PSY324 Lecture 1 PDF

PSY324 Lecture 1 Happiness vs Well-Being What is Happiness? Happiness is seen as a state of mind. There are four different views under this theory. 1. Hedonic view claims that happiness is the balance of pleasant experiences over unpleasant ones. 2. The Emotional state view claims tha...

PSY324 Lecture 1 Happiness vs Well-Being What is Happiness? Happiness is seen as a state of mind. There are four different views under this theory. 1. Hedonic view claims that happiness is the balance of pleasant experiences over unpleasant ones. 2. The Emotional state view claims that happiness is discrete episodes of emotion. This is either a positive emotional state (short time) or mood (long time), OR a positive emotional condition which lasts longer than emotions/moods but are less stable than affective (personality) traits. 3. Life satisfaction view claims that happiness is having a favorable attitude to one's life as a whole. 4. Hybrid view claims that happiness is both the emotion and the attitude. What is the difference between happiness and well-being? Happiness is a state of mind, which is only a part of well-being. well-being reflects a value. well-being includes what is good/bad for us and what makes a good life. History What is well-being according to the ancient Greeks? The study of well-being began in ancient Greek with moral theory. Socrates studied questions related to what makes a person’s life better and how one ought to live. Most ancient moral philosophers believed that happiness was the ultimate goal of life, but did not agree if happiness was Eudaimonia (living well) or Hedonia (pleasure). What are Eudaimonistic theories? Eudaimonistic theories claim that the route to happiness is virtue, which means that happiness is not dependent on material things. There are three different versions of this theory. 1. Some believe that virtue is the same as happiness. 2. Some believe that virtue is the most important part of happiness. Plato believed that one needed to engage in virtuous activities and be a virtuous person, which he believed were only philosophers. Aristotle, Plato’s student, disagreed and believed that one only needed to engage in virtuous activities. 3. Some believe that virtue is the only means to happiness. Stoics believed that the only way to happiness was to live a morally virtuous life. What are Hedonistic theories? Hedonistic theories claim that happiness is the balance of pleasure over pain. The Epicureans believe that happiness is the experience of pleasure that stems from the absence of pain. The Cyrenaics believe that happiness is the sum of pleasures in the long term, but the ultimate goal is short term pleasures. What happened in the period of enlightenment (17th century)? The idea of well-being shifted from living a virtuous life to the sovereignty of the individual, which is the idea that individuals do what is best for them and tend to act rationally to achieve those things. People need liberty and resources to achieve individual goals, which makes this an economist theory (depends on the exchange of goods and services). Psychology What does Psychology say about well-being? Psychology is the study of human behavior. Prudential psychology aims to answer the same questions as the ancient Greeks using theories based on human behavior (psychological theories. Hedonic psychology claims that well-being is positive experiences and emotions. Eudaimonic psychology claims that well-being is maximizing one's potential to live well. Abnormal psychology claims that well-being is the absence of psychological disorders, thus it aims to help people by healing them. Positive psychology claims that identifying and nurturing talents/strengths and protective factors while preventing disease is the way to support well-being. Contemporary Theories How do we categorize contemporary theories of well-being? There are three different ways of categorizing contemporary theories. 1. Eudaimonic (living well) vs Hedonic (positive over negative experiences) 2. Subjectivist (individuals decide what happiness/well-being is) vs Objectivist (there are certain things that are bad and good for you) 3. Needing (psychological needs) vs Wanting (well-being is getting what you want) vs Liking (well-being is feeling good) What is Narrow Hedonism? Narrow Hedonism is the idea of a balance of pleasant/unpleasant experience, but this idea is heavily criticized and rejected since it is too simplistic and reductionist. This idea is hedonic (how you feel), subjectivist (emotions are from your own perspective), and liking (about feelings). Nozick’s Experience Machine: the idea that a machine could give you 100% exact experience of actually doing something without doing it. Could this lead to well-being? Could this lead to satisfaction? What is the Life Satisfaction theory? Life Satisfaction is the cognitive judgements of one’s own life, which makes it a hedonic, subjectivist, and liking theory. This theory is seen as simplistic and reductionist, and contrary evidence shows that life satisfaction rating is heavily influenced by fluctuating variables such as mood. What is the Subjective well-being theory? The Subjective well-being theory claims that well-being is both the balance of positive over negative emotions, and the cognitive judgments of life satisfaction, and it is the most widely used construct of well-being. However, this theory is also seen as simplistic and reductionist, and there is a lot of overlap with the psychological idea of well-being (discriminant validity). What is the Desire theory? The Desire theory, also known as the Preference Satisfaction or Fulfillment theories, claim that well-being is the actual satisfaction of an individual’s desires, which makes this theory subjectivist and wanting. Some advantages to this theory include an obvious link between one’s welfare and motives, consistency with modern sensibility, and flexibility to accommodate all people. Some disadvantages to this theory are the fact that not all desires affect one’s life, not all desires are equally weighted, desires are adaptive (adaptation theory), and miswanting. Human beings are also not very good at predicting how we will feel when we get something we want, and sometimes we do not know what we want. There are also three extension theories that go beyond this basic idea. The monetary desire fulfillment theory claims that people will rationally choose the option that will maximize well-being and money allows people to increase available options, however people are not always rational, there is a complex relationship between wealth and well-being, and there are other factors besides wealth that play a role in well-being. The affective desire fulfillment theory claims that the way we feel about achieving our desires indicated well-being, however there are problems with self-report of feelings, there can be positive emotion without fulfillment (ex. drugs), not all desires have an affective component, and emotion and cognitive evaluations are made by separate neural systems. The cognitive desire fulfillment theory claims that well-being is based on judgements of whether desires are fulfilled, however people's judgements about their lives are not always valid. What are List theories? List theories claim that well-being is associated with achieving things from a list of things we need to have, which seems to encompass the full range of our intuitions about well-being but there is very little agreement of what goes on the list. Examples of this type of theory include Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, actualization), and the capabilities approach (life, health, emotions, reason, affiliation, other species, play, control, thought). What are Eudaimonic theories? Eudaimonic theories see well-being as well-functioning, which are similar to list theories but the items have a theoretical basis and are not individualistic. Advantages are the distinction between subjective happiness and well-being and locating the role of values in well-being. Disadvantages are the de-individualization and the fact that the link between virtue and well-being may be weaker than posited (happy/ruthless CEO vs talented/unsatisfied philosopher). What are some examples of Eudaimonic theories? The self determination theory claims that humans have the innate tendency towards growth and development, and to