Cognition

● Most simply, is thinking

● Sensations and information are received by our brains, filtered
through emotions and memories, and processed to become thoughts.

Concepts
● Categories of linguistic information, images, ideas, or memories
○ Used to see relationships among different elements of
experience
○ Can be complex and abstract (e.g. the idea of justice) or
concrete (types of birds).
Prototype
● the best example or representation of a concept.

Natural concepts:
● Created “naturally” through either direct or indirect experience.
● E.g. our concept of snow.

Artificial concepts:
● Defined by a specific set of characteristics.
● E.g. Properties of geometric shapes (squares, triangles etc)
Schema
● a mental construct consisting of a collection of related concepts.

When a schema is activated, we automatically make assumptions about

the person/object/situation.

Role schema
● makes assumptions about how individuals in certain roles will
behave.
○ What assumptions come to mind about a librarian?

Event schema (cognitive script)

● A set of routine or automatic behaviors.
○ Can vary widely among different cultures and countries.
○ Dictate behavior.
○ Make habits difficult to break.
○ E.g. When riding in an elevator, we automatically stand facing
the door.
Event schemas are automatic, when receiving a text our event schema is
to pick up the phone, read the text ,and reply

Language
● a communication system that involves using words and systematic
rules to organize those words to transmit information from one
individual to another.

Components of Language
Lexicon
- the words of a given language.
Grammar
- the set of rules that are used to convey meaning through the use of
the lexicon.
Phoneme
- a basic sound unit (ah, eh,).
Morphemes
 - the smallest units of language that convey some type of meaning.
Language is constructed through semantics and syntax.

Semantics
- the meaning we derive from morphemes and words.
Syntax
- the way words are organized into sentences.

Noam Chomsky
- proposed that the mechanisms underlying language acquisition are
biologically determined.
- Language develops in the absence of formal instruction.
- Language acquisition follows similar patterns in children from
different cultures/backgrounds.

Critical period
- proficiency at acquiring language is maximal early in life.
- Being deprived of language during the critical period impedes the
ability to fully acquire and use language.

Problem solving Strategies

Trial and error – continue trying different solutions until problem is solved.

Algorithm – step-by-step problem-solving formula.

Heuristic
- general problem-solving framework.
- Short-cuts.
- A “rule of thumb”.
- Working-backwards
– begin solving the problem by focusing on the end result.
- Breaking large tasks into a series of smaller steps.

When do people use heuristics?

- When one is faced with too much information.
- When the time to make a decision is limited.
- When the decision to be made is unimportant.
- When there is access to very little information to use in making the
decision.
- When an appropriate heuristic happens to come to mind at the same
moment.

Pitfalls to problem solving

Mental sets
● Persistence in approaching a problem in a way that has worked in the
past. (A set way of looking at a problem).
- Becomes a problem when that way is no longer working

Functional fixedness
● inability to perceive an object being used for something other than
what it was designed for.

Biases

Anchoring bias
- tendency to focus on one piece of information when making a
decision or solving a problem.
Confirmation bias
- tendency to focus on information that confirms your existing beliefs.
Hindsight bias
- leads you to believe that the event you just experienced was
predictable, even though it wasn’t.
Representative bias
- tendency to unintentionally stereotype someone or something.
Availability heuristic
 - tendency to make a decision based on an example, information, or
recent experience that is readily available to you, even though it may
not be the best example to inform your decision
Classifying Intelligence

Charles Spearman
● Believed intelligence consisted of one general factor, called g.
○ Focused on commonalities amongst various intellectual
abilities.

Raymond Cattell
● Divided intelligence into two components.

Crystalized intelligence
- acquired knowledge and the ability to retrieve it.
- Knowing facts.
Fluid intelligence
- the ability to see complex relationships and solve problems.
- Knowing how to do something.

Robert Sternberg’s Triarchic theory identifies three types of intelligence:

practical, creative, and analytical.
MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES THEORY
Howard Gardner proposed that each person possesses at least 8
intelligences.

1. Linguistic
2. Logical-mathematical
3. Musical
4. Bodily kinesthetic
5. Spatial
6. Interpersonal
7. Intrapersonal
8. Naturalist

Inter and intrapersonal intelligences are often combined and called

emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence
● the ability to understand the emotions of yourself and others, show
empathy, understand social relationships and cues, and regulate your
own emotions and respond in culturally appropriate ways.

Divergent thinking
● thinking “outside the box”.
○ Used when more than one possibility exists on a situation.

Convergent thinking
● ability to provide a correct or well-established answer or solution to a
problem.
How we test intelligence

The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale

Early 1900’s – Alfred Binet developed an intelligence test to use on children
to determine which ones might have difficulty in school.

