Psychology Chapter 4 Quiz

Learning and Behaviour

• Behaviourism focuses on observable behaviours, not internal mental processes
• Personality is shaped by social learning, observing others' behaviours
• Operant conditioning: shaping behaviour through rewards (positive reinforcement) or removal of aversive stimuli (negative reinforcement)
• Positive reinforcement: administering a reward after desirable behaviour
• Negative reinforcement: removing an unpleasant stimulus after a desirable behaviour
• Positive punishment: administering an unpleasant stimulus after undesirable behaviour
• Negative punishment: removing a desirable stimulus after undesirable behaviour
• Continuous reinforcement: rewarding every desired behaviour
• Partial reinforcement schedules: vary when a reward is given
• Four types of partial reinforcement schedules: fixed ratio, variable ratio, fixed interval, variable interval
• Social learning: learning by observing the rewards and punishments of others' behaviours
• Role models: individuals whose behaviours others observe and imitate
• Reciprocal determinism: behaviour, environment, and personality interact
• Operant conditioning in action: behaviour modification techniques used to improve behaviour

Behaviour Modification

• Techniques using operant conditioning to improve behaviour
• Reward only acceptable behaviour
• Effective for treating behaviour problems and psychological disorders
• Useful for changing typical behaviour
• Token economies: systems of rewards
• Behavioural activation: strategies designed to increase engagement in activities

Breaking Bad Habits

• Using behaviour modification on yourself
• Change your own habits

How Far Can Behaviour Modification Go?

• Born with tendencies but our environment shapes our behaviour
• Rewards and punishments shape behaviour
• Reciprocal determinism plays a significant role

Expectancies

• What someone expects to happen, based on past experience
• Involve thoughts and contemplation
• Decisions based on reinforcement value
• Enticing rewards influence choices

Locus of Control

• Internal: individuals feel they are in control of their outcomes
• External: individuals attribute their outcomes to external factors

Classical Conditioning

• Associating two things not normally associated
• Pavlov's experiments with feeding dogs
• Basic elements: Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS), Unconditioned Response (UCR), Conditioned Stimulus (CS), Conditioned Response (CR)
• UCS produces UCR, CS paired with UCS triggers CR

Classical Conditioning and Fear

• Conditioned responses can be generalised to similar stimuli
• Deconditioning is reversing learned fear responses
• Discrimination can help narrow fear to specific stimuli
• Spontaneous recovery: learning it again

Habituation

• Getting used to something in the environment and not responding as strongly anymore

Sleep Conditioning

• Use classical conditioning to sleep better

Personality Across the Lifespan

• Is personality stable throughout life?
• Methods for measuring personality over time (longitudinal study, cross-sectional study)
• Personality stability and change:
• Personality traits increase significantly through early life
• Reaching a plateau in young adulthood
• Stability coincides with maturity
• Little evidence for increasing rank-order stability after 25
• Mean-level trait changes slightly smaller
• Emotional stability increases continuously
• Narrow facet level and maladaptive measures less stable, broader domain and adaptive measures more stable

Personality During Childhood and Adolescence

• Child temperament: genetically based behavioural tendencies
• With age, temperament solidifies into personality
• Follows physical development
• Temperament styles: motor/motivational (activity, rhythmicity, approach ability), cognitive (distractibility, attention), emotional (reactivity, mood)
• The Big Five constructs and corresponding child temperament constructs
• Does temperament predict personality?
• Childhood temperament can sometimes predict adult personality
• Undercontrolled children are more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs

Changes in Big Five Personality Traits

• Childhood: maturity in controlling emotions, becoming more inhibited
• Adolescence: increased understanding (openness), increasing conscientiousness and agreeableness

Changes in Self-Esteem

• Self-esteem changes moderately during elementary school
• Self-esteem dips during early teen years, then increases during high school and young adulthood
• Girls' self-esteem doesn't increase as fast as boys'

Tasks of Adolescence

• Acquiring a temporal perspective
• Acquiring self-certainty
• Role experimentation
• Apprenticeship
• Sexual polarization
• Questions of authority
• Ideological commitment

Developmental Trajectories of Big Five Personality Traits

• Individual differences in adolescent personality related to various long-term health outcomes
• Sex differences and non-linear changes in personality development
• Examined using longitudinal data
• Associations between substance use and personality

Stages of the Life Span

• Stages from infancy to older adulthood

Birth Order

• Firstborns: higher conscientiousness and neuroticism, more dominant
• Middleborns: lower conscientiousness
• Youngers: higher openness, more reckless
• Only children: higher agreeableness, better relationships with parents

Young Adulthood to Old Age

• Personalities are mellowed by adulthood
• Less neuroticism and greater conscientiousness
• Neuroticism declines
• Slight increase in assertiveness and agreeableness
• Personal changes are not radical

Neuroticism

• High neuroticism in youth correlates with high neuroticism in older age

Changes in Self-Esteem and Narcissism

• Self-esteem slightly increases in 20s-60s, then decreases
• Narcissism declines with age

Significant Life Experiences & Social Investment Theory

• Personalities mature as young people enter important adult social roles
• Adult responsibilities and relationships cause maturity
• Maturation of personality involves conscientiousness, agreeableness, and reduced neuroticism.