achieve psychological growth, integrity, and well being, one must have autonomy, competence and relatedness. Ryff’s psychological well-being theory claims that there are six facets of positive human functioning which are self-acceptance, positive relations, autonomy, environmental mastery, life purpose, and personal growth. However, there is an issue with discriminant validity (overlap) with the theory of subjective well-being. What are authentic happiness theories? This theory claims that well-being is about being knowledgeable and autonomous about one’s life conditions, which means that happiness is based on individual values. Advantages include being individualistic/non-simplistic and disadvantages include the fact that some people cannot be authentically happy (ex. Couch potato: chooses to not be satisfied with life). How do we integrate the conceptualizations of well-being? Using Seligman’s PERMA model, we can integrate the conceptualization of well-being. Positive emotions (high levels of positive and low levels of negative affect) Engagement (activities with deep involvement and flow, time passes differently) Relationships (positive relationships with family, friends, etc.) Meaning (experiences that allow connection with something larger than oneself) Accomplishment (achieving goals, pride and fulfillment) What is Positive psychology? Up until the 20th century, psychology was focused on the negatives and had a deficit view that included mental illness, aggression, prejudice and stereotyping. A new branch of psychology aimed to move in the opposite directions and uncover people's strengths and promote their positive functioning by studying positive experiences that facitilite well-being and happiness. PSY324 Lecture 2 Operationalization Why is it difficult to operationalize happiness and well-being? Happiness and well-being are latent constructs, which means they are abstract and cannot be directly measured and observed. So instead we measure indicators that are measured variables that are used to infer information about latent constructs, like surveys. Is the score received on a self report accurate? Scores on self report measures do not truly reflect the true score of the construct of interest because there is always measurement error along with the true level. Random measurement error comes from sources that we cannot predict ahead of time because they influence score in unpredictable ways or are unrelated to the construct of interest. Systematic measurement error comes from non-random sources because they are related to the construct of interest, like response bias. How do we know how much random measurement error we have? Reliability, which is the consistency of scores, tells you how much random measurement error there is in a person’s score. Split-half reliability assesses averages of two random halves of a survey, which should be highly and positively correlated (> +0.70 correlation). Test-retest reliability assesses two scores at two different time points. For short time intervals the test-retest tells us about reliability, and for long time intervals the test-retest tells us about stability (what we are measuring may have truly changed). Interrater reliability assesses the difference of measurements between raters (Kappa K = 1.0). Internal consistency assesses how much the items in a measure correlate with each other (Cronbach’s ⍺ > +0.70). How do we know how much non-random measurement error we have? Validity, which is the assessment of how much you are measuring the construct you want to, tells you how much non-random error measurement there is in a person’s score. Content validity assesses if the items measure the construct at face value, known as face validity. Construct validity assesses if the way the variable has been operationalized matches the way the theory defines it, like factor structures and factor analysis. Criterion validity assesses how much a measure correlates with a gold standard measure. Concurrent validity assesses measured variables at the same time. Convergent validity assesses how your measure correlates with a measure of the same construct (as close to 1.00). Discriminant validity assesses how different your measure is from a measure of a different construct (as close to 0.00). Predictive validity assesses if the measure can predict future behavior, like if political surveys that attempt to measure political attitudes correlate with actual voting decisions. Internal validity assesses whether changes in the IV are causing changes in DV and not some other factors using random assignment and control groups. External validity assesses the extent of whether the results of the study can be generalized to other populations, real world situations, and real world psychological experiences. Studying Well-Being How do we measure happiness and well-being? We can use closed-ended responses where the researcher provides the response options. These analyses are fast and inexpensive, but are limited in the amount of information you receive. We can also use open-ended responses where participants are able to say what they want to. These responses capture underlying dynamics, but interpretations are subject to biases and analysis is lengthy and expensive. Bias can be limited by using other researchers, who are well trained or we can use computer software, but we still need to be using a valid codebook. In order to get valid information, the number of responses given to participants needs to match the distinctions participants actually make. Research has shown that people make fine distinctions in positive levels than negative levels. However, using too many points may compromise the clarity of the measure Wording of the questions and response options may influence people’s evaluations by confusing participants (double negatives) or by allowing them to have different interpretations. Satisficing occurs when participants tend to respond to questions in the most reasonable answer to expend less energy or because they do not have the cognitive resources available. Acquiescence occurs when participants tend to agree with assertions made in questions regardless of the context to avoid confrontation, be polite, and/or defer to others with authority. Satisficing and Acquiescence can be combated by using varying responses that differ in things such as order, wording, etc. Social desirability response bias occurs when participants tend to choose responses that present them in a positive manner to others to maintain a favorable self image to others and/or the self that may not be recognizable. Order of questions and response options also affect responses since they can be influenced by questions before it. Self perception theory claims that you construct your attitudes in the movement by looking at past behavior and the situation in which it occurred and make inferences based on that. Too many response options can cause participants to focus on the first ones they look at using the primacy effect. What are actual measures of well-being? We can simply ask participants how happy they are. Subjective well-being seems to be the dominant way of assessing well-being, which reflects people’s positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction. In 1969, Bradbrun created an Affect Balance Scale with five positive and five negative items with either a yes or no response option, however this has been criticized for being too narrow and having too few items.  