this part of the brain is important for controlling our
use of memory.

In addition to problems with regions such as the DLFPC and medial temporal lobes in
schizophrenia described above, magnitude resonance neuroimaging studies have also
identified changes in cellular architecture, white matter connectivity, and gray matter volume
in a variety of regions that include the prefrontal and temporal cortices (Bora et al., 2011).
People with schizophrenia also show reduced overall brain volume, and reductions in brain
volume as people get older may be larger in those with schizophrenia than in healthy people
(Olabi et al., 2011). Taking antipsychotic medications or taking drugs such as marijuana,
alcohol, and tobacco may cause some of these structural changes. However, these structural
changes are not completely explained by medications or substance use alone. Further, both
Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 205

functional and structural brain changes are seen, again to a milder degree, in the first-degree
relatives of people with schizophrenia (Boos, Aleman, Cahn, Pol, & Kahn, 2007; Brans et al.,
2008; Fusar-Poli et al., 2007; MacDonald, Thermenos, Barch, & Seidman, 2009). This again
suggests that that neural changes associated with schizophrenia are related to a genetic risk
for this illness.

Risk Factors for Developing Schizophrenia

It is clear that there are important genetic contributions to the likelihood that someone will
develop schizophrenia, with consistent evidence from family, twin, and adoption studies.
(Sullivan, Kendler, & Neale, 2003). However, there is no “schizophrenia gene” and it is likely
that the genetic risk for schizophrenia reflects the summation of many different genes that
each contribute something to the likelihood of developing psychosis (Gottesman & Shields,
1967; Owen, Craddock, & O'Donovan, 2010). Further, schizophrenia is a very heterogeneous
disorder, which means that two different people with “schizophrenia” may each have very
different symptoms (e.g., one has hallucinations and delusions, the other has disorganized
speech and negative symptoms). This makes it even more challenging to identify specific genes
associated with risk for psychosis. Importantly, many studies also now suggest that at least
some of the genes potentially associated
with schizophrenia are also associated with
other mental health conditions, including
bipolar disorder, depression, and autism
(Gejman, Sanders, & Kendler, 2011; Y. Kim,
Zerwas, Trace, & Sullivan, 2011; Owen et al.,
2010; Rutter, Kim-Cohen, & Maughan,
2006).

There are also a number of environmental

factors that are associated with an
increased risk of developing schizophrenia.
For example, problems during pregnancy
such as increased stress, infection,
malnutrition, and/or diabetes have been
associated with increased risk of schizophrenia.
There are a number of genetic and environmental risk factors
In addition, complications that occur at the
associated with higher likelihood of developing schizophrenia
including older fathers, complications during pregnancy/ time of birth and which cause hypoxia (lack
delivery, family history of schizophrenia, and growing up in an of oxygen) are also associated with an
urban environment. [Image: CC0 Public Domain] increased risk for developing schizophrenia
Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 206

(M. Cannon, Jones, & Murray, 2002; Miller et al., 2011). Children born to older fathers are also
at a somewhat increased risk of developing schizophrenia. Further, using cannabis increases
risk for developing psychosis, especially if you have other risk factors (Casadio, Fernandes,
Murray, & Di Forti, 2011; Luzi, Morrison, Powell, di Forti, & Murray, 2008). The likelihood of
developing schizophrenia is also higher for kids who grow up in urban settings (March et al.,
2008) and for some minority ethnic groups (Bourque, van der Ven, & Malla, 2011). Both of
these factors may reflect higher social and environmental stress in these settings.
Unfortunately, none of these risk factors is specific enough to be particularly useful in a clinical
setting, and most people with these “risk” factors do not develop schizophrenia. However,
together they are beginning to give us clues as the neurodevelopmental factors that may
lead someone to be at an increased risk for developing this disease.

An important research area on risk for psychosis has been work with individuals who may be
at “clinical high risk.” These are individuals who are showing attenuated (milder) symptoms
of psychosis that have developed recently and who are experiencing some distress or disability
associated with these symptoms. When people with these types of symptoms are followed
over time, about 35% of them develop a psychotic disorder (T. D. Cannon et al., 2008), most
frequently schizophrenia (Fusar-Poli, McGuire, & Borgwardt, 2012). In order to identify these
individuals, a new category of diagnosis, called “Attenuated Psychotic Syndrome,” was added
to Section III (the section for disorders in need of further study) of the DSM-5 (see Table 1 for
symptoms) (APA, 2013). However, adding this diagnostic category to the DSM-5 created a good
deal of controversy (Batstra & Frances, 2012; Fusar-Poli & Yung, 2012). Many scientists and
clinicians have been worried that including “risk” states in the DSM-5 would create mental
disorders where none exist, that these individuals are often already seeking treatment for
other problems, and that it is not clear that we have good treatments to stop these individuals
from developing to psychosis. However, the counterarguments have been that there is
evidence that individuals with high-risk symptoms develop psychosis at a much higher rate
than individuals with other types of psychiatric symptoms, and that the inclusion of Attenuated
Psychotic Syndrome in Section III will spur important research that might have clinical benefits.
Further, there is some evidence that non-invasive treatments such as omega-3 fatty acids and
intensive family intervention may help reduce the development of full-blown psychosis (Preti
& Cella, 2010) in people who have high-risk symptoms.

Treatment of Schizophrenia

The currently available treatments for schizophrenia leave much to be desired, and the search
for more effective treatments for both the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia (e.g.,
hallucinations and delusions) as well as cognitive deficits and negative symptoms is a highly
Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 207

active area of research. The first line of treatment for schizophrenia and other psychotic
disorders is the use of antipsychotic medications. There are two primary types of antipsychotic
medications, referred to as “typical” and “atypical.” The fact that “typical” antipsychotics helped
some symptoms of schizophrenia was discovered serendipitously more than 60 years ago
(Carpenter & Davis, 2012; Lopez-Munoz et al., 2005). These are drugs that all share a common
feature of being a strong block of the D2 type dopamine receptor. Although these drugs can
help reduce hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized speech, they do little to improve
cognitive deficits or negative symptoms and can be associated with distressing motor side
effects. The newer generation of antipsychotics is referred to as “atypical” antipsychotics.
These drugs have more mixed mechanisms of action in terms of the receptor types that they
influence, though most of them also influence D2 receptors. These newer antipsychotics are
not necessarily more helpful for schizophrenia but have fewer motor side effects. However,
many of the atypical antipsychotics are associated with side effects referred to as the
“metabolic syndrome,” which includes weight gain and increased risk for cardiovascular illness,
Type-2 diabetes, and mortality (Lieberman et al., 2005).

The evidence that cognitive deficits also contribute to functional impairment in schizophrenia
has led to an increased search for treatments that might enhance cognitive function in
schizophrenia. Unfortunately, as of yet, there are no pharmacological treatments that work
consistently to improve cognition in schizophrenia, though many new types of drugs are
currently under exploration. However, there is a type of psychological intervention, referred
to as cognitive remediation, which has shown some evidence of helping cognition and function
in schizophrenia. In particular, a version of this treatment called Cognitive Enhancement
Therapy (CET) has been shown to improve cognition, functional outcome, social cognition,
and to protect against gray matter loss (Eack et al., 2009; Eack, Greenwald, Hogarty, &
Keshavan, 2010; Eack et al., 2010; Eack, Pogue-Geile, Greenwald, Hogarty, & Keshavan, 2010;
Hogarty, Greenwald, & Eack, 2006) in young individuals with schizophrenia. The development
of new treatments such as Cognitive Enhancement Therapy provides some hope that we will
be able to develop new and better approaches to improving the lives of individuals with this
serious mental health condition and potentially even prevent it some day.
Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 208

Outside Resources

Book: Ben Behind His Voices: One family’s journal from the chaos of schizophrenia to hope
(2011). Randye Kaye. Rowman and Littlefield.

Book: Conquering Schizophrenia: A father, his son, and a medical breakthrough (1997). Peter
Wyden. Knopf.

Book: Henry’s Demons: Living with schizophrenia, a father and son’s story (2011). Henry and
Patrick Cockburn. Scribner Macmillan.

Book: My Mother’s Keeper: A daughter’s memoir of growing up in the shadow of schizophrenia

(1997). Tara Elgin Holley. William Morrow Co.

Book: Recovered, Not Cured: A journey through schizophrenia (2005). Richard McLean. Allen
and Unwin.

Book: The Center Cannot Hold: My journey through madness (2008). Elyn R. Saks. Hyperion.

Book: The Quiet Room: A journal out of the torment of madness (1996). Lori Schiller. Grand
Central Publishing.

Book: Welcome Silence: My triumph over schizophrenia (2003). Carol North. CSS Publishing.

Web: National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. This is an excellent site for learning more about
advocacy for individuals with major mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.
http://www.nami.org/

Web: National Institute of Mental Health. This website has information on NIMH-funded
schizophrenia research.
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/schizophrenia/index.shtml

Web: Schizophrenia Research Forum. This is an excellent website that contains a broad
array of information about current research on schizophrenia.
http://www.schizophreniaforum.org/

Discussion Questions
Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 209

1. Describe the major differences between the major psychotic disorders.

2. How would one be able to tell when an individual is “delusional” versus having non-
delusional beliefs that differ from the societal normal? How should cultural and sub-cultural
variation been taken into account when assessing psychotic symptoms?

3. Why are cognitive impairments important to understanding schizophrenia?

4. Why has the inclusion of a new diagnosis (Attenuated Psychotic Syndrome) in Section III
of the DSM-5 created controversy?

5. What are some of the factors associated with increased risk for developing schizophrenia?
If we know whether or not someone has these risk factors, how well can we tell whether
they will develop schizophrenia?

6. What brain changes are most consistent in schizophrenia?

7. Do antipsychotic medications work well for all symptoms of schizophrenia? If not, which
symptoms respond better to antipsychotic medications?

8. Are there any treatments besides antipsychotic medications that help any of the symptoms
of schizophrenia? If so, what are they?
Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 210

Vocabulary

Alogia
A reduction in the amount of speech and/or increased pausing before the initiation of speech.

Anhedonia/amotivation
A reduction in the drive or ability to take the steps or engage in actions necessary to obtain
the potentially positive outcome.

Catatonia
Behaviors that seem to reflect a reduction in responsiveness to the external environment.
This can include holding unusual postures for long periods of time, failing to respond to verbal
or motor prompts from another person, or excessive and seemingly purposeless motor
activity.

Delusions
False beliefs that are often fixed, hard to change even in the presence of conflicting
information, and often culturally influenced in their content.

Diagnostic criteria
The specific criteria used to determine whether an individual has a specific type of psychiatric
disorder. Commonly used diagnostic criteria are included in the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorder, 5th Edition (DSM-5) and the Internal Classification of Disorders,
Version 9 (ICD-9).

Disorganized behavior
Behavior or dress that is outside the norm for almost all subcultures. This would include odd
dress, odd makeup (e.g., lipstick outlining a mouth for 1 inch), or unusual rituals (e.g., repetitive
hand gestures).

Disorganized speech
Speech that is difficult to follow, either because answers do not clearly follow questions or
because one sentence does not logically follow from another.

Dopamine
A neurotransmitter in the brain that is thought to play an important role in regulating the
function of other neurotransmitters.
Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 211

Episodic memory
The ability to learn and retrieve new information or episodes in one’s life.

Flat affect
A reduction in the display of emotions through facial expressions, gestures, and speech
intonation.

Functional capacity
The ability to engage in self-care (cook, clean, bathe), work, attend school, and/or engage in
social relationships.

Hallucinations
Perceptual experiences that occur even when there is no stimulus in the outside world
generating the experiences. They can be auditory, visual, olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste),
or somatic (touch).

Magnetic resonance imaging

A set of techniques that uses strong magnets to measure either the structure of the brain (e.
g., gray matter and white matter) or how the brain functions when a person performs cognitive
tasks (e.g., working memory or episodic memory) or other types of tasks.

Neurodevelopmental
Processes that influence how the brain develops either in utero or as the child is growing up.

Positron emission tomography

A technique that uses radio-labelled ligands to measure the distribution of different
neurotransmitter receptors in the brain or to measure how much of a certain type of
neurotransmitter is released when a person is given a specific type of drug or does a
particularly cognitive task.

Processing speed
The speed with which an individual can perceive auditory or visual information and respond
to it.

Psychopathology
Illnesses or disorders that involve psychological or psychiatric symptoms.

Working memory
The ability to maintain information over a short period of time, such as 30 seconds or less.
Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 212

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Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 213

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Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders 214

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Social Psychology
12
Social Cognition and Attitudes
Yanine D. Hess & Cynthia L. Pickett

Social cognition is the area of social psychology that examines how people perceive and think
about their social world. This module provides an overview of key topics within social cognition
and attitudes, including judgmental heuristics, social prediction, affective and motivational
influences on judgment, and explicit and implicit attitudes.

Learning Objectives

• Learn how we simplify the vast array of information in the world in a way that allows us to
make decisions and navigate our environments efficiently.

• Understand some of the social factors that influence how we reason.

• Determine if our reasoning processes are always conscious, and if not, what some of the
effects of automatic/nonconscious cognition are.

• Understand the difference between explicit and implicit attitudes, and the implications
they have for behavior.

Introduction

Imagine you are walking toward your classroom and you see your teacher and a fellow student
you know to be disruptive in class whispering together in the hallway. As you approach, both
of them quit talking, nod to you, and then resume their urgent whispers after you pass by.
What would you make of this scene? What story might you tell yourself to help explain this
interesting and unusual behavior?
Social Cognition and Attitudes 221

People know intuitively that we can better understand others’ behavior if we know the
thoughts contributing to the behavior. In this example, you might guess that your teacher
harbors several concerns about the disruptive student, and therefore you believe their
whispering is related to this. The area of social psychology that focuses on how people think
about others and about the social world is called social cognition.

Researchers of social cognition study how people make sense of themselves and others to
make judgments, form attitudes, and make predictions about the future. Much of the research
in social cognition has demonstrated that humans are adept at distilling large amounts of
information into smaller, more usable chunks, and that we possess many cognitive tools that
allow us to efficiently navigate our environments. This research has also illuminated many
social factors that can influence these judgments and predictions. Not only can our past
experiences, expectations, motivations, and moods impact our reasoning, but many of our
decisions and behaviors are driven by unconscious processes and implicit attitudes we are
unaware of having. The goal of this module is to highlight the mental tools we use to navigate
and make sense of our complex social world, and describe some of the emotional,
motivational, and cognitive factors that affect our reasoning.

Simplifying Our Social World

Consider how much information you come across on any given day; just looking around your
bedroom, there are hundreds of objects, smells, and sounds. How do we simplify all this
information to attend to what is important and make decisions quickly and efficiently? In part,
we do it by forming schemas of the various people, objects, situations, and events we
encounter. A schema is a mental model, or representation, of any of the various things we
come across in our daily lives. A schema (related to the word schematic) is kind of like a mental
blueprint for how we expect something to be or behave. It is an organized body of general
information or beliefs we develop from direct encounters, as well as from secondhand sources.
Rather than spending copious amounts of time learning about each new individual object (e.
g., each new dog we see), we rely on our schemas to tell us that a newly encountered dog
probably barks, likes to fetch, and enjoys treats. In this way, our schemas greatly reduce the
amount of cognitive work we need to do and allow us to “go beyond the information given”
(Bruner, 1957).

We can hold schemas about almost anything—individual people (person schemas), ourselves
(self-schemas), and recurring events (event schemas, or scripts). Each of these types of schemas
is useful in its own way. For example, event schemas allow us to navigate new situations
efficiently and seamlessly. A script for dining at a restaurant would indicate that one should
Social Cognition and Attitudes 222

wait to be seated by the host or hostess, that food should be ordered from a menu, and that
one is expected to pay the check at the end of the meal. Because the majority of dining
situations conform to this general format, most diners just need to follow their mental scripts
to know what to expect and how they should behave, greatly reducing their cognitive workload.

Another important way we simplify our

social world is by employing heuristics,
which are mental shortcuts that reduce
complex problem-solving to more simple,
rule-based decisions. For example, have
you ever had a hard time trying to decide
on a book to buy, then you see one ranked
highly on a book review website? Although
selecting a book to purchase can be a
complicated decision, you might rely on the
“rule of thumb” that a recommendation
from a credible source is likely a safe bet—
so you buy it. A common instance of using
heuristics is when people are faced with
judging whether an object belongs to a
Does the person in this image fit reasonably into your heuristic particular category. For example, you
of a librarian? How representative is he of that category? [Image: would easily classify a pit bull into the
University Library of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, https://goo.gl/ category of “dog.” But what about a coyote?
LxQTuD, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF] Or a fox? A plastic toy dog? In order to make
this classification (and many others),
people may rely on the representativeness heuristic to arrive at a quick decision (Kahneman
& Tversky, 1972, 1973). Rather than engaging in an in-depth consideration of the object’s
attributes, one can simply judge the likelihood of the object belonging to a category, based
on how similar it is to one’s mental representation of that category. For example, a perceiver
may quickly judge a female to be an athlete based on the fact that the female is tall, muscular,
and wearing sports apparel—which fits the perceiver’s representation of an athlete’s
characteristics.