Louis Terman (a Stanford psychologist) modified Binet’s work by

standardizing the administration of the test and testing thousands of
children to establish a norm.

Standardization
● the manner of administration, scoring, and interpretation of results is
consistent.
Norming
● giving a test to a large population so data can be collected comparing
groups, such as age groups.
- The resulting data provide norms/referential scores used to
interpret future scores

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

● David Wechsler’s definition of intelligence - ”the global capacity of a
person to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively
with his environment.”

In 1939, Wechsler developed a new IQ test by combining several subtests

from other intelligence tests.

- Tapped into a variety of verbal and nonverbal skills.

- One of the most extensively used intelligence tests.
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-V) is one of many versions
used today that tests 1) verbal comprehension, 2) visual spatial, 3) fluid
reasoning, 4) working memory and 5) processing Speed.

Flynn Effect
After years of use within schools and communities, periodic recalibration of
WAIS led to an observation known as the Flynn effect.
- The observation that each generation has a significantly higher IQ
than the last.

The source of intelligence

Nature perspective
- Intelligence is inherited from a person’s parents.
- The heritability of intelligence is often researched using twin studies.
- Identical twins raised together and identical twins raised apart exhibit
a higher correlation between IQ scores than siblings or fraternal twins
raised together.

Nurture perspective
- Intelligence is shaped by a child’s developmental environment.
- If parents present children with intellectual stimuli it will be reflected in
the child’s intelligence level.
- Most psychologists now believe levels of intelligence are a
combination of both.

Range of reaction
Theory that each person responds to the environment in a unique way
based on his or her genetic makeup.
- Genetic makeup is a fixed quantity.
- Whether you reach your full intellectual potential is dependent upon
environmental factors
Chapter 11

Personality
- the long-standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to
consistently think, feel, and behave in specific ways.

Historical Perspectives

Hippocrates (370 BCE)

- Theorized that personality traits and human behaviors are based on
four separate temperaments associated with four fluids (“humors”) of
the body.

Galen
- Believed both diseases and personality differences could be
explained by imbalances in the humors and that each person
exhibits one of the four temperaments.
- Prevalent view for over 1000 years and through the Middle Ages.

• Choleric – passionate, ambitious, and bold.

• Melancholic – reserved, anxious, and unhappy.
• Sanguine – joyful, eager, and optimistic.
• Phlegmatic – calm, reliable, and thoughtful.

PHRENOLOGY

Franz Gall (1780)

- Proposed that the distances between bumps on the skull reveal a
person’s personality traits, character, and mental abilities.
Immanuel Kant (18th century)
- Agreed with Galen that individuals could be categorized into one of
the four temperaments. Developed a list of traits to describe the
personality of each of the four temperaments.

Wilhelm Wundt (19th century)

-Suggested that personality could be described using two major axes:

1. Emotional/non-emotional
- separated strong emotions (melancholic, choleric) from the weak
emotions (phlegmatic, sanguine).

2. Changeable/unchangeable
- divided the changeable temperaments (choleric, sanguine) from the
unchangeable ones (melancholic, phlegmatic).

Psychodynamic Perspectives (20th Century)

Sigmund Freud:
- First comprehensive theory of personality explaining both normal
and abnormal behaviors.
- Proposed that unconscious drives influenced by sex, aggression
and childhood sexuality influence personality.

Neo-Freudians:
• Agreed that childhood experiences matter.
• Less emphasis on sex.
• Focused on the social environment and effects of culture on
personality.

Levels of unconsciousness

Unconscious
 - mental activity that we are unaware of and are unable to access.

According to Freud:
- We are only aware of a small amount (about one-tenth) of our
mind’s activities.
- The information in our unconscious mind affects our behavior,
although we are unaware of it.

Freudian slip
- Freud suggested that slips of the tongue (saying a word you did
not intend to say) are sexual/aggressive urges accidently slipping
out of our unconscious.

Freud posited that personality results from efforts to balance two

competing forces.
1. Biological aggressive and pleasure-seeking drives.
2. Internal (socialized) control over these pleasure-seeking drives.

Freud described this process as an interaction between three systems.

Id
• Contains primitive urges (for hunger, thirst, and sex).
• Impulsive, instinctual.
• Operates on the ”pleasure principle” – seeks immediate gratification.

Superego
• Develops through interactions with others, learning social rules for right
and wrong.
• Moral compass that tells us how we should behave based on rules..
• Strives for perfection.
• Judges behavior - leads to feelings of pride or guilt.
Ego (self)
• Attempts to balance the id with the superego.
• Rational
• Operates on the “reality principle” – helps the id satisfy desires in a
realistic way.
• The part of the personality seen by others.