In 1988, Fordyce created the Happiness Measure with four items with eleven response options (1:extremely unhappy/extremely happy, 2-4:0%-100%), however this has been criticized for not having appropriate labels for response options. In 1983, Kammann and Flett created the Affectometer 2 with 40 items on a 5 point scale (not at all - all of the time) to measure affective well-being and life satisfaction, however this has been criticized for measuring other constructs like self-esteem and optimism. In 1988, Watson et al., created a scale the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) with positive and negative affects on a five point scale These scales have both convergent and discriminant validity, however variation in time frames can lead to problems with reliability (higher when asked to think about in general vs at a certain point) and recall biases/inaccuracies. We can also use the Who Well-Being Index (WHO-5) which is a five item measure on a five point scale (all of the time - at no time) that asks how you have been feeling over the past two weeks. As well, we can use the Psychological Wellbeing Scale based on the 6 dimensions of well-being outlined by Ryff, which has high internal consistency and temporal stability, along with high validity due to its factor structure. We can also use alternative approaches such as informant reports (which have similar reliability as self-report measures), implicit measures (such as the IAT), and indirect measures (galvanic skin response, income, etc.). How do we measure life satisfaction? Life satisfaction can be assessed across nations using Cantril’s Ladder which uses a 10 point scale to assess current, future, and past life satisfaction. It can be assessed within nations using Diener et al.’s Satisfaction with Life Scale, even though all five items are positively worded. We can also ask people about satisfaction in specific life domains, which are easy to judge but are not equally relevant to everyone. We know that there is moderate-high reliability across items and scales, retests, situations, organizations, societal level measures, and time intervals however it goes down over longer time intervals due to big life changes. We also know there is convergent validity across measures and mood measures, and discriminant validity from affect, optimism, and self-esteem. PSY324 Lecture 3 Is SWB a trait or state? It makes intuitive sense that situations contribute to our well-being. When good things happen we feel good about it and judge our lives positively. Even though situations can influence our positive or negative affect and our LS, researchers have examined how much circumstances contribute to well-being. When we look at demographic information (age, cultural background, SES, education, occupation), it does not contribute that much to SWB, less than 10% of the variance. If SWB is a state, that suggests it can vary a lot, possibly in response to situations and events in your life. If it is more of a trait, that suggests it is relatively stable, possibly due to internal factors. Looking at long time intervals, we use statistical software to see how much of the variance in SWB comes from a rapidly changing state component and how much comes from an unchanging stable trait component, or from random trait (autoregressive). Luca & Donnellan (1996) used a 9 year test-retest interval based on data from a British household panel study. They found that 30-40% of the variance in LS is stable component, 30% is autoregressive component, and 30% is state component and measurement error. This tells us that LS and SWB is both a state and a trait. Once we know how much measurement error we have and we correct for it, SWB has both state and trait-like properties. 50% of variance changes over time (circumstances, random changes) and 50% of variance is stable (internal characteristics, unchanging environmental circumstances). This means that stable internal factors like genes and personality contribute to long term SWB levels but do not completely set them. What is the hedonic treadmill theory? We adapt to our circumstances. When bad things happen, we are resilient and are able to cope, and our SWB seems to return and the same applies to good things as well. They may impact your SWB in the short term, but it returns to baseline. Some propose the hedonic treadmill theory, which claims that we rapidly and completely adapt to our life circumstances. Some criticisms are that in real life, some events we adapt to slowly (ex. widowhood: 8 years), we don’t always return to baseline (ex. widowhood), there are some events we never adapt to (ex. pleasure of eating), and we seem to have a positivity offset which means our baseline is not at zero. This explains why situations do not contribute as much as we think to our SWB. Non-Situational Factors What is the role of genes in SWB? Genes are sequences of DNA that provide the instructions to prove a product, like proteins. There are different variations of genes called alleles, like for the colours of flower petals. We can use behavioural genetics designs, like family studies, where we should see similar levels of SWB among those who share genes. We should see a higher concordance between MZ twins reared apart than DZ twins reared apart. If we find that MZ reared apart are more similar than DZ and MZ twins reared together then genes play a big role. We can calculate how much difference comes from genes, which is heritability. The other difference comes from the environment, which is environmentality. What is the heritability of SWB? Tellegen et al. (1998) conducted a twin study by giving them a Multiple Personality Questionnaire (MPQ). They found that MZ twins reared apart were more similar to each other than MZ twins reared together and DZ twins, just under 50% heritability of SWB, under 50% for positive emotionality and over 50% for negative emotionality. However, SWB is not only about personality. Lykken et al., (1992) used a measure of cheerfulness, which is the tendency to experience positive emotionality, and aimed to replicate the study. They also added a longitudinal component of 10 years. 50% of SWB seemed to be heritable, and 50% of SWB was stable across 10 years, 80% of which was heritable. They concluded that “trying to be happier may be as futile as trying to be taller”. There are several criticisms. First, their sample size was very small, which means the findings may be due to change. Second, they only used two time points, which questions the validity of the findings. The concordance rate was lower at time two, which means that the environment is playing a role. Nes et al. (2006), replicated this and found an even lower concordance rate at time two. This means that not only your genes affect your SWB. However, cheerfulness is not SWB either. Cheerfulness is a tendency to respond with positive emotion. When measuring affect, heritability is much lower (less than.2). Shared environment contributes just as much as genes to emotions and moods. Heritability estimates vary on what you are measuring. A meta-analysis will review previously published findings to tell you what the overall/average finding is. Bartels (2015) found a heritability of 36% for SWB and 32% for LS for twin studies. Across multiple meta-analyses, we find a 32-41% heritability, 50% when controlling for measurement error. This means that genes only contribute 50% to SWB and environment still matters. Limitations include behaviour genetic designs that cannot precisely capture the role of environment, no individual differences, does not control for shared pre-adoption environment, only able to capture additive (more genes in common, more similar) and non-additive (more interaction of genes in common, more similar). Can heritability change over time? Heritability is a population statistic which means it assesses relative contributions, which means that even though genes do not change, heritability estimates can. Genetic contributions can increase/decrease over time since as you get older your environment changes and matters more. There are two types of environmental influences. Shared environmental factors are those that everyone in a family is exposed to and non-shared environmental factors are unique to you. There is also measurement error. What are gene/environment interactions? Genes and the environment interact. According to the stress-diathesis model, a gene that makes you vulnerable interacts with stressors in the environments that cause you to express those genes (ex. depression). There are also gene/environment correlations, the genes increase the likelihood that you will be exposed to certain environments, and those environments lead to you to engage in certain behaviours or manifest certain symptoms. Passive correlations are when your parents' genes contribute to your genes and environment. Evocative correlations are when your genes make it more likely you will evoke a certain response from your environment. Active correlations are when your genes predispose you to seek out certain environments. Environment can turn genes off/on, epigenetics which use chemicals that tell genes to unwind or stay wound up. Heritability and environmentality estimates do not account for these interactions. We are only beginning to look at molecular