In many situations, an object’s similarity to a category is a good indicator of its membership

in that category, and an individual using the representativeness heuristic will arrive at a correct
judgment. However, when base-rate information (e.g., the actual percentage of athletes in
the area and therefore the probability that this person actually is an athlete) conflicts with
representativeness information, use of this heuristic is less appropriate. For example, if asked
to judge whether a quiet, thin man who likes to read poetry is a classics professor at a
Social Cognition and Attitudes 223

prestigious university or a truck driver, the representativeness heuristic might lead one to
guess he’s a professor. However, considering the base-rates, we know there are far fewer
university classics professors than truck drivers. Therefore, although the man fits the mental
image of a professor, the actual probability of him being one (considering the number of
professors out there) is lower than that of being a truck driver.

In addition to judging whether things belong to particular categories, we also attempt to judge
the likelihood that things will happen. A commonly employed heuristic for making this type
of judgment is called the availability heuristic. People use the availability heuristic to evaluate
the frequency or likelihood of an event based on how easily instances of it come to mind
(Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). Because more commonly occurring events are more likely to be
cognitively accessible (or, they come to mind more easily), use of the availability heuristic can
lead to relatively good approximations of frequency. However, the heuristic can be less reliable
when judging the frequency of relatively infrequent but highly accessible events. For example,
do you think there are more words that begin with “k,” or more that have “k” as the third letter?
To figure this out, you would probably make a list of words that start with “k” and compare it
to a list of words with “k” as the third letter. Though such a quick test may lead you to believe
there are more words that begin with “k,” the truth is that there are 3 times as many words
that have “k” as the third letter (Schwarz et al., 1991). In this case, words beginning with “k”
are more readily available to memory (i.e., more accessible), so they seem to be more
numerous. Another example is the very common fear of flying: dying in a plane crash is
extremely rare, but people often overestimate the probability of it occurring because plane
crashes tend to be highly memorable and publicized.

In summary, despite the vast amount of information we are bombarded with on a daily basis,
the mind has an entire kit of “tools” that allows us to navigate that information efficiently. In
addition to category and frequency judgments, another common mental calculation we
perform is predicting the future. We rely on our predictions about the future to guide our
actions. When deciding what entrée to select for dinner, we may ask ourselves, “How happy
will I be if I choose this over that?” The answer we arrive at is an example of a future prediction.
In the next section, we examine individuals’ ability to accurately predict others’ behaviors, as
well as their own future thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and how these predictions can
impact their decisions.

Making Predictions About the Social World

Whenever we face a decision, we predict our future behaviors or feelings in order to choose
the best course of action. If you have a paper due in a week and have the option of going out
Social Cognition and Attitudes 224

to a party or working on the paper, the decision of what to do rests on a few things: the amount
of time you predict you will need to write the paper, your prediction of how you will feel if you
do poorly on the paper, and your prediction of how harshly the professor will grade it.

In general, we make predictions about others quickly, based on relatively little information.
Research on “thin-slice judgments” has shown that perceivers are able to make surprisingly
accurate inferences about another person’s emotional state, personality traits, and even
sexual orientation based on just snippets of information—for example, a 10-second video
clip (Ambady, Bernieri, & Richeson, 2000; Ambady, Hallahan, & Conner, 1999; Ambady &
Rosenthal, 1993). Furthermore, these judgments are predictive of the target’s future
behaviors. For example, one study found that students’ ratings of a teacher’s warmth,
enthusiasm, and attentiveness from a 30-second video clip strongly predicted that teacher’s
final student evaluations after an entire semester (Ambady & Rosenthal, 1993). As might be
expected, the more information there is available, the more accurate many of these judgments
become (Carney, Colvin, & Hall, 2007).

Because we seem to be fairly adept at

making predictions about others, one
might expect predictions about the self to
be foolproof, given the considerable
amount of information one has about the
self compared to others. To an extent,
research has supported this conclusion.
For example, our own predictions of our
future academic performance are more
accurate than peers’ predictions of our
performance, and self-expressed interests
better predict occupational choice than
career inventories (Shrauger & Osberg,
1981). Yet, it is not always the case that we
hold greater insight into ourselves. While
our own assessment of our personality Although we can be reasonably certain that a winning lottery

traits does predict certain behavioral ticket will make us feel good, we tend to overestimate both how
good we'll feel and for how long. [Image: CC0 Public Domain,
tendencies better than peer assessment of
https://goo.gl/m25gce]
our personality, for certain behaviors, peer
reports are more accurate than self-reports
(Kolar, Funder, & Colvin, 1996; Vazire, 2010). Similarly, although we are generally aware of our
knowledge, abilities, and future prospects, our perceptions are often overly positive, and we
display overconfidence in their accuracy and potential (Metcalfe, 1998). For example, we tend
Social Cognition and Attitudes 225

to underestimate how much time it will take us to complete a task, whether it is writing a
paper, finishing a project at work, or building a bridge—a phenomenon known as the planning
fallacy (Buehler, Griffin, & Ross, 1994). The planning fallacy helps explain why so many college
students end up pulling all-nighters to finish writing assignments or study for exams. The
tasks simply end up taking longer than expected. On the positive side, the planning fallacy
can also lead individuals to pursue ambitious projects that may turn out to be worthwhile.
That is, if they had accurately predicted how much time and work it would have taken them,
they may have never started it in the first place.

The other important factor that affects decision-making is our ability to predict how we will
feel about certain outcomes. Not only do we predict whether we will feel positively or
negatively, we also make predictions about how strongly and for how long we will feel that
way. Research demonstrates that these predictions of one’s future feelings—known as
affective forecasting—are accurate in some ways but limited in others (Gilbert & Wilson,
2007). We are adept at predicting whether a future event or situation will make us feel positively
or negatively (Wilson & Gilbert, 2003), but we often incorrectly predict the strength or duration
of those emotions. For example, you may predict that if your favorite sports team loses an
important match, you will be devastated. Although you’re probably right that you will feel
negative (and not positive) emotions, will you be able to accurately estimate how negative
you’ll feel? What about how long those negative feelings will last?

Predictions about future feelings are influenced by the impact bias : the tendency for a person
to overestimate the intensity of their future feelings. For example, by comparing people’s
estimates of how they expected to feel after a specific event to their actual feelings after the
event, research has shown that people generally overestimate how badly they will feel after
a negative event—such as losing a job—and they also overestimate how happy they will feel
after a positive event—such as winning the lottery (Brickman, Coates, & Janoff-Bullman, 1978).
Another factor in these estimations is the durability bias. The durability bias refers to the
tendency for people to overestimate how long (or, the duration) positive and negative events
will affect them. This bias is much greater for predictions regarding negative events than
positive events, and occurs because people are generally unaware of the many psychological
mechanisms that help us adapt to and cope with negative events (Gilbert, Pinel, Wilson,
Blumberg, & Wheatley, 1998;Wilson, Wheatley, Meyers, Gilbert, & Axsom, 2000).

In summary, individuals form impressions of themselves and others, make predictions about
the future, and use these judgments to inform their decisions. However, these judgments are
shaped by our tendency to view ourselves in an overly positive light and our inability to
appreciate our habituation to both positive and negative events. In the next section, we will
discuss how motivations, moods, and desires also shape social judgment.
Social Cognition and Attitudes 226

Hot Cognition: The Influence of Motivations, Mood, and Desires on

Social Judgment

Although we may believe we are always capable of rational and objective thinking (for example,
when we methodically weigh the pros and cons of two laundry detergents in an unemotional
—i.e., “cold”—manner), our reasoning is often influenced by our motivations and mood. Hot
cognition refers to the mental processes that are influenced by desires and feelings. For
example, imagine you receive a poor grade on a class assignment. In this situation, your ability
to reason objectively about the quality of your assignment may be limited by your anger
toward the teacher, upset feelings over the bad grade, and your motivation to maintain your
belief that you are a good student. In this sort of scenario, we may want the situation to turn
out a particular way or our belief to be the truth. When we have these directional goals, we
are motivated to reach a particular outcome or judgment and do not process information in
a cold, objective manner.

Directional goals can bias our thinking in

many ways, such as leading to motivated
skepticism, whereby we are skeptical of
evidence that goes against what we want
to believe despite the strength of the
evidence (Ditto & Lopez, 1992). For
example, individuals trust medical tests
less if the results suggest they have a
deficiency compared to when the results
suggest they are healthy. Through this
motivated skepticism, people often continue
to believe what they want to believe, even
in the face of nearly incontrovertible
evidence to the contrary.

Motivated skepticism is a bias that can easily impact our views There are also situations in which we do not
of political candidates or issues. It may be more difficult to have wishes for a particular outcome but
objectively evaluate the merits of a political argument if it comes
our goals bias our reasoning, anyway. For
from someone we don't expect to vote for. [Image: Senado
example, being motivated to reach an
Federal, https://goo.gl/slEPEv, CC BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/
accurate conclusion can influence our
VnKlK8]
reasoning processes by making us more
cautious—leading to indecision. In contrast, sometimes individuals are motivated to make a
quick decision, without being particularly concerned about the quality of it. Imagine trying to
Social Cognition and Attitudes 227

choose a restaurant with a group of friends when you’re really hungry. You may choose
whatever’s nearby without caring if the restaurant is the best or not. This need for closure
(the desire to come to a firm conclusion) is often induced by time constraints (when a decision
needs to be made quickly) as well as by individual differences in the need for closure (Webster
& Kruglanski, 1997). Some individuals are simply more uncomfortable with ambiguity than
others, and are thus more motivated to reach clear, decisive conclusions.

Just as our goals and motivations influence our reasoning, our moods and feelings also shape
our thinking process and ultimate decisions. Many of our decisions are based in part on our
memories of past events, and our retrieval of memories is affected by our current mood. For
example, when you are sad, it is easier to recall the sad memory of your dog’s death than the
happy moment you received the dog. This tendency to recall memories similar in valence to
our current mood is known as mood-congruent memory (Blaney, 1986; Bower 1981, 1991;
DeSteno, Petty, Wegener, & Rucker, 2000; Forgas, Bower, & Krantz, 1984; Schwarz, Strack,
Kommer, & Wagner, 1987). 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 (Fiedler, 2001). Furthermore, because the availability of events in our
memory can affect their perceived frequency (the availability heuristic), the biased retrieval
of congruent memories can then impact the subsequent judgments we make (Tversky &
Kahneman, 1973). For example, if you are retrieving many sad memories, you might conclude
that you have had a tough, depressing life.

In addition to our moods influencing the specific memories we retrieve, our moods can also
influence the broader judgments we make. This sometimes leads to inaccuracies when our
current mood is irrelevant to the judgment at hand. In a classic study demonstrating this
effect, researchers found that study participants rated themselves as less-satisfied with their
lives in general if they were asked on a day when it happened to be raining vs. sunny (Schwarz
& Clore, 1983). However, this occurred only if the participants were not aware that the weather
might be influencing their mood. In essence, participants were in worse moods on rainy days
than sunny days, and, if unaware of the weather’s effect on their mood, they incorrectly used
their mood as evidence of their overall life satisfaction.

In summary, our mood and motivations can influence both the way we think and the decisions
we ultimately make. Mood can shape our thinking even when the mood is irrelevant to the
judgment, and our motivations can influence our thinking even if we have no particular
preference about the outcome. Just as we might be unaware of how our reasoning is influenced
by our motives and moods, research has found that our behaviors can be determined by
unconscious processes rather than intentional decisions, an idea we will explore in the next
Social Cognition and Attitudes 228

section.

Automaticity

Do we actively choose and control all our behaviors or do some of these behaviors occur
automatically? A large body of evidence now suggests that many of our behaviors are, in fact,
automatic. A behavior or process is considered automatic if it is unintentional, uncontrollable,
occurs outside of conscious awareness, or is cognitively efficient (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999).
A process may be considered automatic even if it does not have all these features; for example,
driving is a fairly automatic process, but is clearly intentional. Processes can become automatic
through repetition, practice, or repeated associations. Staying with the driving example:
although it can be very difficult and cognitively effortful at the start, over time it becomes a
relatively automatic process, and aspects of it can occur outside conscious awareness.

In addition to practice leading to the

learning of automatic behaviors, some
automatic processes, such as fear
responses, appear to be innate. For
example, people quickly detect negative
stimuli, such as negative words, even when
those stimuli are presented subliminally
(Dijksterhuis & Aarts, 2003; Pratto & John,
1991). This may represent an evolutionarily
adaptive response that makes individuals
more likely to detect danger in their
Our tendency to subtly mimic the people we interact with is environment. Other innate automatic
largely an unconscious behavior. [Image: Susan Sermoneta, processes may have evolved due to their
https://goo.gl/6yQXYp, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF] pro-social outcomes. The chameleon
effect—where individuals nonconsciously
mimic the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of their interaction
partners—is an example of how people may engage in certain behaviors without conscious
intention or awareness (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). For example, have you ever noticed that
you’ve picked up some of the habits of your friends? Over time, but also in brief encounters,
we will nonconsciously mimic those around us because of the positive social effects of doing
so. That is, automatic mimicry has been shown to lead to more positive social interactions
and to increase liking between the mimicked person and the mimicking person.

When concepts and behaviors have been repeatedly associated with each other, one of them
Social Cognition and Attitudes 229

can be primed—i.e., made more cognitively accessible—by exposing participants to the

(strongly associated) other one. For example, by presenting participants with the concept of
a doctor, associated concepts such as “nurse” or “stethoscope” are primed. As a result,
participants recognize a word like “nurse” more quickly (Meyer, & Schvaneveldt, 1971).
Similarly, stereotypes can automatically prime associated judgments and behaviors.
Stereotypes are our general beliefs about a group of people and, once activated, they may
guide our judgments outside of conscious awareness. Similar to schemas, stereotypes involve
a mental representation of how we expect a person will think and behave. For example,
someone’s mental schema for women may be that they’re caring, compassionate, and
maternal; however, a stereotype would be that all women are examples of this schema. As
you know, assuming all people are a certain way is not only wrong but insulting, especially if
negative traits are incorporated into a schema and subsequent stereotype.

In a now classic study, Patricia Devine (1989) primed study participants with words typically
associated with Blacks (e.g., “blues,” “basketball”) in order to activate the stereotype of Blacks.
Devine found that study participants who were primed with the Black stereotype judged a
target’s ambiguous behaviors as being more hostile (a trait stereotypically associated with
Blacks) than nonprimed participants. Research in this area suggests that our social context—
which constantly bombards us with concepts—may prime us to form particular judgments
and influence our thoughts and behaviors.

In summary, there are many cognitive processes and behaviors that occur outside of our
awareness and despite our intentions. Because automatic thoughts and behaviors do not
require the same level of cognitive processing as conscious, deliberate thinking and acting,
automaticity provides an efficient way for individuals to process and respond to the social
world. However, this efficiency comes at a cost, as unconsciously held stereotypes and
attitudes can sometimes influence us to behave in unintended ways. We will discuss the
consequences of both consciously and unconsciously held attitudes in the next section.

Attitudes and Attitude Measurement

When we encounter a new object or person, we often form an attitude toward it (him/her).
An attitude is a “psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity
with some degree of favor or disfavor” (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993, p. 1). In essence, our attitudes
are our general evaluations of things (i.e., do you regard this thing positively or negatively?)
that can bias us toward having a particular response to it. For example, a negative attitude
toward mushrooms would predispose you to avoid them and think negatively of them in other
ways. This bias can be long- or short-term and can be overridden by another experience with
Social Cognition and Attitudes 230

the object. Thus, if you encounter a delicious mushroom dish in the future, your negative
attitude could change to a positive one.

Traditionally, attitudes have been measured through explicit attitude measures, in which
participants are directly asked to provide their attitudes toward various objects, people, or
issues (e.g., a survey).

For example, in a semantic-differential

scale, respondents are asked to provide
evaluations of an attitude object using a
series of negative to positive response
scales—which have something like “unpleasant”
at one end of the scale and “pleasant” at the
other (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957).
In a Likert scale, respondents are asked to
indicate their agreement level with various
evaluative statements, such as, “I believe
that psychology is the most interesting
major” (Likert, 1932). Here, participants
mark their selection between something
like “strongly disagree” and “strongly agree.”
These explicit measures of attitudes can be
used to predict people’s actual behavior, but The explicit attitudes expressed by voters are used to predict
the outcomes of elections, however some people who respond
there are limitations to them. For one thing,
to opinion questions that involve controversial issues may hide
individuals aren’t always aware of their true
their true attitudes. [Image: SueWalkerWhite, https://goo.
attitudes, because they’re either undecided
gl/1jL4WP, CC BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/VnKlK8]
or haven’t given a particular issue much
thought. Furthermore, even when individuals are aware of their attitudes, they might not want
to admit to them, such as when holding a certain attitude is viewed negatively by their culture.
For example, sometimes it can be difficult to measure people’s true opinions on racial issues,
because participants fear that expressing their true attitudes will be viewed as socially
unacceptable. Thus, explicit attitude measures may be unreliable when asking about
controversial attitudes or attitudes that are not widely accepted by society.