Age Differences in Language Use on Facebook

• Study based on over 70,000 people
• Shows changes in social roles and maturation of personality
• Interests shift from studying and partying to work and family relationships

Benefits of Working

• Entering the workforce increases conscientiousness
• Young people are taking longer to begin serious careers and families
• A new life stage called emerging adulthood

Relationships

• Increased conscientiousness and agreeableness among young adults in long-term romantic relationships
• Decrease in neuroticism
• Self-esteem increases as well

Erikson's Life Stages

• Stages of Development (Infancy, Early Childhood, Preschool, School Age, Adolescence, Young Adulthood, Middle Adulthood, Older Adulthood) with their associated conflicts and developments

Parenthood

• Adults with more children may exhibit increased neuroticism
• Becoming a father can magnify existing tendencies in men's sociability
• Few differences in personality traits during parenthood

Negative & Positive Life Experiences

• Different people respond in different ways to positive and negative experiences
• Personality traits can predict life experiences (but not vice-versa)
• Negative experiences have a negligible effect on personality

How Personality Predicts Life Outcomes

• Personality is a significant predictor of life outcomes, even subtle correlations predict various outcomes
• Example: smiling correlating with better life outcomes

Gender, Culture & Personality

• Sex: biological division
• Gender: roles and behaviours
• Sex differences: average differences between sexes
• Origins of gender roles: some are cultural (clothing), some appear universal (aggression, caregiving)
• Cultural changes can influence sex differences
• Sex differences in Big 5 personality traits
• Big 5 personality comparisons and sex differences

Leadership, Occupations & Hobbies, Sexual Attitudes & Behaviors, Cultural Differences

• Women often perform slightly better as leaders, but men rate themselves higher
• Men and women have different preferences for occupations and hobbies, as are their sexual attitudes and behaviors
• Cultural differences exist in these areas

Cultural Differences in Attributions, Self-Views, Cross-Cultural Differences

• Cultural values vary greatly concerning how people rate themselves
• Varying cultural experiences cause different perceptions of success/failure
• Cross-cultural differences exist
• Differences in how individualistic or collectivistic cultures encourage self-enhancement
• Western self-views are more likely to focus on their positive aspects
• Asian cultures value others' opinions more
• Differences in how easy it is to move into and out of relationships

Approach vs. Avoidance Motivation

• Cultural differences in approach versus avoidance motivation
• Focus on attaining success versus avoiding failure
• East Asians more motivated by avoidance

Context Matters

• Personality is viewed more relevantly in individualistic cultures
• Roles and duties describe people better in collectivistic cultures
• Behavior varies based on the situation

Cultural Differences and the Big Five

• Extraversion is linked to cultural individualism
• Agreeableness is generally perceived to be higher in collectivistic cultures
• Conscientiousness is higher in southern latitudes, neuroticism is higher in Asian countries

Symbolic and Connectionist Approaches

Cognitive-Affective Processing System

• A system that is influenced by the emotional content of individuals' experiences
• Takes contexts into account when evaluating and understanding actions
• If...then principle: a conditional quality, which reflects conditional thinking about self and others
• Types of cognitive-affective units (encoding, expectation, beliefs, affect, goals, competencies, self-regulatory plans)
• Five levels of analysis (CAUs, behavioral expression, observer perceptions, situation, biosocial pre-dispositions)

Assessment Perspectives

• Think-aloud protocols
• Experince sampling
• Event recording
• Contextual assessment
• Understanding deficits in basic cognitive processes, issues with attention

Depressive Self-Schemas

• Automatic negative thoughts: inaccurate or distorted schemas applied automatically, resulting in negative feelings
• Cognitive triad: overgeneralizing from one bad outcome to overall self-worth/negative expectations, arbitrary inferences to negative conclusions, catastrophizing problems

Criticism and Response

• Criticism of cognitive psychology: simply a transplantation of cognitive psychology onto the area of personality
• Response: an attempt to understand the human mind and behaviour and a broader way of understanding personality and it provides more tools for understanding behaviour

Summary of Cognitive Perspectives

• Cognitive perspective focuses on how people process information
• Dual process theories can help us understand symbolic and connectionist approaches
• Cognitive assessment = understanding contents/organization of thoughts
• Problems from cognitive information processing issues

Phobias