genetics in terms of SWB. Genes that play a role in neurotransmitters regulate emotions, like a short allele (misfunction) and long allele (higher SWB) for serotonin. Some genes code for enzymes that break down neurotransmitters involved in emotional regulation, like MAOA. Oxytocin seems to be involved in bonding and cooperative behaviour, which may be linked to SWB. Neurochemical Brain is involved in our experience of pleasure and pain, and we have been able to find neural circuits that are involved (experience positive and negative affect). Some theories said that SWB was just desire fulfilment. We have been able to identify brain circuits that are involved in desire, the reward pathways. One of the most important is the Mesolimbic Dopamine System, which is a number of neurological circuits and connected brain areas that are rich in neurons that release and respond to dopamine. These include the cingulate gyrus, striatum, substantia nigra, VTA, nucleus accumbens. This is important in determining what is a reward, motivation to approach certain stimuli because they are associated with positive outcomes. Some stimuli are natural rewards, which means our brains do not have to learn they are positive (ex. sleep, food, sex) which are determined by genes. Other stimuli need to be learned by the help of our reward pathways (ex. money). These pathways are important in producing positive affect by releasing endogenous opioids so we learn through reinforcement. Endogenous opioids receptors are found all over the brain. They are important in modulation of affective states, modulation of neuroendocrine and autonomic stress responses, and the processing of pain by reducing negative affect. Research has shown that we have linked hedonic hotspots all over the brain that are rich in endogenous opioid receptors that receive sensory information and amplify pleasant experiences into liking. One hotspot in the ventral pallidum is one of the most important because when destroyed we seem unable to experience pleasure. We can look at cortisol, which is released when we are stressed and mobilises our resources in response. It circulates our blood and tells our cells to release glucose to make energy to fight the stress. A healthy pattern of cortisol secretion is correlated with positive affect and psychological well-being (self-acceptance, positive relationships, etc.). Cortisol dysregulation has been correlated with psychological disorders such as depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and PTSD, which show an increase in negative affect. However, we need more research to determine causal relationships. Oxytocin is a neuropeptide that plays an important role in birth contractions and lactation, but also social behaviours like pair bonding in animal models. In animal models, oxytocin can alter dopamine regulation in the Mesolimbic Dopamine System and can interact with endogenous opioids and modulate our experience of pain. The effect on humans is limited. Some studies exposed humans to oxytocin and found that they are more trusting. Other studies have shown that variations in an allele in an oxytocin regulation gene seems to be correlated with an increased proneness to anxiety and correlated with responses on measures of emotional well-being. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in basically everything including sex, aggression, sleep, cognition, learning, and mood regulation. We know that SSRIs can combat negative affect by blocking the reuptake of serotonin so that it can spend more time regulating mood. The serotonin transporter gene, short or long alleles, show us a gene/environment interaction. Individuals with two short alleles seem to make people more vulnerable to negative effects of stressors, but there also need to be experience of multiple stressors to manifest depressive symptoms. Serotonin dysregulation seems to be correlated with higher scores on depression and neuroticism. However, we need more research to determine causal relationships, since even though SSRIs work within minutes, it takes weeks for affect change. Brain Structure and Activity Looking at activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is important in higher cognitive abilities and emotion regulation (interpret and reinterpret events). Left hemispheric activation is related to positive emotions and right is related to negative. More left hemispheric activity is positively correlated with positive affect and psychological well-being, but not LS after controlling for positive affect. However some studies show that asymmetry in the amygdala (more on right) is weakly and positively correlated with positive affect and extraversion. Perhaps asymmetry is a diathesis that influences how we respond to emotional challenges. Physical Health For a long time, well-being was the absence of ill-being, thus a lot of research has been focused on this. However, research has shown that this is not true. Ryff et al. (2006) examined biological correlates in order to test the mirror hypothesis that claims there should be similar biological correlates with opposite signs, and the distinct hypothesis that claims that there should be different biological correlates. They found correlations between psychological well-being/psychological ill-being, and physical well-being (cortisol, epinephrine, norepinephrine)/cardiovascular functioning. Support for the mirror hypothesis comes from higher blood sugar/weight correlated with more negative affect, anxiety, anger, and depressive symptoms, and lower weight show less positive emotions and less positive relationships. Support for the distinct hypothesis comes from all other correlations that are not opposite of each other, like cortisol, norepinephrine, HDL cholesterol, etc. Personality We know that there are reliable and individual differences in people's tendencies to respond to their environments, and fall on a continuum of five traits. Costa and McCrae (1980) show that extraversion seems to predict our positive affect and neuroticism seems to predict our negative affect (20% of variance in affect). They proposed the temperamental-instrumental view. The temperamental view (direct) claims that there are certain personality traits that reflect individual differences in people’s tendencies to experience emotions (extraversion and neuroticism). This was based on earlier work by Grey (1971, 1981, 1987) that proposed there are two neurological systems that underlie motivation. The Behavioural Activation System (BAS) is responsible for approach motivations, reflected by extraversion (correlated with positive affect), and the Behavioural Inhibition System (BIS) is responsible for our avoidance motivations, reflected by neuroticism (correlated with negative affect). While we have evidence of approach motivations being distinct from avoidance motivations, there is no evidence that they are completely different circuits. The instrumental view (indirect) claims that certain personality traits indirectly affect our well-being. Traits lead people to encounter environments that lead to the experience of more positive/negative affect. Other researchers propose the dynamic equilibrium theory, where traits reflect global tendencies to experience life consistently in a positive/negative way. Therefore personality traits determine baseline levels of emotions responses by influencing how we interpret momentary events. Extraversion sets the baseline for positive affect and neuroticism sets the baseline for negative affect. Denver & Cooper (1998) conducted a meta-analysis and found that the overall correlation between personality and SWB was just under 20%, and only weak correlation between the big five and SWB. In fact, SWB was most strongly correlated with repressive-defensiveness, which is the tendency to avoid negative information, especially about oneself. It was also strongly correlated with trust, desire for control, stability, hardiness, positive affectivity, locus of control/chance, and tension. It seems as though it is not the big five, but how they capture individual differences in emotional tendencies, since emotional affect is a component of SWB. Personality traits that are strongly linked to well-being are the ones that our relationship functions, like agreeableness. SWB is correlated with traits that influence how you intercept the events in your life. Criticisms come