In order to avoid some of these limitations, many researchers use more subtle or covert ways
of measuring attitudes that do not suffer from such self-presentation concerns (Fazio & Olson,
2003). An implicit attitude is an attitude that a person does not verbally or overtly express.
For example, someone may have a positive, explicit attitude toward his job; however,
nonconsciously, he may have a lot of negative associations with it (e.g., having to wake up
Social Cognition and Attitudes 231

early, the long commute, the office heating is broken) which results in an implicitly negative
attitude. To learn what a person’s implicit attitude is, you have to use implicit measures of
attitudes. These measures infer the participant’s attitude rather than having the participant
explicitly report it. Many implicit measures accomplish this by recording the time it takes a
participant (i.e., the reaction time) to label or categorize an attitude object (i.e., the person,
concept, or object of interest) as positive or negative. For example, the faster someone
categorizes his or her job (measured in milliseconds) as negative compared to positive, the
more negative the implicit attitude is (i.e., because a faster categorization implies that the two
concepts—“work” and “negative”—are closely related in one’s mind).

One common implicit measure is the Implicit Association Test (IAT;Greenwald & Banaji, 1995;
Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998), which does just what the name suggests, measuring
how quickly the participant pairs a concept (e.g., cats) with an attribute (e.g., good or bad).
The participant’s response time in pairing the concept with the attribute indicates how strongly
the participant associates the two. Another common implicit measure is the evaluative
priming task (Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995), which measures how quickly the
participant labels the valence (i.e., positive or negative) of the attitude object when it appears
immediately after a positive or negative image. The more quickly a participant labels the
attitude object after being primed with a positive versus negative image indicates how
positively the participant evaluates the object.

Individuals’ implicit attitudes are sometimes inconsistent with their explicitly held attitudes.
Hence, implicit measures may reveal biases that participants do not report on explicit
measures. As a result, implicit attitude measures are especially useful for examining the
pervasiveness and strength of controversial attitudes and stereotypic associations, such as
racial biases or associations between race and violence. For example, research using the IAT
has shown that about 66% of white respondents have a negative bias toward Blacks (Nosek,
Banaji, & Greenwald, 2002), that bias on the IAT against Blacks is associated with more
discomfort during interracial interactions (McConnell, & Leibold, 2001), and that implicit
associations linking Blacks to violence are associated with a greater tendency to shoot
unarmed Black targets in a video game (Payne, 2001). Thus, even though individuals are often
unaware of their implicit attitudes, these attitudes can have serious implications for their
behavior, especially when these individuals do not have the cognitive resources available to
override the attitudes’ influence.

Conclusion

Decades of research on social cognition and attitudes have revealed many of the “tricks” and
Social Cognition and Attitudes 232

“tools” we use to efficiently process the limitless amounts of social information we encounter.
These tools are quite useful for organizing that information to arrive at quick decisions. When
you see an individual engage in a behavior, such as seeing a man push an elderly woman to
the ground, you form judgments about his personality, predictions about the likelihood of
him engaging in similar behaviors in the future, as well as predictions about the elderly
woman’s feelings and how you would feel if you were in her position. As the research presented
in this module demonstrates, we are adept and efficient at making these judgments and
predictions, but they are not made in a vacuum. Ultimately, our perception of the social world
is a subjective experience, and, consequently, our decisions are influenced by our experiences,
expectations, emotions, motivations, and current contexts. Being aware of when our
judgments are most accurate, and how our judgments are shaped by social influences,
prepares us to be in a much better position to appreciate, and potentially counter, their effects.
Social Cognition and Attitudes 233

Outside Resources

Video: Daniel Gilbert discussing affective forecasting.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xebnl3_dan-gilbert-on-what-affective-forec_people#.UQlwDx3WLm4

Video: Focus on heuristics.

http://study.com/academy/lesson/heuristics.html

Web: BBC Horizon documentary How to Make Better Decisions that discusses many module
topics (Part 1).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul-FqOfX-t8

Web: Implicit Attitudes Test.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Discussion Questions

1. Describe your event-schema, or script, for an event that you encounter regularly (e.g.,
dining at a restaurant). Now, attempt to articulate a script for an event that you have
encountered only once or a few times. How are these scripts different? How confident are
you in your ability to navigate these two events?

2. Think of a time when you made a decision that you thought would make you very happy
(e.g., purchasing an item). To what extent were you accurate or inaccurate? In what ways
were you wrong, and why do you think you were wrong?

3. What is an issue you feel strongly about (e.g., abortion, death penalty)? How would you
react if research demonstrated that your opinion was wrong? What would it take before
you would believe the evidence?

4. Take an implicit association test at the Project Implicit website (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit).

How do your results match or mismatch your explicit attitudes.
Social Cognition and Attitudes 234

Vocabulary

Affective forecasting
Predicting how one will feel in the future after some event or decision.

Attitude
A psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree
of favor or disfavor.

Automatic
A behavior or process has one or more of the following features: unintentional, uncontrollable,
occurring outside of conscious awareness, and cognitively efficient.

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.

Chameleon effect
The tendency for individuals to nonconsciously mimic the postures, mannerisms, facial
expressions, and other behaviors of one’s interaction partners.

Directional goals
The motivation to reach a particular outcome or judgment.

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.

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.

Explicit attitude
An attitude that is consciously held and can be reported on by the person holding the attitude.

Heuristics
A mental shortcut or rule of thumb that reduces complex mental problems to more simple
Social Cognition and Attitudes 235

rule-based decisions.

Hot cognition
The mental processes that are influenced by desires and feelings.

Impact bias
A bias in affective forecasting in which one overestimates the strength or intensity of emotion
one will experience after some event.

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.

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.

Mood-congruent memory
The tendency to be better able to recall memories that have a mood similar to our current
mood.

Motivated skepticism
A form of bias that can result from having a directional goal in which one is skeptical of evidence
despite its strength because it goes against what one wants to believe.

Need for closure

The desire to come to a decision that will resolve ambiguity and conclude an issue.

Planning fallacy
A cognitive bias in which one underestimates how long it will take to complete a task.

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.

Representativeness heuristic
Social Cognition and Attitudes 236

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.

Schema
A mental model or representation that organizes the important information about a thing,
person, or event (also known as a script).

Social cognition
The study of how people think about the social world.

Stereotypes
Our general beliefs about the traits or behaviors shared by group of people.
Social Cognition and Attitudes 237

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13
Conformity and Obedience
Jerry M. Burger

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. This process was demonstrated in a classic study in which college students deliberately
gave wrong answers to a simple visual judgment task rather than go against the group. Another
reason we conform to the norm is because other people often have information we do not,
and relying on norms can be a reasonable strategy when we are uncertain about how we are
supposed to act. Unfortunately, we frequently misperceive how the typical person acts, which
can contribute to problems such as the excessive binge drinking often seen in college students.
Obeying orders from an authority figure can sometimes lead to disturbing behavior. This
danger was illustrated in a famous study in which participants were instructed to administer
painful electric shocks to another person in what they believed to be a learning experiment.
Despite vehement protests from the person receiving the shocks, most participants continued
the procedure when instructed to do so by the experimenter. The findings raise questions
about the power of blind obedience in deplorable situations such as atrocities and genocide.
They also raise concerns about the ethical treatment of participants in psychology
experiments.

Learning Objectives

• Become aware of how widespread conformity is in our lives and some of the ways each of
us changes our attitudes and behavior to match the norm.

• Understand the two primary reasons why people often conform to perceived norms.

• Appreciate how obedience to authority has been examined in laboratory studies and some
of the implications of the findings from these investigations.

• Consider some of the remaining issues and sources of controversy surrounding Milgram’s
Conformity and Obedience 242

obedience studies.

Introduction

When he was a teenager, my son often enjoyed looking at photographs of me and my wife
taken when we were in high school. He laughed at the hairstyles, the clothing, and the kind
of glasses people wore “back then.” And when he was through with his ridiculing, we would
point out that no one is immune to fashions and fads and that someday his children will
probably be equally amused by his high school photographs and the trends he found so
normal at the time.

Everyday observation confirms that we often adopt the actions and attitudes of the people
around us. Trends in clothing, music, foods, and entertainment are obvious. But our views on
political issues, religious questions, and lifestyles also reflect to some degree the attitudes of
the people we interact with. Similarly, decisions about behaviors such as smoking and drinking
are influenced by whether the people we spend time with engage in these activities.
Psychologists refer to this widespread tendency to act and think like the people around us as
conformity.

Fashion trends serve as good, and sometimes embarrassing, examples of

our own susceptibility to conformity. [Image: bianca francesca, https://goo.

gl/0roq35, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]

Conformity and Obedience 243

Conformity

What causes all this conformity? To start, humans may possess an inherent tendency to imitate
the actions of others. Although we usually are not aware of it, we often mimic the gestures,
body posture, language, talking speed, and many other behaviors of the people we interact
with. Researchers find that this mimicking increases the connection between people and
allows our interactions to flow more smoothly (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999).

Beyond this automatic tendency to imitate others, psychologists have identified two primary
reasons for conformity. The first of these is normative influence. When normative influence
is operating, people go along with the crowd because they are concerned about what others
think of them. We don’t want to look out of step or become the target of criticism just because
we like different kinds of music or dress differently than everyone else. Fitting in also brings
rewards such as camaraderie and compliments.

How powerful is normative influence? Consider a classic study conducted many years ago by
Solomon Asch (1956). The participants were male college students who were asked to engage
in a seemingly simple task. An experimenter standing several feet away held up a card that
depicted one line on the left side and three lines on the right side. The participant’s job was
to say aloud which of the three lines on the right was the same length as the line on the left.
Sixteen cards were presented one at a time, and the correct answer on each was so obvious
as to make the task a little boring. Except for one thing. The participant was not alone. In fact,
there were six other people in the room who also gave their answers to the line-judgment
task aloud. Moreover, although they pretended to be fellow participants, these other
individuals were, in fact, confederates working with the experimenter. The real participant
was seated so that he always gave his answer after hearing what five other “participants” said.
Everything went smoothly until the third trial, when inexplicably the first “participant” gave
an obviously incorrect answer. The mistake might have been amusing, except the second
participant gave the same answer. As did the third, the fourth, and the fifth participant.
Suddenly the real participant was in a difficult situation. His eyes told him one thing, but five
out of five people apparently saw something else.

It’s one thing to wear your hair a certain way or like certain foods because everyone around
you does. But, would participants intentionally give a wrong answer just to conform with the
other participants? The confederates uniformly gave incorrect answers on 12 of the 16 trials,
and 76 percent of the participants went along with the norm at least once and also gave the
wrong answer. In total, they conformed with the group on one-third of the 12 test trials.
Although we might be impressed that the majority of the time participants answered honestly,
Conformity and Obedience 244

most psychologists find it remarkable that so

many college students caved in to the pressure
of the group rather than do the job they had
volunteered to do. In almost all cases, the
participants knew they were giving an incorrect
answer, but their concern for what these other
people might be thinking about them
overpowered their desire to do the right thing.

Variations of Asch’s procedures have been

conducted numerous times (Bond, 2005; Bond
Examples of the cards used in the Asch experiment. How & Smith, 1996). We now know that the findings
powerful is the normative influence? Would you be tempted
are easily replicated, that there is an increase
to give a clearly incorrect answer, like many participants in
the Asch experiment did, to better match the thoughts of
in conformity with more confederates (up to
a group of peers? [Image: Fred the Oyster, https://goo.gl/ about five), that teenagers are more prone to
Gi5mtu, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://goo.gl/zVGXn8] conforming than are adults, and that people
conform significantly less often when they
believe the confederates will not hear their responses (Berndt, 1979; Bond, 2005; Crutchfield,
1955; Deutsch & Gerard, 1955). This last finding is consistent with the notion that participants
change their answers because they are concerned about what others think of them. Finally,
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 (Bond & Smith, 1996). Compared with individualistic cultures, people who
live in collectivist cultures place a higher value on the goals of the group than on individual
preferences. They also are more motivated to maintain harmony in their interpersonal
relations.

The other reason we sometimes go along with the crowd is that people are often a source of
information. Psychologists refer to this process as informational influence. Most of us, most
of the time, are motivated to do the right thing. If society deems that we put litter in a proper
container, speak softly in libraries, and tip our waiter, then that’s what most of us will do. But
sometimes it’s not clear what society expects of us. In these situations, we often rely on
descriptive norms (Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990). That is, we act the way most people—or
most people like us—act. This is not an unreasonable strategy. Other people often have
information that we do not, especially when we find ourselves in new situations. If you have
ever been part of a conversation that went something like this,

“Do you think we should?”

Conformity and Obedience 245

“Sure. Everyone else is doing it.”,

you have experienced the power of informational influence.

However, 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.
A good example of how misperceived norms
can lead to problems is found in research on
binge drinking among college students.
Excessive drinking is a serious problem on
many campuses (Mita, 2009). There are many
reasons why students binge drink, but one
of the most important is their perception of
the descriptive norm. How much students
drink is highly correlated with how much they
believe the average student drinks (Neighbors,
Lee, Lewis, Fossos, & Larimer, 2007).
Unfortunately, students aren’t very good at Efforts to influence people to engage in healthier or more
making this assessment. They notice the sustainable behaviors have benefitted from the informational
boisterous heavy drinker at the party but fail influence. For example, hotels have been able to significantly

to consider all the students not attending the increase the numbers of people who re-use bath towels
(reducing water and energy use) by informing them on signs
party. As a result, students typically
in their rooms that re-using towels is a typical behavior of
overestimate the descriptive norm for
other hotel guests. [Image: Infrogmation of New Orleans,
college student drinking (Borsari & Carey,
https://goo.gl/5P5F0v, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/BRvSA7]
2003; Perkins, Haines, & Rice, 2005). Most
students believe they consume significantly less alcohol than the norm, a miscalculation that
creates a dangerous push toward more and more excessive alcohol consumption. On the
positive side, providing students with accurate information about drinking norms has been
found to reduce overindulgent drinking (Burger, LaSalvia, Hendricks, Mehdipour, & Neudeck,
2011; Neighbors, Lee, Lewis, Fossos, & Walter, 2009).

Researchers have demonstrated the power of descriptive norms in a number of areas.

Homeowners reduced the amount of energy they used when they learned that they were
consuming more energy than their neighbors (Schultz, Nolan, Cialdini, Goldstein, &
Griskevicius, 2007). Undergraduates selected the healthy food option when led to believe that
other students had made this choice (Burger et al., 2010). Hotel guests were more likely to
reuse their towels when a hanger in the bathroom told them that this is what most guests
Conformity and Obedience 246

did (Goldstein, Cialdini, & Griskevicius, 2008). And more people began using the stairs instead
of the elevator when informed that the vast majority of people took the stairs to go up one
or two floors (Burger & Shelton, 2011).

Obedience

Although we may be influenced by the people around us more than we recognize, whether
we conform to the norm is up to us. But sometimes decisions about how to act are not so
easy. Sometimes we are directed by a more powerful person to do things we may not want
to do. Researchers who study obedience are interested in how people react when given an
order or command from someone in a position of authority. In many situations, obedience
is a good thing. We are taught at an early age to obey parents, teachers, and police officers.
It’s also important to follow instructions from judges, firefighters, and lifeguards. And a military
would fail to function if soldiers stopped obeying orders from superiors. But, there is also a
dark side to obedience. In the name of “following orders” or “just doing my job,” people can
violate ethical principles and break laws. More disturbingly, obedience often is at the heart
of some of the worst of human behavior—massacres, atrocities, and even genocide.

It was this unsettling side of obedience

that led to some of the most famous and
most controversial research in the history
of psychology. Milgram (1963, 1965, 1974)
wanted to know why so many otherwise
decent German citizens went along with
the brutality of the Nazi leaders during the
Holocaust. “These inhumane policies may
have originated in the mind of a single
person,” Milgram (1963, p. 371) wrote, “but
they could only be carried out on a massive
scale if a very large number of persons
obeyed orders.”

To understand this obedience, Milgram

conducted a series of laboratory investigations. Photographs of victims of Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. From
1975-79 the Khmer Rouge army obediently carried out orders to
In all but one variation of the basic
execute tens of thousands of civilians. [Image: ...your local
procedure, participants were men recruited connection, https://goo.gl/ut9fvk, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.
from the community surrounding Yale gl/Toc0ZF]
University, where the research was carried
Conformity and Obedience 247

out. These citizens signed up for what they believed to be an experiment on learning and
memory. In particular, they were told the research concerned the effects of punishment on
learning. Three people were involved in each session. One was the participant. Another was
the experimenter. The third was a confederate who pretended to be another participant.

The experimenter explained that the study consisted of a memory test and that one of the
men would be the teacher and the other the learner. Through a rigged drawing, the real
participant was always assigned the teacher’s role and the confederate was always the learner.
The teacher watched as the learner was strapped into a chair and had electrodes attached
to his wrist. The teacher then moved to the room next door where he was seated in front of
a large metal box the experimenter identified as a “shock generator.” The front of the box
displayed gauges and lights and, most noteworthy, a series of 30 levers across the bottom.
Each lever was labeled with a voltage figure, starting with 15 volts and moving up in 15-volt
increments to 450 volts. Labels also indicated the strength of the shocks, starting with “Slight
Shock” and moving up to “Danger: Severe Shock” toward the end. The last two levers were
simply labeled “XXX” in red.

Through a microphone, the teacher administered a memory test to the learner in the next
room. The learner responded to the multiple-choice items by pressing one of four buttons
that were barely within reach of his strapped-down hand. If the teacher saw the correct answer
light up on his side of the wall, he simply moved on to the next item. But if the learner got the
item wrong, the teacher pressed one of the shock levers and, thereby, delivered the learner’s
punishment. The teacher was instructed to start with the 15-volt lever and move up to the
next highest shock for each successive wrong answer.