Effects on Personality
Balanced id and superego → healthy personality.
Imbalanced id and superego → neurosis (tendency to experience
negative emotions), anxiety disorders, or unhealthy behaviors.

Defense Mechanisms
- Unconscious protective behaviors that work to reduce anxiety.
- Used by the ego to restore balance between the id and superego.
- Freud believed them to be used by everyone but that overuse
could be problematic.
ALFRED ADLER
Individual psychology
• Focuses on our drive to compensate for feelings of inferiority.
• Inferiority complex – A person’s feelings that they lack worth and don’t
measure up to the standards of others or of society.
• Social motives are thought to be the force behind thoughts, emotions,
and behaviors.
• Placed focus on social connections during childhood development.
• Believed happiness can be found in working together for the betterment
of all.
• Viewed the main goal of psychology to be “to recognize the equal rights
and equality of others”.
• Saw conscious processes as more important.
• Theorized that birth order shapes our personality

Adler identified three fundamental social tasks all individuals must

experience.
1. Occupational tasks – careers.
2. Societal tasks – friendship.
3. Love tasks – finding an intimate partner.

ERIK ERIKSON
Psychosocial theory of Development
• Personality develops throughout the lifespan.
• Emphasizes the importance of social relationships at each stage.
• Development of a healthy personality and sense of competence depend
on successfully completing each of the 8 stages.

CARL JUNG
Analytical Psychology
• Focused on working to balance conscious and unconscious thought.
- Carl Jung acknowledged the concept of a personal unconscious but
was also interested in exploring the collective unconscious.
Collective unconscious
 - universal version of personal unconscious, holding mental patterns,
or memory traces, which are common to all of us.

Archetypes
- patterns that exist in our collective unconscious across
cultures/societies.
- Represented by universal themes in various cultures reflecting
common experiences of people around the world.
- Integration of unconscious archetypal aspects of the self seen as part
of self-realization process.

Persona
- A mask that we consciously adopt.
- Derived from conscious experiences and our collective unconscious.
- A compromise between our true self and the self that society expects
us to be (hiding parts of the self that do not align with societies
expectations).

Extroversion vs Introversion
- Jung’s most important
contributions to the field of
personality psychology was the
idea of extroversion and
introversion to explain different
attitudes towards life.

THE BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE

 - Learning approaches to personality focus on observable, measurable
phenomena.

Skinner
• We learn to behave in particular ways.
• Personality is shaped by reinforcements and consequences in the
environment.
• Personality develops over our entire life.
• Personality can vary as we experience new situations.

THE SOCIAL-COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

Bandura
- Agreed that personality develops through learning but disagreed with
the behaviorist approach because thinking and reasoning are
important parts of learning.

Social-cognitive theory
- emphasizes both learning and cognition as sources of individual
difference in personality.

Factors in personality development:

Reciprocal Determinism
- cognitive processes (beliefs, expectations, and personality
characteristics), behavior, and context (environment/situation) all
interact.
- Bandura proposed the idea of reciprocal determinism: Our
behavior, cognitive processes, and situational context all influence
each other.
Observational learning
- learning by observing someone else’s behavior and it’s
consequences.
• Teaches us which behaviors are acceptable and rewarded in our culture.
• Teaches us which behaviors are socially unacceptable.
Self-efficacy – level of confidence in our own abilities, developed through
social experiences.
• Affects how we approach challenges.

JULIAN ROTTER
- LOCUS OF CONTROL

HUMANISTIC APPROACHES
The humanistic approach focuses on how healthy people develop.

Abraham Maslow
• Studied people he considered healthy, creative, and productive (Albert
Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln).
• Found that they shared similar characteristics – open, creative, loving,
spontaneous, compassionate, concerned for others, accepting of
themselves.

Carl Rogers
• Linked personality to self-concept (thoughts and feelings about
ourselves).
• Divided the self into the idea self and the real self.
• Ideal self – the person you would like to be.
• Real self – the person you actually are.
• Believed we needed to find congruence between the ideal and real self –
thoughts about ideal self and real self are similar.
• High congruence → greater sense of self-worth and a health,
productive life.
• Incongruence → maladjustment.
BIOLOGICAL APPROACHES
Perspective that differences in our personalities can be explained by
inherited predispositions and physiological processes
.
Heritable Traits
Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart:
• Found that identical twins, whether raised together or apart, have very
similar personalities.
• Suggests the heritability of some personality traits.
• Traits with more than a 0.50 heritability ratio – leadership, obedience to
authority, a sense of well-being, alienation, resistance to stress, and
fearfulness.

Temperament
- Temperament appears very early in life (suggesting a biological
basis).
- Babies can be categorized into one of three temperaments – easy,
difficult, or slow to warm up.

Environmental factors and maturation can affect expression of

personality.