from other meta-analyses, like Lucas & Fajita (200) and Heller et al. (2004) found there are actually stronger correlations between extraversion/neuroticism. There is also a consistent link between psychological well-being and extraversion/neuroticism, but this may be mediated by psychological distress. Extraversion, conscientiousness and low neuroticism are linked to self-acceptance, mastery, and purpose in life. Openness is linked to personal growth, agreeableness/extraversion are linked to positive relationships, and low neuroticism is linked to autonomy. PSY324 Lecture 4 What is attention? Attention is a state in which our cognitive resources are focused on certain aspects of the environment rather than others. It also means that our nervous system is in a state to respond to stimuli. What is selective attention? Selective attention is the ability to focus our attention on a particular stimulus or piece of information while ignoring other stimuli or information. What is the negativity bias? Negativity bias is the tendency to experience greater cognitive activity to negative events. Negative information requires more attentional resources and it is stored in memory in a more accessible manner. Why do we have a negativity bias? According to the evolutionary view, our ancestors lived in dangerous environments, thus being more aware of the negative aspects of one’s environment provided a survival advantage. Since this requires more cognitive resources, having this negativity bias where one did not need to consciously pay more attention was adaptive. How do we know we have a negativity bias? Evidence of the negativity bias is typically provided using attention interference-based tasks, where the response times for negative stimuli were longer than response times for neutral stimuli since they capture more attention and produce more attentional interference. Using emotional stroop tasks, where participants must name the colour of either a neutral or negative word, we see that negative words require more time. Using a dot probe task, where there is a fixation cross in the middle of the screen for a minute, then a neutral stimuli on one side and an emotional stimuli on the other, probe shown on either side, participants asked to press either button. We find that people are faster on congruent trials, when the probe is on the emotional side, because that is where your attention is already focused. De Houwer et al., (1998, 2001) used the affective simon task, where participants must say “positive” to uppercase words and “negative” to lowercase words, to find that it is harder for people to say “positive” to a negative word, than for people to day “negative” to a positive word. Using emotion priming, when we show an emotional prime followed by a target word (either consistent or inconsistent with prime), participants are asked to categorise the target word as quickly as possible. We see that participants are faster to categorise congruent conditions, but this effect is stronger for negative words than positive. This suggests that negative information is more tightly linked within the negative schema than positive information is with positive schemas. Are there individual differences? Individual differences also matter. For example, when we look at the emotions stroop task with social rejection words, people who are particularly sensitive to being rejected by others seem to show a stronger attentional interference effect. This suggests that these individuals are particularly focusing on negative rejection related stimuli. This is also seen with people with anxiety disorders or depressive disorders. This suggests that their attention is chronically focused on the negative information, and that attentional biases may contribute to emotional vulnerabilities to negative mood and anxiety. Correlations Is there a correlation between selective attention and affect? We have some evidence that positive emotions can also influence our attention. For example, some studies have found that momentary experiences of positive affect seem to also influence selective attention. There is a correlation between experiencing high arousal positive emotion and paying more attention to rewards than to non-rewards in spatial attention tasks. Therefore, our emotions may influence where we focus our attention. Positive affect is also associated with attentional focus on more global aspects of a stimulus rather than local aspects of visual stimuli. Fredrickson & Branigan (2005) used a global-local task where participants are given the choice of a global or local option when matching figures (triangles and squares). Participants who watched positive videos made more global choices and those who watched negative videos were more likely to make local choices. Positive affect seems to broaden our attentional focus while negative affect seems to narrow it. Fredrickson proposed a broaden (attention) and build (resources) model. Is there a correlation between selective attention and life satisfaction? Life satisfaction is the cognitive component of SWB, but there is very little research that has looked at the relationship between LS and SWB. We know that there is a mood and memory congruency effect, but there are few studies that have looked at LS and memory. Some studies have looked at memory biases, like the motivation to keep positive self-views that make us remember our past better than it really was. People with high LS are more biassed to recall positive memories and remember the past better than it was. Evaluations of LS can also be influenced by heuristics like the availability heuristic. Researchers have proposed that we do not just make LS evaluations in a bottom-up process, there also seems to be a top-down process. People with higher LS have a tendency to notice more of the good things that happen, a tendency to positively interpret things, and they make inferences to support their high LS so that they can maintain it. Sanchez & Vazquez (2014) assessed participant LS and positive affect, then used the dot probe/spatial attention task with neutral and happy faces. They found that both PA and LS predicted more attention to happy faces. Using eye tracking, they found that high LS predicted more PA, PA then predicted more elaborate attention on the happy faces, and they were more likely to bring their attention back to the positive face. This suggests that high LS may influence PA because your attention is biassed to the positives in life. Categorization How do we categorise our appraisals? We know that SWB plays a role in how we interpret stimuli, happy individuals interpret their experiences in positive ways. Research looks at categorization as a way of showing that SWB can have top-down effects. Robinson et al (2004, 2006) show that participants have a faster reaction time to categorise negative stimuli compared to neutral ones, and those participants were also the ones who reported more negative appraisals and affect in their daily life and were less satisfied with their life. We also know that personality traits influence our tendency to respond with either positive or negative emotions. We look at the facets of extraversion (cheerfulness) and neuroticism (depression). What is re-categorization / re-appraisal / cognitive restructuring? Reappraisal is going back to an interpretation and thinking about it more. Research has shown that happy people reappraise negative events in more positive ways, while unhappy people reinforce the negative. This positive reappraisal is at the base of many cognitive psychotherapies. For example, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is used when people are stuck in a negative thinking pattern and have difficulty positively reappraising on their own, it encourages people to change their routine behaviours to bring in more positive affect. Mindfulness is the non-judgmental awareness of present emotions. Decentering is seeing emotions and events as objective. Cognitive defusion is letting thoughts come and go. Acceptance is recognizing that experiences will come and go without judgement or resistance. Conflict What happens when there is cognitive conflict? Festinger said if there is a conflict between our internal states, we are motivated to reduce that discomfort, called the cognitive dissonance theory. He proposed this theory to explain why sometimes people change their