In reality, the learner received no shocks. But he did make a lot of mistakes on the test, which
forced the teacher to administer what he believed to be increasingly strong shocks. The
purpose of the study was to see how far the teacher would go before refusing to continue.
The teacher’s first hint that something was amiss came after pressing the 75-volt lever and
hearing through the wall the learner say “Ugh!” The learner’s reactions became stronger and
louder with each lever press. At 150 volts, the learner yelled out, “Experimenter! That’s all. Get
me out of here. I told you I had heart trouble. My heart’s starting to bother me now. Get me
out of here, please. My heart’s starting to bother me. I refuse to go on. Let me out.”

The experimenter’s role was to encourage the participant to continue. If at any time the teacher
asked to end the session, the experimenter responded with phrases such as, “The experiment
requires that you continue,” and “You have no other choice, you must go on.” The experimenter
ended the session only after the teacher stated four successive times that he did not want to
continue. All the while, the learner’s protests became more intense with each shock. After 300
Conformity and Obedience 248

volts, the learner refused to answer any

more questions, which led the experimenter
to say that no answer should be considered
a wrong answer. After 330 volts, despite
vehement protests from the learner
following previous shocks, the teacher
heard only silence, suggesting that the
learner was now physically unable to
respond. If the teacher reached 450 volts
—the end of the generator—the experimenter
told him to continue pressing the 450 volt
lever for each wrong answer. It was only
after the teacher pressed the 450-volt lever
three times that the experimenter
announced that the study was over.

If you had been a participant in this

research, what would you have done?
Diagram of the Milgram Experiment in which the "teacher" (T) Virtually everyone says he or she would
was asked to deliver a (supposedly) painful electric shock to the have stopped early in the process. And
"learner"(L). Would this experiment be approved by a review
most people predict that very few if any
board today? [Image: Fred the Oyster, https://goo.gl/ZIbQz1, CC
participants would keep pressing all the
BY-SA 4.0, https://goo.gl/X3i0tq]
way to 450 volts. Yet in the basic procedure
described here, 65 percent of the participants continued to administer shocks to the very end
of the session. These were not brutal, sadistic men. They were ordinary citizens who
nonetheless followed the experimenter’s instructions to administer what they believed to be
excruciating if not dangerous electric shocks to an innocent person. The disturbing implication
from the findings is that, under the right circumstances, each of us may be capable of acting
in some very uncharacteristic and perhaps some very unsettling ways.

Milgram conducted many variations of this basic procedure to explore some of the factors
that affect obedience. He found that obedience rates decreased when the learner was in the
same room as the experimenter and declined even further when the teacher had to physically
touch the learner to administer the punishment. Participants also were less willing to continue
the procedure after seeing other teachers refuse to press the shock levers, and they were
significantly less obedient when the instructions to continue came from a person they believed
to be another participant rather than from the experimenter. Finally, Milgram found that
women participants followed the experimenter’s instructions at exactly the same rate the
men had.
Conformity and Obedience 249

Milgram’s obedience research has been the subject of much controversy and discussion.
Psychologists continue to debate the extent to which Milgram’s studies tell us something
about atrocities in general and about the behavior of German citizens during the Holocaust
in particular (Miller, 2004). Certainly, there are important features of that time and place that
cannot be recreated in a laboratory, such as a pervasive climate of prejudice and
dehumanization. Another issue concerns the relevance of the findings. Some people have
argued that today we are more aware of the dangers of blind obedience than we were when
the research was conducted back in the 1960s. However, findings from partial and modified
replications of Milgram’s procedures conducted in recent years suggest that people respond
to the situation today much like they did a half a century ago (Burger, 2009).

If you had been "a teacher" in the Milgram experiment, would you have behaved
differently than the majority who delivered what they thought were massive 450-
volt shocks? [Image: Sharon Drummond, https://goo.gl/uQZGtZ, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0,

https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]

Another point of controversy concerns the ethical treatment of research participants.

Researchers have an obligation to look out for the welfare of their participants. Yet, there is
little doubt that many of Milgram’s participants experienced intense levels of stress as they
went through the procedure. In his defense, Milgram was not unconcerned about the effects
of the experience on his participants. And in follow-up questionnaires, the vast majority of
his participants said they were pleased they had been part of the research and thought similar
experiments should be conducted in the future. Nonetheless, in part because of Milgram’s
studies, guidelines and procedures were developed to protect research participants from
these kinds of experiences. Although Milgram’s intriguing findings left us with many
Conformity and Obedience 250

unanswered questions, conducting a full replication of his experiment remains out of bounds
by today’s standards.

Social psychologists are fond of saying that we are all influenced by the people around us
more than we recognize. Of course, each person is unique, and ultimately each of us makes
choices about how we will and will not act. But decades of research on conformity and
obedience make it clear that we live in a social world and that—for better or worse—much
of what we do is a reflection of the people we encounter.
Conformity and Obedience 251

Outside Resources

Student Video: Christine N. Winston and Hemali Maher's 'The Milgram Experiment' gives
an excellent 3-minute overview of one of the most famous experiments in the history of
psychology. It was one of the winning entries in the 2015 Noba Student Video Award.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVIUZwkM_G0

Video: An example of information influence in a field setting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yFeaS60nWk

Video: Scenes from a recent partial replication of Milgram’s obedience studies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwqNP9HRy7Y

Video: Scenes from a recent replication of Asch’s conformity experiment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgDx5g9ql1g

Web: Website devoted to scholarship and research related to Milgram’s obedience studies
http://www.stanleymilgram.com

Discussion Questions

1. In what ways do you see normative influence operating among you and your peers? How
difficult would it be to go against the norm? What would it take for you to not do something
just because all your friends were doing it?

2. What are some examples of how informational influence helps us do the right thing? How
can we use descriptive norm information to change problem behaviors?

3. Is conformity more likely or less likely to occur when interacting with other people through
social media as compared to face-to-face encounters?

4. When is obedience to authority a good thing and when is it bad? What can be done to
prevent people from obeying commands to engage in truly deplorable behavior such as
atrocities and massacres?

5. In what ways do Milgram’s experimental procedures fall outside the guidelines for research
with human participants? Are there ways to conduct relevant research on obedience to
authority without violating these guidelines?
Conformity and Obedience 252

Vocabulary

Conformity
Changing one’s attitude or behavior to match a perceived social norm.

Descriptive norm
The perception of what most people do in a given situation.

Informational influence
Conformity that results from a concern to act in a socially approved manner as determined
by how others act.

Normative influence
Conformity that results from a concern for what other people think of us.

Obedience
Responding to an order or command from a person in a position of authority.
Conformity and Obedience 253

References

Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a

unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs, 70 (9, Whole No. 416).

Berndt, T. J. (1979). Developmental changes in conformity to peers and parents. Developmental

Psychology, 15, 608–616.

Bond, R. (2005). Group size and conformity. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 8, 331–354.

Bond, R., & Smith, P. B. (1996). Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch’s
(1952b, 1956) line judgment task. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 111–137.

Borsari, B., & Carey, K. B. (2003). Descriptive and injunctive norms in college drinking: A meta-
analytic integration. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 64, 331–341.

Burger, J. M. (2009). Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today? American Psychologist,
64, 1–11.

Burger, J. M., & Shelton, M. (2011). Changing everyday health behaviors through descriptive
norm manipulations. Social Influence, 6, 69–77.

Burger, J. M., Bell, H., Harvey, K., Johnson, J., Stewart, C., Dorian, K., & Swedroe, M. (2010).
Nutritious or delicious? The effect of descriptive norm information on food choice. Journal
of Social and Clinical Psychology, 29, 228–242.

Burger, J. M., LaSalvia, C. T., Hendricks, L. A., Mehdipour, T., & Neudeck, E. M. (2011). Partying
before the party gets started: The effects of descriptive norms on pre-gaming behavior.
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 33, 220–227.

Chartrand, T. L., & Bargh, J. A. (1999). The chameleon effect: The perception-behavior link and
social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 893–910.

Cialdini, R. B., Reno, R. R., & Kallgren, C. A. (1990). A focus theory of normative conduct: Recycling
the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 58, 1015–1026.

Crutchfield, R. S. (1955). Conformity and character. American Psychologist, 10, 191–198.

Deutsch, M., & Gerard, H. B. (1955). A study of normative and informational social influences
upon individual judgment. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51, 629–636.

Goldstein, N. J., Cialdini, R. B., & Griskevicius, V. (2008). A room with a viewpoint:Using social
norms to motivate environmental conservation in hotels. Journal of Consumer Research, 35,
472–482.

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Conformity and Obedience 254

Milgram, S. (1965). Some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority. Human

Relations, 18, 57–76.

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,
67, 371.

Miller, A. G. (2004). What can the Milgram obedience experiments tell us about the Holocaust?
Generalizing from the social psychology laboratory. In A. G. Miller (Ed.), The social psychology
of good and evil (pp. 193–239). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Mita, M. (2009). College binge drinking still on the rise. JAMA: Journal of the American Medical
Association, 302, 836–837.

Neighbors, C., Lee, C. M., Lewis, M. A., Fossos, N., & Larimer, M. E. (2007). Are social norms the
best predictor of outcomes among heavy-drinking college students? Journal of Studies on
Alcohol and Drugs, 68, 556–565.

Neighbors, C., Lee, C. M., Lewis, M. A., Fossos, N., & Walter, T. (2009). Internet-based
personalized feedback to reduce 21st-birthday drinking: A randomized controlled trial of
an even-specific prevention intervention. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 77,
51–63.

Perkins, H. W., Haines, M. P., & Rice, R. (2005). Misperceiving the college drinking norm and
related problems: A nationwide study of exposure to prevention information, perceived
norms, and student alcohol misuse. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 66, 470–478.

Schultz, P. W., Nolan, J. M., Cialdini, R. B., Goldstein, N. J., & Griskevicius, V. (2007). The
constructive, destructive, and reconstructive power of social norms. Psychological Science,
18, 429–434.
14
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled
Robert V. Levine

This module introduces several major principles in the process of persuasion. It offers an
overview of the different paths to persuasion. It then describes how mindless processing
makes us vulnerable to undesirable persuasion and some of the “tricks” that may be used
against us.

Learning Objectives

• Recognize the difference between the central and peripheral routes to persuasion.

• Understand the concepts of trigger features, fixed action patterns, heuristics, and mindless
thinking, and how these processes are essential to our survival but, at the same time, leave
us vulnerable to exploitation.

• Understand some common “tricks” persuasion artists may use to take advantage of us.

• Use this knowledge to make you less susceptible to unwanted persuasion.

Introduction

Have you ever tried to swap seats with a stranger on an airline? Ever negotiated the price of
a car? Ever tried to convince someone to recycle, quit smoking, or make a similar change in
health behaviors? If so, you are well versed with how persuasion can show up in everyday life.

Persuasion has been defined as “the process by which a message induces change in beliefs,
attitudes, or behaviors” (Myers, 2011). Persuasion can take many forms. It may, for example,
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 256

differ in whether it targets public compliance or private acceptance, is short-term or long-

term, whether it involves slowly escalating commitments or sudden interventions and, most
of all, in the benevolence of its intentions. When persuasion is well-meaning, we might call it
education. When it is manipulative, it might be called mind control (Levine, 2003).

Whatever the content, however, there is a similarity to the form of the persuasion process
itself. As the advertising commentator Sid Bernstein once observed, “Of course, you sell
candidates for political office the same way you sell soap or sealing wax or whatever; because,
when you get right down to it, that’s the only way anything is sold” (Levine, 2003).

Persuasion is one of the most studied of all social psychology phenomena. This module
provides an introduction to several of its most important components.

The instruments of persuasion work the same for selling products or

politicians. [Image: if winter ends, https://goo.gl/BxiDC0, CC BY-NC 2.0, https://

goo.gl/VnKlK8]

Two Paths to Persuasion

Persuasion theorists distinguish between the central and peripheral routes to persuasion
(Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The central route employs direct, relevant, logical messages. This
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 257

method rests on the assumption that the audience is motivated, will think carefully about
what is presented, and will react on the basis of your arguments. The central route is intended
to produce enduring agreement. For example, you might decide to vote for a particular political
candidate after hearing her speak and finding her logic and proposed policies to be convincing.

The peripheral route, on the other hand, relies on superficial cues that have little to do with
logic. The peripheral approach is the salesman’s way of thinking. It requires a target who isn’t
thinking carefully about what you are saying. It requires low effort from the target and often
exploits rule-of-thumb heuristics that trigger mindless reactions (see below). It may be
intended to persuade you to do something you do not want to do and might later be sorry
you did. Advertisements, for example, may show celebrities, cute animals, beautiful scenery,
or provocative sexual images that have nothing to do with the product. The peripheral
approach is also common in the darkest of persuasion programs, such as those of dictators
and cult leaders. Returning to the example of voting, you can experience the peripheral route
in action when you see a provocative, emotionally charged political advertisement that tugs
at you to vote a particular way.

Triggers and Fixed Action Patterns

The central route emphasizes objective communication of information. The peripheral route
relies on psychological techniques. These techniques may take advantage of a target’s not
thinking carefully about the message. The process mirrors a phenomenon in animal behavior
known as fixed action patterns (FAPs). These are sequences of behavior that occur in exactly
the same fashion, in exactly the same order, every time they’re elicited. Cialdini (2008)
compares it to a prerecorded tape that is turned on and, once it is, always plays to its finish.
He describes it is as if the animal were turning on a tape recorder (Cialdini, 2008). There is the
feeding tape, the territorial tape, the migration tape, the nesting tape, the aggressive tape—
each sequence ready to be played when a situation calls for it.

In humans fixed action patterns include many of the activities we engage in while mentally
on "auto-pilot." These behaviors are so automatic that it is very difficult to control them. If
you ever feed a baby, for instance, nearly everyone mimics each bite the baby takes by opening
and closing their own mouth! If two people near you look up and point you will automatically
look up yourself. We also operate in a reflexive, non-thinking way when we make many
decisions. We are more likely, for example, to be less critical about medical advice dispensed
from a doctor than from a friend who read an interesting article on the topic in a popular
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 258

magazine.

A notable characteristic of fixed action patterns is how they are activated. At first glance, it
appears the animal is responding to the overall situation. For example, the maternal tape
appears to be set off when a mother sees her hungry baby, or the aggressive tape seems to
be activated when an enemy invades the animal’s territory. It turns out, however, that the on/
off switch may actually be controlled by a specific, minute detail of the situation—maybe a
sound or shape or patch of color. These are the hot buttons of the biological world—what
Cialdini refers to as “trigger features” and biologists call “releasers.”

Humans are not so different. Take the

example of a study conducted on various
ways to promote a campus bake sale for
charity (Levine, 2003). Simply displaying
the cookies and other treats to passersby
did not generate many sales (only 2 out of
30 potential customers made a purchase).
In an alternate condition, however, when
potential customers were asked to "buy a
cookie for a good cause" the number rose
to 12 out of 30. It seems that the phrase "a
good cause" triggered a willingness to act.
In fact, when the phrase "a good cause" was
paired with a locally-recognized charity
(known for its food-for-the-homeless
Certain triggers can cause people to switch into an automatic program) the numbers held steady at 14
pattern of behavior. In an experiment, potential customers were out of 30. When a fictional good cause was
more easily persuaded to buy when they heard the words "for used instead (the make believe "Levine
a good cause." [Image: joelorama, https://goo.gl/FLXszT, CC BY-
House") still 11 out of 30 potential
NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]
customers made purchases and not one
asked about the purpose or nature of the
cause. The phrase "for a good cause" was an influential enough hot button that the exact
cause didn't seem to matter.

The effectiveness of peripheral persuasion relies on our frequent reliance on these sorts of
fixed action patterns and trigger features. These mindless, rules-of-thumb are generally
effective shortcuts for coping with the overload of information we all must confront. They
serve as heuristics—mental shortcuts-- that enable us to make decisions and solve problems
quickly and efficiently. They also, however, make us vulnerable to uninvited exploitation
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 259

through the peripheral route of persuasion.

The Source of Persuasion: The Triad of Trustworthiness

Effective persuasion requires trusting the source of the communication. Studies have
identified three characteristics that lead to trust: perceived authority, honesty, and likability.

When the source appears to have any or all of these characteristics, people not only are more
willing to agree to their request but are willing to do so without carefully considering the facts.
We assume we are on safe ground and are happy to shortcut the tedious process of informed
decision making. As a result, we are more susceptible to messages and requests, no matter
their particular content or how peripheral they may be.

Authority

From earliest childhood, we learn to rely on authority figures for sound decision making
because their authority signifies status and power, as well as expertise. These two facets often
work together. Authorities such as parents and teachers are not only our primary sources of
wisdom while we grow up, but they control us and our access to the things we want. In
addition, we have been taught to believe that respect for authority is a moral virtue. As adults,
it is natural to transfer this respect to society’s designated authorities, such as judges, doctors,
bosses, and religious leaders. We assume their positions give them special access to
information and power. Usually we are correct, so that our willingness to defer to authorities
becomes a convenient shortcut to sound decision making. Uncritical trust in authority may,
however, lead to bad decisions. Perhaps the most famous study ever conducted in social
psychology demonstrated that, when conditions were set up just so, two-thirds of a sample
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 260

of psychologically normal men were willing to administer potentially lethal shocks to a stranger
when an apparent authority in a laboratory coat ordered them to do so (Milgram, 1974; Burger,
2009).