Two dimensions of temperament important to adult personality:

1. Reactivity
- how we respond to new or challenging environmental stimuli.
2. Self-regulation
- ability to control response
SOMATOTYPES
William H. Sheldon believed body type could be linked to personality.
He proposed three somatotypes:
1. Endomorphs – relaxed, comfortable, good-humored, even-tempered,
sociable, and tolerant.
2. Mesomorphs – adventurous, assertive, competitive, and fearless.
3. Ectomorphs – Anxious, self-conscious, artistic, thoughtful, quiet, and
private.

TRAIT THEORISTS
Believe that people have certain traits (characteristics or ways of
behaving).
• For example, optimistic or pessimistic, sociable or shy.
Gordon Allport
Found 4,500 words in the English language to describe people and
organized them into
three categories.
1. Cardinal traits – dominates the entire personality (rare).
2. Central traits – make up our personality.
3. Secondary traits – less obvious or consistent, present under certain
circumstances (e.g., preferences, attitudes).
Raymond Cattell
- Narrowed Allport’s list to about 171 traits.
 - Identified 16 dimensions of personality – instead of a present being
present or absent, people are scored on a continuum.
HANS & SYBIL EYSENCK
Hans and Sybil Eysenck focused on temperament and believed that our
personality traits are influenced by our genetic inheritance.

2 specific personality dimensions:

1. Extroversion/Introversion.
• High in extroversion – sociable, outgoing.
• High in introversion – high need to be alone, engage in solitary behaviors.

2. Neuroticism/Stability.
• High in neuroticism – anxious, overactive sympathetic nervous system.
• High in stability – more emotionally stable.

FIVE FACTOR MODEL

- In the Five Factor Model, each person has five traits, known as the
Big Five personality traits.
- Each trait is scored on a continuum from high to low.
- The first letter of each trait spells the mnemonic OCEAN.

1. Openness to experience
2. Conscientiousness
3. Extroversion.
4. Agreeableness.
5. Neuroticism.
HEXACO MODEL

Self-Report Inventories
- Objective test to assess personality.
- Often use multiple-choice items or numbered scales (Likert scales).
- Used for job screenings

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI):

• One of the most widely used personality inventories.
- True or false questions
• Originally developed to assist in diagnosing psychological disorders.
• Newest version (MMPI-2-RF) has 338 questions.
• Scored on 10 scales – hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria,
psychopathic deviance, masculinity vs femininity, paranoia,n psychasthenia
(obsessive/compulsive qualities), schizophrenia, hypomania, and social
introversion.
Projective Tests
Projective testing relies on projection (defense mechanism) to assess
unconscious processes.
• Ambiguous cards are shown to individuals who are asked to tell a story,
interpret an image, or complete a sentence.
• Individuals will project feelings, impulses, and desires onto the cards.

Rorschach Inkblot Test

– An individual interprets a series
– Individual is asked to complete 40 incomplete sentences as quickly as
possible to reveal desires, fears, and struggles.

CHAPTER 15

Psychopathology
- the study of psychological disorders, including their symptoms,
etiology (causes), and treatment.

Wakefield (1992):
Proposed a more influential concept in which he defines psychological
disorders as a harmful dysfunction.
- Dysfunction occurs when an internal mechanism (e.g., cognition,
perception, learning) breaks down and cannot perform its normal
function.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder and major depressive disorder frequently

occur in the same person.

Diathesis-Stress Model:
- Integrates biological and psychosocial factors to predict the likelihood
of a disorder.
Diathesis + Stress → Development of a disorder

- People with an underlying predisposition for a disorder (diathesis) are

more likely than others to develop a disorder when faced with
adverse environmental or psychological events.
- A diathesis can be a biological or psychological vulnerability.

Anxiety Disorders
Characterized by excessive and persistent fear and anxiety, and by related
disturbances in behavior.

Prevalence:
• Effects approximately 25%-30% of the U.S. population during their
lifetime.
• More common in women than men.
• Most frequently occurring class of mental disorders.

Acquisition of Phobias

1. Classical Conditioning.

• Child is bitten by dog (US) → dogs become associated with

biting (CS) → child experiences fear around dogs (CR).
• Conditioned fears develop more readily to fear-relevant stimuli (images
of snakes and spiders) than to fear-irrelevant stimuli (images of flowers).

2. Vicarious Learning.
• Child observes cousin react with fear around spiders → child
later expresses the same fears even though spiders have never
presented any danger to him.
3. Verbal transmission of information.
• A child is continuously told that snakes are dangerous → child
starts to fear snakes.

Behavioral inhibition
- a consistent tendency to show fear and restraint when presented
with unfamiliar people or situations

Comorbidity
The condition of having two or more diseases at the same time