attitudes, it's to reduce dissonance between their attitude and behaviour. According to the psychodynamic perspective, Freud said that conflict has implications for well-being. He proposed that there were three parts of the psyche, the id that produces unconscious impulses and the ego that is based on the reality principle. He claimed that since the ego is suppressing the id, if there is no resolution then the conflict will build and have negative effects on well-being, like anxiety, thus the ego has to find a way to allow the expression of some impulses and repress others using defence mechanisms. There is also evidence that people who are congruent in explicit and implicit measures of the same construct are higher in SWB and LS than those who are mismatched. What are threat comparator skills? Some researchers have looked at the conflict between cognition and motivation. Threat comparator skills are how easy it is to detect threats in our environment, measured by how quickly people can categorise things as threatening or nonthreatening. They are also involved in comparing information to our current goals. Researchers make use of a go/no-go task where participants are asked to complete a behaviour when they get the go signal, which is a threatening stimulus. We find that people who find it easy to go only when it’s a threat, this implies higher threat comparator skills compared to people who don’t go, who are slower, or people who go when there is no threat. Threat comparator skills can interact with agreeableness, which reflect your orientation to others. High agreeableness should reflect a trusting and open approach to others, thus a conflict with high threat comparator skills will cause a reduction in SWB. Low agreeableness should reflect a distrusting and suspicious approach to others, thus no conflict with high comparator skills will cause an elevation of SWB. What is neurotic conflict? Horney (1945) proposed a theory of neurotic conflict, which argues conflict between different parts of the mind can be at the root of anxiety and thus the root of psychological disorders. Incongruence between conscious and unconscious motivations. Agreeableness is your conscious motivation to avoid/approach others, and implicit self-esteem is unconscious self-esteem. This suggest that people who are high in agreeableness and high in implicit self esteem, they report more negative affect compared with people who do not experience that conflict between the motivation to favour others and to favour themselves Goals What are goals? Goals are ideals, norms, obligations, or other guidelines that represent a desired endstate. Goals are generally focused on an object, focused on the future, used to guide behaviour, internally represented, and something we are committed to approaching or avoiding. Goals are important for self regulation and self control, but they also serve other purposes. Since goals influence our affect, it makes intuitive sense that our goals will influence well-being. According to the desire fulfilment theories, goals are critical in well-being. We feel good when we achieve our goals and we feel bad when we do not. Our commitment to our goals help provide us a sense of personal agency, structure and meaning to life, and helps us cope with problems and maintain well-being. What is conation? Conation is the human capacity to set and pursue personal agendas. There are several conative processes that can potentially affect well-being. These include goal selection, goal striving, and goal attainment. What are self-concordant goals? There are several models of how cognitive processes influence well-being. One is Sheldon & Elliot’s (1999) self-concordance model, which says that we should be willing to put in more effort for our self-concordant goals, which allows us to satisfy our psychological needs, like the need for autonomy, affiliation, etc. Self-concordant goals lead to sustained effort, which leads to goal attainment, which leads to need satisfying experiences, which ultimately leads to positive changes in well-being. Self-concordant goals reflect an individual's authentic interests/values, which means these goals let you achieve the things that are the most important to you and provide validation of who you are. These goals are also intrinsically motivating, which means that motivation comes from within and thus takes us further in sustaining effort and allows us to persevere in the face of obstacles. These goals are also associated with an internal perceived locus of control, which means that you believe that you are responsible for the good things in your life. Bahrami & Cranney (2018) updated the self-concordance model by testing each of the steps, and they found that self-concordant goals are positively related to putting in more effort, snd simply setting these goals is positively related to satisfying our basic needs (need for autonomy). They also found sustained effort and achieving goals leads to satisfaction of basic needs as well. Self-Esteem What is self-esteem? Self-esteem reflects our evaluations of ourselves, and is both a trait (global and domain-specific) and a state (context specific, ex. test score). Self-esteem has a cognitive and affective component, and can be explicit and implicit. People show a stronger preference for letters in their own name, but there is a validity issue since there are certain letters that undergraduates prefer (A) or dislike (F) since they are students. Using an IAT (based on reaction time to assess strength of associations stored in memory), we see that participants with high self-esteem are faster to respond to the me/positive condition and participants with low-self-esteem are faster to respond to the me/negative condition. How is self-esteem related to well-being? Explicit self-esteem is moderately and positively correlated with well-being, for both self reports and informant reports. Implicit self-esteem has a very small correlation, but this seems to depend on how you measure implicit self-esteem and well-being. Schimmack & Diener (2003) looked at correlations between implicit self-esteem measured by the name-letter effect, implicit self-esteem measured by the IAT, and SWB measured by hedonic balance (positive affect over negative affect). They found a weak correlation, but when you control for name/letter liking, IAT scores seem to be unrelated to SWB. This may be because we do not have valid measures of implicit self-esteem or the IAT , which may be influenced by mood, distractions, etc. Research that has broken down SWB into various aspects show that implicit self-esteem does predict how much negative emotion people experience on a daily basis, how much negative emotion people express to others on a daily basis, and people’s complaints of somatic symptoms like headaches and stomach aches. Some have proposed that implicit self-esteem seems to be able to predict people’s negative experiences because these unconscious evaluations may serve as a defence against negative self-relevant information that may be threatening to self-views. When implicit self-esteem is high these defences are strong, but when implicit self-esteem is low there are holes in the unconscious defensive shield. Why is self-esteem correlated with well-being? Some researchers propose an evolutionary basis for self esteem. The environment was rough, and those who lived in groups were more likely to survive and reproduce. The sociometer hypothesis proposes that self-esteem helped protect our ancestors from the negative effects of social rejection. We evolved mechanisms to gauge how much we were accepted in the group and our risks of being rejected and being kicked out of that group so that we could adjust our behaviour. The terror manangement theory claims that self-esteem helped protect our ancestors from the negative effects of being aware of our own mortality. Self-esteem allowed them to be more secure in their existence by allowing them to see themselves as someone with value who will live on in the minds of others, which reduced their existential anxiety. The self-affirmation theory claims that self-esteem allows us to be resilient in the face of adversity. The ability to evaluate yourself positively can allow you to overcome a minor setback. Some researchers propose the self-enhancement motive, which is the need to see ourselves positively. It is our desire to enhance the positive of how we view ourselves and the desire to protect ourselves from personally relevant negative information. This should bias the ways we think about ourselves and our lives. Are positive illusions correlated with higher SWB? Historically, we have linked seeing things as they really are to higher levels of well-being, even with psychological disorders. Taylor & Brown (1988) challenged this notion and published an article that claims we do not see ourselves/world/others as how they really are, we have positive illusions that make us see things better than they really are. They claimed that this is good for our well-being, and cited a lot of studies that supported this claim using the “better than average” effect.  