Uncritical trust in authority can be problematic for several reasons. First, even if the source
of the message is a legitimate, well-intentioned authority, they may not always be correct.
Second, when respect for authority becomes mindless, expertise in one domain may be
confused with expertise in general. To assume there is credibility when a successful actor
promotes a cold remedy, or when a psychology professor offers his views about politics, can
lead to problems. Third, the authority may not be legitimate. It is not difficult to fake a college
degree or professional credential or to buy an official-looking badge or uniform.

Honesty

Honesty is the moral dimension of trustworthiness. Persuasion professionals have long

understood how critical it is to their efforts. Marketers, for example, dedicate exorbitant
resources to developing and maintaining an image of honesty. A trusted brand or company
name becomes a mental shortcut for consumers. It is estimated that some 50,000 new
products come out each year. Forrester
Research, a marketing research company,
calculates that children have seen almost
six million ads by the age of 16. An
established brand name helps us cut
through this volume of information. It
signals we are in safe territory. “The real
suggestion to convey,” advertising leader
Theodore MacManus observed in 1910, “is
that the man manufacturing the product is
an honest man, and the product is an
honest product, to be preferred above all
others” (Fox, 1997).

Likability
People tend to favor products that are associated with people
they like. This is the key ingredient to celebrity endorsements.
While there are a lot of factors that can contribute to likability,
If we know that celebrities aren’t really
being physically attractive is one of the most influential. [Image: experts, and that they are being paid to say
DFID, https://goo.gl/KfFvvi, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/ what they’re saying, why do their
Toc0ZF] endorsements sell so many products?
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 261

Ultimately, it is because we like them. More than any single quality, we trust people we like.
Roger Ailes, a public relations adviser to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, observed:
“If you could master one element of personal communication that is more powerful than
anything . . . it is the quality of being likable. I call it the magic bullet, because if your audience
likes you, they’ll forgive just about everything else you do wrong. If they don’t like you, you
can hit every rule right on target and it doesn’t matter.”

The mix of qualities that make a person likable are complex and often do not generalize from
one situation to another. One clear finding, however, is that physically attractive people tend
to be liked more. In fact, we prefer them to a disturbing extent: Various studies have shown
we perceive attractive people as smarter, kinder, stronger, more successful, more socially
skilled, better poised, better adjusted, more exciting, more nurturing, and, most important,
of higher moral character. All of this is based on no other information than their physical
appearance (e.g., Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972).

Manipulating the Perception of Trustworthiness

The perception of trustworthiness is highly susceptible to manipulation. Levine (2003) lists

some of the most common psychological strategies that are used to achieve this effect:

Testimonials and Endorsement

This technique employs someone who people already trust to testify about the product or
message being sold. The technique goes back to the earliest days of advertising when satisfied
customers might be shown describing how a patent medicine cured their life-long battle with
“nerves” or how Dr. Scott’s Electric Hair Brush healed their baldness (“My hair (was) falling out,
and I was rapidly becoming bald, but since using the brush a thick growth of hair has made
its appearance, quite equal to that I had before previous to its falling out,” reported a satisfied
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 262

customer in an 1884 ad for the product). Similarly, Kodak had Prince Henri D’Orleans and
others endorse the superior quality of their camera (“The results are marvellous[sic]. The
enlargements which you sent me are superb,“ stated Prince Henri D’Orleans in a 1888 ad).

Celebrity endorsements are a frequent feature in commercials aimed at children. The practice
has aroused considerable ethical concern, and research shows the concern is warranted. In
a study funded by the Federal Trade Commission, more than 400 children ages 8 to 14 were
shown one of various commercials for a model racing set. Some of the commercials featured
an endorsement from a famous race car driver, some included real racing footage, and others
included neither. Children who watched the celebrity endorser not only preferred the toy cars
more but were convinced the endorser was an expert about the toys. This held true for children
of all ages. In addition, they believed the toy race cars were bigger, faster, and more complex
than real race cars they saw on film. They were also less likely to believe the commercial was
staged (Ross et al., 1984).

Presenting the Message as Education

The message may be framed as objective information. Salespeople, for example, may try to
convey the impression they are less interested in selling a product than helping you make the
best decision. The implicit message is that being informed is in everyone’s best interest,
because they are confident that when you understand what their product has to offer that
you will conclude it is the best choice. Levine (2003) describes how, during training for a job
as a used car salesman, he was instructed: “If the customer tells you they do not want to be
bothered by a salesperson, your response is ‘I’m not a salesperson, I’m a product consultant.
I don’t give prices or negotiate with you. I’m simply here to show you our inventory and help
you find a vehicle that will fit your needs.’”

Word of Mouth

Imagine you read an ad that claims a new restaurant has the best food in your city. Now,
imagine a friend tells you this new restaurant has the best food in the city. Who are you more
likely to believe? Surveys show we turn to people around us for many decisions. A 1995 poll
found that 70% of Americans rely on personal advice when selecting a new doctor. The same
poll found that 53% of moviegoers are influenced by the recommendation of a person they
know. In another survey, 91% said they’re likely to use another person’s recommendation
when making a major purchase.

Persuasion professionals may exploit these tendencies. Often, in fact, they pay for the surveys.
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 263

Using this data, they may try to disguise their message as word of mouth from your peers.
For example, Cornerstone Promotion, a leading marketing firm that advertises itself as under-
the-radar marketing specialists, sometimes hires children to log into chat rooms and pretend
to be fans of one of their clients or pays students to throw parties where they subtly circulate
marketing material among their classmates.

The Maven

More persuasive yet, however, is to involve peers face-to-face. Rather than over-investing in
formal advertising, businesses and organizations may plant seeds at the grassroots level
hoping that consumers themselves will then spread the word to each other. The seeding
process begins by identifying so-called information hubs—individuals the marketers believe
can and will reach the most other people.

The seeds may be planted with established opinion leaders. Software companies, for example,
give advance copies of new computer programs to professors they hope will recommend it
to students and colleagues. Pharmaceutical companies regularly provide travel expenses and
speaking fees to researchers willing to lecture to health professionals about the virtues of
their drugs. Hotels give travel agents free weekends at their resorts in the hope they’ll later
recommend them to clients seeking advice.

There is a Yiddish word, maven, which refers to a person who’s an expert or a connoisseur,
as in a friend who knows where to get the best price on a sofa or the co-worker you can turn
to for advice about where to buy a computer. They (a) know a lot of people, (b) communicate
a great deal with people, (c) are more likely than others to be asked for their opinions, and (d)
enjoy spreading the word about what they know and think. Most important of all, they are
trusted. As a result, mavens are often targeted by persuasion professionals to help spread
their message.

Other Tricks of Persuasion

There are many other mindless, mental shortcuts—heuristics and fixed action patterns—that
leave us susceptible to persuasion. A few examples:

• "Free Gifts" & Reciprocity

• Social Proof

• Getting a Foot-in-the-Door
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 264

• A Door-in-the-Face

• "And That's Not All"

• The Sunk Cost Trap

• Scarcity & Psychological Reactance

Reciprocity

“There is no duty more indispensable than that of returning a kindness,” wrote Cicero. Humans
are motivated by a sense of equity and fairness. When someone does something for us or
gives us something, we feel obligated to return the favor in kind. It triggers one of the most
powerful of social norms, the reciprocity rule, whereby we feel compelled to repay, in equitable
value, what another person has given to us.

Gouldner (1960), in his seminal study of the reciprocity rule, found it appears in every culture.
It lays the basis for virtually every type of social relationship, from the legalities of business
arrangements to the subtle exchanges within a romance. A salesperson may offer free gifts,
concessions, or their valuable time in order to get us to do something for them in return. For
example, if a colleague helps you when you’re busy with a project, you might feel obliged to
support her ideas for improving team processes. You might decide to buy more from a supplier
if they have offered you an aggressive discount. Or, you might give money to a charity
fundraiser who has given you a flower in the street (Cialdini, 2008; Levine, 2003).

Social Proof

If everyone is doing it, it must be right. People are more likely to work late if others on their
team are doing the same, to put a tip in a jar that already contains money, or eat in a restaurant
that is busy. This principle derives from two extremely powerful social forces—social
comparison and conformity. We compare our behavior to what others are doing and, if there
is a discrepancy between the other person and ourselves, we feel pressure to change (Cialdini,
2008).

The principle of social proof is so common that it easily passes unnoticed. Advertisements,
for example, often consist of little more than attractive social models appealing to our desire
to be one of the group. For example, the German candy company Haribo suggests that when
you purchase their products you are joining a larger society of satisfied customers: “Kids and
grown-ups love it so-- the happy world of Haribo”. Sometimes social cues are presented with
such specificity that it is as if the target is being manipulated by a puppeteer—for example,
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 265

the laugh tracks on situation comedies that

instruct one not only when to laugh but
how to laugh. Studies find these techniques
work. Fuller and Skeehy-Skeffington (1974),
for example, found that audiences laughed
longer and more when a laugh track
accompanied the show than when it did
not, even though respondents knew the
laughs they heard were connived by a
technician from old tapes that had nothing
to do with the show they were watching.
People are particularly susceptible to social
proof (a) when they are feeling uncertain,
and (b) if the people in the comparison
group seem to be similar to ourselves. As While few people really like to wait in long lines, we might do it
P.T. Barnum once said, “Nothing draws a anyway in certain situations. If enough people are willing to wait
crowd like a crowd.” it (usually) is a sign that there is something worth having at the
end. A line in front of a restaurant, movie, etc. is social proof that
will likely influence other people to try. [Image: Bill Badzo, https://
Commitment and Consistency goo.gl/fPdNVn, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]

Westerners have a desire to both feel and be perceived to act consistently. Once we have
made an initial commitment, it is more likely that we will agree to subsequent commitments
that follow from the first. Knowing this, a clever persuasion artist might induce someone to
agree to a difficult-to-refuse small request and follow this with progressively larger requests
that were his target from the beginning. The process is known as getting a foot in the door
and then slowly escalating the commitments.

Paradoxically, we are less likely to say “No” to a large request than we are to a small request
when it follows this pattern. This can have costly consequences. Levine (2003), for example,
found ex-cult members tend to agree with the statement: “Nobody ever joins a cult. They just
postpone the decision to leave.”

A Door in the Face

Some techniques bring a paradoxical approach to the escalation sequence by pushing a

request to or beyond its acceptable limit and then backing off. In the door-in-the-face
(sometimes called the reject-then-compromise) procedure, the persuader begins with a large
request they expect will be rejected. They want the door to be slammed in their face. Looking
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 266

forlorn, they now follow this with a smaller request, which, unknown to the customer, was
their target all along.

In one study, for example, Mowen and Cialdini (1980), posing as representatives of the fictitious
“California Mutual Insurance Co.,” asked university students walking on campus if they’d be
willing to fill out a survey about safety in the home or dorm. The survey, students were told,
would take about 15 minutes. Not surprisingly, most of the students declined—only one out
of four complied with the request. In another condition, however, the researchers door-in-
the-faced them by beginning with a much larger request. “The survey takes about two hours,”
students were told. Then, after the subject declined to participate, the experimenters retreated
to the target request: “. . . look, one part of the survey is particularly important and is fairly
short. It will take only 15 minutes to administer.” Almost twice as many now complied.

And That’s Not All!

The that’s-not-all technique also begins with the salesperson asking a high price. This is
followed by several seconds’ pause during which the customer is kept from responding. The
salesperson then offers a better deal by either lowering the price or adding a bonus product.
That’s-not-all is a variation on door-in-the-face. Whereas the latter begins with a request that
will be rejected, however, that’s-not-all gains its influence by putting the customer on the
fence, allowing them to waver and then offering them a comfortable way off.

Burger (1986) demonstrated the technique in a series of field experiments. In one study, for
example, an experimenter-salesman told customers at a student bake sale that cupcakes cost
75 cents. As this price was announced, another salesman held up his hand and said, “Wait a
second,” briefly consulted with the first salesman, and then announced (“that’s-not-all”) that
the price today included two cookies. In a control condition, customers were offered the
cupcake and two cookies as a package for 75 cents right at the onset. The bonus worked
magic: Almost twice as many people bought cupcakes in the that’s-not-all condition (73%)
than in the control group (40%).

The Sunk Cost Trap

Sunk cost is a term used in economics referring to nonrecoverable investments of time or

money. The trap occurs when a person’s aversion to loss impels them to throw good money
after bad, because they don’t want to waste their earlier investment. This is vulnerable to
manipulation. The more time and energy a cult recruit can be persuaded to spend with the
group, the more “invested” they will feel, and, consequently, the more of a loss it will feel to
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 267

leave that group. Consider the advice of billionaire investor Warren Buffet: “When you find
yourself in a hole, the best thing you can do is stop digging” (Levine, 2003).

Scarcity and Psychological Reactance

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
(Cialdini, 2008). Anyone who has encountered
a willful child is familiar with this principle.
In a classic study, Brehm & Weinraub
(1977), for example, placed 2-year-old boys
in a room with a pair of equally attractive
toys. One of the toys was placed next to a
plexiglass wall; the other was set behind
the plexiglass. For some boys, the wall was
1 foot high, which allowed the boys to easily
reach over and touch the distant toy. Given
this easy access, they showed no particular
People may be more attracted to an opportunity when supplies preference for one toy or the other. For
or time is limited. [Image: Peter Rukavina, https://goo.gl/
other boys, however, the wall was a
KQ2LmT, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]
formidable 2 feet high, which required
them to walk around the barrier to touch
the toy. When confronted with this wall of inaccessibility, the boys headed directly for the
forbidden fruit, touching it three times as quickly as the accessible toy.

Research shows that much of that 2-year-old remains in adults, too. People resent being
controlled. When a person seems too pushy, we get suspicious, annoyed, often angry, and
yearn to retain our freedom of choice more than before. Brehm (1966) labeled this the principle
of psychological reactance.

The most effective way to circumvent psychological reactance is to first get a foot in the door
and then escalate the demands so gradually that there is seemingly nothing to react against.
Hassan (1988), who spent many years as a higher-up in the “Moonies” cult, describes how
they would shape behaviors subtly at first, then more forcefully. The material that would make
up the new identity of a recruit was doled out gradually, piece by piece, only as fast as the
person was deemed ready to assimilate it. The rule of thumb was to “tell him only what he
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 268

can accept.” He continues: “Don’t sell them [the converts] more than they can handle . . . . If
a recruit started getting angry because he was learning too much about us, the person working
on him would back off and let another member move in .....”

Defending Against Unwelcome Persuasion

The most commonly used approach to help people defend against unwanted persuasion is
known as the “inoculation” method. Research has shown that people who are subjected to
weak versions of a persuasive message are less vulnerable to stronger versions later on, in
much the same way that being exposed to small doses of a virus immunizes you against full-
blown attacks. In a classic study by McGuire (1964), subjects were asked to state their opinion
on an issue. They were then mildly attacked for their position and then given an opportunity
to refute the attack. When later confronted by a powerful argument against their initial
opinion, these subjects were more resistant than were a control group. In effect, they
developed defenses that rendered them immune.

Sagarin and his colleagues have developed a more aggressive version of this technique that
they refer to as “stinging” (Sagarin, Cialdini, Rice, & Serna, 2002). Their studies focused on the
popular advertising tactic whereby well-known authority figures are employed to sell products
they know nothing about, for example, ads showing a famous astronaut pontificating on Rolex
watches. In a first experiment, they found that simply forewarning people about the
deviousness of these ads had little effect on peoples’ inclination to buy the product later. Next,
they stung the subjects. This time, they were immediately confronted with their gullibility.
“Take a look at your answer to the first question. Did you find the ad to be even somewhat
convincing? If so, then you got fooled. ... Take a look at your answer to the second question.
Did you notice that this ‘stockbroker’ was a fake?” They were then asked to evaluate a new set
of ads. The sting worked. These subjects were not only more likely to recognize the
manipulativeness of deceptive ads; they were also less likely to be persuaded by them.

Anti-vulnerability trainings such as these can be helpful. Ultimately, however, the most
effective defense against unwanted persuasion is to accept just how vulnerable we are. One
must, first, accept that it is normal to be vulnerable and, second, to learn to recognize the
danger signs when we are falling prey. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.

Conclusion

This module has provided a brief introduction to the psychological processes and subsequent
“tricks” involved in persuasion. It has emphasized the peripheral route of persuasion because
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 269

this is when we are most vulnerable to psychological manipulation. These vulnerabilities are
side effects of “normal” and usually adaptive psychological processes. Mindless heuristics
offer shortcuts for coping with a hopelessly complicated world. They are necessities for human
survival. All, however, underscore the dangers that accompany any mindless thinking.
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 270

Outside Resources

Book: Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably irrational. New York, NY: Harper.

Book: Cialdini, R. B. (2008). Influence: Science and practice (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and
Bacon.