However, there is a challenge in our operationalization of positive illusions. The majority of people think they are slightly better than the average person, however some people are actually better than average (validity issue) thus we cannot distinguish between these evaluations. Additionally, the average person people think of is not standardised, thus we can use an aggregate of multiple informants that vary on closeness, use strangers, or use objective external criterion like behaviour. Another challenge is the operationalization of well-being. When we use self-report measures, the positive illusion bias will contaminate their rating. Also, anytime two variables, like self-esteem and well-being, share a cause in common, like self-enhancement (positive illusions), they are going to be correlated to each other. However, there is some evidence that positive illusions can also lead to risky behaviour and can lead people to come across as vain. Young (2014) published a review that showed that people with positive illusions were more happy, held more positive self-views, had a greater ability to care for others, a greater capacity for productive and creative work, and were better at adjusting to stressful events. PSY324 Lecture 5 What is positive thinking? Research has found a positive correlation between being optimistic and scoring high on measures of LS, PA, low levels of NA, etc. Optimism is expecting that good things are going to happen in the future, in general more than bad things. Optimistic people make external, variable, and specific attributions for negative outcomes, and make internal, stable, global attributions for positive outcomes. However, sometimes this self-enhancement motive can lead us to unrealistic optimism. We may show a self-serving bias where we believe good things are more likely to happen to us and bad things are more likely to happen to other people. Even though this is meant to protect us, this can be harmful when we make risky choices. Another way of thinking positively is to be hopeful, where you expect that good things are going to happen in the future due to your personal efforts. Two types of thinking have been proposed. The first is pathways thinking which is coming up with multiple pathways to reach their goals, and agentic thinking which is the belief in one’s abilities to achieve the goals you have set. Hope is also positively correlated with well-being. What are positive comparisons? Positive comparisons occur when people reflect on themselves using a standard they set, which can be others or themselves. People who are happy seem to compare themselves to others in ways that maintain their happiness. People can engage in basking in reflected glory, where people feel more positive about themselves when they are associating with successful others to increase one’s feelings of self-worth. We also make downward temporal comparisons, where we compare our present selves to worse past selves. Similarly, we make downward social comparisons, where we compare ourselves to others who are performing worse on the dimension under evaluation. It turns out that happy people seem to compare themselves to the number of people they are better than, while unhappy people seem to compare themselves to others that are doing better than they are. National Differences in Well-Being Do nations differ in well-being? Since 1981, the World Value Survey has collected data from over 100 countries every few years using the same questions, representing 90% of the world’s population. We have data from over a million participants about their happiness over time. The Gallup World Poll administers questionnaires to different participants in over 130 countries, representing 95% of the world’s population. They assess how often participants experience positive and negative emotions. It turns out that Finland, Denmark, and Iceland are the top three countries in terms of self-reported life satisfaction. What makes nations differ in their well-being? We used to assume we knew why certain nations were happier than others, mainly due to economic health. Therefore, we just needed to provide things to increase the well-being of countries. However, this is not true, since there is no 1:1 relationship between well-being and economic indicators like GDP. Research that looks at culture found that cultural values can predict national difference in subjective well-being after controlling for the national income level. Therefore, we need to explore what culture is, since it seems to be a good candidate in explaining differences between nations. Culture What is culture? Culture is more than your race, ethnicity, language, society, etc. because it is a combination of all these factors and more. Culture is actually a system of meaning and information that is shared between people and handed down between generations. This allows a group of people to live a meaningful and fulfilling life. Where does culture come from? Culture is acquired through the process of socialisation. Going back into our human evolutionary history, we look at certain universal needs and motives, like biological (food, shelter, water) and social (mates, protection, food resources). Humans have adapted to their contexts in terms of their ecologies (heat trapping dwellings/insulated clothing), ressources, and people. Therefore we created guidelines that helped ensure the survival for all persons in the group. Culture evolved from the adaptations of social motives to particular contexts. What are the contents of culture? We can look at culture through objective and subjective contents. Objective contents are aspects of culture that will exist without humans. These are physical artefacts such as architecture, books, clothing, food, art, tools, etc. Subjective contents are aspects of cultures that will no longer exist without humans. These include psychological processes, values, beliefs, attitudes, behaviours, norms, worldviews, etc. What are values? Values are guiding principles that refer to desirable goals that motivate behaviour. We can have personal values that refer to transitional desirable goals. We can also have cultural values, which are abstract ideas about what a society collectively views as good, right, and desirable. Using an empirical approach, Hofsteade surveyed employees of multinational business organisations from 72 countries. Using factor analysis, he found that there are 6 underlying cultural dimensions. Power distance reflects the acceptance of unequal distributions of power. Uncertainty avoidance reflects the threat of unknown or ambiguous situations. Masculinity/femininity reflects the importance of success/money compared to caring for others. Long/short term orientation reflects the delayed gratification of emotions, social, and material needs. Individualism/collectivism reflects the focus on the self and immediate family compared to members of the larger group. Finally, indulgence/restraint reflects the pursuit of happiness compared to control of social norms. According to Schwartz, there are 7 contents of culture. Embeddedness reflects the conservation of social traditions. Intellectual autonomy reflects the freedom to pursue your own ideas. Affective autonomy reflects the encouragement to pursue personal experiences. Hierarchy reflects the maintenance of self control. Egalitarianism reflects social justice. Mastery reflects competency. Finally, harmony reflects unity. Schwartz also claims that cultural values can also be in opposition in terms of openness to change, self-transcendence, conservation, and self-enhancement. What are challenges in examining well-being across