Book: Gass, R., & Seiter, J. (2010). Persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining (4th
ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Book: Kahneman, D. (2012). Thinking fast and slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Book: Levine, R. (2006). The power of persuasion: how we\'re bought and sold. Hoboken,
NJ: Wiley
http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Persuasion-Were-Bought/dp/0471763179

Book: Tavris, C., & Aronson, E. (2011). Mistakes were made (but not by me). New York, NY:
Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Student Video 1: Kyle Ball and Brandon Do's 'Principles of Persuasion'. This is a student-
made video highlighting 6 key principles of persuasion that we encounter in our everyday
lives. It was one of the winning entries in the 2015 Noba Student Video Award.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orkt0wiEGt4

Student Video 2: 'Persuasion', created by Jake Teeny and Ben Oliveto, compares the central
and peripheral routes to persuasion and also looks at how techniques of persuasion such
as Scarcity and Social Proof influence our consumer choices. It was one of the winning
entries in the 2015 Noba Student Video Award.
https://vimeo.com/123205124

Student Video 3: 'Persuasion in Advertising' is a humorous look at the techniques used by

companies to try to convince us to buy their products. The video was created by the team
of Edward Puckering, Chris Cameron, and Kevin Smith. It was one of the winning entries
in the 2015 Noba Student Video Award.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-UnkWGCKzU

Video: A brief, entertaining interview with the celebrity pickpocket shows how easily we
can be fooled. See A Pickpocket’s Tale at
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 271

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/01/video-the-art-of-pickpocketing.html

Video: Cults employ extreme versions of many of the principles in this module. An excellent
documentary tracing the history of the Jonestown cult is the PBS “American Experience”
production, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/introduction/jonestown-introduction/

Video: Philip Zimbardo’s now-classic video, Quiet Rage, offers a powerful, insightful
description of his famous Stanford prison study
http://www.prisonexp.org/documentary.htm

Video: The documentary Outfoxed provides an excellent example of how persuasion can
be masked as news and education.
http://www.outfoxed.org/

Video: The video, The Science of Countering Terrorism: Psychological Perspectives, a talk
by psychologist Fathali Moghaddam, is an excellent introduction to the process of terrorist
recruitment and thinking
http://sciencestage.com/v/32330/fathali-moghaddam-science-cafe-the-science-of-counterin­
g-terrorism-psychological-perspectives.html

Discussion Questions

1. Imagine you are commissioned to create an ad to sell a new beer. Can you give an example
of an ad that would rely on the central route? Can you give an example of an ad that would
rely on the peripheral route?

2. The reciprocity principle can be exploited in obvious ways, such as giving a customer a free
sample of a product. Can you give an example of a less obvious way it might be exploited?
What is a less obvious way that a cult leader might use it to get someone under his or her
grip?

3. Which “trick” in this module are you, personally, most prone to? Give a personal example
of this. How might you have avoided it?
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 272

Vocabulary

Central route to persuasion

Persuasion that employs direct, relevant, logical messages.

Fixed action patterns (FAPs)

Sequences of behavior that occur in exactly the same fashion, in exactly the same order, every
time they are elicited.

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.

Heuristics
Mental shortcuts that enable people to make decisions and solve problems quickly and
efficiently.

Peripheral route to persuasion

Persuasion that relies on superficial cues that have little to do with logic.

Psychological reactance
A reaction to people, rules, requirements, or offerings that are perceived to limit freedoms.

Social proof
The mental shortcut based on the assumption that, if everyone is doing it, it must be right.

The norm of reciprocity

The normative pressure to repay, in equitable value, what another person has given to us.

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.

The triad of trust

We are most vulnerable to persuasion when the source is perceived as an authority, as honest
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 273

and likable.

Trigger features
Specific, sometimes minute, aspects of a situation that activate fixed action patterns.
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 274

References

Barrett, D. (2010). Supernormal stimuli: How primal urges overran their evolutionary purpose.
New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. New York, NY: Academic Press.

Brehm, S. S., & Weinraub, M. (1977). Physical barriers and psychological reactance: Two-year-
olds’ responses to threats to freedom. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 830–
836.

Burger, J. M. (2009). Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today? American Psychologist,
64(1), 1–11.

Burger, J. M. (1986). Increasing compliance by improving the deal: The that’s-not-all technique.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 277–283.

Cialdini, R. B. (2008). Influence: Science and practice (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Dion, K., Berscheid, E., & Walster, E. (1972). What is beautiful is good. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 24, 285–290

Fox, Stephen (1997). The mirror makers: A history of American advertising and its creators.
Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Fuller, R. G., & Sheehy-Skeffington, A. (1974). Effects of group laughter on responses to

humorous materials: A replication and extension. Psychological Reports, 35, 531–534.

Gouldner, A. W. (1960). The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement. American Sociological

Review, 25, 161–178.

Hassan, S. (1988). Combating cult mind control. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press.

Levine, R. (2003). The power of persuasion: How we’re bought and sold. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Levine, R. (2003). The power of persuasion: How we're bought and sold. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley
& Sons

McGuire, W. (1964). Inducing resistance to persuasion: Some contemporary approaches. In

L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 1, p. 306). New York, NY:
Academic Press.

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Mowen, J. C., & Cialdini, R. B. (1980). On implementing the door-in-the-face compliance

technique in a business context. Journal of Marketing Research, 17, 253–258.

Myers, David (2011). Social psychology (10th ed.). New York, NY: Worth.

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In L.
Persuasion: So Easily Fooled 275

Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 19, pp. 123–205). San Diego,
CA: Academic Press.

Ross, R. P., Campbell, T., Wright, J. C., Huston, A. C., Rice, M. L., & Turk, P. (1984). When celebrities
talk, children listen: An experimental analysis of children’s responses to TV ads with celebrity
endorsement. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 5, 185–202.

Sagarin, B. J., Cialdini, R. B., Rice, W. E., & Serna, S. B. (2002). Dispelling the illusion of
invulnerability: The motivations and mechanisms of resistance to persuasion. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 526–541.
Developmental Psychology
15
Cognitive Development in Childhood
Robert Siegler

This module examines what cognitive development is, major theories about how it occurs,
the roles of nature and nurture, whether it is continuous or discontinuous, and how research
in the area is being used to improve education.

Learning Objectives

• Be able to identify and describe the main areas of cognitive development.

• Be able to describe major theories of cognitive development and what distinguishes them.

• Understand how nature and nurture work together to produce cognitive development.

• Understand why cognitive development is sometimes viewed as discontinuous and

sometimes as continuous.

• Know some ways in which research on cognitive development is being used to improve
education.

Introduction

By the time you reach adulthood you have learned a few things about how the world works.
You know, for instance, that you can’t walk through walls or leap into the tops of trees. You
know that although you cannot see your car keys they’ve got to be around here someplace.
What’s more, you know that if you want to communicate complex ideas like ordering a triple-
shot soy vanilla latte with chocolate sprinkles it’s better to use words with meanings attached
to them rather than simply gesturing and grunting. People accumulate all this useful
Cognitive Development in Childhood 278

knowledge through the process of cognitive development, which involves a multitude of

factors, both inherent and learned.

Cognitive development refers to the

development of thinking across the
lifespan. Defining thinking can be
problematic, because no clear boundaries
separate thinking from other mental
activities. Thinking obviously involves the
higher mental processes: problem solving,
reasoning, creating, conceptualizing, cate­
gorizing, remembering, planning, and so
on. However, thinking also involves other
mental processes that seem more basic
and at which even toddlers are skilled—
such as perceiving objects and events in the
environment, acting skillfully on objects to
obtain goals, and understanding and
producing language. Yet other areas of Cognitive development in childhood is about change. From birth
human development that involve thinking to adolescence a young person's mind changes dramatically in

are not usually associated with cognitive many important ways. [Image: One Laptop per Child, https://

development, because thinking isn’t a goo.gl/L1eAsO, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/9uSnqN]

prominent feature of them—such as

personality and temperament.

As the name suggests, cognitive development is about change. Children’s thinking changes
in dramatic and surprising ways. Consider DeVries’s (1969) study of whether young children
understand the difference between appearance and reality. To find out, she brought an
unusually even-tempered cat named Maynard to a psychology laboratory and allowed the 3-
to 6-year-old participants in the study to pet and play with him. DeVries then put a mask of a
fierce dog on Maynard’s head, and asked the children what Maynard was. Despite all of the
children having identified Maynard previously as a cat, now most 3-year-olds said that he was
a dog and claimed that he had a dog’s bones and a dog’s stomach. In contrast, the 6-year-olds
weren’t fooled; they had no doubt that Maynard remained a cat. Understanding how children’s
thinking changes so dramatically in just a few years is one of the fascinating challenges in
studying cognitive development.

There are several main types of theories of child development. Stage theories, such as Piaget’s
stage theory, focus on whether children progress through qualitatively different stages of
Cognitive Development in Childhood 279

development. Sociocultural theories, such as that of Lev Vygotsky, emphasize how other
people and the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the surrounding culture, influence children’s
development. Information processing theories, such as that of David Klahr, examine the
mental processes that produce thinking at any one time and the transition processes that
lead to growth in that thinking.

At the heart of all of these theories, and indeed of all research on cognitive development, are
two main questions: (1) How do nature and nurture interact to produce cognitive
development? (2) Does cognitive development progress through qualitatively distinct stages?
In the remainder of this module, we examine the answers that are emerging regarding these
questions, as well as ways in which cognitive developmental research is being used to improve
education.

Nature and Nurture

The most basic question about child development is how nature and nurture together shape
development. Nature refers to our biological endowment, the genes we receive from our
parents. Nurture refers to the environments, social as well as physical, that influence our
development, everything from the womb in which we develop before birth to the homes in
which we grow up, the schools we attend, and the many people with whom we interact.

The nature-nurture issue is often presented as an either-or question: Is our intelligence (for
example) due to our genes or to the environments in which we live? In fact, however, every
aspect of development is produced by the interaction of genes and environment. At the most
basic level, without genes, there would be no child, and without an environment to provide
nurture, there also would be no child.

The way in which nature and nurture work together can be seen in findings on visual
development. Many people view vision as something that people either are born with or that
is purely a matter of biological maturation, but it also depends on the right kind of experience
at the right time. For example, development of depth perception, the ability to actively
perceive the distance from oneself to objects in the environment, depends on seeing
patterned light and having normal brain activity in response to the patterned light, in infancy
(Held, 1993). If no patterned light is received, for example when a baby has severe cataracts
or blindness that is not surgically corrected until later in development, depth perception
remains abnormal even after the surgery.

Adding to the complexity of the nature-nurture interaction, children’s genes lead to their
Cognitive Development in Childhood 280

eliciting different treatment from other

people, which influences their cognitive
development. For example, infants’
physical attractiveness and temperament
are influenced considerably by their
genetic inheritance, but it is also the case
that parents provide more sensitive and
affectionate care to easygoing and
attractive infants than to difficult and less
attractive ones, which can contribute to
the infants’ later cognitive development
(Langlois et al., 1995; van den Boom &
Hoeksma, 1994).

Also contributing to the complex interplay

A child that is perceived to be attractive and calm may receive a
different sort of care and attention from adults and as a result
of nature and nurture is the role of
enjoy a developmental advantage. [Image: Cairn 111, https://goo. children in shaping their own cognitive
gl/6RpBVt, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/HEXbAA] development. From the first days out of
the womb, children actively choose to
attend more to some things and less to others. For example, even 1-month-olds choose to
look at their mother’s face more than at the faces of other women of the same age and general
level of attractiveness (Bartrip, Morton, & de Schonen, 2001). Children’s contributions to their
own cognitive development grow larger as they grow older (Scarr & McCartney, 1983). When
children are young, their parents largely determine their experiences: whether they will attend
day care, the children with whom they will have play dates, the books to which they have
access, and so on. In contrast, older children and adolescents choose their environments to
a larger degree. Their parents’ preferences largely determine how 5-year-olds spend time, but
15-year-olds’ own preferences largely determine when, if ever, they set foot in a library.
Children’s choices often have large consequences. To cite one example, the more that children
choose to read, the more that their reading improves in future years (Baker, Dreher, & Guthrie,
2000). Thus, the issue is not whether cognitive development is a product of nature or nurture;
rather, the issue is how nature and nurture work together to produce cognitive development.

Does Cognitive Development Progress Through Distinct Stages?

Some aspects of the development of living organisms, such as the growth of the width of a
pine tree, involve quantitative changes, with the tree getting a little wider each year. Other
changes, such as the life cycle of a ladybug, involve qualitative changes, with the creature
Cognitive Development in Childhood 281

becoming a totally different type of entity after a transition than before (Figure 1). The existence
of both gradual, quantitative changes and relatively sudden, qualitative changes in the world
has led researchers who study cognitive development to ask whether changes in children’s
thinking are gradual and continuous or sudden and discontinuous.

Figure 1: Continuous and discontinuous development. Some researchers see development as a

continuous gradual process, much like a maple tree growing steadily in height and cross-sectional area.
Other researchers see development as a progression of discontinuous stages, involving rapid
discontinuous changes, such as those in the life cycle of a ladybug, separated by longer periods of slow,

gradual change.

The great Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget proposed that children’s thinking progresses through
a series of four discrete stages. By “stages,” he meant periods during which children reasoned
similarly about many superficially different problems, with the stages occurring in a fixed
order and the thinking within different stages differing in fundamental ways. The four stages
that Piaget hypothesized were the sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years), the preoperational
reasoning stage (2 to 6 or 7 years), the concrete operational reasoning stage (6 or 7 to 11
or 12 years), and the formal operational reasoning stage (11 or 12 years and throughout the
rest of life).

During the sensorimotor stage, children’s thinking is largely realized through their perceptions
of the world and their physical interactions with it. Their mental representations are very
limited. Consider Piaget’s object permanence task, which is one of his most famous problems.
If an infant younger than 9 months of age is playing with a favorite toy, and another person
removes the toy from view, for example by putting it under an opaque cover and not letting
the infant immediately reach for it, the infant is very likely to make no effort to retrieve it and
to show no emotional distress (Piaget, 1954). This is not due to their being uninterested in
the toy or unable to reach for it; if the same toy is put under a clear cover, infants below 9
Cognitive Development in Childhood 282

months readily retrieve it (Munakata, McClelland, Johnson, & Siegler, 1997). Instead, Piaget
claimed that infants less than 9 months do not understand that objects continue to exist even
when out of sight.

During the preoperational stage, according to Piaget, children can solve not only this simple
problem (which they actually can solve after 9 months) but show a wide variety of other
symbolic-representation capabilities, such as those involved in drawing and using language.
However, such 2- to 7-year-olds tend to focus on a single dimension, even when solving
problems would require them to consider multiple dimensions. This is evident in Piaget’s
(1952) conservation problems. For example, if a glass of water is poured into a taller, thinner
glass, children below age 7 generally say that there now is more water than before. Similarly,
if a clay ball is reshaped into a long, thin sausage, they claim that there is now more clay, and
if a row of coins is spread out, they claim that there are now more coins. In all cases, the
children are focusing on one dimension, while ignoring the changes in other dimensions (for
example, the greater width of the glass and the clay ball).

Piaget's Sensorimotor and Pre-operational Reasoning stages

Cognitive Development in Childhood 283

Children overcome this tendency to focus on a single dimension during the concrete
operations stage, and think logically in most situations. However, according to Piaget, they
still cannot think in systematic scientific ways, even when such thinking would be useful. Thus,
if asked to find out which variables influence the period that a pendulum takes to complete
its arc, and given weights that they can attach to strings in order to do experiments with the
pendulum to find out, most children younger than age 12, perform biased experiments from
which no conclusion can be drawn, and then conclude that whatever they originally believed
is correct. For example, if a boy believed that weight was the only variable that mattered, he
might put the heaviest weight on the shortest string and push it the hardest, and then conclude
that just as he thought, weight is the only variable that matters (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958).

Finally, in the formal operations period, children attain the reasoning power of mature adults,
which allows them to solve the pendulum problem and a wide range of other problems.
However, this formal operations stage tends not to occur without exposure to formal
education in scientific reasoning, and appears to be largely or completely absent from some
societies that do not provide this type of education.

Although Piaget’s theory has been very influential, it has not gone unchallenged. Many more
recent researchers have obtained findings indicating that cognitive development is

Piaget's Concrete and Formal Operations stages

Cognitive Development in Childhood 284

considerably more continuous than Piaget claimed. For example, Diamond (1985) found that
on the object permanence task described above, infants show earlier knowledge if the waiting
period is shorter. At age 6 months, they retrieve the hidden object if the wait is no longer than
2 seconds; at 7 months, they retrieve it if the wait is no longer than 4 seconds; and so on. Even
earlier, at 3 or 4 months, infants show surprise in the form of longer looking times if objects
suddenly appear to vanish with no obvious cause (Baillargeon, 1987). Similarly, children’s
specific experiences can greatly influence when developmental changes occur. Children of
pottery makers in Mexican villages, for example, know that reshaping clay does not change
the amount of clay at much younger ages than children who do not have similar experiences
(Price-Williams, Gordon, & Ramirez, 1969).

So, is cognitive development fundamentally continuous or fundamentally discontinuous? A

reasonable answer seems to be, “It depends on how you look at it and how often you look.”
For example, under relatively facilitative circumstances, infants show early forms of object
permanence by 3 or 4 months, and they gradually extend the range of times for which they
can remember hidden objects as they grow older. However, on Piaget’s original object
permanence task, infants do quite quickly change toward the end of their first year from not
reaching for hidden toys to reaching for them, even after they’ve experienced a substantial
delay before being allowed to reach. Thus, the debate between those who emphasize
discontinuous, stage-like changes in cognitive development and those who emphasize gradual
continuous changes remains a lively one.

Applications to Education

Understanding how children think and learn has proven useful for improving education. One
example comes from the area of reading. Cognitive developmental research has shown that
phonemic awareness—that is, awareness of the component sounds within words—is a
crucial skill in learning to read. To measure awareness of the component sounds within words,
researchers ask children to decide whether two words rhyme, to decide whether the words
start with the same sound, to identify the component sounds within words, and to indicate
what would be left if a given sound were removed from a word. Kindergartners’ performance
on these tasks is the strongest predictor of reading achievement in third and fourth grade,
even stronger than IQ or social class background (Nation, 2008). Moreover, teaching these
skills to randomly chosen 4- and 5-year-olds results in their being better readers years later
(National Reading Panel, 2000).

Another educational application of cognitive developmental research involves the area of

mathematics. Even before they enter kindergarten, the mathematical knowledge of children
Cognitive Development in Childhood 285

from low-income backgrounds lags far

behind that of children from more
affluent backgrounds. Ramani and
Siegler (2008) hypothesized that this
difference is due to the children in
middle- and upper-income families
engaging more frequently in numerical
activities, for example playing numerical
board games such as Chutes and
Ladders. Chutes and Ladders is a game
with a number in each square; children
start at the number one and spin a
spinner or throw a dice to determine how
far to move their token. Playing this game
seemed likely to teach children about
Activities like playing games that involve working with numbers and
numbers, because in it, larger numbers
spatial relationships can give young children a developmental
are associated with greater values on a
advantage over peers who have less exposure to the same
concepts. [Image: Ben Husmann, https://goo.gl/awOXSw, CC BY 2.0,
variety of dimensions. In particular, the
https://goo.gl/9uSnqN]
higher the number that a child’s token
reaches, the greater the distance the
token will have traveled from the starting point, the greater the number of physical movements
the child will have made in moving the token from one square to another, the greater the
number of number-words the child will have said and heard, and the more time will have
passed since the beginning of the game. These spatial, kinesthetic, verbal, and time-based
cues provide a broad-based, multisensory foundation for knowledge of numerical
magnitudes (the sizes of numbers), a type of knowledge that is closely related to mathematics
achievement test scores (Booth & Siegler, 2006).

Playing this numerical board game for roughly 1 hour, distributed over a 2-week period,
improved low-income children’s knowledge of numerical magnitudes, ability to read printed
numbers, and skill at learning novel arithmetic problems. The gains lasted for months after
the game-playing experience (Ramani & Siegler, 2008; Siegler & Ramani, 2009). An advantage
of this type of educational intervention is that it has minimal if any cost—a parent could just
draw a game on a piece of paper.

Understanding of cognitive development is advancing on many different fronts. One exciting

area is linking changes in brain activity to changes in children’s thinking (Nelson et al., 2006).
Although many people believe that brain maturation is something that occurs before birth,
the brain actually continues to change in large ways for many years thereafter. For example,
Cognitive Development in Childhood 286

a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, which is located at the front of the brain and
is particularly involved with planning and flexible problem solving, continues to develop
throughout adolescence (Blakemore & Choudhury, 2006). Such new research domains, as
well as enduring issues such as nature and nurture, continuity and discontinuity, and how to
apply cognitive development research to education, insure that cognitive development will
continue to be an exciting area of research in the coming years.

Conclusion

Research into cognitive development has shown us that minds don’t just form according to a
uniform blueprint or innate intellect, but through a combination of influencing factors. For
instance, if we want our kids to have a strong grasp of language we could concentrate on
phonemic awareness early on. If we want them to be good at math and science we could
engage them in numerical games and activities early on. Perhaps most importantly, we no
longer think of brains as empty vessels waiting to be filled up with knowledge but as adaptable
organs that develop all the way through early adulthood.
Cognitive Development in Childhood 287

Outside Resources

Book: Frye, D., Baroody, A., Burchinal, M., Carver, S. M., Jordan, N. C., & McDowell, J. (2013).
Teaching math to young children: A practice guide. Washington, DC: National Center for
Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S.
Department of Education.

Book: Goswami, U. G. (2010). The Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Cognitive Development.

New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Book: Kuhn, D., & Siegler, R. S. (Vol. Eds.). (2006). Volume 2: Cognition, perception, and
language. In W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Series Eds.), Handbook of child psychology (6th ed.).
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Book: Miller, P. H. (2011). Theories of developmental psychology (5th ed.). New York: Worth.

Book: Siegler, R. S., & Alibali, M. W. (2004). Children's thinking (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River,
NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Discussion Questions

1. Why are there different theories of cognitive development? Why don’t researchers agree
on which theory is the right one?

2. Do children’s natures differ, or do differences among children only reflect differences in

their experiences?

3. Do you see development as more continuous or more discontinuous?

4. Can you think of ways other than those described in the module in which research on
cognitive development could be used to improve education?
Cognitive Development in Childhood 288

Vocabulary

Chutes and Ladders

A numerical board game that seems to be useful for building numerical knowledge.

Concrete operations stage

Piagetian stage between ages 7 and 12 when children can think logically about concrete
situations but not engage in systematic scientific reasoning.

Conservation problems
Problems pioneered by Piaget in which physical transformation of an object or set of objects
changes a perceptually salient dimension but not the quantity that is being asked about.

Continuous development
Ways in which development occurs in a gradual incremental manner, rather than through
sudden jumps.

Depth perception
The ability to actively perceive the distance from oneself of objects in the environment.

Discontinuous development
Discontinuous development

Formal operations stage

Piagetian stage starting at age 12 years and continuing for the rest of life, in which adolescents
may gain the reasoning powers of educated adults.

Information processing theories

Theories that focus on describing the cognitive processes that underlie thinking at any one
age and cognitive growth over time.

Nature
The genes that children bring with them to life and that influence all aspects of their
development.

Numerical magnitudes
The sizes of numbers.
Cognitive Development in Childhood 289

Nurture
The environments, starting with the womb, that influence all aspects of children’s
development.

Object permanence task

The Piagetian task in which infants below about 9 months of age fail to search for an object
that is removed from their sight and, if not allowed to search immediately for the object, act
as if they do not know that it continues to exist.

Phonemic awareness
Awareness of the component sounds within words.

Piaget’s theory
Theory that development occurs through a sequence of discontinuous stages: the
sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages.

Preoperational reasoning stage

Period within Piagetian theory from age 2 to 7 years, in which children can represent objects
through drawing and language but cannot solve logical reasoning problems, such as the
conservation problems.

Qualitative changes
Large, fundamental change, as when a caterpillar changes into a butterfly; stage theories such
as Piaget’s posit that each stage reflects qualitative change relative to previous stages.

Quantitative changes
Gradual, incremental change, as in the growth of a pine tree’s girth.

Sensorimotor stage
Period within Piagetian theory from birth to age 2 years, during which children come to
represent the enduring reality of objects.

Sociocultural theories
Theory founded in large part by Lev Vygotsky that emphasizes how other people and the
attitudes, values, and beliefs of the surrounding culture influence children’s development.
Cognitive Development in Childhood 290

References

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Baker, L., Dreher, M. J., & Guthrie, J. T., (Eds.). (2000). Engaging young readers: Promoting
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Bartrip, J., Morton, J., & De Schonen, S. (2001). Responses to mother's face in 3-week to 5-
month old infants. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 19, 219–232

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Booth, J. L., & Siegler, R. S. (2006). Developmental and individual differences in pure numerical
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Price-Williams, D. R., Gordon, W., & Ramirez, M. (1969). Skill and conservation: A study of
pottery making children. Developmental Psychology, 1, 769.

Ramani, G. B., & Siegler, R. S. (2008). Promoting broad and stable improvements in low-income
children’s numerical knowledge through playing number board games. Child Development,
79, 375–394.

Scarr, S., & McCartney, K. (1983). How people make their own environments: A theory of
genotype-environment effects. Child Development, 54, 424–435.

Siegler, R. S., & Ramani, G. B. (2009). Playing linear number board games—but not circular
ones—improves low-income preschoolers’ numerical understanding. Journal of Educational
Psychology, 101, 545–560.

van den Boom, D. C., & Hoeksma, J. B. (1994). The effect of infant irritability on mother-infant
interaction: A growth curve analysis. Developmental Psychology, 30, 581–590.
16
Social and Personality Development in
Childhood
Ross Thompson

Childhood social and personality development emerges through the interaction of social
influences, biological maturation, and the child’s representations of the social world and the
self. This interaction is illustrated in a discussion of the influence of significant relationships,
the development of social understanding, the growth of personality, and the development of
social and emotional competence in childhood.

Learning Objectives

• Provide specific examples of how the interaction of social experience, biological maturation,
and the child’s representations of experience and the self provide the basis for growth in
social and personality development.

• Describe the significant contributions of parent–child and peer relationships to the

development of social skills and personality in childhood.

• Explain how achievements in social understanding occur in childhood. Moreover, do

scientists believe that infants and young children are egocentric?

• Describe the association of temperament with personality development.

• Explain what is “social and emotional competence“ and provide some examples of how it
develops in childhood.

Introduction
Social and Personality Development in Childhood 293

“How have I become the kind of person I am today?” Every adult ponders this question from
time to time. The answers that readily come to mind include the influences of parents, peers,
temperament, a moral compass, a strong sense of self, and sometimes critical life experiences
such as parental divorce. Social and personality development encompasses these and many
other influences on the growth of the person. In addition, it addresses questions that are at
the heart of understanding how we develop as unique people. How much are we products of
nature or nurture? How enduring are the influences of early experiences? The study of social
and personality development offers perspective on these and other issues, often by showing
how complex and multifaceted are the influences on developing children, and thus the
intricate processes that have made you the person you are today (Thompson, 2006a).

Understanding social and personality

development requires looking at children
from three perspectives that interact to
shape development. The first is the social
context in which each child lives,
especially the relationships that provide
security, guidance, and knowledge. The
second is biological maturation that
supports developing social and emotional
competencies and underlies temperamental
individuality. The third is children’s
developing representations of themselves
and the social world. Social and
personality development is best understood
as the continuous interaction between
these social, biological, and representational Humans are inherently social creatures. Mostly, we work, play, and
aspects of psychological development. live together in groups. [Image: The Daring Librarian, https://goo.

gl/LmA2pS, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]

Relationships

This interaction can be observed in the development of the earliest relationships between
infants and their parents in the first year. Virtually all infants living in normal circumstances
develop strong emotional attachments to those who care for them. Psychologists believe that
the development of these attachments is as biologically natural as learning to walk and not
simply a byproduct of the parents’ provision of food or warmth. Rather, attachments have
evolved in humans because they promote children’s motivation to stay close to those who
care for them and, as a consequence, to benefit from the learning, security, guidance, warmth,
Social and Personality Development in Childhood 294

and affirmation that close relationships provide (Cassidy, 2008).

Although nearly all infants develop

emotional attachments to their caregivers--
parents, relatives, nannies-- their sense of
security in those attachments varies.
Infants become securely attached when
their parents respond sensitively to them,
reinforcing the infants’ confidence that
their parents will provide support when
needed. Infants become insecurely attached
when care is inconsistent or neglectful;
these infants tend to respond avoidantly,
resistantly, or in a disorganized manner
(Belsky & Pasco Fearon, 2008). Such
insecure attachments are not necessarily
the result of deliberately bad parenting but
One of the first and most important relationships is between are often a byproduct of circumstances. For
mothers and infants. The quality of this relationship has an example, an overworked single mother
effect on later psychological and social development. [Image:
may find herself overstressed and fatigued
Premnath Thirumalaisamy, https://goo.gl/66BROf, CC BY-NC
at the end of the day, making fully-involved
2.0, https://goo.gl/FIlc2e]
childcare very difficult. In other cases, some
parents are simply poorly emotionally equipped to take on the responsibility of caring for a
child.

The different behaviors of securely- and insecurely-attached infants can be observed

especially when the infant needs the caregiver’s support. To assess the nature of attachment,
researchers use a standard laboratory procedure called the “Strange Situation,” which involves
brief separations from the caregiver (e.g., mother) (Solomon & George, 2008). In the Strange
Situation, the caregiver is instructed to leave the child to play alone in a room for a short time,
then return and greet the child while researchers observe the child’s response. Depending on
the child’s level of attachment, he or she may reject the parent, cling to the parent, or simply
welcome the parent—or, in some instances, react with an agitated combination of responses.

Infants can be securely or insecurely attached with mothers, fathers, and other regular
caregivers, and they can differ in their security with different people. The security of
attachment is an important cornerstone of social and personality development, because
infants and young children who are securely attached have been found to develop stronger
friendships with peers, more advanced emotional understanding and early conscience
Social and Personality Development in Childhood 295

development, and more positive self-concepts, compared with insecurely attached children
(Thompson, 2008). This is consistent with attachment theory’s premise that experiences of
care, resulting in secure or insecure attachments, shape young children’s developing concepts
of the self, as well as what people are like, and how to interact with them.

As children mature, parent-child relationships naturally change. Preschool and grade-school

children are more capable, have their own preferences, and sometimes refuse or seek to
compromise with parental expectations. This can lead to greater parent-child conflict, and
how conflict is managed by parents further shapes the quality of parent-child relationships.
In general, children develop greater competence and self-confidence when parents have high
(but reasonable) expectations for children’s behavior, communicate well with them, are warm
and responsive, and use reasoning (rather than coercion) as preferred responses to children’s
misbehavior. This kind of parenting style has been described as authoritative (Baumrind,
2013). Authoritative parents are supportive and show interest in their kids’ activities but are
not overbearing and allow them to make constructive mistakes. By contrast, some less-
constructive parent-child relationships result from authoritarian, uninvolved, or permissive
parenting styles (see Table 1).

Table 1: Comparison of Four Parenting Styles

Parental roles in relation to their children change in other ways, too. Parents increasingly
become mediators (or gatekeepers) of their children’s involvement with peers and activities
outside the family. Their communication and practice of values contributes to children’s
academic achievement, moral development, and activity preferences. As children reach
adolescence, the parent-child relationship increasingly becomes one of “coregulation,” in
which both the parent(s) and the child recognizes the child’s growing competence and
autonomy, and together they rebalance authority relations. We often see evidence of this as
parents start accommodating their teenage kids’ sense of independence by allowing them to
Social and Personality Development in Childhood 296

get cars, jobs, attend parties, and stay out later.

Family relationships are significantly affected by conditions outside the home. For instance,
the Family Stress Model describes how financial difficulties are associated with parents’
depressed moods, which in turn lead to marital problems and poor parenting that contributes
to poorer child adjustment (Conger, Conger, & Martin, 2010). Within the home, parental marital
difficulty or divorce affects more than half the children growing up today in the United States.
Divorce is typically associated with economic stresses for children and parents, the
renegotiation of parent-child relationships (with one parent typically as primary custodian
and the other assuming a visiting relationship), and many other significant adjustments for
children. Divorce is often regarded by children as a sad turning point in their lives, although
for most it is not associated with long-term problems of adjustment (Emery, 1999).

Peer Relationships

Parent-child relationships are not the only

significant relationships in a child’s life.
Peer relationships are also important.
Social interaction with another child who is
similar in age, skills, and knowledge
provokes the development of many social
skills that are valuable for the rest of life
(Bukowski, Buhrmester, & Underwood,
2011). In peer relationships, children learn
how to initiate and maintain social
interactions with other children. They learn
skills for managing conflict, such as turn-
taking, compromise, and bargaining. Play
also involves the mutual, sometimes
complex, coordination of goals, actions,
Peer relationships are particularly important for children. They
and understanding. For example, as
can be supportive but also challenging. Peer rejection may lead
infants, children get their first encounter
to behavioral problems later in life. [Image: Twentyfour Students,
with sharing (of each other’s toys); during
https://goo.gl/3IS2gV, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/jSSrcO]
pretend play as preschoolers they create
narratives together, choose roles, and collaborate to act out their stories; and in primary
school, they may join a sports team, learning to work together and support each other
emotionally and strategically toward a common goal. Through these experiences, children
develop friendships that provide additional sources of security and support to those provided
Social and Personality Development in Childhood 297

by their parents.

However, peer relationships can be challenging as well as supportive (Rubin, Coplan, Chen,
Bowker, & McDonald, 2011). Being accepted by other children is an important source of
affirmation and self-esteem, but peer rejection can foreshadow later behavior problems
(especially when children are rejected due to aggressive behavior). With increasing age,
children confront the challenges of bullying, peer victimization, and managing conformity
pressures. Social comparison with peers is an important means by which children evaluate
their skills, knowledge, and personal qualities, but it may cause them to feel that they do not
measure up well against others. For example, a boy who is not athletic may feel unworthy of
his football-playing peers and revert to shy behavior, isolating himself and avoiding
conversation. Conversely, an athlete who doesn’t “get” Shakespeare may feel embarrassed
and avoid reading altogether. Also, with the approach of adolescence, peer relationships
become focused on psychological intimacy, involving personal disclosure, vulnerability, and
loyalty (or its betrayal)—which significantly affects a child’s outlook on the world. Each of these
aspects of peer relationships requires developing very different social and emotional skills
than those that emerge in parent-child relationships. They also illustrate the many ways that
peer relationships influence the growth of personality and self-concept.

Social Understanding

As we have seen, children’s experience of relationships at home and the peer group
contributes to an expanding repertoire of social and emotional skills and also to broadened
social understanding. In these relationships, children develop expectations for specific people
(leading, for example, to secure or insecure attachments to parents), understanding of how
to interact with adults and peers, and developing self-concept based on how others respond
to them. These relationships are also significant forums for emotional development.