cultures? We have looked at differences between nations, however these differences do not always reflect cultural differences. In order for us to make meaningful comparisons, we must have equivalence, which is the condition of similarity in terms of conceptual meaning and empirical methods. Any course of non-equivalence introduces measurement error which reduces the reliability and validity. Conceptual equivalence occurs when cultures hold the same meaning for a construct that is being used, since cultures may differ in what terms like “happiness” means to them. Methodology equivalence occurs when all aspects of the research methods are similar across cultures. This includes procedural equivalence which involves understanding research processes, and sampling equivalence which involves representative samples. This is to ensure that differences between cultures are not attributed to demographic factors like religion, which is really hard to do. Measurement equivalence occurs when measures used are equally valid and reliable. This includes linguistic equivalence (translation, back-translation), conceptual equivalence (construct meaning), and psychometric equivalence (validity). Interpretational equivalence occurs when inferences actually reflect differences in culture. This depends on the power of research designs, which is the likelihood of finding an effect if one exists, and can depend on factors such as sample size and sample generalizability. We also need to account for response bias, like extremity bias. Cultural Differences Are there cultural differences in defining happiness? Very few studies have used open ended questions to collect qualitative data. Lu & Gilmour (2004) asked Chinese and American students to write an essay on what happiness is, and then coded those essays. Both groups believed happiness is a positive and desirable state of mind. Chinese students believed that happiness is a spiritual cultivation and transcendence of the present, a balanced emotional life, and fulfilling social expectations. American students believed that happiness is the enjoyment of present life, having personal agency, and the uncompromised pursuit of personal happiness. Are there cultural differences in subjective well-being (SWB)? Affect Suh et al. (1998) found that the correlation between affective experiences and life satisfaction differs across nations. They used World Value Survey data which used Bradburns’s affect balance scale and individual measures of Hofsteade’s cultural dimensions. They found that LS was strongly positively correlated with affective balance (.32 for positive and -.59 for negative). They found that emotion plays a greater role for individualistic nations than for collectivistic nations. They also found a culture difference by assessing social norms by asking participants how much they care if the people they thought were important accepted them. LS was more predicted by emotions in individualistic cultures, and both emotions and social norms explained LS in collectivist cultures. Personality Schimmack et al. (2002) found a positive correlation between extraversion and hedonic balance and a negative correlation between neuroticism and hedonic balance. Culture moderated the correlation between hedonic balance and life satisfaction, stronger for individualistic cultures than for collectivistic cultures. Goals Culture also influences which goals people consider to be important for their well-being. Oishi & Diener (2001) found that American participants with a European background considered having fun and enjoying life as an important goal, while Asian Amerians and Japanese participants considered other’s happiness, especially people who are personally important, to be an important goal Self-Esteem Both SWB and self-esteem are higher in western cultures than eastern cultures, and the correlation between SWB and self-esteem is higher in western cultures as well. This could be due to a variety of reasons, including differences in self-enhancement and difference between individualism and collectivism. Self-Enhancement Recent studies show that there seems to be universal self-enhancement, but the topic of self-enhancement differs depending on what dimensions your culture holds important, known as tactical self-enhancement, and differs depending on who we are enhancing about, known as mutual enhancement. Additionally, there seems to be a universal self-serving attributional bias, where people attribute positive events on themselves and negative events on external factors. This bias seems to be weaker in collectivistic cultures. Unpackaging Culture How do we “unpackage” culture? There are other things about culture that can play a role, like how cultures think about the world. In order to explore the idea that the reason why people from western cultures score higher on measures of SWB and self-esteem compared to people from eastern cultures is because of differences in the way they think. We can use a systematic approach to test this called “unpackage” culture, which has four steps. STEP 1. Ensure equivalence and empirically demonstrate that there really are differences in culture. STEP 2. Come up with a theory that explains why that cultural difference is there, what is the cultural construct (ex. thinking) that explains the difference. STEP 3. Conduct research studies that show cultures differ on that construct. STEP 4. Empirically test whether it is those cultural differences that explain the cultural differences in well-being. What are cultural differences in thinking? Dialectic thinking seems to be more common among Eastern cultures that have been heavily influenced by the work of Confucius. Dialectical thinking is based on the principles of contradiction (opposites can exist), change (universe is in constant flux), and holism (universe is connected). Synthetic thinking seems to be more common among Western cultures that have been heavily influenced by ancient Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle. Synthetic thinking is based on the laws of identity (things are unique and discrete), noncontradiction (opposites cannot coexist), and excluded middle (no middle ground). Are differences in thinking correlated to differences in well-being? Spencer-Rodgers et al. (2004) tested whether differences in synthetic vs dialectical thinking across cultures explains why there are differences in SWB and self-esteem. They proposed that dialectical thinking should lead people to have the tendency to accept both negative and positive aspects of themselves, greater recognition that life experiences are fleeting, affective balance, acceptance of negative experiences, and greater ambivalence. Subsequently, they proposed that synthetic thinking should lead to a focus on one or the other, greater focus on positive than negative. Therefore cultural differences in thinking should have implications for the relation between self-esteem and well-being. STEP 1. In study 1, Spencer-Rodgers et al. (2004) compared students from American and Chinese universities on self-esteem which was broken into positive and negative self-evaluations, which allowed them to also measure attitudinal ambivalence. They found that greater ambivalence was found among those in dialectical thinking cultures (Chinese) and less ambivalence in synthetic thinking cultures (American). STEP 2. In study 2, they used open-ended responses so we know that these results are not due to methodological factors like biases as confounds. We see the same results. Thus they proposed that those who use dialectical thinking use more ambivalence, thus the negatives they endorse will lower their scores on self-esteem. STEP 3. In study 3, they used a measure of naive dialecticism, which is a measure of how much you as an individual see the world in a dialectic way. They found that at a group level, Chinese participants showed higher naive dialecticism and higher levels of ambivalence, and also lower levels of well-being/self-esteem. STEP 4. In study 4, they manipulated dialecticism by randomly assigning participants to be primed to think more dialectically and then measured ambivalence, self-esteem, LS, and a manipulation check of naive dialecticism. They were able to replicate findings from study 1 and 2, and they showed that in the dialectic prime condition, people showed more ambivalence and scored lower on self-esteem and LS.