Remarkably, young children begin developing social understanding very early in life. Before
the end of the first year, infants are aware that other people have perceptions, feelings, and
other mental states that affect their behavior, and which are different from the child’s own
mental states. This can be readily observed in a process called social referencing, in which
an infant looks to the mother’s face when confronted with an unfamiliar person or situation
(Feinman, 1992). If the mother looks calm and reassuring, the infant responds positively as if
the situation is safe. If the mother looks fearful or distressed, the infant is likely to respond
with wariness or distress because the mother’s expression signals danger. In a remarkably
insightful manner, therefore, infants show an awareness that even though they are uncertain
about the unfamiliar situation, their mother is not, and that by “reading” the emotion in her
Social and Personality Development in Childhood 298

face, infants can learn about whether the circumstance is safe or dangerous, and how to
respond.

Although developmental scientists used to believe that infants are egocentric—that is, focused
on their own perceptions and experience—they now realize that the opposite is true. Infants
are aware at an early stage that people have different mental states, and this motivates them
to try to figure out what others are feeling, intending, wanting, and thinking, and how these
mental states affect their behavior. They are beginning, in other words, to develop a theory
of mind, and although their understanding of mental states begins very simply, it rapidly
expands (Wellman, 2011). For example, if an 18-month-old watches an adult try repeatedly
to drop a necklace into a cup but inexplicably fail each time, they will immediately put the
necklace into the cup themselves—thus completing what the adult intended, but failed, to
do. In doing so, they reveal their awareness of the intentions underlying the adult’s behavior
(Meltzoff, 1995). Carefully designed experimental studies show that by late in the preschool
years, young children understand that another’s beliefs can be mistaken rather than correct,
that memories can affect how you feel, and that one’s emotions can be hidden from others
(Wellman, 2011). Social understanding grows significantly as children’s theory of mind
develops.

How do these achievements in social understanding occur? One answer is that young children
are remarkably sensitive observers of other people, making connections between their
emotional expressions, words, and behavior to derive simple inferences about mental states
(e.g., concluding, for example, that what Mommy is looking at is in her mind) (Gopnik, Meltzoff,
& Kuhl, 2001). This is especially likely to occur in relationships with people whom the child
knows well, consistent with the ideas of attachment theory discussed above. Growing language
skills give young children words with which to represent these mental states (e.g., “mad,”
“wants”) and talk about them with others. Thus in conversation with their parents about
everyday experiences, children learn much about people’s mental states from how adults talk
about them (“Your sister was sad because she thought Daddy was coming home.”) (Thompson,
2006b). Developing social understanding is, in other words, based on children’s everyday
interactions with others and their careful interpretations of what they see and hear. There
are also some scientists who believe that infants are biologically prepared to perceive people
in a special way, as organisms with an internal mental life, and this facilitates their
interpretation of people’s behavior with reference to those mental states (Leslie, 1994).

Personality

Parents look into the faces of their newborn infants and wonder, “What kind of person will
Social and Personality Development in Childhood 299

this child will become?” They scrutinize

their baby’s preferences, characteristics,
and responses for clues of a developing
personality. They are quite right to do so,
because temperament is a foundation for
personality growth. But temperament
(defined as early-emerging differences in
reactivity and self-regulation) is not the
whole story. Although temperament is
biologically based, it interacts with the
influence of experience from the moment
of birth (if not before) to shape personality
(Rothbart, 2011). Temperamental dispositions
are affected, for example, by the support
level of parental care. More generally,
Although a child's temperament is partly determined by genetics,
environmental influences also contribute to shaping personality. personality is shaped by the goodness of
Positive personality development is supported by a "good fit" fit between the child’s temperamental
between a child's natural temperament, environment and qualities and characteristics of the
experiences. [Image: Thomas Hawk, https://goo.gl/2So40O, CC
environment (Chess & Thomas, 1999). For
BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/FIlc2e]
example, an adventurous child whose
parents regularly take her on weekend
hiking and fishing trips would be a good “fit” to her lifestyle, supporting personality growth.
Personality is the result, therefore, of the continuous interplay between biological disposition
and experience, as is true for many other aspects of social and personality development.

Personality develops from temperament in other ways (Thompson, Winer, & Goodvin, 2010).
As children mature biologically, temperamental characteristics emerge and change over time.
A newborn is not capable of much self-control, but as brain-based capacities for self-control
advance, temperamental changes in self-regulation become more apparent. For example, a
newborn who cries frequently doesn’t necessarily have a grumpy personality; over time, with
sufficient parental support and increased sense of security, the child might be less likely to cry.

In addition, personality is made up of many other features besides temperament. Children’s

developing self-concept, their motivations to achieve or to socialize, their values and goals,
their coping styles, their sense of responsibility and conscientiousness, and many other
qualities are encompassed into personality. These qualities are influenced by biological
dispositions, but even more by the child’s experiences with others, particularly in close
relationships, that guide the growth of individual characteristics.
Social and Personality Development in Childhood 300

Indeed, personality development begins with the biological foundations of temperament but
becomes increasingly elaborated, extended, and refined over time. The newborn that parents
gazed upon thus becomes an adult with a personality of depth and nuance.

Social and Emotional Competence

Social and personality development is built from the social, biological, and representational
influences discussed above. These influences result in important developmental outcomes
that matter to children, parents, and society: a young adult’s capacity to engage in socially
constructive actions (helping, caring, sharing with others), to curb hostile or aggressive
impulses, to live according to meaningful moral values, to develop a healthy identity and sense
of self, and to develop talents and achieve success in using them. These are some of the
developmental outcomes that denote social and emotional competence.

These achievements of social and personality development derive from the interaction of
many social, biological, and representational influences. Consider, for example, the
development of conscience, which is an early foundation for moral development. Conscience
consists of the cognitive, emotional, and social influences that cause young children to create
and act consistently with internal standards of conduct (Kochanska, 2002). Conscience
emerges from young children’s experiences with parents, particularly in the development of
a mutually responsive relationship that motivates young children to respond constructively
to the parents’ requests and expectations. Biologically based temperament is involved, as
some children are temperamentally more capable of motivated self-regulation (a quality called
effortful control) than are others, while some children are dispositionally more prone to the
fear and anxiety that parental disapproval can evoke. Conscience development grows through
a good fit between the child’s temperamental qualities and how parents communicate and
reinforce behavioral expectations. Moreover, as an illustration of the interaction of genes and
experience, one research group found that young children with a particular gene allele (the
5-HTTLPR) were low on measures of conscience development when they had previously
experienced unresponsive maternal care, but children with the same allele growing up with
responsive care showed strong later performance on conscience measures (Kochanska, Kim,
Barry, & Philibert, 2011).

Conscience development also expands as young children begin to represent moral values and
think of themselves as moral beings. By the end of the preschool years, for example, young
children develop a “moral self” by which they think of themselves as people who want to do
the right thing, who feel badly after misbehaving, and who feel uncomfortable when others
misbehave. In the development of conscience, young children become more socially and
Social and Personality Development in Childhood 301

emotionally competent in a manner that provides a foundation for later moral conduct
(Thompson, 2012).

The development of gender and gender

identity is likewise an interaction among
social, biological, and representational
influences (Ruble, Martin, & Berenbaum,
2006). Young children learn about gender
from parents, peers, and others in society,
and develop their own conceptions of the
attributes associated with maleness or
femaleness (called gender schemas). They
also negotiate biological transitions (such
as puberty) that cause their sense of
themselves and their sexual identity to
mature.

Each of these examples of the growth of

social and emotional competence illustrates Social influences such as cultural norms impact children's
interests, dress, style of speech and even life aspirations. [Image:
not only the interaction of social, biological,
Amanda Westmont, https://goo.gl/ntS5qx, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0,
and representational influences, but also
https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]
how their development unfolds over an
extended period. Early influences are important, but not determinative, because the
capabilities required for mature moral conduct, gender identity, and other outcomes continue
to develop throughout childhood, adolescence, and even the adult years.

Conclusion

As the preceding sentence suggests, social and personality development continues through
adolescence and the adult years, and it is influenced by the same constellation of social,
biological, and representational influences discussed for childhood. Changing social
relationships and roles, biological maturation and (much later) decline, and how the individual
represents experience and the self continue to form the bases for development throughout
life. In this respect, when an adult looks forward rather than retrospectively to ask, “what kind
of person am I becoming?”—a similarly fascinating, complex, multifaceted interaction of
developmental processes lies ahead.
Social and Personality Development in Childhood 302

Outside Resources

Web: Center for the Developing Child, Harvard University

http://developingchild.harvard.edu

Web: Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning

http://casel.org

Discussion Questions

1. If parent–child relationships naturally change as the child matures, would you expect that
the security of attachment might also change over time? What reasons would account for
your expectation?

2. In what ways does a child’s developing theory of mind resemble how scientists create,
refine, and use theories in their work? In other words, would it be appropriate to think of
children as informal scientists in their development of social understanding?

3. If there is a poor goodness of fit between a child’s temperament and characteristics of

parental care, what can be done to create a better match? Provide a specific example of
how this might occur.

4. What are the contributions that parents offer to the development of social and emotional
competence in children? Answer this question again with respect to peer contributions.
Social and Personality Development in Childhood 303

Vocabulary

Authoritative
A parenting style characterized by high (but reasonable) expectations for children’s behavior,
good communication, warmth and nurturance, and the use of reasoning (rather than coercion)
as preferred responses to children’s misbehavior.

Conscience
The cognitive, emotional, and social influences that cause young children to create and act
consistently with internal standards of conduct.

Effortful control
A temperament quality that enables children to be more successful in motivated self-
regulation.

Family Stress Model

A description of the negative effects of family financial difficulty on child adjustment through
the effects of economic stress on parents’ depressed mood, increased marital problems, and
poor parenting.

Gender schemas
Organized beliefs and expectations about maleness and femaleness that guide children’s
thinking about gender.

Goodness of fit
The match or synchrony between a child’s temperament and characteristics of parental care
that contributes to positive or negative personality development. A good “fit” means that
parents have accommodated to the child’s temperamental attributes, and this contributes to
positive personality growth and better adjustment.

Security of attachment
An infant’s confidence in the sensitivity and responsiveness of a caregiver, especially when
he or she is needed. Infants can be securely attached or insecurely attached.

Social referencing
The process by which one individual consults another’s emotional expressions to determine
how to evaluate and respond to circumstances that are ambiguous or uncertain.
Social and Personality Development in Childhood 304

Temperament
Early emerging differences in reactivity and self-regulation, which constitutes a foundation
for personality development.

Theory of mind
Children’s growing understanding of the mental states that affect people’s behavior.
Social and Personality Development in Childhood 305

References

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Blackwell
Index

absolute threshold, 65 cerebrum, 39

action potential, 37 chameleon effect, 228
adoption study, 52 chemical senses, 74
affective forecasting, 225 chronic stress, 163
agnosia, 69 Chutes and Ladders, 285
agoraphobia, 182 classical, 91
alogia, 201 cochlea, 71
anhedonia, 157 concrete operational reasoning stage, 281
anhedonia/amotivation, 199 concrete operations stage, 283
anosmia, 75 conditioned compensatory responses, 96
Anxiety, 178 conditioned response, 185
attitude, 229 conditioned response (CR), 92
attributional styles, 163 conditioned stimulus (CS), 92
audition, 70 cones, 69
auditory canal, 71 conformity, 242
auditory hair cells, 71 Confounds, 20
authoritative, 295 Conscience, 300
autobiographical memory, 120 conservation problems, 282
automatic, 228 consolidation, 125
availability heuristic, 223 context, 99
axon, 37 continuous, 281
behavioral genetics, 52 contralateral, 39
binocular disparity, 68 corpus callosum, 39
binocular vision, 68 correlation, 22
Biological vulnerabilities, 179 cue overload principle, 128
blocking, 97 dark adaptation, 69
bottom-up processing, 66 Delusions, 199
brain stem, 38 dendrites, 37
Broca’s Area, 42 dependent variable, 19
catatonia, 199 depth perception, 279
categorize, 101 descriptive norms, 244
central, 256 diagnostic criteria, 201
Central Nervous System, 36 differential threshold, 66
cerebellum, 39 Diffuse Optical Imaging, 43
directional goals, 226 Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
discontinuous., 281 (fMRI), 43
discriminative stimulus, 100 gender schemas, 301
Disorganized behavior, 200 generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), 180
disorganized speech, 200 goal-directed, 103
distinctiveness, 121 goodness of fit, 299
dopamine, 207 grandiosity, 157
dorsal pathway, 69 gustation, 74
durability bias, 225 habit, 103
early adversity, 163 hallucinations, 200
effortful control, 300 heritability coefficient, 54
Electroencephalography (EEG), 43 heuristics, 222
empirical methods, 7 heuristics, 257
encoding, 120 Hot cognition, 226
encoding specificity principle, 127 hypersomnia, 157
engrams, 124 hypotheses, 7
episodic memory, 119 impact bias, 225
episodic memory, 203 Implicit Association Test, 231
ethics, 11 implicit attitude, 230
evaluative priming task, 231 implicit measures of attitudes, 231
experimenter expectations, 21 independent variable, 19
explicit attitude, 230 Information processing theories, 279
external cues, 182 informational influence, 244
extinction, 99 instrumental, 93
false memories, 147 internal bodily or somatic cues, 182
Family Stress Model, 296 interoceptive avoidance, 182
fear conditioning, 96 just noticeable difference (JND), 66
fight or flight, 181 law of effect, 94
fixed action patterns (FAPs), 257 light adaptation, 69
flashback, 186 limbic system, 39
flashbulb memory, 122 longitudinal study, 27
Flat affect, 201 magnetic resonance imaging, 204
flavor, 76 mechanoreceptors, 73
foils, 145 memory traces, 124
foot in the door, 265 misinformation effect, 126, 143
formal operational reasoning stage, 281 mnemonic devices, 131
formal operations stage, 283 mock witnesses, 145
frontal lobe, 40 mood-congruent memory, 227
functional capacity, 202 motivated skepticism, 226
multimodal perception, 76 planning fallacy, 225
myelin sheath, 37 positron emission tomography, 204
Nature, 279 Positron Emission Tomography (PET), 43
need for closure, 227 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 186
nervous system, 36 prediction error, 98
neurodevelopmental, 206 preoperational reasoning stage, 281
neurons, 36 preparedness, 98
neurotransmitters, 37 primary auditory cortex, 72
nociception, 74 primary somatosensory cortex, 73
normative influence, 243 primary visual cortex, 69
numerical magnitudes, 285 primed, 229
Nurture, 279 principle of inverse effectiveness, 76
obedience, 246 processing speed, 203
object permanence task, 281 psychological reactance, 267
observational learning, 105 Psychological vulnerabilities, 179
obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), 187 psychomotor agitation, 157
occipital lobe, 40 psychopathology, 201
Odorants, 74 punishers, 94
olfaction, 74 qualitative changes, 280
olfactory epithelium, 74 quantitative changes, 280
operant, 93 quantitative genetics, 53
operant conditioning, 93 quantitative law of effect, 101
operational definitions, 19 quasi-experimental design, 26
opponent-process theory, 70 random assignment, 20
ossicles, 71 reciprocity, 264
panic disorder (PD), 182 recoding, 122
parietal lobe, 40 reinforced, 181
participant demand, 21 reinforcer, 93
Pavlovian conditioning, 91 reinforcer devaluation effect, 102
perception, 65 renewal effect, 99
peripheral, 256 representativeness heuristic, 222
peripheral nervous system, 41 retardation, 157
phantom limb pain, 74 retina, 68
phantom limbs, 74 retrieval, 120
phonemic awareness, 284 retroactive interference, 126
photo spreads, 145 rods, 69
Piaget’s stage theory, 278 SAD performance only, 185
pinna, 71 schema, 221
placebo effect, 21 schemata, 147
security of attachment, 294 temporal resolution, 43
Semantic memory, 119 theories, 7
sensation, 65 theory of mind, 298
sensorimotor stage, 281 thought-action fusion, 188
sensory adaptation, 67 top-down processing, 66
shape theory of olfaction, 75 transduction, 65
signal detection, 65 trichromatic theory, 70
slowly escalating the commitments, 265 trigger features, 258
social anxiety disorder (SAD), 184 twin studies, 53
social cognition, 221 tympanic membrane, 71
Social Learning Theory, 105 unconditioned response (UR), 92
social models, 105 unconditioned stimulus (US), 92
social proof, 264 ventral pathway, 69
social referencing, 297 vestibular system, 72
social zeitgeber, 165 vicarious reinforcement, 107
Sociocultural theories, 279 Weber’s Law, 66
socioeconomic status, 160 working memory, 203
soma, 37
Somatosensation, 72
somatotopic map, 73
sound waves, 70
spatial resolution, 43
Specific vulnerabilities, 179
split-brain, 39
spontaneous recovery, 99
Stereotypes, 229
stimulus control, 100
storage, 120
suicidal ideation, 157
superadditive effect of multisensory
integration, 76
synapses, 37
synaptic gap, 37
systematic observation, 7
tastants, 75
taste aversion conditioning, 96
taste receptor cells, 75
temperament, 299
temporal lobe, 40